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

  Deda held Hansel’s shoulders and pushed him away to arms length. “Ahh, Hansel, you look so big!”

  “You look really old, Deda,” Hansel said, as respectfully as an eight-year-old could say such words.

  Deda laughed, “I am so old, Hansel! I am so old!” He placed his palm on the back of the boy’s neck and led him to the small sofa which was arranged just off the foyer. Deda sat down and lifted Hansel to his lap; Gretel followed and sat beside him on the cushion.

  “Hello, Heinrich,” Deda said, not taking his eyes from the children.

  Gretel’s father stood at the door, silently watching the interaction between his children and his wife’s father. “Marcel.”

  “Why don’t you sit?”

  “We won’t be staying.”

  Over the years Gretel had grown used to this style of conversation between her father and Deda, terse and factual, completely devoid of style. It wasn’t that they disliked each other exactly, but more that they had failed to reach the level of trust normally achieved between two people at this stage in a relationship. Her parents had been married almost twenty years.

  “Have you contacted The System?” Deda asked.

  “Of course. They won’t do anything for days,” Gretel’s father replied. And then, “Unless there’s evidence of a crime.”

  Deda nodded in understanding. “Gretel,” he said, “why don’t you and your brother explore in the cellar for a while. I’ve some new books you would both like, just at the bottom of the stairs, on the first shelf there. You’ll see them when you go down.”

  Deda stood and led the children to the cellar door, opening it and pulling the ribbed metal chain that hung just at the top of the stairs, unleashing a dull orange glow of light. The cellar was an obvious suggestion so that Deda could speak to her father alone, but Gretel didn’t mind, and played along for her brother’s sake. Besides, they were going to discuss her mother—and the possibilities of what might have happened—and she didn’t have the emotional stamina to handle that right now.

  As she and her brother reached the bottom of the cellar, Gretel saw that the books Deda referenced were the same ones he had had for at least two years now: Reptiles of the Northlands, Sea Life, and a few others containing topics Gretel had long since lost interest in.

  “These books aren’t new,” Hansel complained. “I’ve read these a thousand times.”

  “Your Deda’s old Han, he doesn’t remember” Gretel replied, “And, anyway, you still like them.”

  “Fine.”

  Hansel opened the sea creature book absently and slumped heavily into a dusty club chair, once the centerpiece of Deda’s living area but now in exile, having been replaced by a chair more conducive to Deda’s frail condition. The dust from the chair puffed into the dim light and then dissipated. Normally Gretel found places like Deda’s cellar repulsing—the dust was as thick as bread and seemed not to be spared from any section of furniture; and the scurrying sounds that clattered from the corners of the dark room conjured in her mind pictures of things much larger than mice. And she was sure that the spiders she had seen over the years had to be as large as any in the world.

  But for all the impurities, Gretel had no memory of ever fearing the cellar. Lately, in fact, she felt drawn to it, mystified by the shrouded hodgepodge of books and tools and bric-a-brac that coated the surface of every shelf and table. There were candles and candle holders next to decorative plates and stemware; prehistoric preserve jars being used as paperweights for pictures of men and women Gretel had never seen in person; and dozens of other trinkets and curiosities that as a small girl she had considered junk—nuisances that cluttered up what might otherwise have been a play room for tea parties and dancing and such—but that she had recently come to admire.

  The cellar, however, for all its antique charm, was also dark and difficult to explore. There was no window, and the one low-watt bulb that hung by the door illuminated only the area a few feet past the base of the steps; beyond that, a flashlight was required to make out any details of an object, if not just to walk. Gretel never asked Deda why he hadn’t put a working lamp in the area, and now assumed it was to discourage her and Hansel from playing back there, though he had never explicitly forbade them from exploring that part of the house. Besides, as large as the cellar was, certainly large enough to convert into an apartment if Deda had ever decided to take in a boarder, most children didn’t need to be warned about what may lurk in such a place.

