The Gretel Series: Books 1-3 (Gretel Series Boxed set) Read online

  Gretel now stood on the shore beside the boat and slowly scanned the water. She felt inside the hull of the canoe and found the lantern, lifting it out and lighting it. It was so bright! She was aware there wasn’t a way to adjust the intensity of the lantern, unlike the oil lantern they’d owned when Gretel was younger, but in the daylight that hadn’t seemed to be an issue. In fact, if she had any concern it was that the light wouldn’t be enough. But now, in the cape of Back Country blackness, it seemed the light must have been visible for miles, as if a star had been born from the union of water and trees.

  Gretel breathed deeply, trying to relax. The truth was there was no one out to see the light at this hour. These were farming folk, early risers; the only potential witnesses were likely to be either philandering or drunk—or most likely both. No one to worry about, Gretel thought. And in any case, witnesses or not, she was crossing the lake. Crossing the lake now. Life would decide her fate from there.

  She moved the light over the canoe and checked again that both the guitar and buckets were intact. Gretel had decided on four buckets, figuring that four would hold enough fruit to last her and Hansel—and her father if necessary—for at least a week, more if she could keep it cool. She hadn’t considered exactly how to store and preserve the fruit yet, or how to explain their origin if her father—or God help her, Odalinde—were to ask, but there were more immediate concerns at the moment.

  With everything in order, Gretel placed the lantern in the front of the boat and shoved the canoe easily into the water, dexterously avoiding wetting her shoes as she grabbed either side of the stern end, and bounced in, landing in perfect sitting position at the stern seat. She moved the lantern to the bow, picked up the guitar and gently began to row across the lake toward the Klahr orchard.

  In the daylight, the lake looked like hardly more than a large pond, but now, under the shroud of night, it seemed larger, frightening. There was a quietness to it that implied undisclosed secrets and demanded trepidation. Gretel thought she would have preferred raging rapids under sunny skies to the lake at this moment.

  She distracted herself by trying to remember when she’d last been on the boat, but she couldn’t recall, imagining it must have been when Hansel was just a toddler, and their father would row them past the entire Klahr orchard, down to the Stein mill where the lake ended. Gretel remembered being mostly bored by the trips, other than seeing the joy it brought to her brother and father. She would have given just about anything to have such stability and leisure in her life right now.

  The canoe nudged into the silty bottom of the lake just a few feet off the shore of the Klahr side of the lake. Gretel was already across! She let out a breathy laugh at how quick the ride had been; she’d barely paddled the guitar more than a few times it seemed.

  So far the plan was working as well as she could have hoped.

  Gretel pulled the lantern and buckets from the canoe, and was now grateful for the lantern’s brightness; she was completely unfamiliar with the landscape on this side of the lake, and began to imagine bottomless pits and angry dogs waiting for her just outside the circumference of the light’s rays. She walked slowly up the slight slope of the muddy beach, focusing on the two or three feet that were illuminated just in front of her steps. Soon she crossed a threshold into a patch of wild grass and then saw the first of the trees planted closely together in the perfectly manicured row of dirt that formed the back of the Klahr orchard. She was there.

  Gretel exhaled and then breathed in deeply, taking the clean, candied air into her lungs and holding it there, savoring it, before releasing it to the breeze. Her stomach reacted instantly, awakening from its slumber.

  She lifted the lantern branch-high and her eyes were overwhelmed with pears. There were pears everywhere on the tree, bulbous and perfectly shaped, nestled in clusters, clinging to the leaves like giant green raindrops. There were dozens, maybe hundreds on the one tree, and Gretel’s mind conjured a picture of the entire orchard, which ran as long and deep as human eyes could see, even from across the lake in the clear of day. She began to extrapolate out how many pears and apples there must be in the entire orchard and realized it was inconceivable. Millions, she thought.

  Gretel’s impulses stirred and she scrambled for a bucket. The trees were taller than she’d imagined, and Gretel would certainly have needed a ladder to pick one clean, but she only had four buckets to fill, and the low-hanging fruit would be just fine. Besides, there were hundreds—maybe thousands—of trees to choose from.

