From somewhere beyond the fence resounded the howls and barks of a pack of dogs, which caused Egert to freeze in place. The hermit turned back and mooed encouragingly at him. From the nearest gate in the fence, two teenage boys were dashing toward them, skipping and hopping as they ran; at the sight of them, Egert involuntarily seized the hermit by his shoulder.
Ten paces away, the boys stopped short, gulping air, their eyes and mouths wide open. Finally, the one who was a bit older gleefully cried out, “Look! Elder Chestnut has picked up a stray!”
The little hamlet was small and solitary. It consisted of twenty-odd farmyards, a little turret with a sundial, and the house of the local wisewoman, which was on the outskirts. Life flowed by there lazily and with regularity. The arrival of Egert did not especially surprise anyone except the children: Chestnut had picked up some young man with a scar, and that was all well and good. At the suggestion that he stay on to work and spend the winter at the hamlet, Egert only sullenly shook his head. To winter where it was warm? What for? To grope for human society? Perhaps he would still return home, to Kavarren, where his father and mother, and his room with its fireplace and tapestries were?
Glorious Heaven, after everything that he had done! He no longer had a home. He no longer had a father or a mother; it was past the time to mourn Lieutenant Soll, whose place in the world was now occupied by a nameless young man with a scar.
Winter turned into one long delirium.
Though accustomed to the cold since childhood, Egert still took ill with the arrival of the first frost. More than once over the course of the long winter, the hermit grieved that it was so difficult to hollow out a grave in the frozen earth.
Egert thrashed about on the straw, gasping and coughing. The old man seemed more of a fatalist than a doctor: he swathed Egert in bast matting and gave him herbal infusions to drink, but after assuring himself that his patient had quieted down and fallen asleep, he went into the forest with a spade, justly reasoning that if he chipped away at the ground little by little, the hole might attain the appropriate depth by the time it was needed.
Egert was unaware of this. Opening his eyes, he saw above him first that solicitous, pocked face, then the gloomy beams of the ceiling, then the honeycombed patterns that had been carved into the mud walls. One day he came to consciousness and saw Toria over him.
“Why are you here?” he wanted to ask. His tongue would not obey him, but he asked the question without parting his lips, mute like the hermit.
She did not answer. She was sitting, her back arched and her head lowered toward her shoulders like a mournful stone bird on someone’s grave.
“Why are you here?” asked Egert again.
She shifted slightly. “And why are you?”
Fierce, burning flames seared his eyes as if a torch had been set to them.
His mother also came. Egert felt her hand on his forehead, but he could not open his eyelids. Then pain and fear overwhelmed him, and he could not recognize her; he could not recall her face.
The hermit shook his head and shuffled off into the forest, carrying the spade under his arm.
However, as luck would have it, the frosts gave way to warmth and Egert Soll was still alive. One warm spring day, weak as a kitten, he made his way to the door of the hut without any help and raised his face—his wasted face that now seemed to consist only of his eyes and the scar—toward the sun.
The hermit waited a few more days and then, sighing and wiping away sweat, he refilled the vacant grave that had cost him so much labor.
The old wisewoman lived on the outskirts of the tiny hamlet. Egert furtively drew a circle on the path, pressed his left pinkie to his right thumb, and knocked on the gate.
He had been preparing himself for this visit for many days. Time and again the hermit had tried to tell him something, poking at his scar with his finger. Finally, gathering up his courage, Egert set out for the hamlet alone in order to visit the wise woman.
Her courtyard was quiet; it seemed the old woman kept no dogs. A spring wind slowly turned an ungainly weathervane on the roof. The weathervane was a greased wheel with shrunken oddments attached to it, scraps that Egert, upon closer inspection, realized were the skins of frogs.
Finally, Egert heard the shuffling of footsteps. He shivered, but he clenched his teeth and remained where he was.
The gate cracked open with a moan, and a prominent, expressive blue eye, like a glass marble, stared hard at Egert. “Ah, the young stray with the scar.”
The gate swung open wider and Egert, overcoming his diffidence, stepped into the yard.
A thatch-roofed hut stood by the fence; on a chain near it—Egert recoiled—sat a wooden beast covered in tar, with curved fangs peeking out of its half-open jaw. Instead of eyes it had black pits. Walking past, Egert broke out into a sweat because he felt a furtive, observant gaze looming in those pits.
“Come in.”
Egert entered the house, which was congested with an abundance of superfluous items that seemed randomly strewn about. It was a dark and mysterious house, and the walls were covered with two layers of dried herbs.
“Why have you come, young man?”
The old crone looked at him with one round eye. The other was closed, and the eyelid had grown into her cheek. Egert knew that the old woman never worked wicked magic on anyone; quite the opposite: she was well loved in the village for her rare abilities to heal. He knew this, and all the same he trembled before that steadfast, wooden stare.
“Why have you come?” repeated the wise woman.
“I wanted to ask you something.” Egert had to force the words out.
Her eye blinked. “Your fate is crooked.”
“Yes.”
The old woman meditatively wiped her nose, which was snubbed like a girl’s. “We’ll see. Let’s take a look at you.”
Casually stretching out her hand, she took a thick candle from a shelf, lit it by rubbing the wick with her fingers, and though the day was quite bright, brought the flame close to Egert’s face.
Egert braced himself. It seemed to him that instead of warmth, cold emanated from the flame.
“Well, aren’t you just a big bird,” said the old woman pensively. “Your aura is mangled, Egert.”
Egert shivered.
“Your scar,” continued the old woman, as if talking to herself, “is a mark. Now, who would mark you like that?”
She put her eye very close to Egert’s face and suddenly sprang back, her blue eye almost pushing its way out of its socket. “By the frog that enlightens me, by the frog that directs me, by the frog that protects me: Get out, get out!”
And with surprising strength she seized a stupefied Egert by the shoulders and pushed him away. “Out! Go, and don’t return! It is not for me to stand against him; I do not have the strength to tussle with him!”
Before he could come to his senses, Egert was already at the gate. His back crashed into the fence.
“Grandmother! Don’t chase me away! I—”
“I’ll set my dog on you!” snapped the sorceress, and—Glorious Heaven!—the wooden beast slowly turned its tar-covered head.