Gretel (24 page)

With the woman’s back still turned, and without thinking, Anika grabbed the ceramic hollow off the bed and shoved it beneath her gown, holding on to it through the fabric, trying to appear as casual as possible.

Did the woman notice the move? Or hear it? If she did, she didn’t care, and without looking at Anika, the witch walked back to the bed, still grumbling about the mess. There was still the bottom sheet to contend with, and that contained the lion’s share of the clean-up challenge.

Starting at the foot of the bed, not twelve inches from where Anika stood frozen in uncertainty and anticipation, the woman began to remove the fitted corners of the bottom sheet. It was a struggle at first, the sheet perhaps a bit small for the bed, but eventually she released it and moved toward the head of the mattress to unbind the other end.

And then, at the midpoint of the bed, she stopped.

She didn’t look back at Anika, but instead looked down at the brown streaks that marked the white sheets. With barely a turn of her head, the witch peeked back toward the tray with which she now stood parallel, and then back to the mattress again. Casually she placed two fingers from her left hand on the edge of the brown stain and then brought them to her nose, smelling the mistake she had made.

The witch never saw the girl fumble frantically beneath her gown, nor did she hear the whispered word ‘Die’ as the clay bowl smashed onto her left cheekbone. She did, however, feel the collapse of her eye socket and the ensuing rattle of splintered bone in her sinus cavity, as well as the stiff, mercilessness of the wooden floorboards on the back of her skull.

She had felt it all before she blacked out.

The old woman woke in a panic, coughing and gasping for air. Her windpipe was blocked with what had to be a shattered piece of her own skull.

She tried to stand, but her legs had been bound at the ankles and thighs, and her arms at the wrists and behind her back. She fell back to the floor face down, her eyes bulging, wheezing in terror. She tried again to stand, using the leverage of the bed, and this time made it to her knees, desperately trying to take air into her lungs. The lack of oxygen began to fog her head and blur her vision. She was dying.

Behind her she felt the bed frame brush her back, and she reached for it with her elbow, trying to gauge its exact position. With a last act of will and survival, the old woman leaned her torso forward, almost touching her head to the floor, and then rocked back violently, slamming her upper back against the steel of the bed.

There was a simultaneous flash of pain and light as the bone shot from the witch’s throat like a prehistoric bullet. She closed her functioning eye and collapsed back to the floor, now lying on her side, replenishing her cells with precious gasps of air.

She lay in that position for several minutes until her breathing steadied and then focused on her body as the pain set in. Her face was destroyed. The left side felt as if someone had removed her cheekbone. She had no sight in her left eye and had to assume she would never regain it. That was okay; it was her weaker eye anyway.

The throbbing ache that now filled the space between her shoulder blades where she’d smashed her back to the bed added slightly to her misery, but it was the mildest of her physical problems at the moment. It was the sickening looseness in her head that concerned her most, and she feared that without the attention of a skilled surgeon her brain would begin to leak from its cavity. She could deal with the pain—that would go away in time—but she needed to know that her body was stable and that she wasn’t going to hemorrhage slowly over the next few days.

The potion. If she could complete the last stages of the mixture, she reasoned, adding the liver parts, specifically, she could mend enough of her body to carry on. It wasn’t quite perfect yet, the mixture, there was perhaps another week of aging and feeding that needed to be done to get it exact, but it was close enough. She’d never tempted it before, always fearing the worst if it wasn’t precise, but certainly the recipe allowed for slight degrees of error.

As for her permanent injuries, she could always find a doctor later to fix her face—if not her sight—and continue living for a hundred more years. Longer.

But first she needed the Source.

That the young girl left her alive didn’t surprise the witch. She’d met very few people in her long life that could kill mercilessly unless it was in direct defense of themselves or their children. It was no small feat to slice the throat of an old lady lying unconscious on the floor, or even to chain her and leave her to starve, even if it that old lady’s intentions were to harvest your organs.

Undoubtedly the Source hoped the blow she’d struck would kill her captor, but if it didn’t, she hadn’t the will to make sure. And for that she would pay.

