Just a piece? Harriet could eat the entire packet and go without recrimination for a while. Maggie wasn’t expecting her this evening. She usually sent thank-you notes, but even the most scrupulous forget to send notes sometimes. (Zahir Leveque would’ve appreciated these calculations of Harriet’s. Not to the extent that he’d reconsider her potential as a grandchild, but enough to make him wonder from time to time whether he’d written her off too quickly.) Margot had told Harriet to leave the gingerbread alone, though, and Harriet always did what her mother said. They had an agreement.
Harriet, do you like responsibility?
Me? N-no . . .
Thought not. I was the same when I was your age.
What did you do about it?
Tried to get other people to take responsibility for me.
And did they?
No. But I will for you, if you’d like.
Yes, please.
OK. I’ll take responsibility for anything you do on my say-so. But if you go against me, Harriet Lee—if you do something I expressly told you not to do—you have to handle the rest all by yourself. Do you understand?
Harriet’s soul quaked. I understand.
Good.
(Is it really OK to talk to one’s juniors like that? Looking back on it all, the this or thatness of Druhástrana aside, both Harriet’s parents are a bit . . .
Perdita and the dolls unanimously concur: “Yeah, say no more.”)
Goodbye to unconditional obedience; Harriet looked around for somewhere to sit as she savored the dawn of a new era. She fished her flashlight out of her bag and doubled back on her steps, all the way to the yawning mouth of Gretel’s Well. Waxed paper rustled as she sat down, placed the packet of gingerbread on her lap, and pulled at the ribbon. Then:
Harriet! Harriet Lee!
Voices bawled her name from all four sectors. Torchlight and tractor beams danced across the fields, eager to expose a girl who’d hoped to rebel against her mother. She raised a hand against them, shielding her eyes, and with her other hand she dropped the gingerbread into the well.
A few things happened after that, and one of them was that the well murmured with delight. Not the well—Harriet almost fell in after the gingerbread—not the well itself. Someone within the well. The readjustment was no better than the initial impression.
The person inside the well said: What?! I LOVE gingerbread. How did you know?
Atif Cook and Jiaolong Parker were coming for Harriet. She heard them stomping and whooping. Dottie Cooper was only quiet because she was filling her lungs for another yell. And the person inside the well raised her head. It seemed there were footholds, or she was standing on something. The girl brandished the packet of gingerbread as if it was a newly won trophy.
This is super. I was just getting hungry. Hi, I’m Gretel. And you are . . . ?
Harriet didn’t say a word.
The girl laughed uneasily. Some sort of fairy godmother in training? Don’t understand Druhástranian?
Harriet still couldn’t speak.
Oh, said the girl. Right. I just popped out of this well and . . . right.
She asked if Harriet was going to get into a flap. Harriet quickly turned her torch on and off. She saw that the girl was no more than three years older than her, if that. She saw that the girl was of similar build and skin color to her, but she didn’t wear her hair in the dreadlocks typical to black peasants in Druhástrana. This girl’s hair was gathered up into a bun of modest size. No freshly baked bun could look softer or be more of an impeccable sphere. Must be a city girl: Margot Lee had worn her hair like this until farmstead life had forced her to give up. Harriet flicked the flashlight on and off again to check a couple of more details: she coveted the girl’s ever so slightly turned-up nose. And the girl had two pupils in each eye; that’s why her eyes looked like bottomless lakes in the torchlight.
I’m not going to get into a flap, Harriet said. This fell under the remit of eventualities she had to deal with by herself if she went against Margot. She had expected to be able to taste the gingerbread first, so she did have to ask herself whether this wasn’t a bit unjust . . .
HARRIET LEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Harriet snatched the packet of gingerbread back from the girl’s hand and stuffed it into the bottom of her bag.
The girl grabbed her wrist. Better give that back! What kind of person . . .
Yes, let’s talk about different kinds of people. Why don’t we start with the kind of person who lives in a well, Harriet hissed.
Gretel said she liked a good riddle but would rather have her gingerbread back. You want me to pay something, don’t you? But I haven’t got any money on me at the moment.
Shhhh!
