by L. L. Soares
Ulaf guided them closer, moving from tree to tree until only a narrow strip of snow and mud separated them from the stable. From their vantage point behind a wide pine, they scanned the faces of the captive children, all of whom wore identical coats and headgear that looked to be of native origin. Anders eyed the figures, cursing distance and shadows for making identification such an impossible chore.
One of the goats let out an angry bleat, whipped its head around and lunged at the boy brushing it. Before the boy could move, the goat bit into his shoulder and tore away a chunk of cloth and flesh. The injured boy cried out and fell to his knees, clutching at his wound, while the goat swallowed the lump of meat and stamped the ground. One of its hooves struck the fallen boy’s head with a sickening crunch that reached all the way to the hidden onlookers.
The boy went silent.
The goat bent down and licked at the blood darkening the snow around the body, lifted its head and gave a satisfied snort.
“Take him to the kitchen,” one of the ogres ordered. Its two companions, both of them wearing wide grins, grabbed the motionless body by the feet and dragged it away, leaving a dark trail in their wake.
“Get back to work, all of you. Or you’ll end up in our bellies tomorrow eve.” The ogre gave a wicked laugh and motioned at the slaves with a pointed stick. Doing their best to stay out of biting range, the children returned to their grooming and cleaning.
“Did you see that?” Paul whispered.
“Very few escape stable duty unmarked,” Ulaf whispered, pulling up his sleeve to show them a concave, jagged depression on his forearm. The bone-white scar reminded Anders of a shark bite. “In Winterwood, even the animals have a taste for flesh.”
“I can’t see if the boys are down there. We need to get closer,” Anna said, peering past Anders.
“’Tis better to wait and—”
“Look.” Paul pointed at two boys who were shoveling manure into buckets.
Anders saw it at the same time. Blue pajama bottoms tucked into ankle-high leather boots.
Pajamas just like the ones Nick and Jake owned.
One of the boys lifted his head and Anders caught a glimpse of a familiar nose and mouth. A thrill ran through him. Nick. The boys are alive! Now, if they could somehow get their attention—
“It’s them!” Anna’s soft exclamation right next to his ear made him jump. Her body slammed against his and then she darted past him, heading across the clearing.
“Verdammt.” Anders took off after her, with Paul a step behind. If they could catch her before anyone saw them…
One of the goats lifted its head and gave a loud bleat. The others followed its lead, snorting and kicking as they sounded the alarm while staring at the intruders. The lone ogre guarding the children called out for help.
Too late. No need for stealth anymore.
“Nick! Jake!” Anna’s shout echoed off the trees and buildings. The boys looked up, their eyes wide and their mouths open. Then shock turned into broad smiles.
“Mommy!” The boys dropped their shovels and ran to Anna, who grabbed them in her arms.
Anders pulled her up and turned her towards the woods. “Head for the path. We’ll be—”
Ulaf stood between them and their freedom, his arms spread.
“I’m sorry.” He raised his voice. “Come quickly! Over here. Humans are trying to escape!”
Before Anders could move, shouts erupted from behind them. Several ogres rushed up and surrounded them, weapons at the ready and faces twisted with fury.
“Intruders!” One of the ogres, a fat man with bushy, gray hair and a bulbous nose covered in moles, jabbed at the humans with his spear. “Make no move or I’ll have your guts for supper.”
“Aye, we’ll have them anyways once Mother Gryla gets them,” another said, and they all laughed, revealing teeth more deadly than those of the goats.
An ogre glanced at Ulaf, who stood to one side, his hands folded at his belt and his eyes cast down.
“What are you still doing here? Move your arse along before you join them in a cell.”
“Yes.” Ulaf nodded and hurried away, his short form quickly blending in among the other elves busy at their various tasks.
“Move.” A sharp point poked Anders in the back. Another ogre pushed Paul, who stumbled and landed on his knees in muddy slush. An ogre kicked him in the thigh, forcing a grunt of pain from him, but he managed to regain his feet before further blows came his way. Jake burst into tears. Anna tried to go to him, but an ogre hissed at her and thrust its knife in her direction. Anders kept a firm grip on his daughter’s arm as the ogres herded them down a muddy street towards the King’s castle.
“Where are you taking us?” Paul asked. An ogre answered by swatting him across the back with a spear. After that, none of the captives said anything. Anders had no desire to speak anyhow. The looming castle held his attention. Up close, it looked even more macabre than it had from the edge of the village.
Deeply creviced bark, easily an arm’s length thick, created a black, impenetrable shield. A pair of massive doors, each one ten feet tall and just as wide, made up the front entrance. Higher up, where enormous branches split from the trunk to create spires and turrets and battlements, semicircular openings placed at regular intervals indicated rooms or chambers of some kind at every level. Dark smoke, redolent of burning wood and roasting meat, issued from knotholes that served as vents.
The ogres steered them away from the main doors and down a hill to a smaller side entrance, where a new odor assaulted them: the foul stench of human waste, a thousand times worse than any public restroom. A zone of barren ground circled the base of the castle, bereft of snow and ice. The circle of dark, slushy muck oozed and splattered as the ogres and their captives marched through it.