  But by eleven, and certainly now at fourteen, the illicitness of the “dark areas” only enhanced Gretel’s curiosity, and, frankly, made the jaunts to Deda’s bearable. What enjoyments she got at eight or nine were now almost completely nullified by her grandfather’s health and her own adolescence. So the cellar had become her entertainment, and specifically the magazines.

  Gretel found the flashlight that always sat on the seldom-used workbench and turned it on in Hansel’s eyes.

  “Stop, Gretel!”

  Gretel chuckled. “I’m going to look for something in the back, I’ll be right here, okay?” Gretel knew to be playful and delicate with her brother; he hadn’t yet fully accepted that something bad might actually have happened to his mother, and if it occurred to him now, she thought, she was in no condition to help.

  Hansel didn’t respond, but looked up from the sea creatures book and followed Gretel with his eyes to the far end of the cellar, making sure the light was always visible.

  Gretel felt her way to the antique bureau she was looking for and found the knob of the right-side drawer of the middle row. She could feel the weight of the magazines as she pulled, careful not to force the drawer and tear one of the covers. She pulled the top issue off the stack and thumbed through it, suddenly feeling nervous at the sight of the smiling, underclad women flipping past her. She leafed through to the end and put the first issue in the stack face down on the surface of the bureau so as to keep them in order when she put them all back, and took out the next issue, passively thumbing through it, staring at the women who were pretty much all the same. They weren’t nude, but they were certainly there to provoke men and not to sell undergarments.

  Gretel wasn’t exactly sure why the women fascinated her. She didn’t like girls in that way—at least she didn’t think so—she certainly didn’t get the same feelings looking at these women that she got when talking with certain boys at school. It was something else, something about their expressions. The way they smiled so easily for the camera when, Gretel had to assume, they felt ashamed and sad the whole time. She wanted to hug them, befriend them, let them know that she was fascinated by them, by their strength to do what she could never imagine. And that they were beautiful.

  “Gretel, what are you doing?” Hansel called from the stairs.

  Gretel flinched, nearly dropping the magazine, before fumbling it back to its proper place in the drawer and stacking the first one on top of it. “Nothing Han, looking at some old magazines. I’m coming.”

  She shut the bureau drawer and turned back for the stairs, and as the flashlight turned with her, the beam strayed wildly, just drifting over the thick black spine of a book. The book.

  There it was.

  The thick hardcover tome had presided from the top of Deda’s tallest bookshelf for as long as Gretel had a memory of the house, which was from about age four. At that time, of course, the book was as mysterious and out of reach as space, and she hadn’t the slightest clue as to what it might contain. But its sheer size and blackness had fascinated her even then.

  The cover was absolute in its darkness, with no shine or reflection, as if it were overlaid with black wool. And there was no text or pattern on the spine—which was the only part Gretel would ever see for many years—and she imagined that someone looking up casually at the shelf could easily have mistaken the book for emptiness, a large gap in the middle of other books.

  By age seven she got up the nerve to touch the book, which was no easy task given the height of the sh
elf and the book’s position. It required delicate stacking of furniture and the tip-toe balance of a ballerina, but Gretel was determined, and soon became quite adept with her scaffolding.

  During those years Gretel visited Deda’s house regularly—at least once every other month—and with every visit she made a point to feel the book, to physically touch it, rubbing her fingertips on the exposed area. It was always cold—as were all of the books in the cellar—and its lack of any real texture, Gretel believed, gave an indication as to its age.

  But she didn’t touch the book because of any particular enchantment, or even because she thought it was magic, she did so more as a gauge, testing when she would be able to move forward on her stalled curiosity. As she grew taller, and as her level of comfort on the far ledges of stacked stools and empty milk crates increased, she began trying to flip the book out of its snug resting spot, placing her index finger at the top where the spine met the pages and then pulling backwards. At seven it never budged, as if cemented down, and the effort only enhanced Gretel’s wonderment. It would be two years later when she would finally free the massive text and learn a word that would eventually come to hold a high place in her lexicon forever.