  The buckets were filled quickly, and as Gretel began the first trip back to the canoe—one hand holding the lantern, the other lugging a bucket of pears—she lamented not bringing more than four. She could imagine sitting with Hansel and devouring all the pears in a single morning, and the Klahrs would miss four buckets of pears no more than the beach would miss four buckets of sand. But four was all she had, and she needed to stay on task. Besides, she could always come back for more.

  With three buckets secure in the canoe, Gretel made her last trip back to the orchard for the remaining bucket when she heard a dull metallic click. She knew instantly it was the unmistakable sound of a round of ammunition being loaded into the chamber of a shotgun.

  “Place the bucket on the ground,” a voice commanded. The man’s voice was neither loud nor aggressive. In fact, Gretel thought, there was a soothing, instructive quality to it.

  Gretel did as she was told and now stood frozen, suddenly realizing the vulnerable position she was in. She had been caught trespassing and stealing—no small offenses, particularly in the Back Country—and was now being held alone by a man with a gun, a man who, Gretel assumed, was either going to kill or rape her. Or both. Property crimes in the Back Country were not turned over to The System—and they never went unpunished. She had never associated the Klahr family with anything other than piety and work, but the truth was she didn’t know them at all. For all she knew they could have spent the bulk of their days offering sacrifices to Satan himself.

  “Hold the lantern up to your face.” The steady voice was coming from in front of Gretel, maybe ten or fifteen feet away.

  Gretel obeyed, closing her eyes to avoid the glare of the light.

  “Gretel Morgan.”

  Gretel opened her eyes in surprise, narrowing them, trying to force her vision through the darkness. She listened with both fear and anticipation as the heavy footsteps approached.

  Finally, the figure came into view, but the light only illuminated his torso. The man was tall, and Gretel lifted the light over her head to try to see his face.

  “It’s all right, Gretel, let me have the lamp,” the voice said, wrapping his long fingers around the handle. Gretel released her grip and dropped her hands to her sides, assuming a tall, penitent posture, as if waiting for a scolding.

  The stranger lifted the lantern to his face and stooped to Gretel’s height, revealing his face. It was Georg Klahr. “Let’s go,” he said.

  AMANDA KLAHR PLACED the soup gently in front of Gretel, who instinctively grabbed the sides of the bowl and raised it just slightly off the table. She caught herself in time, but Mrs. Klahr had seen her, and Gretel immediately imagined how appalled her mother would have been.

  “Here Gretel,” Mrs. Klahr said, placing a spoon beside the bowl. The woman hovered for a moment, frowning down at Gretel. “I know the face of hunger child, and it’s been many years since I’ve seen it as I do on your face right now. Eat the soup as you like; your bread will be ready soon.”

  Gretel’s eyes filled with tears as she picked up the spoon and began ladling the soup into her mouth. “Thank you, Ma’am,” she choked out between swallows, but the warm broth and the smell of the bread from the kitchen overwhelmed her, and the gratitude she felt yielded to eating.

  The front door opened and closed, and Gretel looked up sheepishly from her bowl as Mr. Klahr walked into the kitchen.

  “Anyone there, Georg?” Mrs. Klahr inquired, setting a steaming plate of
bread beside the soup bowl.

  “No,” he replied, “seems not.” Mr. Klahr placed his hat on the table and sat down across from Gretel, watching her as she dipped her bread in the soup and shoved it in her mouth.

  Gretel kept her eyes on her bowl, afraid that lifting them and making contact with Mr. Klahr would somehow end the magic that was happening in front of her.

  “You’ve a brother,” Mr. Klahr stated. “Greener than you as I recall.”

  Gretel met Georg Klahr’s eyes and hesitated. “Yes, sir.”

  “Did he eat yesterday?”

  Gretel looked at Mrs. Klahr and then back to the man across the table, suddenly feeling guilty at her newfound bounty. “My father’s nurse took him to town. She told him she would buy him something to eat there. I was in bed before they returned, but I guess she did.”

