by Blair Aaron
“Madam you don't need to talk to your co-workers like that.” Elsa turned around to meet Freja Stein, a petite built woman with beady blue eyes. The hot pink lipstick rubbed over her thin lips and helmet shaped hairdo gave her an air of craziness, wildness, and abandon. But she continued to defend Elsa.
“Bitch don't talk to me like that,” Mitch said to the woman. “Who the hell are you anyway?”
“I'm Freja Stein, and I'm not going to let you talk to my friend that way.” Freja stumbled her words a bit, cutting away her glance from Mitch, and for a second Elsa thought she saw a glimmer of fear from Freja. She knew Mitch had a furious temper, and given Freja's frail frame, Elsa decided to protect her before it was too late.
“You don't even know her,” Mitch said.
“She does. We're friends from long ago. You just haven't noticed, Mitch,” Elsa said. She grabbed Freja's slight elbow and guided her away from her boss. Freja gave Elsa a faint smile of gratitude, and Elsa could feel her body shaking. The woman was so slight, like a strong gust of wind could blow her away; she had long, spindly fingers with uncut nails and smooth hands. Her shoulders folded over forward and she walked with her hips jutted out, as if her pelvis carried a bowl of marbles that must not be spilled.
“Thanks for helping me, ma'am. What was your name again?”
“No problem, doll. Like I said, my name really is Freja.” She took Elsa's hand in hers and began petting it. “You have lovely skin.” Elsa blushed. Not many other girls ever gave her compliments; Elsa didn't know if they were jealous or if they truly thought she was repulsive. As much as she loved men, sometimes a feminine compliment regarding her beauty was far more powerful a self-esteem boost than anything a man could say. Women knew the work required and value of looking good.
“You seem very upset doll. I could see something was wrong. What time do you get off?”
“Just in a couple hours,” Elsa said.
“That's great. Do you want to join me for some tea at my house tonight? There are some peach blooms just getting ripe on my window sill. I'm really proud of them. We could make a pie or some jam.”
“That sounds nice.”
“I'll hang out here and give ol' Mitch the evil eye from this here bar while you finish your chores. Go on now, doll.” She pushed Elsa from the base of her waist toward the center of the room. Elsa was surprised by the strength Freja had in her.
CHAPTER 18
Later that night, Elsa took off her apron and ignored Mitch as she left. She put her apron in her pocket, her breath fogging her vision due the cold. She shifted her gaze around her. “Where are you Freja?”
A hand pinched her butt. “I'm right here, girlie!” Freja laughed, grabbing her hand like a school-age girl who had just found a new best friend. She guided Elsa down the hilly exit of the tavern, the murmured voices receding in the distance.
“You and me,” she said, laying her head on Freja's shoulder, “we're soul mates. You know that?”
“I didn't know that,” Elsa said, enjoying the feeling of another person's touch since the night before. “But I do now. Where are you from Freja?”
“Doll, I cannot wait for you to see my place. I've put so much work in it since this afternoon, when I knew you were coming over. I've cut all my apples and peaches down. The whole place smells like something from a dream, girl.”
“I can't wait. How long have you lived at this place?”
“Oh not long. Not long at all. We--I've been here for a short, short time. I move around a lot you see. I don't want to be rooted in one place.”
“How come?”
“Variety is the spice of life, doll.”
They continued walking down the trail, past the main street, into the cobblestone street that disappeared into the forest area between the town and the rest of the vast wilderness that stretched for miles and miles into nothingness. The moonlight lit up the trail as Elsa followed Freja through the dark woods.
“Hold my hand doll. It's chilly and I'm scared. We're such vulnerable women. Anyone--or anything--could follow us.” Freja seemed genuinely scared for her safety, and Elsa could imagine the dangers such a small woman must face when unmarried. She wondered if Freja had any children, or at her late age, any grandchildren.
