Gretel (20 page)

“Nothing father,” Gretel replied, “Odalinde let me borrow her book and I’m just returning it to her. Go back to bed.”

“How did you get into that cabinet? You shouldn’t be in there. I prepared that space for Odalinde, and you and your brother were never to go in there.”

Her father’s voice was low and weary, but far from calm, and Gretel saw that patronization wasn’t going to work with him.

“I’m suspicious of her, father, and you should be too. Aren’t you at all curious as to why you aren’t getting better? You should be back working by now. Or at least not spending your entire day in bed. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m getting better,” Heinrich Morgan replied, and then looked at the floor, unconvinced of his own words.

“You’re not! And every time I mention it to Odalinde she says, ‘All he needs is more rest.’ Well, rest isn’t making you better, and I’ve got money now. I’ll take you into the city. Tomorrow. We’ll have real doctors examine you. Good doctors that can run tests and…”

“No!” her father interrupted, “No more doctors, Gretel. Heinrich Morgan closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then reached for the wall to crutch his stance. When he finally spoke again, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “You can’t go into her cabinet, Gretel,” he said. “You just can’t.” He paused again, as if he’d momentarily fallen asleep, and then said, “And that goes for you too.” He nodded toward Hansel, his eyes still closed, and then turned and staggered back to his bedroom.

Gretel’s anger at her father’s weakness and her amplified hatred for Odalinde combined to brew the beginning stages of tears and fury, but she contained her emotions. It was a skill she hadn’t yet mastered, but one she’d been working on daily.

In truth, she wanted nothing more than to run down to her boat and shove off into the lake and row for hours, sweating off the frustrations of her home while building her muscles in preparation for some impending showdown. Perhaps she would even dock at Rifle Field and spend the rest of the evening on her back staring at the stars, developing her strategy for making her life right again.

But none of that would be possible tonight. There was still the matter of returning the key, an operation that would require two people, and one that, even if it could be done alone, was too serious to delegate to someone as young and vulnerable as Hansel. Besides, Gretel would need to talk to her brother about what had just occurred with their father, assure him that although he was still sick, he would get better at some point, soon probably, and that he still loved them. And that he would keep to himself what he saw in the kitchen. Gretel couldn’t really be sure that any of these things were true, of course, but reassurances like these were required of her now, and she accepted this responsibility with less reluctance as each day passed.

It was after ten o’clock when Odalinde finally returned, and though Gretel would normally have been sleeping at such an hour, especially on a school night, she was instead sitting at the kitchen table when the nurse walked in. Odalinde gave Gretel a curious look and grumbled her name in weary acknowledgment. Gretel saw this as a good sign that she was none the wiser about the key missing from her bag.

Now for the tricky part.

“Odalinde,” Gretel said, rising from the chair, her eyes fixed on the woman, “I have something to show you. I realize it may upset you, and if it does, I would just like to say that I’m sorry in advance.”

Now Odalinde’s attention was rapt on Gretel, and she followed the girl’s hands as she brought the figurine from behind her back into the light of the kitchen.

“I’m not quite sure how it happened, but…”

As if the script had been rehearsed for weeks, Odalinde placed her bag on the floor and took the porcelain swan from Gretel, cradling it delicately and holding it up to the light.

“What is it?” she asked rhetorically, without any of the alarm in her voice Gretel had expected.

Odalinde turned the fragile piece over gently with her fingers, squinting desperately to find the flaw, and as she examined the piece, Hansel appeared silently behind her, stooped with assassin-like grace, and nestled the cabinet’s key down into the bottom of her canvas bag.

Gretel shifted her eyes to Hansel’s squirrel-like movements, gave a slight grin, and then focused back on Odalinde and the figurine. It had, in fact, been Hansel’s idea to use the swan as a diversion, and only to pretend that it had been broken, as opposed to actually breaking it, which had been Gretel’s suggestion. Frankly, Gretel had barely noticed the figurine’s appearance on the mantel, though apparently it had been there since the day Odalinde arrived; that the piece was important to Odalinde, Gretel hadn’t the slightest idea. Whether it had any real value Gretel wasn’t sure either, but Hansel insisted she cherished it, and had witnessed her take special care in cleaning it, even speaking to it on occasion when she was in one of her more airy, carefree moods.