  The uncertainty in Gretel’s voice was obvious, and she did nothing to disguise it. There was no point pretending things were just dandy at home when you’ve been caught stealing apples at four o’clock in the morning. The tone was not lost on George Klahr, and he glanced sideways at his wife.

  “Mrs. Klahr will pack some food for you to take to your brother. Make sure it gets to him.” Georg Klahr frowned and looked away, clearly disgusted at the abject position of the poor girl in his kitchen. Still looking away he said, “Is your father going to marry that woman?”

  “No, sir!” Gretel snapped her head up from her plate and stared wide-eyed at the side of Mr. Klahr’s face. Her voice was louder than she’d intended, and she repeated the words, this time more softly. “No, sir. She’s his nurse, that’s all.”

  Gretel hadn’t known the Klahrs were even aware of Odalinde, never mind that she’d been with them long enough to ask such a question. But that’s how it was in the Back Country: news about the arrival of strangers traveled with the speed of electricity, and often with greater detail than one would expect.

  The thought of her father marrying Odalinde had frankly never occurred to Gretel, though now that the question had been posed it seemed like a legitimate possibility. Likely even. Gretel’s stomach turned slightly and she put her hands to her mouth to suppress the nausea.

  Mercifully, Mrs. Klahr quickly changed the subject. “How is your father?” She shot her husband a dirty look and Mr. Klahr looked away unruffled. “I know he was very ill for a while there. A mule kick, was it? To the gut?”

  Still wallowing in the dreadful idea of her new stepmother, Gretel looked at Mrs. Klahr as if she had asked this question in Latin. “Ill? Uh...yes ma’am,” she replied finally, “except it was a horse.”

  “Ah yes, a horse. But he’s doing better?”

  Gretel considered the question for a moment. “I don’t really know. It seems sometimes that he is. Like he’s fully recovered, though perhaps a bit sore still, and then later he’s in bed for days. And sometimes when I talk to him it’s as if he hardly knows me.”

  At this revelation, an awkward noiselessness enveloped the kitchen, and Gretel blushed at having disclosed so much in her answer to what was, more or less, a rhetorical question.

  Mrs. Klahr had cleared her bowl and Gretel now sat with her hands hanging by her sides, suddenly feeling like a prisoner undergoing a soft interrogation who has just been coerced into willingly revealing everything about herself, without so much as a harsh word from her captors. These were her neighbors, yes, but as she reminded herself again, she didn’t really know them at all.

  She picked up her spoon again and began to scrape the bottom of the bowl.

  “So what should we do about the apples you’ve stolen?” Mr. Klahr asked flatly.

  Gretel glanced up at the man across the table from her, a look of regret in her eyes, though secretly she was thankful to be done with the personal questions and back on the topic of why she was sitting in the Klahr kitchen to begin with.

  “I don’t know, sir,” she replied, and then thought a moment, her eyes glancing toward the ceiling. “I have no money to pay for them. I suppose my father will have to make amends.” Gretel paused, perhaps dramatically she would later consider, “Unless you’re to call The System.”

  The words blurted from Gretel’s mouth with the tone of a hopeful alternative, and Gretel blushed immediately. It was true she was no longer afraid of The System, and in the context of the situation, she would have much preferred discussing this matter of the apples with Officer Stenson than with George Klahr.

  But it was ludicrous to think The System would handle such a relatively petty crime as the one at hand. So why would she have made the suggestion? It wasn’t to do with her mother’s disappearance, Gretel thought. If The System did take the time to respond to this apple complaint, they would focus on the crime at hand—not on giving information about another case to the accused!

  And Gretel knew in her bones that there was nothing about her mother for them to offer anyway. At least nothing they were willing to share.

  So what then?

  But Gretel knew the answer, of course. There was only one reason The System would have popped into her mind, and it was a reason Gretel had thought about on and off for weeks. It was The System officer’s son. Petr.