“Below!” a voice called, and the ogres all looked up. Several of them dodged out of the way just in time to avoid a stream of brown liquid that splashed to the ground in their midst. The vile stink instantly grew worse, to the point where Anders thought he might be sick. Some of the liquid spattered onto an ogre’s coat and he cursed, while the others snorted laughter, sounding like pigs rooting for food. Anders searched the turrets overhead and saw a female ogre with a large wooden bowl in her hands, standing at a window and laughing along with her kin.
Chamber pots. His stomach churned at the realization they were walking through decades, maybe centuries, of shit from the castle’s inhabitants. Paul gagged and covered his mouth. Next to him, Anna didn’t fare as well. She doubled over and vomited, followed by a spell of gagging and dry heaving that left the ogres laughing even harder. Anders took advantage of the diversion to put his arms around Nick and Jake.
“It will be all right,” he whispered. The boys looked at him with teary eyes, but neither acknowledged his words. He didn’t blame them for not believing. He wasn’t sure he believed himself.
An ogre sidled up to them and waggled a rusty blade attached to a bone handle, causing both boys to duck behind Anders. “Think this is bad, do you? In a few hours, mucking around in the King’s shite will seem like heaven compared to what awaits you in Gryla’s kitchen.”
Anders barely had time to consider those words before they filed through a simple wooden door into the castle, where musty, mildew-saturated air was a grateful change from the stench outside. A low ceiling forced them to walk slightly hunched over, and Anders’s back protested the uncomfortable posture.
A few scattered torches provided just enough light to avoid walking into walls as the corridor wound its way downhill, but the ogres navigated the turns without slowing, which told Anders they either knew the way by heart or could see exceptionally well in the dark.
Their descent ended when they took a sharp turn and entered a wide chamber, half of which was blocked by a series of iron bars set so close together a large person wouldn’t be able t
o get an arm between them. A short door sat in the middle. One sputtering torch delivered a feeble glow that threatened to go out at any moment. An ogre took a long key from a peg on the wall and opened the door.
Strong hands pushed Anders forward. Caught off guard, he stumbled and fell into the cage. His family joined him on the floor a second later and the door clanged shut. The ogre turned the lock and then peered in at them.
“Enjoy your accommodations. We’ll see you at the feast.”
Snuffling, honking laughter filled the corridor, fading as the ogres filed out.
In the resulting silence, Anders heard the rustle of bodies shifting. Damp straw stuck to his face and hands, bringing with it the acrid stink of old urine. He sat up and did his best to brush away the soiled detritus, then made a quick inspection of their cell. Longer and wider than his daughter’s living room, with no windows and a ceiling that barely topped six feet. As his eyes adjusted to the near dark, he made out the forms of other people. They lay on the floor, twenty or twenty-five of them. A few looked at him and then put their heads back down.
Paul got to his knees and helped Anna sit up.
“I can’t believe Ulaf did that,” Anna said, wiping grime and straw from her hands.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have trusted him.” Anders wanted to bang his fists against the bars until his bones broke. He’d fallen for the elf’s lies, and now they were paying the price for his stupidity.
Anna sniffed back tears. “No, the fault’s all mine. If I’d listened to you, believed you—”
“Mommy, when are we going home?”
Anders watched his daughter open her mouth and then close it again without answering. She pulled her boys into a hug, and they pressed themselves close to her, burying their faces against her chest. Paul moved around behind them and wrapped his arms around all of them.
We can’t give up hope. We’re alive. All of us. As much as Anders didn’t want to admit it, he’d had his doubts of ever seeing his grandchildren again. He scooted over and gave both of them a quick hug and a kiss on the head, and then leaned back. Finding them was wonderful, but they still had a bigger problem to solve.
How to escape and get back home.
Anders tore his eyes away from the tearful reunion and looked around the room, really seeing it for the first time. Many of the other prisoners were sitting up, staring with wide eyes at the unexpected moment of joy occurring amidst the despair and hopelessness of their situation. A terrible cold, worse than the freezing air of the dungeon, crept through Anders’s bones as he got his first real look at their faces.
All children.
Every one of them. Children. All of them of a similar age, between seven and ten. Dressed in threadbare coats and pants over pajamas or undergarments. A few only had slippers to protect their feet. All of them looked bruised and scared.
Children. Captured for the feast.
Anders’s heart delivered a sharp jolt but he ignored it and turned back to his family. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
“No escape,” one of the captives whispered. “No escape from the witch.”
“We have to find a way.” Anders got to his feet, tugging at Paul to get him to stand. “And fast. We can’t be here when morning comes.”
Somewhere in the depths of the dungeon a door slammed, the sound echoing from one ancient wooden wall to the next until it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Too late,” a child said, and all of them lay down on the piss-soaked, filthy straw, pulling their hoods over their faces. Several of them whimpered or cried into their sleeves.
Two figures emerged from the darkness, dancing into the chamber with manic glee. Their elongated, misshapen faces peered out from the hoods of their matching green hide coats to show eyes alight with madness.
