Gretel (3 page)

But the truth was it was too late for the road, at least at the part where her car now lay abandoned and invisible. Whatever it was that had compelled her into the wilderness had now taken her beyond the point where she had the will to make it back. It would be a disheartening trek of over an hour through the now detestable mud, and at this point she wasn’t sure she would even be able to find it. The turns she had made along the way to avoid the deeper swampy areas and larger thickets had disoriented Anika, and though she was fairly confident that she could head back in the general direction she had come, with fatigue and fear now a factor, there was no certainty she would reach the road at all.

Her other option—only option really—was to continue on. She realized she may only immerse herself deeper, but eventually she would reach a boundary. This was the Northlands, not the Amazon, after all. She had to keep going and cling to the fact that possibility rested in every new clearing.

She stood up on the log and slowly surveyed the forest in each direction, hoping by some wonder of the universe her eyes would focus past the camouflage and spot something other than trees. It wasn’t a particularly dense woodland, so even with the lush spring leaves there was quite a bit of visibility. But she saw nothing. She jumped down off the log and searched the forest again, this time at ground level, figuring she may have more luck at a different angle. Nothing. She climbed the log again and this time stood tall, straightening her back, and cupped her mouth with her hands. She breathed deeply and screamed as loudly as possible.

“Help me! Can anybody hear me!”

The words seemed to float through the trees, echoing off the branches and carrying downwind. With the additional height of the log, her voice felt forceful, and the decision to yell now seemed less an act of desperation and more of an actual rescue strategy. She paused and listened, not expecting a response, and, of course, getting none. She screamed again, this time feeling a strained burn in her throat. She couldn’t remember ever having yelled this loud as an adult. Still nothing, and the subsequent silence was stark, only reinforcing her desertion. She couldn’t know that the sound waves of this particular bellow deflected at just the proper angle, avoiding perfectly the large oak trunks and dense clumps of leaves that should have absorbed them forever, traveling instead just far enough from their source to reach the auditory canal of an old woman who lay dying on a weathered terrace less than four miles away.

Anika moved down to a sitting position on the log, broke off a dying branch, and began clearing as much mud as possible from her shoes and pant cuffs. It was a futile exercise she knew—they’d be covered again in a matter of paces—but she needed whatever boost she could get. At least she hadn’t worn a dress today, she thought. It could always be worse.

She placed her feet back down on the damp dirt floor and was startled by a rustle beneath the log. She stifled a gasp and watched as two chipmunks ran past her and headed up a nearby tree. Anika unconsciously cataloged the vermin as a potential food source; though if it came to that, how she would trap such small, fleeting creatures she had no idea. She watched the tiny animals disappear into the camouflage of the tree’s top branches and then continued her upward gaze to the clear blue sky. It was indeed a marvelous day, she thought, and then she started walking.

The old woman opened her eyes and searched her surroundings with the vibrancy of an infant seeing the world for the first time. The voice was faint—perhaps the faintest sound she had ever heard—but that she had heard it there was no doubt. It may be the voice of Death, she thought, but if it was, he was incarnate. That sound had come in through her ears, not her imagination. She replayed the words in her mind. Over and over. The voice was feminine—beautiful and distressed. Strong. Alive. Not the voice of Death. The voice of Life. Delivering again.

“Anika!”

Gretel Morgan flinched violently at the sound of her father’s voice, somehow managing not to drop the ceramic plate she had been drying over the sink. He was awake, and, as was usually the case lately, unhappy.

“It’s me, Father, I’ll be right there,” she called, turning her head slightly toward the back bedroom, trying her best not to sound aggravated. She certainly sympathized with his condition but had grown tired of the demands it came with.

Gretel sighed and placed the dish on the sideboard. She had hoped to finish the cleaning before he woke since her tasks seemed to multiply when he was conscious. Cooking his meals alone was a day’s work; add in laundering his clothes (including ironing) and general fetching, and the assignment was barbaric. Thankfully, Mother would be home today, at least to bear some of the constant attention, if not the heavy lifting.