  Gretel turned and faced the bookshelf and centered the beam of the flashlight on the book, which was no longer in its normal far left position on the top shelf, having moved to one center-right. In ten years it was the first time she had ever seen it out of place, other than when she was perusing it of course. Had it been in its current position when she was seven years old, she noted, it would have been a much easier endeavor to pull the book down, since this particular side of the shelf was far easier to access.

  Now, at fourteen, the trick was to grab the book without attracting her brother’s attention.

  Gretel could see Hansel sifting through some boxes on the shelves near the stairs, and knew that his boredom would draw him to her soon; but the book was just out of her reach, and she didn’t want to risk arousing his inquisitiveness by struggling and groaning on her tiptoes. Careful not to make any sudden motions, she pulled a large bucket from under the old wash basin and tossed aside a crusty towel that had dried crumpled and deformed inside, probably sometime in the last decade.

  Gretel then placed the flashlight on the workbench, beacon down, reducing her visibility to a small halo of light on the table surface, and blindly flipped the bucket on its rim.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Hansel cried, his voice dripping with suspicion.

  “Hansel, don’t come over here, you’ll trip on something,” Gretel replied, trying to sound casual.

  The sudden darkness had alerted her brother and Gretel silently cursed herself. She could hear him making tentative steps toward the bookshelf and Gretel quickly stepped up on the bucket, nearly missing the bottom brim and toppling to the floor. She began feeling for the black leather. She couldn’t even make out the shadowy forms of the books without the flashlight, let alone any of the writing, but there was no doubt she would know her book by touch.

  “Gretel?” Hansel again, edging closer.

  “Han, I’m very serious, there are a million things that you could fall on and hurt yourself.”

  “I’ll hold the light for you so you can see.”

  “I don’t need the light, I’ve got it.”

  Gretel continued to feel for the book knowing she must be close. If it were in its proper spot she would have gotten it already and been done with it, now all this commotion would force her to make up some story about it. It didn’t matter, he couldn’t read the book anyway. She couldn’t even read it. In fact, she couldn’t even read the letters.

  Gretel moved her hand over from a thin laminated book, and as instantly as the forefinger of her left hand brushed the cold, dead leather, she knew she had found it. By now Hansel had reached the shelf and was looking up at Gretel on the bucket.

  “Han, shine the light up here,” she barked in a loud whisper. “I don’t want to knock anything off.”

  Hansel placed his hand on the flashlight, but before he could lift it to aid in his sister’s search, a large beam of light shone in from the stairs, illuminating her face and the goal of her quest.

  “Ah yes,” her grandfather said, pointing the hanging bulb toward Gretel, “that book. It fascinates me, too.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The first bite of chill came down just before the top of the red sun slipped behind the tallest cedars. Darkness was less than an hour away, and the waking moon was already visible, waiting to take its post in the night sky.

  Anika Morgan hunkered in a small, weathered-out cavity that had formed in a hill bank and covered her face with her hands. She was lost and had not the faintest concept of where the treeline might be. The hope that had carried her through clearings and creeks, over countless bluffs and damp wastelands, was gone.

  At least for today.

  Her will had shut down and the prospect of death was now lodged tightly in her brain. What had she done? To her children? Her husband? Her life? In her unruliest imagination she wouldn’t have seen herself like this! Dying in the woods of the Northlands. She lamented once again her decision to plunge unprepared into these strange woods, knowing full well that map reading and orienteering were a glaring weakness in her skill set.

  But her instincts to survive—if not to navigate—seemed to be properly aligned. She knew she hadn’t the skills to trap or make fire, but early on Anika recognized the unlikelihood of escaping the forest in the daylight, and had wasted no time seeking shelter. Hunger had come calling hours ago, and she had kept an eye out for anything that could pass for food. But the elements, she knew, were her biggest threat, even in the midst of a mild spring day.

