by Jeff Wheeler
The volhov motioned one of his men over to help him. Together they lifted the barrel of eels and dumped them into the box.
“Come, golem,” said the volhov. “Stand in the waters.”
The golem turned its gaze to look at Braslava with its one eye.
“Golem,” commanded the volhov.
The golem held her gaze a few moments more, then stepped into the box.
One of the eels gently wrapped itself around his leg.
Where was Anja?
“Lie down,” said the volhov. “Lie down and cover yourself in brine.”
Braslava did not know the magic of this wizard. But she knew this bath of stinking water was a grave, a death from which her golem would not return.
“No,” she whispered.
The golem sat, like a man in a bath. The glistening back of an eel broke the surface of the water and moved past the golem’s waist. Then the golem laid itself back and, with barely a disturbance, slipped beneath the brine.
She looked down upon it under the water. The eels swam over the golem, caressing its body with their fat lengths, nuzzling its crevices with their broad and bearded heads.
A commotion rose outside. “Where is the volhov?” It was Mislav.
The volhov looked up, a smile of triumph on his face. He crossed the hut to the door and exited. Braslava followed him.
Mislav stood in the yard, his baby, wailing and red-faced, in his arms. Nina was held back by two soldiers.
Anja lagged behind, but there was no bottle, no jug, not even a covered bowl of sacrificial blood.
Braslava’s heart fell.
“We are honored,” said Mislav.
Something suddenly locked into place in her mind. It was Mislav who had alerted the ban. Mislav who had called this wizard.
She would not believe Mislav was involved with this great evil. And yet, there he was, one knee to the ground.
Anja walked through the yard, skirting Mislav and the volhov. She walked up to the door, panting.
“What happened?” asked Braslava.
“Inside,” she said.
When they stood in the house, Anja turned to the soldier there. “Your captain says he has your payment. If you don’t get it quick, he’ll give it to another.”
The soldier turned and walked out the door.
Braslava turned to Anja. “What—”
Anja cut her off. “Quickly,” she said. She withdrew a small pot from her tunic and a small bundle of fresh mint. She put them on the chair.
Braslava’s heart soared. She should have never doubted Anja. They had to get the golem out of the water. “You take the feet,” said Braslava. “I’ll take the shoulders.”
“The golem’s too heavy,” said Anja. “We’ll both take the shoulders.”
Braslava considered the eels for only a moment, and then she bent over and plunged her hands in. The brine burned her damaged finger. But she ignored the pain and looped her arm under the golem’s armpit to pull it out. Anja knelt on the other side.
One of the eels thrashed, turned sharply, and bit into Braslava’s arm.
Braslava yanked her arm back and gasped.
“Quickly,” hissed Anja.
Braslava clenched her teeth and reached in. She bent low trying to get a good hook on the golem.
The water roiled with the eels’ thick bodies. Another bite. Another. There was venom in those fangs. Braslava could feel the burn creeping up her arm.
Anja growled. “Lift,” she said.
Braslava heaved with all her might. The two women dragged the golem partway out of the box.
An eel clung to the back of Anja’s arm, hanging out of the coffin. They heaved again, and the golem slipped wetly onto the floor. The eel dropped from Anja’s arm and writhed next to the golem, gulping air.
Anja retrieved the pot and unstopped it. She dabbed the mint leaves in.
“But we’re women,” said Braslava. “Shouldn’t Mislav—”
“Sometimes,” said Anja, “the Lord uses a Deborah and Jael.” She withdrew the cluster of mint leaves, red with blood, and wiped them across the golem’s forehead. “Sometimes he uses a harlot.” The smell of the blood and mint mixed with the brine. She dipped the leaves again, and wiped the golem’s arm.
The solider Anja had sent out pointed at them. “You! Stop!” He charged.
Anja dipped again, but the soldier had crossed the space between them and delivered a kick to her head that sent her reeling. The crock of blood and mint leaves flew from her hands. Anja tried to roll to her knees, but the soldier shoved her aside.
