Gretel (40 page)

Gretel let out a quiet burst of laughter. “I hardly mean it like that,” she said. And then, “Do you think she’s still coming?”

“I don’t know, honey, but let’s leave the canoe on the bank. I want her to know we’re here.”

Gretel walked back to her mother at the shoreline and, as the two women stepped toward the boat, they were halted by the twisted face of the tortuous witch rising from the lake.

Her face was gruesome, bloodied from head to chin, her mouth deformed and vacant, with a demented grinning overbite. In the dark of night, with her hair and body dripping with water, she looked like a corpse that had crawled from a tomb buried long ago at the bottom of the lake.

Anika stood palsied by the emerging face, stunned at the transformation it had undergone. Everything back on the bank had happened so quickly—the attack and Gretel’s heroics—that nothing had registered in Anika’s mind. But it was obvious now what was happening—even with all that destruction to the woman’s face—Anika understood clearly what she was seeing. The torture. The blood. All of the extractions and the rank pies, all of the forced, unnatural rest and nursing, it had all been for this. This metamorphosis. This conversion of the hideous beast from the woods of the Northlands into a younger, more maniacal version of itself. A stronger version of itself.

“Now Gretel! Follow me now!”

Anika broke from her paralysis and sprinted to the fence and the awaiting burrow beneath it, with Gretel following obediently, barely a step back from her heels. She ushered her daughter through first, and Gretel slithered under the fence as nimbly as a human could. Anika was on the ground following before her daughter’s feet had cleared the hole, sneaking peeks behind her, expecting the monster to grab her at any moment.

But the woman didn’t pursue them, and Anika and Gretel made it through, quickly heading to the front side of the cannery. Anika opened the door and shuffled Gretel through, narrowly squeezing in herself before slamming the door behind them. Anika briefly considered that perhaps the warehouse would have been the better option, but the hill leading up to it was steep, and she didn’t trust her legs at this point. And there were tools in the cannery. Weapons.

When Anika had been inside the cannery earlier—escaping the very grounds on which she now sought sanctuary—there had still been a hint of daylight by which to navigate. But it was nearly pitch black inside the building now, with only the radiance of the moon through the second-level window to see by.

Ideally, Anika would have blocked the door with a table or piece of large machinery, but she recalled the emptiness of the cannery floor and decided there was nothing accessible to serve that purpose, and there was no time to explore. Besides, Anika thought, the door swung out—not in—and any blockade would be easily conquered.

Anika grabbed her daughter’s hand and, extending her other arm, felt the space immediately in front of her for any looming obstacles. The path to the stairs had been clear previously, she was relatively confident on that count, but she could little afford to be hobbled by a stray iron post or corroded hole in the floor. She and Gretel had to get to the second level.

“Where is she? Why isn’t she following us?” Gretel asked, her tone hopeful, suggesting that perhaps the woman hadn’t seen the hole they’d created, or perhaps hadn’t been able to fit.

Or maybe she decided the effort was too taxing after all. Or, with God’s Grace, had finally succumbed to her injuries. That was the one they needed. But Anika knew better; she’d seen the glee and determination on the woman’s face. She was wounded, but she’d never stop chasing them. Any of them.

“She is, Gretel. But maybe she suspects a trap.”

Anika stepped forward and felt the toe of her shoe against the side of the bottom step. “We’re going upstairs, Gretel. There’s no railing, so be careful.”

With the moonlight shining through to the landing at the top of the stairs, the ascent got progressively easier as they reached the top, and Anika quickly looked around for the hammer she’d used earlier to clear out the window.

“Is there one?” Gretel asked.

“One what?” Anika replied, focusing on the floor, squinting her eyes in adjustment to the shadows on the floor.

“A trap? You said, ‘Maybe she suspects a trap.’ Is there a trap?”

“No. Not really. Not one that I’ve planned anyway. But if she suspects one, that’s good. It will give us time to think of one.” Anika realized this logic was somewhat specious, but the alternative—having the witch bounding up the stairs to maul them—was certainly worse.