I’ll pay later. I honestly, honestly will. You have my word.
There were echoes in the well backing up everything the girl said, but Harriet meant to have her gingerbread even if she had to battle demons for it. Gretel made one last attempt to snatch Harriet’s bag, then disappeared from direct view just as Nat Cooper, Jiaolong’s father, appeared.
Harriet Lee, you’ve a visitor at home and your mother wants you.
Is that all? Who is it?
Some Mrs. Moneybags. Funny thing, though . . . she’s got all these sweaty men in suits combing the fields. Asked if I could help them with anything and got told, “No you can’t.” That where you’ve been all afternoon? Digging up buried treasure?
6
Dottie Cooper and Jiaolong Parker ran ahead shouting, Found her, found her, and Atif Cook held her hand as they walked home. Handsome, ironical Atif, who only ever looked at Harriet when he received extrasensory notification of her being about to fall over or spurt milk from her nose.
Atif, Harriet said. Why are you holding my hand?
He didn’t really answer her question. He said she smelled really good. Maybe he thought that was an answer. He seemed to be in a receptive mood, so she tried to place a “hypothetical” Gretel’s Well scenario before him. What characteristics could one anticipate in a being that lived in a well?
Atif wasn’t interested. There’s no story about Gretel’s Well. Now if this was about the Giant’s Clog, or Mr. Jack-in-the-Box, or even about Marco, Chris, and Francisca Drake—you know, Maggie Parker’s pigeons . . . we think those birds are still alive somewhere. It was such a simple route, and they were so carefully trained that there are really only two things that could’ve stopped them coming home to roost years ago.
Having put in some time searching for Maggie’s pigeons among the farmstead’s plant-vertebrate combinations, Harriet gave in: Two options . . . are we including Maggie’s envious kidnap theory?
No, we’re not—nobody buys that. The first possibility is that they got captured by the military and have been turned into war pigeons.
Oh, come on.
It has been known to happen. The second possibility is extraterrestrial interference . . . you smell really, really good. Did I already say that?
Atif lifted her hand and gnashed his teeth, playacting that he was eating her up. Harriet shook him off and ran indoors.
* * *
—
CLIO KERCHEVAL DIDN’T LOOK like a Mrs. Moneybags to Harriet, but she was sitting barefoot on the sitting-room floor when Harriet came in, so perhaps it had been her shoes that gave her away. She drew Harriet into her arms and said, How beautiful, how beautiful, she does you both proud. Both Margot and Simon looked immensely relieved that Clio thought so. What if she hadn’t approved; would they have kicked Harriet out?
Clio repeatedly declared admiration for Simon, who had been starved of it so long he hadn’t the faintest idea how to cope with this surfeit and began a detailed discourse on co-farmers of his who were much better than him. Nat Cooper could work for longer without a break; Vasily Parker never took a day off; Paul Cook’s mustache was indisputably su
perior. Margot offered Clio more gingerbread. Clio was pleased to accept, and then it was Margot’s turn to be told how wonderful she was. Was Margot absolutely sure the wheat wasn’t food-grade . . . it tasted so very like . . . Clio talked breathlessly and fast, so that nobody could interrupt her even if they wanted to. You could only receive her sentiments, all of which were warm and cozy. Clio was the same kind of perky-pretty as Harriet’s mother, her hair in a bob that flipped out around her dangly earrings, and all this was incongruous with the fact that she was the owner of the farmstead. She was the theoretical person who limited at least four families’ ability to thrive. Harriet spent most of the evening waiting for Simon and Margot to gang up on Clio or to pursue the appeals they and their co-farmers had made in their many letters to her, beseeching letters many pages long. They could also have asked Clio how many farms she owned. Simon or Margot didn’t do any of those things. They told Clio she could sleep in Harriet’s room, no bother, it was so late, and she was a cousin, after all. Clio and Margot talked about people Margot used to know. Everybody was doing well.
Harriet, aren’t you having any of this?
Harriet ate a piece of gingerbread and tingled all over. It was a square meal and a good night’s sleep and a long, blood-spattered howl at the moon rolled into one. She took another piece, and another, avoiding her mother’s laser stare.