“I knocked it to its side while dusting this evening,” Gretel lied. “I’m sorry, but I think I’ve cracked it. Just there.” Gretel pointed to the base of the swan’s neck, placing her fingernail in a thin crevice at the point where the wing joined with the gray collar of the bird.

“There?” Odalinde squinted her eyes tighter.

“Yes. There, at the neck.”

“That’s no crack, silly girl! Those are its feathers, separated on the wing!”

Gretel took a deep breath and smiled, feigning relief, though in fact the smile reflected pride in her performance.

“Thank goodness!” she said, “I’ve never seen the figure close up before. I really thought I’d cracked it.”

“Perhaps you should leave the dusting to me from now on.” Odalinde sighed and walked the figurine back to the mantel and placed it in its proper spot, noting the dirty mantel. “Been dusting have you?”

“Yes, well…” Gretel snorted a laugh, “as you say, I should probably leave that to you.”

With tragedy averted, Odalinde’s fatigue returned, and she slinked back to the kitchen and grabbed her bag from the floor, fishing the key from the bottom. Gretel watched anxiously as the woman opened the cabinet door and went through her routine of restocking the space. But instead of simply shoving the bag in and locking the door as Gretel had seen her do dozens of times, Odalinde paused, suddenly, as if noticing something slightly off. It was only for an instant, the pause, and there was no suspicious glance back toward the kitchen, but that she paused was without doubt. Did she know? How could she know? Gretel had put the book back exactly as it had been. And there was nothing else in the cabinet to be moved.

At last, Odalinde closed the door and locked it, keeping the key in her clenched fist, and she walked slowly back to her bedroom. She opened the door, and just before she entered she turned to Gretel. “Gretel,” she said stoically, “if you have any interest in my things, please don’t be afraid to ask.”

The concoction was coming along, but slower than the woman would have liked. The extractions proved painstaking—much more difficult than she’d remembered—and required every bit of the training she’d received in the Old Country. She had the book of course, which gave every detail of the procedures, but she still had to be precise with every slice and suture. No amount of instruction could correct for a shaky hand or poor intuition. Acquiring fluids from such delicate organs without killing was difficult, and the woman, to say the least, was rusty.

But she remained focused and disciplined, methodical with every incision and took only what was absolutely safe to keep the Source alive. The Source would die in the end, of course; once the liver was removed and the bile taken there was no chance of survival, but all the acids had to be just so, and that meant she would have to eat the pies for another week or so. If the Source was slaughtered too early, everything would be lost. It was always better to wait too long.

The woman re-read the instruction from the book that rested on the tray, and added the precise number of drops to the mixture, stirring slowly as she did so, folding the red liquid into the mash with a thin piece of flat steel she called a ‘Fin’, a tool she’d designed long ago for just this purpose. She was careful not to over-mix, and used a wooden spatula to gently scrape the excess potion from the Fin, sliding the utensils back and forth against each other until all the mixture was off. None of it could be spared.

Once properly combined, the woman placed a glass covering over the bowl and then draped a white cloth on top of the glass. It didn’t need to be kept airtight, but the mixture couldn’t afford the additions of dust or large insects either. Or, God forbid, mice. The white cloth prevented her from having to look at the vile broth all day.

A dull scream bellowed from the back room, signaling to the woman it was time for the evening feeding. She’d been expecting it would come soon. She’d learned by now to differentiate between the screams of sleep and those of confusion and fear, but either way they affected the woman’s nerves little more than a clock striking on the hour.

The ‘real’ screams did mean, however, that the drug was beginning to wear off, and it was important the Source was kept as tranquil and unruffled as possible. The woman was convinced that adrenaline and hormones affected the potency of the mixture, more so even than the drug itself.