  And she had been fortunate to find the ‘cave,’ which was how she thought of it, though it was really nothing more than a deep indentation in the side of a hill she’d been following for the last several hours. It was barely deep enough to sit in, let alone lie down, but it was shelter, and it would protect her from the cold night wind that was sure to come. The breezes she so welcomed during the heat of the day now terrified her.

  A shiver scurried the length of Anika’s back, the night again teasing what lie ahead, and Anika tucked her arms into the sleeves of her thin cotton blouse, gripping the bottoms of her elbows, her forearms layered across her abdomen below her bra. This was a bad sign, she thought: the sun had not fully set and the early stages of hypothermia had already begun. If she made it through the night, it wouldn’t be without the help of God. Somewhere in the back of her mind she considered that her faith would help, but she would conserve her prayers for now, knowing the worst of the cold was still to come. What she wouldn’t give for a blanket.

  Anika drifted to sleep but was awake within minutes, the result of another short, epileptic shiver. She was wide-eyed and focused for a minute, and then drifted away again, repeating this cycle on and off for what may have been an hour, with her shakes each time becoming increasingly violent, as her muscles tried desperately to create warmth. She needed to move.

  She crawled from the cave and stood outside in the open of the forest. It was dark, but not as dark as she would have imagined this far from civilization; the moon, thankfully, doing its part for her on this night.

  She got to her feet and forced herself to run, at first in place, and then occasionally in short bursts to about a ten-foot radius, making sure not to lose sight of her shelter. She lifted her knees as high as possible, feeling the blood in them resist, and then start to come alive. The short naps had been frustrating and alarming—with death being the result of any deep sleep, she feared—but they had momentarily revived her, and Anika suddenly felt she could sustain the exercise long enough to get warm again. After that she wasn’t sure, and she knew running around wasn’t the long-term solution to her situation—after all, she was hungry, and her energy would fail soon. But for now running felt good, and she went with it.

  The crunch of her shoes on the leaf litter and dry
twigs sounded abrupt and panicky in the stillness of the forest, and the noise evoked in her some long-forgotten sense of urgency, the primal need to continue even under dire conditions and the harshest of circumstances. Though being lost in the woods in early spring, Anika conceded, hardly qualified as the ‘harshest of circumstances.’

  She felt suddenly energized, and desperately wished it were daytime so she could continue her lonely journey, ill-fated though it may be. She even considered, with the brightness of the moon, moving on at night; but her hunger, which was manageable now, wouldn’t stay in the shadows for much longer, and if delirium was coming, she’d rather it arrive in the relative safety of her new burrow or in the light of day and not in the open of the forest darkness. Besides, if she did brave the forest tonight and was unable to find a cabin or some other artificial structure, it was unlikely she would again find natural accommodations like those she had now and would almost certainly freeze.

  No, for now she would stay awake and keep her body moving as long as possible, conserving her water and resting when necessary. The night had a long way to go, but she felt she could make it.

  Anika continued her pattern of light jogging, followed by short bursts of sprints, and then rest. As her legs began to tire, the jogging and sprint sessions became indistinguishable, and the rest periods became dozes. She resisted the urge to lie down, or huddle back in the cave, but sleep was inevitable.

  THE LOUD CRUNCH OF feet startled Anika, and with semi-cognizance she chuckled to herself, realizing she had fallen asleep while somehow walking in place. Wouldn’t that be a great ability to have right now, she thought, and then realized she was doing it now, which inspired her in a groggy, abstract sort of way. Maybe she could figure out how to harness this newfound talent and sustain it.

  The dreamlike concept turned to alert curiosity, and Anika opened her eyes to find herself lying in darkness on the ground in her “resting” spot. She wasn’t sleepwalking, she was just sleeping. Mud and branches stuck to the side of her nose and lips, and something insectile quickly crawled its way up from the hairline at the back of her head toward the top of her scalp.