“Get away from me,” Anika said suddenly, not looking up. Her voice had no anger; the words were those of caution. “I’m going to get better Hansel, I promise. But until then, stay away.”
Chapter 17
The road out of Zanpie is as long and straight as it is empty. When we began our walk, I noticed there were only three more houses past the one where Noah was staying; after that the landscape became a desolate moonscape.
We’re now into our second day of traveling and the walk has become a maddening journey of redundancy. The straightness, however, has been a blessing during the night, and has allowed us to gain ground during the dark hours. The linear path has meant there is little fear of a wayward fork or death-disguising curve that would lead us into some gaping chasm or river. There is just the unbending path of an eroding stone walkway, almost completely overgrown and purposeless, appearing to have been built during an era before common man.
Emre walks in front, alone and unshackled; Maja, Noah, and I had decided the boy posed little physical danger, and he certainly didn’t possess the frame of someone athletic enough to overpower or outrun any of his handlers. During the two nights that have passed we’ve taken shifts to oversee him—a combination of suicide and escape watch—but the supervision has proven unnecessary on both evenings, as Emre has slept as soundly as a sated hog.
“How much longer, Noah?” Maja asks.
Finally. It has been the question at the front of my mind since we began our walk at sunrise about four hours ago. But I’ve said nothing for a day and a half now, maintaining a sentry-like responsibility to some sort of vague pride.
“Zanpie forms the last of the Western Koudeheuval towns. The moment we passed the town limits, we were sure to see no other town for four days.”
Maja stops walking and closes her eyes for a moment, processing what she’s just heard. “Four days? So you mean to tell me that we have another two days to walk?”
“No. We have a two-day walk to the next town. But we aren’t going to the next town. We’re going further.”
“Where is it that we are going, Noah?” I interrupt, trying to head off any panic that Maja seems headed toward. The four of us have moved off the path now and are seated on a fallen log at the side of the road.
“We are tracking Gromus.” Noah looks confused by the question. “We are traveling to find your sister. And others, perhaps. It is my hope.”
“Yes, I understand, but where is that?”
Noah smiles and shakes his head. “I thought you knew.”
“The Village of the Elders? Is that right? Was Emre telling the truth about that?”
“If it’s what he told you then yes, I believe that’s where he’s headed.”
The Village of the Elders. We’re on the way to retrace my mother’s path to recovery, the road of redemption she traveled with Noah during our original pilgrimage to the Old World.
“My mother spoke of it briefly, and I’ve heard it mentioned another time since I’ve been here. The place of the ancient mystics. It sounded almost unbelievable when she first told us the tale. And truthfully, if anyone other than Anika Morgan had told that story, I would have surely doubted such a place existed.”
“It does exist, Hansel. It is all so true.”
“Here is something though: a bartender I met west of Stedwick, and then Emre later, told me the village has become something of a tourist attraction. Is that true? Has your discovery opened the place up for amusement?”
Noah chuckles. “I have made my living on the story of your mother’s quest. It is but one more reason that I owe her so much. But I don’t take them there, Hansel. Not to the places we explored. Never would I do that. There is another village, though, just off the mountain path that we’ll be traveling, that is where I take them to satisfy their intrepid wishes.”
“The people there must despise you.”
“Not at all. I only take those people who are willing to spend when they arrive. And the villagers welcome their wealth. The privacy they lose is the price, but it is one they have decided they are willing to pay.”
“But the place we’re going, the ancient village of my ancestors, this Village of the Elders, why is Gromus going there?”
“Hansel, that village is not just the birthplace of the Morgan family, it is the birthplace of Orphism itself. I don’t know exactly what his plan is for going there, but I’ve no doubt he will find the way. Not easily, but he will find it. It is one of the reasons I believe he has taken your sister as his company. To somehow guide him there. And then present her as his offering. Or perhaps use her for...” He cuts off the thought.
I feel a twinge of sickness and urgency at this last part. “So when would you expect us to get there? Traveling at the rate we’re going?”
“Five days. We will make up a considerable amount of time on Gromus if we can make it in that time.”
“Get up,” I bark at Emre. I look to Noah again. “What do you think about him? Do we need him? I don’t want anyone slowing us down. Not for even for a minute.”
“I don’t want to admit it, but we may indeed need him. After seeing the condition of his parents, he may, unfortunately, have more use than we would like.”
There had been no discussion of Emre’s parents since Maja and I reunited with Noah at the front of his lodging. It had registered as irrelevant to me, the parents, and I hadn’t bothered inquiring about their fate. I had passively hoped they were okay, but I was more concerned with my own problems.
“They weren’t dead when I found them, but...there was no way for them to be saved. It turns out he used them quite extensively.”
“Monster,” Maja whispers, covering her mouth.
“Did you..?” I ask, frowning at Noah, not needing to finish the question for him to get the gist.
“I did what needed to be done. But I will never assume the responsibility for taking the lives of those two people.”
“I’m sorry.”