The woman wiggled her way back up to a sitting position and leaned gingerly against the bed. She tested the strength of the rope on her wrists and could tell the girl had done a competent job with the knotting. The witch pushed her back hard against the bed now and screamed, extending her knees out and sliding her shoulders onto the mattress. She took three heavy breaths, accepting the pain in her back, and then slithered the rest of her torso onto the bed. She was now able to stand.

There was enough slack at her ankles that she could shuffle to the kitchen, and once there she began looking for something to slice through the cords at her wrists.

There was nothing accessible that she could see immediately, but if she could open the front door, there were plenty of items in the yard that would serve the purpose. With the height of the doorknob, however, that would be a challenge all its own.

As the witch’s mind began to construct a way to wedge a butcher’s knife between a drawer and the counter, her eye caught sight of a brown shard of pottery at her feet. Her heart raced, and as she stumbled too quickly past the kitchen counter, nearly collapsing from her bound ankles, she instantly saw the rest of the pot along with the soupy mixture splattered across the floor.

The potion.

It was destroyed.

The road was indeed close to the cabin and Anika found it quickly. Thankfully the witch hadn’t been lying about that. Anika was coughing and wheezing as she reached it and collapsed hard on her buttocks, her back finding a tall, roadside evergreen to lean against.

She’d not stopped running since leaving the cabin, and despite the relatively short distance, her lungs—and legs—were exhausted. Anika was frustrated by her fitness level and wanted to continue farther down the road, but will alone wasn’t going to overcome months of muscle atrophy. She would only rest a minute though, and then would start walking; she wasn’t going to risk being missed by a passing car. If she had to, she thought, she would strip naked and run to the middle of the road.

She rubbed her lower leg just above her ankle where the chain had been clasped. The gesture was part massage and part reassurance that the shackle was really gone. The sensation that it remained was still strong and Anika imagined she’d be feeling it for some time. Maybe for the rest of her life.

She replayed the events of the last hour in her head, wondering if she’d killed the witch (she doubted it) and thought of all that could have gone wrong. What if Anika hadn’t seen the pie bowl in time? What if the blow hadn’t knocked the woman unconscious? What if the woman didn’t have the keys with her? This last thought was most frightening, since Anika would have been forced to kill the old woman—if she hadn’t been killed already—and then solve the puzzle of escaping the chains before starving to death alone in the slaughter room. Perhaps she would have gnawed off her foot, though what good that would have done she didn’t know since she was still in the middle of the forest and she doubted there was a phone in that cabin.

But none of these thoughts occurred to her at the time—at the time it had all been instinct. Even her decision to slide that bowl of unspeakable broth to the floor was impulsive, though one she was now glad she’d made. Had the cauldron not been sitting out in the open, so easily accessible, Anika wouldn’t have risked the time to find it.

She stood gently, unsure of her thighs’ ability to make such a movement, and was encouraged by the result. They seemed to relish the motion, aching for long steady movements. Well, they would certainly get them, Anika thought, maybe for the next several hours, though she hoped it wouldn’t be quite so long.

She began to walk the Interways toward the Southlands. With any luck, she’d reach the Back Country by nightfall.

Once the ropes on her wrists were free the woman dropped to her knees, leaned forward on her elbows, and began lapping the liquid from the floor like a cat. The ropes, it turned out, were old and brittle, and escape had been fairly easy. Four or five strokes against an exposed wall beam and she was free. The adrenaline induced by the sight of the wasting concoction drying at her feet didn’t hurt either, and her sawing motions had been frantic and fearless.

Much of the soupy mixture had congealed, forming a protective, awful, skin-like film. But the hag didn’t have the luxury to care, and she scooped the broth up indiscriminately, splashing it into her mouth like a wanderer in the desert who’s just stumbled upon a lone puddle of water.

The taste was far from good, but nothing like it had tasted in the past. Perhaps it was the bile that gave the potion its putridity, she thought, or maybe the direness of her situation was muffling her taste buds.

