The Witch's Trinity (19 page)

How would he position me? On my back on the straw? Standing with my arms tied?

Think of something else, Güde.

Would he do it, or the notary? Slowly, twisting the pin after long moments of hesitation, or quickly, so that before I understood it, my body was issuing blood again, after all these years of not seeing that color between my legs? Would he take pleasure in it?

Move your mind.

Would I be able to bear it?

Think of Hensel. This village when times were happy.

I stared at my arms, withered as they were, and fiercely pictured them grasped by two other arms. Suddenly, two men were on either side of me and holding my weight as I swung into the air, feckless and proud, my feet higher than my head and the skirts flouncing, the special skirts of Harvest Fest, and then returning to earth, my feet scampering to get my speed up as the men swung me again. And then Hensel winked as I spun out of the circle in his arms only, pressed as close to him as women and men ever get, feeling the sweat drenching his shirt and him spinning me so fast my feet were only on the ground in spurts, the world a blur…

How I loved dancing at harvest time! My favorite was the Miller’s Dance, of course, since my husband was the miller. All the dancers outstretched their arms, interlocking, and moved in circles past each other like the gears of the mill wheel. Each one supported the others, and we trusted our weight to the interlocked arms, so that we could fearlessly spin and not fall. We trusted each other. Back when there was something to harvest.

The men faded against the gray stones of my prison, the lingering grins becoming the seams between the stones, the curve of an arm becoming a spidery crack.

I fought to keep this heady memory in my mind: the music, feeling Hensel’s back muscles through his thin, wet shirt. I fought to keep the partners bowing to each other and Künne’s red ribbons flouncing just past the limits of my vision. My braids flying through the air and then bouncing down with a heavy thwack on my spine, the stiffness of my hands, for I had clutched others’ hands to preserve my very life as I spun in these dizzying circles…

But a thought intruded, that of a pear made of iron.

Had he given it to Künne? Had she undergone that shame before they stripped her in the church? But how could she have survived it? No woman could live through the tattering of her insides. I would be stripped like Künne. All the young boys would ridicule me because they had never seen me when my hair was flaxen and my cheeks full and ruddy. All the men had wanted to dance with Künne or me. We had been merry, but who remembered that of us?

After we danced, we would rest, our hearts beating. One of the villagers who hadn’t danced, whose breath was still easy, would sing. That was the first time I’d heard the song about being betrayed by false pretense. I stood up to sing it now, and ran my fingers over the stones of the tower. I walked in a circle, stepping back as I passed the fireplace, stepping in again afterward, and doing the same for the straw bed. I circled the round interior, singing, as demented as any half-wit that staggered in the streets.

I must’ve passed the remainder of the day doing this.

If any watched, they would have concluded that I had lost my mind.

I woke to her pressing a slice of pear to my mouth. It was perfectly ripe and the thick grain of its texture released juice against my lips and chin.

I had slept where I had fallen in exhaustion from my circling, and so I called out in confusion at finding myself on the ground near the fireplace. As soon as my mouth opened in the shriek, she pressed the pear slice inside. I closed my eyes to savor the taste and block out the sight of the witch kneeling over me, her hair tumbling over her shoulders as black as a crow. I swallowed the fragrant pulp and ran my tongue over my lips and as far down as it could reach, to catch the last bits of juice. And then finally I opened my eyes. “Do you have any more?” I asked.

“Of course. We make food from dung and wine from piss, so there is always sup in a witch’s kitchen.” She smiled at my reaction. “Does it not taste as sweet?” she asked.

“It’s an abomination,” I said, “For it’s an echo of Christ’s miracle, changing his body to bread and his blood to wine.”

She ran a finger over my lips and I recoiled at the touch. Then she put that finger in her mouth and suckled it as a babe would do. “It’s sweeter for having been on your lips, Güde,” she said. “Those once red lips.”

I had no words to answer this. She spake like a lover.

“Have you experienced the holy rite of communion?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, after a pause.

“It is a witch’s best sacrilege,” she said. “For we will accept the bread and accept the wine, and keep it in our mouths. On the way home, we will find the most horrible dung heap, rotten and crawling with maggots and sloppy with stink, and we will spit everything the priest gave us out onto that pile.”

I scrambled to my feet to get away from her, my palms digging painfully against the dirt floor for purchase.

“I would never do such a thing! The sacrament is holy and good. I would never commit such an act!”

“Ah, Güde, the sacrament is wicked, not holy. There are many forces that move the heavens, which operate in the most appalling darkness. Christ is false. Do you not recall how we used to harken to the calls of the birds in the wood and summon the blessings of the beasts? And Christ has taken the place of that.”

“Christ is the true one,” I answered. “We were fools to see sense in a beast.”

“Fools today!” she snorted. “Packed into a wooden box, standing in the cold, to call down God’s help. We used to do it ourselves over the flames of the fire.”

“We were ignorant.”