We must try to save some for Gretel, Clio said, snatching one more piece before they all vanished. My daughter, you know. You’ll meet her once she’s found.
She ran away? Harriet asked, trying her very best not to look like someone who’d already met the missing girl.
Oh no. Not really. I wouldn’t put it like that. She’s just hard to keep up with. But you’ll meet her very soon. I just know she’ll love you. You’re a lovable lamb.
Clio Kercheval bore no real physical resemblance to the girl in Gretel’s Well, but she talked like her. Bright, innocuous, and a little too deliberate to be truly naive. That’s how a woman might distract you from observing her level of experience and how a girl might distract you from observing her lack of it. Harriet thought of Gretel burrowed at the bottom of a cold, deep well, hungry and alone, her begging mistaken for bargaining.
At about two in the morning, when everyone in the cottage was asleep, Harriet crept out and made her way down to the well, proceeding with caution because of the men in suits she’d heard about. She saw a few of them inspecting footprints in the grass around the rusted loom and others delving into grain bins, which made her cross—that grain was now unsellable and would all have to go into gingerbread. Clio had said that her people knew what they were doing and Gretel would be found before morning, but there they were still looking for her. Harriet wasn’t convinced the suited search party wanted to find the girl. They were disgruntled insomniacs who created disorder to spite others for sleeping.
Gretel wasn’t hiding anymore. She sat with her back against the well’s mouth, fingering the buttons of a thick jacket she hadn’t been wearing when Harriet had first seen her.
You’re the girl who came with something to eat?
Obviously.
OK, but so far you just turn up and shine a torch in my face. How am I supposed to know what you look like . . .
Harriet handed her torch to Gretel, who swung the light around for a couple of seconds and then handed the torch back without comment. She only shook her head a little before sticking a hand into the pocket of her dress and producing a square of paper, which she tore in half and held out. This for the gingerbread.
Is it money? There were numbers printed on it.
Half a lottery ticket. The prize is enough wealth for two lifetimes, so if we win, you only need half.
And you need the other half, Gretel Kercheval? Gretel was too forward. Harriet had to push back, make her acknowledge that they were unacquainted.
Gretel would not acknowledge this. She rubbed the side of her nose. So worried about the other half . . . seems like sharing’s hard for you.
She held out Harriet’s half of the lottery ticket until she took it. She ate all the gingerbread and licked the crumbs out of the packet. As with Clio, the gingerbread didn’t seem to transport her—she just liked the taste. She was thirsty, so she drank from the watering can Harriet brought her.
Why’s this well called Gretel’s Well?
They say . . .
They say . . . ?
They say there’s no story here.
Ha! But there is.
Gretel took Harriet’s torch again and shone it into the well. As usual the light didn’t touch the bottom, so Harriet couldn’t see anything. Gretel had to tell her: Some girl died here.
That’s sad, Harriet said. How long ago, do you think?
A couple of hours ago, Gretel said.
Harriet laughed politely, but Gretel sighed and said: No, seriously.
Where one girl had sat with her back against the well’s mouth there were now two, Harriet Lee and a murderous sprite with two pupils in each eye. Harriet regretted having left the cottage that night.
Gretel said: Thinking about it now, that girl might have had an idea that she’d get a reward if she brought me to my mother. If that’s what she thought, she was right. Mum loves giving rewards. But the girl was too rough. I’d almost left this farmstead and crossed over into the next, and then SWOOSH. I didn’t know what was going on.
So you . . . so you . . . did whatever you did and then dumped her in the well?
Yeah.
Gretel. I don’t know what to say.
The body in the well was Dottie’s, or Elsa’s, or Zu’s. They had lost Dottie and the mad, gory eloquence of the nosebleeds she had when most impassioned. Or one of their leaders was gone: Elsa, with her nascent showmanship and daredevil scythe-spinning. Zu and her tendency to draw them all together: What do we think, lads? If you were unwell or in some kind of disgrace with the other kids, Erzurum Cook would bring you a small restorative or a reset token. She’d say it was from everyone, and you knew Zu had talked them around.