Braslava picked up the stone the volhov had smashed her fingers with.
The soldier bent to recover the crock.
Braslava struck him in the head. She struck again. He stumbled back, a look of surprise on his face. With all her might she smashed him one last time in the temple.
The soldier fell sideways to the floor.
Braslava dropped to her knees and grabbed for the pot and mint. Her arm was swelling from the venom. Most of the blood had spilled on the floor. She sopped up the blood, turned, anointed the golem’s other arm. She anointed its right leg. Sopped up more blood. The smell of mint and blood filled her. Her arm felt like fire.
The doorway darkened.
Braslava did not look up.
“No!” snarled the volhov.
She anointed its other leg. Smeared blood on its chest.
A soldier yanked her back by her hair. She fought to get her legs underneath her, but he dragged her along the floor.
“No,” repeated the volhov. “No!” He grabbed one of the empty barrels, scooped up water from the box, and splashed it over the golem.
The blood did not wash off.
“A cloth!” he yelled. He dropped to his knees. Scrubbed at the blood with his tunic. “Come off!” he commanded, but the blood had soaked into the clay.
The golem sat up. It raised one hand and took the volhov by the throat. It convulsed, then rolled over to its hands and knees, dragging the volhov with it.
It convulsed again, violently, and spat a black and slimy lump onto the floor. The shem.
The golem stood and walked over to the small barrel. It reached in and fetched its eye, the volhov still struggling in its grip.
The soldier released Braslava’s hair and backed up.
The golem stuffed its eye back into its head. Then it turned its attention to the volhov. Its face was terrible.
Fear flashed through her. What bindings had the volhov broken?
Steam rose from the bloodstains on the golem’s red clay. But it wasn’t steam. It wasn’t anything she’d ever seen—wisps of light that hovered and flowed like heavy smoke.
Glory.
It was glory. It was God’s divine burnings.
Glory smoked from the golem’s eyes. It flowed from its mouth.
The volhov fumbled in his coat.
The golem’s hand and forearm burst into flame.
The volhov screamed.
The golem lifted the volhov off the ground by his neck.
The fire spread, curling the volhov’s beard, smoking the linen surcoat. Then in a whoosh, he caught flame like a piece of dry grass, blazed into a pillar of fire. Smoke flooded the room, billowed along the ceiling.
Braslava coughed, dropped to her knees. The brightness of that fire hurt. She shielded her eyes.
Anja moaned.
Outside, soldiers shouted. On the roof, the slate shingles clattered and clinked. Dirt blew into the room, followed by a blast of wind that slammed the door and shutters against the wall. Debris flew into Braslava’s face. Something struck her in the back. And then the wind turned into a gale.
The room was a furnace. Her hair crackled and curled in the heat. Braslava thought of the burning bush, the smoking mount—they would all be immolated by God’s glory.
She heard a huge crack. Felt herself being pulled up by the wind.
It gusted again, and she swore in the rush of wind she hea
rd music or singing. Then the whistling moved outside, the wind retreated. She gulped in a breath of air. It stank of burning flesh, but it was not full of smoke.
Something large thumped to the floor.
She took a breath. And another. She was alive. That in itself was a miracle. She brushed sand from her face and eyelashes. When she opened her eyes, the golem was lying on the floor. The volhov was gone.
Braslava rushed to the golem. The red clay shone in places like porcelain. In others it was black.
“Golem?” she said. She touched its shoulder, its arm.
“It’s dead,” said Anja.
Braslava looked up. Anja was holding her jaw in obvious pain. Her hair was almost all burned away. Anja motioned at the golem’s legs. “It’s nothing more than baked clay now.”
Braslava looked back down. The leg was cracked open down the middle like a loaf of bread. The stomach, chest, arms—the whole body was spidered with fissures like poorly fired pottery. She touched its handsome cheek and the head rolled to its side, free of the body.