“I know what you're thinking. You wonder if I have any children. Well I don't, bitch!” Elsa's heart stopped, as she wasn't sure whether Freja was serious or joking. “Just kidding doll. I get the question a lot, but I really don't have kids. It's ok. You didn't hurt my feelings.” They continued to walk in silence.
When they emerged from the woods into a clearing, a small cottage lay hidden in silhouette from the moonlight. Elsa's gut sank for some inexplicable reason, even though she felt safe with Freja and her little cottage emitted a vague scent of burned sugar. She found herself intoxicated by the white panels and solid oak door, and the murmur of music playing somewhere in the distance.
“Where is that music coming from?”
“There's probably a bunch of kids juking and jiving in the clearing behind my house. They have been doing that ever since I moved in. Can't get a wink of sleep.”
They stepped onto the porch, as Freja pulled out her cloth coin purse. She pulled out an ugly, rusted skeleton key to unlock her door and after some struggle the door clicked open, creaking slowly into the cottage to reveal dank, black space. Elsa could not see anything in front of her face, and Freja slipped into the darkness without saying anything.
“Freja where are you?” Elsa could hardly catch her breath. The air was ice cold and her heart raced faster than a hummingbird. She reached in front of her face, groping through the darkness. “Freja. Can you not hear me?” She called for her several times, making sure not to step on a cat's tail or fall over a piece of furniture. In the distance behind her house, she could hear a muted cackle and then a scratching sound next to her ear. Freja lit a match, and her skeleton like face emerged from the darkness, smiling not ten inches from Elsa's nose.
“Sorry doll. Place can't have fire when I'm gone. There is no one to watch the place and make sure it doesn't burn down. Remember, I don't have any kids or a husband, right?”
Elsa nodded. She followed Freja through the various corridors of her house, into and out of rooms. The layout of her cottage resembled something like underground catacombs, and Elsa got a sense the place was far bigger than it appeared from the outside.
“You're not going to kill me are you?” Elsa joked, an attempt to break the ice.
“Of course dear. I'm going murder you with an ax and then put you in an oven. I'll make a pie out of you,” she said. Elsa knew consciously she was joking, but Freja's outline blocking the light of the candle was very eerie. Her long slender fingers seemed to grow in the candle light as they continued ambling down the corridor.
“You can hold my hand if you want to,” she said, opening it up from behind. Elsa grabbed her hand and they continued walking for what seemed an eternity. Freja kicked open a door with her foot and guided Elsa through the door. She sat down in a rocker and waved Elsa to an area across a pit. She kneeled down and lit a small fire, and the room lit up with an orange glow. The whole area grew warmer and more comfortable by the second.
Freja leaned back in her chair and propped up her feet. “Ah, that's better. So what do you think, doll?”
“Well I haven't seen much. It's very dark.”
“Oh I'll show you more in a second.”
“OK great. I smell peach pie somewhere too.”
“You bet you do girlie. I made it special just for ya.” She smiled for second. “You're missing someone aren't ya?”
“How do you mean?”
“Someone's gone. They left you, not willingly. That was why you're upset.”
“You're a very intuitive woman, Freja.”
“Of course I am silly. Why do you think I rescued you?”
“That's true,” Elsa laughed, suddenly feeling more willing to open up to Freja, who seemed more welcoming than ever.
Elsa thought she could trust her, felt Freja was her guardian angel. Added to that was the pure panic in Elsa's stomach as the memories of last night, which came barreling into her mind in regular intervals, despite the fact that she tried to keep them locked away, in order to concentrate on surviving in the moment. She breathed a sigh of exhaustion. “Well I guess I ought to tell you.”
Freja sipped a small cup of apple juice. “Go on girl. I'm waiting.”
“You mean you don't already know, Miss Clairvoyant?”
“I'm intuitive not telepathic. Let's hear it. Who killed him?”
“No one killed him. He was taken from me.”
“By who?”
“I don't know. That's the thing. I mean I think I know. But something tells me I'm wrong about it. I feel like my hunch will make me jump to conclusions.”