She filled a small cup with water and dropped in a pinch of the powder from the saucer next to the stove. She placed the cup on the feeding tray, which she’d already loaded with two small pies, and then walked with them back toward the bedroom where her victim lay chained. She opened the door quickly and entered, and was immediately hit with the smell of fresh urine. Again. An irritating side effect of the drug. She could only hope the Source had found the pot this time, as she was getting tired of cleaning and replacing the sheets. But that was just another part of it: she also couldn’t risk the Source being defiled from lying around in her own piss all day.

“Breakfast,” the woman said coldly, not looking up.

The Source groaned and attempted to talk, instead only managing garbled nonsense. The drug made intelligible speech virtually impossible, since one of its functions was to boggle the part of the brain controlling syntax and tenses. It was amusing at first, the blathering, but now it just frustrated and annoyed the old woman, and she had wasted too much time already trying to elicit meaning from the subconscious ramblings. ‘Hansel’ and ‘Gretel’ came up a lot—no doubt the names of the Source’s children—but the other words and names always stopped short of significance. Except for one.

It was tempting for the witch, living in such isolation, to ease up on the drug and allow some sort of dialogue with the girl, but the old woman knew nothing good would come of it. It wasn’t that she feared feeling sympathy for the girl—she’d long since shed the ability for that emotion—but she was old, and she wasn’t foolish enough to think she was incapable of being tricked by a mind more nimble than her own. She didn’t know if this creature had such a mind—in fact, she doubted it—but there was no point in taking chances.

It had been months since the young gift lying before her had appeared, miraculously, as if fused from air and earth, a flower planted in the wood waiting to be plucked and drained of its nectar. Life had responded to her on that horrifying morning, almost instantly. Now it was her task to complete the work.

And that task would need to be completed soon. That morning on the stoop, when ‘death’ had been so close, had turned out to be nothing more than a bout of withdrawal, and it was only the hope and anticipation of a continued long life—and a new focus—that had seen her through it. But hope alone wasn’t enough, and death would eventually come. She was tiring again, and she would need to drink soon.

The old woman rolled her eyes at the girl’s garbled words and placed the tray on the end table, harder than she’d intended, almost spilling some of the powdered water.

The Source had figured out almost immediately after her capture that it was the water which was tainted, and at first had refused to drink it. But the slightest singe of a hot nail just below her left eye, along with the promise that the next time she refused it the nail would go an inch higher, had quickly reversed her resistance. There had been no ‘next time.’ The stress wasn’t good for the hormones, of course, but a necessary evil to establish the rules.

“You’re to drink first, then you eat.”

The woman grabbed the chamber pot—which was full—and opened the door to leave.

“Tonight I’ll take more,” she said and slammed the door behind her.

Anika watched the woman leave through a cloud, and then registered the slam of both the bedroom and front doors. Two doors closing, she was positive.

The drug or poison or whatever it was, was wearing off, but it still lingered, and she had to be definitive in her thought process. The woman had left her room and then the house. That made sense. That had been her usual routine just after bringing the meals.

Anika figured out months ago that it was almost always the water that was drugged, but she also suspected it may sometimes have been the food as well, and as she lay staring at the knots of wood in the beams above her, she decided there would be no drinking tonight. She would have to eat—there was no real way to hide the food—but water was something else. She was banking it was in the water this time, and she needed to sober up.

In the beginning, the woman had sat like a barn owl from the vanity bench, ensuring Anika drank every drop of water and ate every crumb of pie. But it had been weeks since she’d last waited in the room for Anika to finish a meal, and after the tattoo had been branded on Anika’s face, she hadn’t needed to. The scar beneath her left eye and the memory of the pain kept Anika obedient to the regiment.

But Anika could sense the time left was short. Any day—any moment—could be her last. Something had to change. Soon.

As she recalled, her shackles were last removed only days ago after she’d wet the bed, but Anika was barely conscious at the time and had only a foggy memory of it now. She had a drowsy recollection of sitting against the wall naked, rubbing her legs with a wet cloth as the old witch changed the bed covers. But she couldn’t remember changing into the clothes she now wore, and probably wouldn’t have remembered the episode at all if it hadn’t been for the hag’s screaming. She assumed the scolding was directed toward her, but it didn’t register that way at the time. In fact, Anika vaguely remembered laughing, which meant she was at the apex of the drug’s effects.