“Golem,” she said.
* * *
When Braslava and Anja staggered out of the doorway and into the yard, they found Mislav prostrated in the dirt, arms stretched out, praying into the dust. Nina was standing in shock, her hair wild and filled with debris, holding her babe.
Two of the soldiers lay dead in the yard. Of the rest, Braslava could see none.
She walked over to the spruce next to her hut where the golem used to sit and stood in the bed of needles. She held her throbbing arm. The lintel of the door frame, the tops of the windows—they were all blackened with smoke.
She thought of the prophet Elijah, of the fiery chariot coming for him, and the horses of flame, and him going up in a burning whirlwind of smoke.
Was it not a burning whirlwind that had claimed the golem’s spirit too?
To have survived such a thing! She should have felt gratitude. She should have been filled with praise. But she looked down at the bed of needles and saw clumps of the tree’s tacky sap. Unbidden, tears came to her eyes, and she felt only a horrible loss.
* * *
Two days later, when they could all think, Braslava insisted Mislav, who had distracted the volhov so well, must take the relic of the golem’s body and keep it hidden and safe. She did not, however, know what to do with her hut, covered as it was in divine smoke. Did it mean the rocks and timbers themselves were now holy? If so, what person could simply wipe that away?
In her mind, this was where the golem died vanquishing the volhov. It should be a hero’s monument. Besides, hadn’t the Lord accepted the ram as an offering? You did not clean away the memories of such things. It was just not done. So Braslava left the hut and moved in with Anja.
However, that did not mean they had to abandon her garden. And so, one day before the snows came in earnest, the two women went to dig in Braslava’s garden for turnips to make into a mash. Braslava’s eel-bitten arm still ached. Nevertheless, they worked well into the afternoon. It was then, when they came back round to the front of what they now considered the golem’s hut, that they found a Turkman’s tulip lying on the doorstep.
A doorstep that had, only hours before, been swept clean.
The tulip was purple with white ragged stripes. And around it, scattered on the porch stone, lay crumbs of red clay.
Anja looked at Braslava with raised eyebrows. Both women shaded their eyes with a hand and searched the yard and hillside. There was nothing but the sun, the brown autumn grass, and the wind whispering through the spruce.
“You would think,” said Anja, “that one golem in a lifetime would be enough.”
Braslava stooped and picked up the flower.
God had sent her a man, with clay and fire and beating heart. Had he also sent her a husband? Or was she wrong? Was it she that had been sent to deliver this Jonah from the belly of the earth, and these were gifts of gratitude? The golem’s body was dead. Of this she was certain. But that did not mean it could not leave a message.
The tulip glistened in the sunlight.
“This is to show,” Braslava said, “that even little things are not forgotten.”
And so it was. Even if sometimes, the Lord be blessed, the divine message was both wonderful and terrible.
John D. Brown
John D. Brown is an award-winning writer. He currently lives with his wife and four daughters in the hinterlands of Utah where one encounters much fresh air, many good-hearted ranchers, and the occasional wolf.
Find out more at johndbrown.com.
Gretel and Hansel
By Charity Tahmaseb | 1,300 words
Hansel wanted to go back.
Even after endless weeks in a cage, even after Gretel scrubbed and swept and scoured for the witch, even after she pushed the frog-skinned crone into the oven, Hansel wanted to go back.
They stood at the edge of the forest, where the grass grew wild and sharp and brambles grabbed at their skin. The trees above reached their branches toward the ground as if they might scoop the two up and carry them away.
“She’s dead,” Gretel said to him.
Hansel stared into the woods.
“I killed her,” she added.
He shook his head, the movement so slow that at first, Gretel didn’t take its meaning.
“You didn’t kill her,” he said, his words as dead as the witch should’ve been. “She’s alive.”