“I always trust my hunches doll. There is no other way to know anything.” She smiled at Elsa, with the same skeleton like grin. Elsa had surprised herself with the ease with which she'd accepted the existence of male witches, magic spells, glowing eyes, and such. To her, the past week seemed like an extended dream from which she'd only begun to awake. There was never any moment to stop and question the reality of what happened with Dorien and Theo. Maybe Elsa longed so intensely for one great passion for her life that she'd unconsciously accepted it was all fake and illusory. But the truth was obviously that it wasn't fake, she wasn't crazy, and she was going to do anything it took to find Theo, the only man whom she truly loved. On top of that, she had not met Theo and seen him for the true man he was. Her heart and body belonged to one person, the blond-haired French beauty who'd left her the night before and whom she would go to the ends of the earth to save. She knew, just knew, she could find him in the Forbidden Forest, but there was no way she would go there, because she knew she would never get out. If she did, the fire in her soul will have gone cold and her heart gone black. She cared nothing about committing atrocious acts.
She wondered what would happen if she talked to Freja about all her problems. On the one hand, she needed to vent to someone and find help. The night before had been so traumatizing her brain almost literally blocked it out. Who, after all, just goes back to work after their significant other disappears into the wind after transforming into sand? It was all very ridiculous when you put it like that, but even so, everything except her willpower must have betrayed her true state of mind today at the tavern to anyone looking close enough.
She looked around the room at Freja's small fire, the bolus of incense crackling in a small ceramic bowl. A meek bed sat under the window and a dresser and work desk was beside the doorway to the kitchen. There was nothing for sure dream-like or magical about Freja's place, and Elsa felt a stark, harsh sense of reality hit her like a ton of bricks. This sense of real life--with its disappointments and adversity and lack of organization--stood in direct contrast to the dream-state she found herself enjoying with Theo.
She was back in the land of the living, back down from cloud land. Freja might think Elsa lost her mind and concocted a bizarre story about warring warlocks to keep from facing reality. The whole town could find her and have her burned at the stake for participating in pagan rituals. There was clear danger to the dilemma, but she felt she could trust Freja. She took a deep breath, bracing herself for the possible repercussions.
“I have a kind of strange question, Freja.”
“Shoot sister.”
“Do you--do you believe in magic?”
Freja sat quiet for a second, staring down at the floor. “Maybe magic. If that's what you want to call it.”
“What else would you call it?”
“Spirituality. Channeling.”
“You have any experience with that?”
“No of course not,” she smiled without making eye contact with Elsa. “But when I was a kid, I liked to think I could have powers to read people's minds. Of course, this was just kid's daydreaming. I remember putting a pot of boiling water at the end of our driveway, taking 12 steps back from the pot, and throwing my grandfather's acorns one at a time into the bucket. I had overheard him talking about it with my mom. They were saying it was black magic. I was so young you know, so it didn't occur to me that it might be wrong. I was just wishing for a boyfriend to love me.”
Elsa laughed. “That's so sweet. No harm in that, I guess.”
“Maybe not. And then when I was a girl, we used to have this bucket of well water on our kitchen table, that I'd drink from at night. One night I got up from my mom's bed to get a drink and I could see this shape in the corner of the room with big bright eyes. I got real scared and threw the ladle at it, then ran into my mom's bedroom.”
“Ha! Must have been terrifying.”
“It was, girl.” Freja leaned back in her rocking chair and swayed to and fro, looking off into the distance. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“Well it kind of has to do with my boyfriend, who disappeared.”
“Oh dear. You're being serious?”
“Actually yes.”
Freja stopped rocking and bolted forward. “Listen to me right now. Promise me that what I'm about to show you you'll keep secret.”
“Ok,” Elsa said, a little scared, unsure of what Freja had in store for her.
Freja took a quick glance in the darkened area of the room behind Elsa and whispered, “Follow me.”