It didn’t matter; as it was, there was no guarantee that drinking it would render any benefit at all. In fact, it was more likely to sicken her, she thought, since all of the ingredients weren’t included.

But she had nothing to lose. She could feel herself slipping. It was a feeling similar to the one she had that morning, just a few months ago, before Life had brought her back.

The woman stopped drinking only to breathe, the burgundy mess slogging down from her chin in thick webs. She leaned in to drink again, and as she pooled her hands together to scoop she felt the first tingle. It was like the sprinkle of water from a distant splash, tickling the left side of her skull where her former prisoner had shattered the empty pie bowl. It was slight at first, the tingle, and then quickly crescendoed into something nearing an electrical surge. Initially, there was
only
the feeling, and then the old woman recognized an ease and slowness to her breathing. It was as if her nasal passages had suddenly doubled in size. She gluttoned for the air, taking giant, vacuumed breaths through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, the huge swallows of oxygen as refreshing as any drink she could ever remember tasting.

She took another deep breath and then stopped in a gasp when she spied the open door to her left. The front door to the cabin. Wide open. Had it been open this whole time? Or was her Source back to finish the job, deciding she had the will to kill after all, and was now hiding somewhere in the room, armed and cocking some organic weapon?

Confused, the old woman turned suspiciously toward the door and jumped as the kitchen and back hall suddenly appeared in her periphery. And it was then she understood what was happening.

The door had indeed been open all along—open at least since her Source had escaped—it was just the woman hadn’t been able to see it. Until now. Until the potion. She could see. From both eyes.

She was being healed.

The old woman untied the knots at her feet and moved slowly, delicately, to the lone chair in her cabin, afraid any jarring movements might impact the potion’s effects. She sat upright in the chair, stiff, anticipating what was to come, just as she had done only months ago in the same spot. This time, however, she knew instinctively there would be no blacking out or painful contractions; this combination was fresh, beautiful (perhaps with the bile it would be perfect!), and it was going to make her whole again.

The electric tingle moved from her skull to the space between her shoulder blades, tightening the muscles there and then loosening them to just the right tension. From there it moved swiftly past her legs to her feet—drained from so much hiking through the restrictive forest—and lavished them with warmth and health and nutriment.

The old woman sat for what must have only been an instant, basking as the potion stormed everything from her complexion to her toenails, inundating her body with minerals and magic, cleansing each cell of decades of decay and pollutants, to regenerate a physique many generations past its intended time and purpose.

Nausea entered her stomach briefly but was quickly invaded and tamed, the potion not allowing any form of discomfort or disease to sustain itself. From her gut the magic formula flowed downward, stimulating her between her legs, moistening her crotch and evoking a smile and shiver. It rushed the length of her body to her teeth, at once filling cavities and filing incisors. The feeling swarmed upward through her newly-repaired skull and rippled over her scalp, vaccinating each follicle and patch of dander. Reflexively, the witch finger-combed through her hair and closed her eyes in ecstasy at the ease in which her hands glided through. Her tangled locks had existed for so many years she’d forgotten what healthy strands felt like.

This feeling was different. All of it was different. She’d taken the potion for close to two hundred years, she guessed, and had never experienced anything like what was happening today. It was as if decades of mixture had been concentrated into one pot, accelerating and magnifying all of the potion’s wondrous effects.

She’d heard of this before—this exceptional regeneration—eons ago in another world and language, when knowledge of the potion itself—if not the ingredients—had been known by many, and witchcraft and magic weren’t the metaphors and caricatures they were today. And though few ever had the will and stomach to explore it then, there were plenty of stories from The Ancients that implied its truth.

Even the book, of which she was told several still existed in the world, did not mention this rumored secret, for reasons even the old hag could understand on some level. It was said, she recalled, that the fluids of a kinsman could produce what she was now experiencing. That the closer the relation of whose blood and fluid was being extracted, the more magnificent the effects would be to the one ingesting it. It was obvious now; she understood it all. Life never failed its end of the deal.