“Then why does everyone still make the sign of the meat as religiously as the sign of the cross? People still believe, Güde. And soon the priests will be exposed for the shameful men they are; we will return to the old ways.”

My back was against the stones of the wall, I could retreat no further.

“I cannot offer you what you want,” I said in a low, low voice, barely hearing myself. “I do not want to join the circle in the forest. I wish to bow my head in prayer to the true God and accept the sacrifice of his Son. Please, please
leave me.”

“Even if it means you starve?”

“Yes,” I said. “Stop coming to me. Leave an old woman to her hard thoughts.”

“Even though those you think are telling the truth are the ones who will tie you to a stake and burn you?”

“They do tell the truth!”

“And my final question, Güde. Do you ask me to leave even though you have already signed my master’s book?”

“I did not sign!” I cried out. “It signed on my behalf, although I said not a word nor made any signal to ask it to do so!”

“It saw what was in your heart. We told you we would feed you if you signed, and you did sup with us in the forest, did you not?”

I froze.

“That was the barter,” she said. “As the pig spun on the spit, we offered its meat to you in exchange for your pledge. And you ate fully of that pig meat.”

“No!” I said.

“No? By my troth, Güde, I saw you eat.”

“I ate…but…”

“But?”

“I did not consent!”

“What manner of fickle barterer are you? To accept the goods and not deliver what you promised in return?”

“But the meat was simply in my hands!”

“After you signed.”

“Nooooooooooo!” My hair was standing up on end and the air sizzled around me. Had I made such a disastrous mistake? Had I? “I was confused! I am only an old woman and you tricked me! My mind has not been my own these days! I was so hungry. I was confused! Oh, dear God and his Son, deliver me, Christ! A bargain is not to be held to when the maker has been deceived!”

“What was deceptive, Güde? We offered food for your signing and you ate.”

“But I didn’t understand! When meat was placed into my hands, I was so hungry there was scarcely reason in my head!”

“A poor defense.”

I understood. I had been tricked. If this witch was not a figment ushered into my head by the forgetfulness of the elderly, I had indeed made a pact with the devil. I felt aware of the flatness of the world and the pit of eternal darkness that surrounded us on all sides. I had just now tipped off the edge. “Why, why did you ever come to me?” I asked in despair.

“Your son brought me into your life, Güde.” Her eyes grew in luster, and I saw that she was angry. “I chose you because you remember the old ways. Your girlhood was not so very long ago, when hunters revered their prey.”

“Jost has surely naught to do with you and your wicked band—”

“He bargained with me unwittingly,” she said, and bent her body into a strange posture, a crouch, looking as if she were about to spring upon me. Her body was tense like those of the cats that used to live in the mill, preparing to pounce upon a mouse skittering amidst the grain.

I took exactly seven steps backward until once again my back was stiffened against the wall.

She stayed in her crouch. “Do you remember the rabbit?” she asked. “The one you all ate and Jost made a pelt of?”

I nodded.

“Its skin hangs above your fire, drying out. It is promised to Alke as a wrap.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“A beautiful white pelt with only one black stripe.”

“Yes.”

“It is my sister,” she said, and suddenly she leaped upon me. Her teeth were at my throat, biting through my skin, her breath hot and ragged. I pushed at her without success as she pressed her weight fully against me and yowled. Then she backed away and spat. I clamped my hand to my throat. “When he found her in his trap and broke her neck, you were wandering in another part of the forest, Güde. He is the one I hate, but we do not gather men to our fold. Only women. You bear the brunt of his punishment, Güde.”

My blood glinted on her teeth.

“I went howling from my sister’s killing ground, seeing her hanging from his belt upside down like a worthless rag, and came to find you, sunk to your knees in the driving snow. I gathered the witches and my master and we tempted you.”

Behind me, hidden from her sight, my fingers clawed at the stones. Surely there was a way out. I ran to the door and pulled and battered on it. Just like the night Irmeltrud had pushed me out. That was the night!
That was the night!
It was Irmeltrud’s blame the witches had found me in the wood! I pulled at the latch and kicked and hit the door. “Help me, someone! Friar! Please!”

“The friar is as angry at you as I am,” she said. “You’ll find no pity from either of us.”

“Help me!” I yelled. “Please deliver me! Lord in heaven, send me deliverance!”

“We all take forms to honor our master,” she said. “I take the cat form and my sister was a pure white rabbit, with a black stripe for her raven hair. And you could be anything you wish, Güde. An owl to hoot through the branches or a horse tossing its hooves to a gallop by moonlight. And perhaps no hunter will pierce your heart with an arrow.
Perhaps.
”

I screamed at the top of my lungs and kept the sound going to drown her out. I screamed with all my breath, thinking of the years without grain, the curse that God had passed down to us, and why it was that hunger had cost me my soul. No one came to the door. I didn’t know if anyone was even nearby to hear. And when I finally turned around, exhausted and broken beyond repair, even she was gone.