Gretel walked the ten or so paces to her father’s room and paused at the door, softly clearing her throat and assuming the statuesque, confident posture her mother always seemed to have when she entered a room. At fourteen, her shoulders and hips had begun to forge, and early indications suggested she would have her mother’s shapely body. She had no delusions of striding in and conquering her father’s petulance in the same effortless way her mother did, of course, but hopefully she could disarm him if only for a moment.

She formed what she believed was a serious, business-like look on her face and entered the room. She could see that her father was sitting up slightly in his bed, but avoided his eyes and walked briskly to the end table, feigning irritation at the crumbs and empty glasses that littered its surface.

“Where is your mother?” her father grumbled, his deep, accented speech at once both intimidating and divine. “She was to be home by now.”

“She’s probably not coming home,” Gretel replied casually, letting the words drift just to the edge of uneasiness. “I wouldn’t blame her. If I was her I would have changed my name and run away to a village in the south.” She kept her eyes down, serious, staying excessively focused on her father’s mess.

Her father frowned and stared coldly at his daughter. “Perhaps I’ll send you to a village in the south.”

Gretel stopped sponging the table in mid-motion, and stared up at her father with a look of both disbelief and anticipation. “Would you? Please! Promise me, Papa!” She held his gaze for as long as possible before losing control of the charade and erupting into a snorted laugh.

Her father shook his head slowly and grinned. Gretel could see the flicker of joy in his eyes, proud of how quick his daughter had become with her banter. Yet another gift inherited from her mother.

“How are you feeling, Papa?” Gretel said, now straight-faced, unable to conceal her weariness. She sat on the edge of the bed and examined her father’s bandages.

“Better than I look.”

“Well, you look terrible.”

“So better than terrible then.” He waved an absent hand and began shuffling to get on his feet, having reached the extent of how much he wanted to discuss himself or his maladies. “Get me up.”

“You need to stay in bed, Papa. You’re not ready.”

“Then you had better be ready with the piss pot.”

With that, Gretel stooped and leaned in toward her father, offering her shoulder as a crutch. She could see him size up her position, and with a soft, guttural grunt he threw an arm around his daughter’s neck, embarrassment no longer the palpable element it had been six weeks ago. His white bedshirt was badly stained with some type of red sauce, and his ever-growing belly extended over the elastic of his tattered long underpants. It had amazed Gretel the short time it took for a man with such a long-standing trademark of pride and masculinity to concede to the often cruel circumstances of life; in the case of her father, those circumstances had come most recently in the form of three fractured ribs—not exactly the bubonic plague in the hierarchy of ailments, but painfully debilitating nevertheless. Particularly for a man nearing sixty.

Gretel boosted him from the bed and shuffled him slowly to the threshold of the washroom, grimacing throughout the process, and from there left him to his own maneuvers. The doctor had explained to her mother that the injury would likely cause a decrease in appetite, since even automatic bodily functions like swallowing and digesting could be painful, and limited activity would reduce his need for the same amount of nourishment he was getting before the accident. The opposite, however, was proving true; he ate constantly and, as a result, had become quite heavy. She couldn’t be sure, but Gretel guessed that her father had gained at least forty pounds in little over a month.

“So where is your mother?” The voice from behind the bathroom door was less demanding now and contained the subtle hint of concern. Gretel had lingered outside since she would have to bring her father back when he was done.

“Delayed, I guess. But she must have left Deda’s already or else she would have telephoned.”

“Then why didn’t she phone to say she would be delayed?” His pitch was now higher and layered with obstinance.

“Perhaps she was delayed on the road, I don’t know Papa.” She paused and asked, “Are you going to be in there much longer?” Gretel was now annoyed, both at her father for his current weakness and at her mother for being late. There were still dishes remaining in the kitchen, and she needed a break—if only for fifteen minutes—to sit and rest. Not working or helping or talking. Just to rest.