Anika was on her knees now, feeling the dusty wood of the floor in search of the hammer. It had been here! She’d dropped it right here!

“Gretel,” she whispered, “there’s a hammer up here. On the floor somewhere. It should be here by the window. Help me find it.”

A crackling sound on the ground below froze Anika, and she could here Gretel’s breathing stop midway through her exhalation. It could have been just an animal—a raccoon likely—Anika thought, and on any other night it would have been. She considered for a moment that maybe Gretel had been right: maybe the blow from the oar had been more severe than realized, and it was only the witch’s adrenaline that had seen her through the lake. Maybe she’d staggered out of the water toward them in a last desperate attempt at murder until her body simply refused to go any further.

Maybe, Anika thought, but she was alive. And as long as she was alive, she’d be coming.

Every atom in Anika’s body wanted to crawl to the window and peek out, just to get a glimpse of the ground below, to see if the woman was there, waiting for them, starving them out perhaps. But she knew if the witch was there—recovered and virile—that to give away their position at this point was suicidal; the witch knew they were inside the cannery, but not where inside. Anika and Gretel had to hold that advantage, no matter how slight.

“She’s down there, Mother,” Anika said, her voice so tempered that ‘mother’ came out as “other.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll hide here for now.” Anika hadn’t prepared for this recess. She’d figured that after they ran for the cannery the witch would have been a step behind them and that all of it—one way or the other—would be over by now. But that hadn’t happened, and now she needed a real plan. “We’ll move away from the window for now, out of the light, against the wall.”

“And then what?” Gretel asked.

“I don’t know, Gretel!” Anika immediately regretted her whispered bark, but let the effect of it stand. “Just move to the wall.”

Anika scooted to the side wall of the cannery and frowned at Gretel, who had decided to move away from her to the opposite wall. Not really a good time for brooding, Anika thought, but she’s just a child. And God only knew what she’d been through. A tear formed in Anika’s eyes and her mind raced to red over the struggle that wouldn’t be rewarded. The reward she deserved! Her life! Her children!

Anika quickly erased the tear, flicking it away in a redirection of anger. No. No. No. She wouldn’t let her mind straggle off in a countenance of the inequities of life. Not now, and not ever again. There was simply no gain in it. There were gains from love—and sometimes from fight—but never from blame. Never from self-pity. Those were the things that bred regret. Those were the things that dissolved power.

“Mother.” It was Gretel from the opposite wall, whispering only as loud as necessary to be heard.

“I love you, Gretel,” Anika replied.

“I love you too, Mother. I can’t wait until Hansel sees you.”

This time Anika let the tear fall, and she wanted to run to Gretel, to spend her last seconds on earth—if that what was meant to be—in the arms of her daughter.

“And Mother,” Gretel continued.

“Yes, angel?”

“I found the hammer.”

The witch staggered to the dry ground of the clearing and collapsed, gasping for air. She was thankful the women had run off—had they stood and fought, she may not have had the strength to defeat them both. She was desperately tired, and her injuries were not insignificant.

But this challenge was a mere formality, a honing of her abilities, a further test of her dedication to Life. Rest was all she needed to continue. Rest and more potion.

The old woman lay flat on her back now, breathing heavily through her damaged jaws. She could feel the effects of the magic broth trying to restore her once again, as it had earlier in the cabin after she’d been brutally attacked and left to die. But already she sensed the potency diminishing. In her bones and muscles she still felt young and strong, but she wasn’t healing the same.

She needed more. She needed everything blended properly this time. And her earlier plans to kill the older one, her original Source, had to be recalibrated. She would need all of them. All of the Aulwurms. The girl and the woman she would get now, and later, when she’d regained control of the situation, the boy.

She watched her prey squeeze beneath the wire barrier, scattering like so many vermin she’d hunted in her day. Her rest would be short-lived it seemed, and the witch felt a pang of panic as she watched the women disappear into the darkness on the opposite side of the fence. She was confident she could scale the fence, or even fit beneath it, but such efforts would take their toll, and leave her vulnerable in whatever conflict eventually awaited her.