  George Klahr formed a quizzical smile at Gretel’s suggestion of The System and sat studying her for a moment, as if he’d missed something in the story. “I think that might be a bit excessive. Don’t you?”

  Gretel shrugged shyly.

  “And I’d also prefer not to involve your father...or that woman. What is her name?”

  “Odalinde. Odalinde Merth.”

  “Or Odalinde Merth.”

  George Klahr rose from his chair and walked to the cupboard, taking out a ceramic mug and pouring himself a cup of coffee, mumbling to himself something about not going back to sleep.

  Gretel frowned at the hint of blame.

  “Instead Gretel,” George Klahr continued, “I’d like you to repay me another way.”

  Gretel’s eyes widened, and she eagerly followed Mr. Klahr as he paced back toward the window and looked out past the orchard to the first glint of morning sunlight. His words scared her slightly—Gretel wasn’t naive to the deviant wishes of some (maybe all) men. But she also didn’t sense evil in Mr. Klahr, neither in his tone or his character generally. And the fact that his wife stood not eight feet away comforted Gretel further (though she was not naive to the perversions of certain women either).

  Gretel waited for the proposition silently, steeling herself not to speak, afraid that she might blurt out an offer beyond what was to be pitched—though what she would have volunteered she couldn’t have said.

  “As you obviously know,” Mr. Klahr started, smiling and nodding toward the bucket of apples beside the table, “the orchard is just about ready for harvest. Starting Thursday in fact, I have men coming from across the Back Country, some even from the Northlands, to pick the fruit. They’ll be here for the next several weeks.”

  Gretel sat riveted, still not quite sure what was coming.

  “These men will need to be fed, and their clothes and linen will need to be cleaned. They’re a quiet, respectful bunch generally, not very fussy, but there is still a lot to be done in regards to their care. It isn’t easy work.”

  Mr. Klahr paused.

  “Mrs. Klahr has been insisting on help with these duties for, what is it now dear, twenty years?” George Klahr looked at his wife and gave the same quizzical smile Gretel had received only minutes before.

  “I lost count somewhere around year ten,” Mrs. Klahr replied without looking up.

  Mr. Klahr continued. “So...I’d like to offer you a job, Gretel, assisting Mrs. Klahr with these duties.” He paused to let the offer penetrate. “You can work after school and on Saturday, even before school if you like. I’ll pay you by the hour, the same wage as the pickers, and you can work as much or as little as you like, though if you say you will be here on a particular day I’ll expect you to be. And you’re not to miss school.”

  Tears began to form be
hind Gretel’s eyes before Mr. Klahr had finished speaking. Her stomach knotted nervously and she couldn’t contain the smile that fought through her pursed lips and spread as wide as her face. She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing, and said nothing in response, waiting for a ‘catch’ to the offer.

  “So?” Mr. Klahr said, “Will I see you Thursday?”

  Gretel cleared her throat and sat up straight in her chair. “Yes sir, you will,” she said professionally, “Thursday. I’ll be here before and after school. As early as I can.”

  Mrs. Klahr spoke up, “As long as it isn’t as early as you showed up today.”

  Gretel blushed again, but her excitement instantly transformed it into a glow of joy. “Yes, ma’am.”

  With the deal in place, the Klahr’s began hustling Gretel back home before the sun rose completely, so as not to raise the eyebrows of Odalinde. Generally, Odalinde didn’t give much thought to Gretel’s comings and goings, which would make her newly-gained employment not much of an issue, but there was no point inciting unnecessary suspicion. To be safe, Gretel and the Klahrs developed a believable story for how Gretel acquired her job, just in case anyone should ever ask. Though, truthfully, the only person Gretel could imagine caring much at all about the story was Hansel, and he would believe whatever his sister told him.

  Gretel confessed to the Klahr’s about the three buckets already in the canoe, and Mr. Klahr told her to keep them, along with the one by her side. “We’ve more apples and pears than we could ever sell or process in a season,” Mrs. Klahr said, “Better you eat them than the pigs. And I want you to give that bread to your brother as soon as he’s awake.”