“In any case, the blood in this boy, the blood that now flows in his veins, it may be valuable. I believe we should keep him as long as we can. If he gets away from us, or slits his own wrists in the middle of the night, then it will be decided. But until that time comes...it is your decision, Hansel.”
I stare at the boy now, pushing him out in front of me, meeting his eyes. His expression is stoical, but I detect the slightest trace of a grin. “I don’t blame you entirely. You’re a boy, and I’m sure he gave you few choices.”
“He’s my god now. And I have decided I shall not take my own life. It is for him to decide.”
It’s my turn to smile now. “You’ll tell yourself that for the rest of your life I’m sure, however short that might be. But you don’t believe it. You feel guilty for them, and now that he’s left you, now that he’s found what he was after and doesn’t need you anymore, you feel too invested to let him go.”
The boy’s face morphs grotesquely, and his sneer is primal, animal-like. “You don’t know anything about him!”
“I’m not going to let you die, Emre. I’m going to try to keep you alive long enough to see who your god really is. And to watch him choke to death on his own blood.”
Emre closes his eyes now and smiles fully, entering some type of meditative trance. He opens them again and does a scan of his three captors. “I think he’ll kill the girl first. He won’t want to listen to her screams. He can be sensitive to the high pitches of females. Yes, I’m sure of it now. She will be first, followed by Mr. Noah.” He focuses his gaze on Noah. “You think he’ll fear you but he won’t.”
Noah snickers as his eyes narrow on the boy. It’s a gesture that says he hopes he’s underestimated.
“But Hansel,” Emre continues, “he has plans for you. I have no misconceptions regarding that. Once he has you, he will have both of the Morgan children! Both of the killers of his beloved Marlene. It is a miracle delivered from the Universals. The Life Givers.”
The words are stunning to me; they s
ound as if they’re being delivered in a dream. Marlene. He said Marlene. His beloved?
“But that’s not quite all of it, is it Hansel. There was more than just you and your sister. Your mother too. But she hasn’t come to rescue her daughter. Why is that?”
“How do you know about all of this? How do you know about Marlene?”
“As Noah has discovered, we’re all kin now.”
I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I’ve had enough of Emre’s mysticism and impertinence. He knows more about me and my family than I would have preferred, but that knowledge also means that Noah’s right: he’ll likely be useful at some point along our journey. On an impulse, and somewhat childishly, I smack Emre in the back of his head.
“Ow!” The exclamation is so normal in its juvenility that I feel the slightest twinge of sympathy for the boy. He is just a boy, after all, and whatever attitude and demeanor he’s presenting at this point was clearly not the same he had at this time last year. In many respects, his life was taken from him by Gromus the way my father and mother’s life was taking from them by Marlene.
“Get walking, Emre. You seem very chatty about what you know, so expect to be talking more along the way.”
“I’ll be happy to, Hansel. But you’ll have to promise to answer that question.”
“What question is that?”
“About your mother. Where is your mother?”
Chapter 18
My mother rose slowly at the edge of the water, pushing the ground gently with the tips of her fingers, her upper body staying perfectly still as her legs scissored straight. She spun and looked up at me, smiling, the sparkle in her eyes genuine and alive. Human.
Six months had passed since that day in the driveway, since the day my mother turned her addictive mind toward me in a terrifying act of aggression, leaving me no choice but to smash her shin with the business end of a shovel. There was no break to the bone, thankfully, and after the pain and tears of the moment had faded, we made a pact to tell Gretel the injury came as a result of a missed step and a fall, just as mother was making her way down to the waterfront. The story was mother’s invention, coming to her almost as an epiphany, and one she instantly took as a sign that the cure to her addiction could be found in the form of resuming her meditations by the lake. She had made a re-commitment to getting well, to making a clean and successful break from the monstrous drug that had taken control of everything she loved.
During those two seasons of recovery, I had chosen to follow the advice she’d given me as she lie mangled on the gravel, and had largely kept away from Anika Morgan. But the distance I’d chosen to keep wasn’t really done out of fear or suspicion; on the contrary, I could see that the rehabilitation was working, the effort my mother was giving to it, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her and tell her how proud I was of what she had done, that I had forgiven her the second the incident was over in the driveway, which, of course, was the truth. I had kept away from her out of some obscure belief that if I got complacent with mother, and we began to settle back into our old routines, then all of the infected parts of those routines would return too. I couldn’t have said for sure what these old routines would look like—after all, there was no more potion, so even if mother wanted to she couldn’t recommence her habit—but everything seemed to be working, and I didn’t want to test it.
And mother knew what was happening too, though we never spoke about it. Every interaction now was superficial, intentional. She would simply give me a smile and a nod as I walked out the door on the way to school, grabbing an orange and a piece of toast on the way and telling her I loved her in that casual adolescent way. Or when mother went to sleep, there was nothing but the same thing said every night. “Lights, locks, and love Hansel. See you in the morning.” No hugs or moments of reflection. No long knowing stares. And never a mention of how she was feeling.