“Here, Mother! Here! These are the ones we want next.” The two jegere pointed into the cage, right at Nick and Jake.
“Don’t let them take us again!”
The boys pressed themselves tighter against their mother, hiding their faces, and Anders knew instantly who the newcomers were.
The Yule Lads. The murderous sons of the Holly King.
The ones who took my grandchildren.
He placed himself in front of his family, blocking them from the gesturing fiends, just as a third figure entered the dungeon.
Someone gasped, and more than a few of the captive children moaned at the sight of the old woman. Even Anders backed up a step, despite the bars between them.
Ancient as the tree surrounding them, she exuded evil like a fetid body odor. Hunched and emaciated, she still projected a sense of power stronger than any man ten times her size. A long nose with a sharp hook at the end dominated her craggy face. Beneath it, her lips were two pallid worms and her chin a jagged spike split by a deep cleft from which sprouted several long whiskers. Wild, stringy, white hair fell haphazardly over her ears and down to her shoulders, giving the impression she’d never learned to use a comb or brush. Her eyes, black as a starless night, glared from under a brow too large for her face. When she opened her mouth to speak, she revealed brown, misshapen teeth with several empty places along her gums.
“Gryla.” The word escaped Anders lips before he could stop it.
The crone narrowed her eyes at him. “And who have we here? A human who knows my name? Where are you from, old man?”
Anders shook his head. “I’ll not speak with you, witch.”
The ancient woman made a tsk-tsk sound through her crooked teeth. “You don’t need to converse for me to know your secrets.”
She leaned forward, one hand cupping a pointed ear. She listened for a moment and then lifted her head and took a deep breath through flaring nostrils.
“Ah, I can smell the strength fading in your blood, which thickens and slows with every beat. You fear for your children and your grandchildren, but your worries should be for yourself before your family. They’re going to die, ’tis true, but you won’t be here to see it. Your clock is ticking, old man, ticking the last of your time away. Can you hear it? Tick…tick…tick…”
The witch raised her staff and pointed it at Anders. “Oh, too bad. No more minutes.”
Agony exploded in Anders’s chest, radiating out from his heart to his shoulders and arms and down to his belly. His throat tightened, turning a cry of pain into a wheezing gasp. His legs gave out and he fell, one hand pressed against his sternum. Rank straw and dust filled his nose, but the invisible band around his chest wouldn’t let him cough. Dim light turned to complete darkness. From far away, he heard Anna shouting at him—“Father! Father!”—but he had no strength to respond. Other sounds reached him in his lightless world. The metallic clank of the lock being opened. Voices shouting.
“Help!”
“Take them, Mother! We brought them just for you.”
“Leave them alone!”
Then the clang of iron striking iron, which grew louder in his head, became a booming thunder reverberating in his skull, drowning everything else out as it beat in time to the tortured pounding behind his ribs.
My heart. Pills. Must reach them. Can’t let…
It was no use. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. He’d failed. Failed to keep his family safe, failed to return them home. Hopelessness washed through him, bringing the bitter taste of defeat to his mouth. The roaring in his hears faded, taking the pain in his chest with it, until only a final thought remained.
I’m sorry.
“Dad?”
Anders opened his eyes. A blurry, ghostly face hovered in black sky. He blinked and then wondered why he had to.
I died. Didn’t I?
He blinked again, and the face resolved into Anna staring at him from a couple of feet away. Tears carved dark streaks through the dirt on her cheeks.
“Thank God.” She le
aned down and kissed his cheek.
“What—” Anders stopped. The bitter taste in his mouth. Dry lips. A hint of nausea. All too familiar. “My pill. Who?”
“I knew you had to have them with you. As soon as you collapsed, I searched your pockets. But you didn’t wake up right away, and I thought…I thought I was too late.”
Anders managed a weak smile. His daughter knew him too well. He never left his bedroom without his nitroglycerin pills stashed in the pocket of his robe or pants, not once in the ten years since he’d developed angina after a mild heart attack.
“No blockages,” the cardiologist had told him. “But try to avoid stress.”
If only he could see me now.
“Help me up.” He let Paul and Anna guide him into a sitting position. As always after one of his episodes, his arms and legs felt weak as a newborn’s, but that would pass in a few minutes. In the meantime, his mind still worked, so he might as well use it.
“What happened after I…?”
Anna bit her lip and shook her head.
“They took Jake and Nick. I tried to stop them, but that old woman, she did something to me. And to Paul. We couldn’t move.”
“She’s not a woman, she’s a witch.” Anders took a deep breath, then regretted it when the stink of mildew and piss filled his lungs. He tried not to think about all the diseases floating in the air. “We need to get out of here. We have to find them before…”
“Please don’t say it,” Anna whispered.
“Say what?” Paul asked.
The feeling of defeat returned, falling on Anders like a sodden blanket. They were alive, yes, but still trapped. How long had he been unconscious? Long enough for…?
“Gryla is the Holly King’s wicked bride, the mother of the Yule Lads and the evil sister of Mother Earth. She’s a witch with a fondness for children.”