She really scared me—Gretel demonstrated the grab. Harriet screamed.
How could she just suddenly grab you like that?
I’ll tell them what I did in the morning, Gretel said, and Harriet said, I’ll tell them you were scared.
They clung to each other. Did the death penalty apply to them?
If neither of us says anything, she won’t be found, Harriet ventured, in a very small voice so the sound of her disloyalty to Elsa or Zu or Dottie wouldn’t carry.
She’ll be found all right, Gretel said. There’ll be a smell.
We could cover the well mouth.
Too suspicious.
Is that her jacket you’re wearing?
Yeah . . .
GRETEL.
She doesn’t need it anymore.
A bit of an expert on needs, was Gretel. Harriet only needed half of a lottery prize; dead girls didn’t need warm jackets. Harriet didn’t recognize the jacket; something in her still hoped that the well was empty and Gretel had just been exercising her strange sense of humor.
We could . . . move her. Harriet said it, since it didn’t seem Gretel was ever going to. We could hide her.
Gretel looked as if she was having regrets too. Regrets that she’d confessed. Thanks, but let’s leave everything as it is for now.
Are there footholds?
Ledges . . . you can go up and down them like a ladder. But you can’t just—
Helpful Harriet knew where to find rope and rushed it over from the Parker family’s barn. Time was of the essence. All Gretel had to do was pull on the rope when she felt a weight at the end of it. Harriet would follow the weight up and hold her . . . it . . . when Gretel was tired.
Harriet, Gretel said. I don’t make jokes. There’s a body down there. And once you come close to it, you’ll know you can
’t move it or hide it. You’re going to get upset.
By the time Harriet lost sight of Gretel’s livid face, her end of the rope had already slipped out of her hand. See you at the bottom. She stopped looking up and concentrated on the torch that spilled light at her feet. Just enough for her to get to the next ledge, and the next, provided she didn’t misjudge distance. Some of the ledges were sticky, and some crumbled beneath one heel so she had to slot her fingers into the earthy gaps in the brickwork of the wall while her foot sought out a new outcrop. The temperature decreased as she descended. She lost feeling in her fingers and toes and kept casting her torchlight back onto ledges she’d just left, checking that she hadn’t left any behind (fingers, toes). She reached out to touch the rope that ran down alongside her, praying that Gretel wouldn’t drop it. She couldn’t hear anything from the world above, but she heard a hectic pitter-patter around her, marathons hurtled through as only many-legged can. And she heard Dottie below, calling out: Who’s there? Don’t—don’t—
Turandot Cooper. Dottie. Relief made her careless. She missed a foothold, pedaled air, and caught her torch before it followed the rope. It’s me. I’ll be there in a minute. It’s all right, Dottie.
The remainder of her descent took longer than the minute she’d promised, but they kept calling out to each other:
You came for me, Harriet, you came for me.
You’re OK, Dottie? Are you hurt anywhere?
Didn’t think anybody would come—because there’s no story—
Somebody told me there was. Are you hurt anywhere?
Dunno—everything’s sort of jumping and down. Harriet, there’s a bad girl up there.
Dottie’s form swam into view, and Harriet stepped down onto a springy amalgam of moss and sneakily discarded mattress. Careful, Dottie said, and the floor swelled and knocked Harriet’s feet out from under her; it was no floor, but a bed of slugs and soft-shelled organisms shiny with filth. She crawled the rest of the way, and Dottie flung both arms around her neck. So her arms were all right. There was a nasty cut on the side of her head and her left leg was sprained, if not outright broken. Harriet rummaged for their end of the rope and tied it around Dottie’s waist. Slow work for numb fingers, but she got the knots corset-tight, chattering away so as to obscure the fact that they were depending on the girl who’d sent Dottie down here to haul her up again. It was so cold that they blew steam as they spoke, anonymizing each other’s features. Harriet jerked the rope. Oi, she screamed, careful not to use any names. Oi, you—start pulling! She didn’t have much hope of being heard. Dottie had already shouted herself hoarse. And Gretel hadn’t actually agreed to anything.
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