Gretel inquired about my absence on occasion, noting I had become both emotionally and physically distant lately, especially from mother. But the answer was simple and mostly the truth: I was a teenager now, growing up, and I didn’t want to spend all my time hanging around at home with my mother. I was making it a point to start becoming more social with my school mates.
It all made sense, of course, my excuses, but more importantly, it kept the chances of disturbing the recovery to a minimum.
“And don’t ask about how she’s doing, Gretel,” I had told my sister, without a grain of humor in my voice. “She’s getting better, getting past it, so please just let it happen. If you ask about it...I don’t know.”
Gretel had smiled and hugged me, and we both cried softly. “I won’t say anything. I promise. I don’t know exactly what happened between you two, but I know it’s something more than a fall down the railroad ties.”
I had pulled away from her, giving her a look that said I wasn’t ready to talk about it, and maybe never would be.
“But I don’t care, Hansel. I don’t care if she had suddenly become bald and had a cactus growing from the top of her head.”
I had laughed so hard at the image that I snorted and almost puked.
Gretel had smiled hard but held in her laugh. “All I care about is that my family is healthy again. And getting close to happy. And you are the reason, Hansel. You were the one that stayed with her during the bleakest of times. You made sure she was fed and not putting herself in danger. And you were the one that usually administered the...”
I had shaken my head furiously at Gretel, quietly begging her not to speak about the potion.
Gretel had acquiesced, instead doubling back on her original point. “It was you, brother. Don’t forget that.”
I shook from my mind the conversation with Gretel from months earlier, and now focused on mother, who walked briskly up the steps from the lake, stretching her arms high to the sky as she came, keeping the pose for several seconds before lowering them and circling them into a windmill motion to shake out the burn.
“Hi mom,” I said, dropping my eyes as I spoke. “I was just heading out.”
“Where are you going?”
I detected something new in her voice. But the new was something old. An aggravation in the pitch.
“I mean, it’s fine of course. I’m just curious what you’ve been into these days.”
I had put myself in this position and I immediately cursed myself inside. The window had opened, and instead of passing through it, heading into town for the day, I watched it slowly close with each step my mother took toward the house. It was a sloppy mistake.
My timing had been fairly consistent over the last few months: when mother went to the lake, I left the property. Sometimes I would simply walk the road into town, usually meeting up with a couple of friends from school if they happened to be around; or I took a cue from Gretel and rowed out to Rifle Field, bringing with me a book or a notebook or, on occasion, my bow and arrows.
But today I had stopped and stared, measuring mother and her condition, breaking the vow of ignorance I had taken, even knowing first-hand how blissful it was.
But this was simply a setback, a slip on my part, and one that could be recovered. I addressed my mother’s question, keeping it formal. “I’m going into town.”
“Friends there?”
“I don’t know, but that’s not why I’m going. I saw a sign a couple of weeks ago in Georgette’s. They’re looking for help. ‘Sweeping and Cleaning Help Needed’ I think the sign said.”
“A couple of weeks ago?” My mother tilted her head forward and looked at me with doubt, her eyes asking if I understood that what was there two weeks ago was not likely to still exist.
“I know what you’re thinking, but then I was in town yesterday and the sign was still up. I was going to ask about it today.”
“Oh? You’re a little young to be working, don’t you think?”
“Gretel was working for the Klahrs at my age.” The words came out before I could stop them, and I instantl
y saw the pain flare on Anika’s face.
She had heard the whole story, of course, during the days following her ordeal with Marlene, when everyone gave their angle on the nightmare that had unfolded. Part of our story was that of Gretel finding work with the Klahrs after father’s illness. The suspicion and negligence of Odalinde, after she had first arrived, forced Gretel into a desperate attempt to steal food from the Klahr orchard. But the Klahrs had caught Gretel in the act, and after hearing of her dilemma at home, had offered her work. The money and relationship that Gretel had earned from the Klahrs had saved our lives, and it was something we would never forget.
Anika had nothing to feel shameful about, of course—it wasn’t her fault that she’d been kidnapped by an ancient witch—but my statement invoked too many terrible memories from that time, in Anika more so than in either Gretel or me. Her husband had ended up dead, her children were essentially abandoned, and, ultimately, she had become sick, on the verge of death, only to be brought back to life from a mixture consisting of her own bodily poison.
The potion. This was why I had stayed away. No matter how the conversation started between mother and me, it was always going to come back around to the potion. Always back to the addiction.
“She didn’t work in a restaurant,” Anika said, her words coming in a deflated whisper. “It wasn’t in a restaurant.”
I studied my mother’s face, almost expecting it to morph into the creature that had erupted from the porch over a half a year ago and made a direct line to strangling her own son.
But instead she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I think it’s a fine idea. You’re growing up. Georgette’s will be lucky to have you.”
“I’m only going to ask about it. And when school starts again, I’ll only tell them I can work on the weekends.”
“Work where?” Gretel came out on the porch, her backpack slung across her shoulders, no doubt on her way down to the lake and off to the orchard.
The Gretel Series: Books 1-3 (Gretel Series Boxed set) Page 71