“Maybe you should bathe,” she suggested, offering the words in the tone of a helpful reminder so as not to offend him. “You’ll call Deda’s when you’re out.” Her father mumbled something inaudible from behind the door, and then a grain of joy arose in Gretel at the abrupt sound of water being released from the tub’s faucet.

She sighed with relief and walked back toward the kitchen, her desire to finish housework now dwarfed by the urge to rest. She averted her gaze from the sink as she passed it, and headed quickly for the back porch, where she collapsed forcefully in a white, weathered rocker. She tilted her face up toward the ceiling and closed her eyes, thankful for the chance to relax, but understanding that what she really needed was sleep. Sleep had now become the default thought in her mind throughout the day, and, in fact, had become of such value since her father’s accident, that over the past three weeks Gretel had started her mornings by staring at herself in the small nightstand mirror by her bed and listing in her mind the things that she would be willing to give up for an undisturbed day of slumber. A full day. Not one chore. Not one knock. Not even a voice. Just complete serenity. Of course, she possessed virtually nothing of her own, so this exercise basically involved the sacrifices of treasures she would never see and powers she would never have, the latest offering being a horse that could fly. Later, in the throes of the day, she would scoff at how little value she would have gotten from her imagined trade-offs; but she was convinced that, at the time, she would have made the deal.

Gretel could feel herself drifting, and decided not to fight. The dishes remained, but her mother would be home soon, and though she would be in no mood to finish her daughter’s chores after a long day of travel, Gretel concluded that as a parent she would recognize when her child was spent. If her father needed help back to his bed she would help, but aside from that, she was done for the day.

“She’s not home, Gretel.”

Gretel opened her eyes and was greeted by the orange glow of the twilight sky above her. She was momentarily disoriented, but smelled the oil from the lamps and remembered she was on the porch. Her late afternoon catnap had metastasized into solid sleep. By her estimation, she was out for at least four hours.

Her thoughts immediately went to her father, whom, for all she knew, was in the tub dead, a victim of immobility, hypothermia, and a neglectful daughter.

She got up quickly from the rocker and felt the effect of her sleeping position in the form of a dull stiffness at the back of her neck. No question she would be dealing with that misery for the rest of the night. Tentatively, Gretel turned back toward the house and screamed at the sight of her father sitting at the porch table, dressed and shaven, his elbows propped up and his head buried in his hands. He looked as if her were in a library reading—the way one might read a dictionary or an atlas—but there was nothing on the table below him.

Her initial thoughts were of relief, that her father was alive and that she was not a murderer. Then, registering his condition, her thoughts became more selfish, assuming his apparent improvement meant she would now get real relief. Physical relief. More sleep.

She stood staring at him, waiting for him to speak, but he sat in position, silent.

“Papa?” she said, “What’s wrong?” Gretel spoke softly, but her tone had no sympathy and was one demanding an explanation. Her father didn’t move and she became uneasy, then scared. “What’s wrong!” she said again, this time louder, panicked and quivery, the film of sleep and the surreality of her father sitting upright in a chair on the porch, functional, now completely wiped away.

“She’s not home, Gretel.” Her father lifted his head from his hands and looked out through the trees at the small narrow lake that lined their property.

Gretel could see where the tears had been on his freshly-washed cheeks and she noted that this was as close to weeping as she’d ever seen from either of her parents.

“Something’s happened,” he said, “I know something’s happened.”

Her father’s words caused Gretel’s legs to wobble, and she sat back down slowly in the rocker. She couldn’t speak, and looked off in the same direction as her father, as if they were both trying to spot the same object on the water. “Did you call Deda?” she asked finally, in a whisper, already knowing the answer.

“Of course I called him. She left even earlier than she had told me she would. She should have been home long before we expected her.” There was no anger in her father’s voice, only defeat.

“Perhaps there was traffic then. A very bad accident…and the road is closed.”