Still, she had to move.

She climbed back to her feet and stepped slowly to the fence, peering through into the blackness. She took a step back and scanned the metal barrier top to bottom, calculating what efforts would be needed to lift herself over the barbed wire. Certainly burrowing under would be far easier, but there would be several seconds of defenselessness, and it wasn’t impossible that the women were waiting with a raised axe just on the other side.

But the witch was anemic, and even the idea of taking flight exhausted her. She couldn’t wait to recover, and she couldn’t risk a failed attempt that would leave her caught in the barbs. The hole at the bottom of the fence seemed like the only decision.

She kneeled back to the soft ground, preparing to follow the path the women had taken only minutes before, and froze at soft muffled sounds coming from the huge rusted building in front of her. There was silence for a few beats, and then the sounds again, coming from within. At first the woman assumed it was rats or bats, but then, magically, the faint hiss of whispers drifted down from the window above. The witch’s smile grew wide with joy, and she had to cover her half-mouth like a schoolgirl to keep from chuckling.

She lay back down, this time at the foot of the fence just in front of the tunnel, and closed her eyes, listening to the sweet sounds above her, waiting for her power to return.

“How long are we going to stay here?” Gretel asked.

It was the first words either woman had spoken in at least ten minutes, both Gretel and Anika seeming to understand that silence was safer. But Gretel was growing restless, and with every minute that passed, more wary of the situation. This plan of her mother’s to hide and fortify seemed as good as any before, but now it felt wrong, like it was working against them. Like they were trapped.

“It hasn’t been that long, Gretel. It just feels that way,” Anika replied.

Gretel could hear the doubt in her mother’s voice and capitalized on it.

“We can’t just sit here, Mother. Maybe she’s gone by now. She doesn’t know we came in here, right? How could she? Maybe she went off into the woods somewhere looking for us, and now’s the time we should be leaving.”

This didn’t feel right to Gretel either—she suspected the witch was still near—but she wanted to move, be proactive. Sitting and waiting, as a rule, always seemed to Gretel like the wrong course of action.

“And if she’s down there, waiting for us, what then?”

Gretel paused a moment and said, “Then we’ll fight her…and kill her.”

Gretel’s words lingered for several beats, and then she saw the figure of her mother creep into view and head toward the window. She had her head bowed well below the height of the sill, like a bank robber dodging pistol fire with the local sheriff in some old movie.

“I’m going to take a look,” Anika whispered, “but just understand, if she sees me, you’ll get your wish. There will be a fight. So keep the hammer ready.”

Gretel held the hammer up, and then, not sure whether she or the hammer was visible to her mother from where she sat, replied, “I’ve got it.”

Gretel watched the back of her mother’s head rise slowly up to the opening of the window, turning first in the direction of Rifle Field, and then rotating back in the direction of their property down the lake. She then stood up further to get a view of the ground directly below, and instantly collapsed back to the floor and turned toward Gretel, wide-eyed and stunned.

Assuming her mother had seen the witch walking below, Gretel stayed quiet, and simply turned her palms up and matched her mother’s expression.

“She’s down there. Outside the fence near the hole.” Anika was barely auditory, doing little more than mouthing the words. “I think she might be dead.”

Gretel looked toward the window. “Let me see.”

Anika nodded, indicating she wanted Gretel’s assessment about whether she also believed the witch dead.

Gretel walked on her knees over to the window and looked out, scanning the ground below, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The night was still clear and the moon offered plenty of light past the fence. But Gretel didn’t see anyone. She scanned the grounds for a few seconds more and then turned back to her mother. “I don’t see her. You said by the fence, right?”

“Yes, right next to the hole. Let me see.”

Gretel backed off and allowed her mother to move in again.

Anika peered once again out the window. “I don’t understand. She was…”

A hoarse, high-pitched cry shattered the quiet of the night and rang through the cannery like the bellow of a bull elephant. Anika, screaming in disbelief, lurched in terror away from the window—so far, in fact, that had she backed up even another foot, Gretel could see she would have gone tumbling down the open stairway.