CHAPTER 19
Freja got up and wrapped a black shawl around her upper body, and Elsa followed her through the second doorway, into the kitchen, where Freja dug through the drawers for a large key. Then she followed her out of the house back into the shed behind her cottage. Freja unlocked the door and opened a small hole in the wooden floor of the shed. She pulled out a dirty book with frayed edges and a stained, hidebound cover. There was a strange, ornate design Elsa didn't recognize on the front of the book.
“This,” Freja said, dusting off the cover, “is something I found hidden in the well behind my house as a girl. I think my grandfather practiced witchcraft.” She sat on her legs, like a ten year-old child, showing her best girl friend her secret diary would.
“What's in the book?”
“Spells I don't really recognize.”
“Have you ever used it?”
“No never. I wouldn't know where to start. Some pages have been ripped out. There aren't any instructions either. I think whoever this belonged to used it like a reminder for the details but otherwise knew what they were doing.”
Elsa reached out to touch the book, but Freja pulled it away. “You don't know what will happen to you,” she said. “The book might have some kind of effect on you. And there's something else you should know.”
“What's that? Can you help me?”
“I can't. I have no idea what I'm doing. But maybe someone else can.”
“Who?”
“He's very old. My family, when I was very young, caught my grandfather in some kind of ritual and he was banished from the towns. They threatened to set him and the rest of our family on fire. So he went into exile, but only I know where he is.”
“Did he tell you before he left?”
“No but he left clues along the way. He told me things about where he used to live, and how much he would like to go back there. Then he said if anything ever happened to him, you'd know where to find him.”
“Do you think he's still there?”
“Maybe. I remember the cabin on the edge of a cliff.”
“So let's go. How far away is it?”
“A long journey, sister. I don't know if I can make it.”
“Of course you can, Freja. You're stronger than you think.” Elsa sat back and told Freja all the things that had happened to her over the course of the previous week. She confessed everything she knew about Theo's transformation, and his revelation about the Forbidden Forest. Freja simply listened without saying a word, content to make a comment for clarification every now and then. Elsa halfway expected her to show shock or skepticism ab
out the whole matter, but she did nothing but crease her brow and nod her head.
CHAPTER 20
After some promises on Elsa's part to protect her from the dangers out in the wide world, she agreed to grab two horses from the stable and head out that night. Elsa was sure Freja's grandfather was still alive and could tell her and Freja how the book of spells might help them find Theo, if he was still alive. The forest echoed strange noises through the trail, as their horses plopped along the dirt path. Freja told Elsa about a childhood story her grandfather recounted called the Erlking. It was a German folktale about a demon who lived in the forest and under bridges, waiting for children to eat as they passed unprotected by their parents. Freja herself lost her parents at a very young age and was herself in many ways still a girl, despite her advanced age. In this regard, because they were both once again single, without children, Elsa could relate to her. But Elsa knew she had value as a busty woman. Before she met Theo (or Dorien) she knew she would survive somehow, without necessarily knowing who she would meet that would sweep her off her feet. Where Elsa found herself occasionally insecure about the width of her hips, Freja had no confidence whatsoever about her prospects of ever meeting anyone who would love her. She confided in Elsa that girl made fun of her for being skinny, and the whole experience of her teenage years did a load of damage to her self-worth. Elsa found herself pitying the woman more than she cared to admit.
They rode for the rest of the night, resting a bit in the morning for some breakfast. Famished from the journey and ready for some sleep, they came upon a small inn in the valley between hills that seemed to reach up to the sky. It was busy, full of burly men with hairy knuckles and bulging biceps. Freja walked close beside Elsa as they tied up their horses and approached the entrance. The closer they got, the harder she squeezed Elsa's hand. Elsa gave her one look and touched her should to assure her everything would be okay. As she followed Freja into the diner, she looked over her shoulder at an out-of-place dog in the distance, staring in their direction with a knowing look in its eyes that gave the impression of humanness. Elsa felt those eyes follow her into the diner.