Was she? Could she be? Gretel stretched her hands in front of her, palms skyward. These hands. They’d shoved from behind. They’d murdered. The crunch of bones, the sizzle of hair and flesh. The thick smoke that had filled her mouth and throat, the plumes laced with the stench of rancid meat.
No one could live through that. No one, perhaps, except a witch.
“Why do you want to go back?” she asked.
A smile lit his face, the same sort of look she’d seen their father cast toward their stepmother, the same look Millie gathered from men in the tavern. Although some men reserved that gaze for the pint of ale they held in their grip. When Hansel licked his lips, Gretel hoped he wouldn’t answer.
He didn’t.
Every year, on the anniversary of their escape, Gretel would find Hansel at the edge of the forest. She’d stand with him while the sun dipped below the horizon, the slanting light flickering against the trees, shadows growing and leaping. The branches appeared to elongate as if beckoning them to step inside the wood.
When there was just enough light left to navigate home, Gretel would ask, “Why do you want to go back?”
Hansel never answered.
Every year, she took his hand—a limp, clammy thing—in her own, and tugged him from the edge. With each step, her legs ached. With each step, the urge to shove him toward the woods grew stronger.
Go! Run to her!
Only the feel of Hansel’s hand in hers kept her steady on the path home. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe they all were. Hansel lived as if his heart, his soul, still resided deep in the woods, in a gingerbread house. At odd times, she’d catch him licking his lips, and she knew. She’d tasted the sugar too. It had left both of them empty—she without her brother, he without his heart’s desire.
The year they turned sixteen, Gretel climbed the path to the woods only to find Hansel’s spot empty. Pulse fluttering in her throat, she bent low. Her fingers skimmed the dust trail. In the dim light, she barely made out a boot print. It was enough to go on.
Gretel scampered down the path, grabbed her cloak from the hook inside the cottage door, and raced back up the hill. Before she could catch her breath, before she could gather enough courage to venture inside the woods, a hand gripped her wrist.
“Stay back, girl. Don’t go after him.”
The voice was lilting, filled with sorrow and knowledge. Not her father, then. Gretel turned to confront Millie from the tavern.
“I have to go,” Gretel said. “He’s my brother.”
“Not anymore, he isn’t. He has
n’t been yours for a very long time.” Millie tugged on her wrist, a gentle, coaxing sort of thing that had Gretel stumbling forward. “It’s too late. Once the witch has you, she doesn’t let go.”
“Yes, she does.” She wrenched her wrist from Millie’s grip and held up her hands for the woman to see. “I did it once. I can do it again.”
Gretel pulled her cloak tightly around her and plunged into the forest.
Brambles wielded their thorns like daggers, their sharp points shredding her cloak. Branches grabbed at her hood. Eventually one plucked it from her head, the force choking her until she undid the drawstring.
On she ran until the woods opened onto a stream. The stream led to the gingerbread house. Gretel halted, letting the fringe of trees around the clearing conceal her.
The path to the house was covered with brittle, the air perfumed with spun sugar and melted chocolate. Even from this distance, desire churned in Gretel’s belly. Yes, she’d tasted the sugar. Yes, she’d thought of returning. But after that unbearable sweetness, the cream curdled in her mouth, the sugar scorched her tongue. She’d purged, not far from here, next to the stream while Hansel had continued to consume the treats as if they were the only thing that could sustain him.
The witch stood in the entryway to her house, but this was not the frog-skinned crone of Gretel’s memory. The witch glowed like spring itself, her skin the color of a pale crocus stem, her hair long and flowing, as white as lily of the valley and as soft as spun sugar.
Hansel lounged against the rail, a candied apple in his hands, the fruit so big and bright it seemed to throw off a glow into the night. The witch curved a finger beneath his chin, and with no more than that, urged him inside.
Gretel threw herself forward, but the rock-sugar fence that surrounded the house barred her way, new segments sprouting across each path she tried. She flung herself against the fence. A second later, she sprang back, her palms stinging. She turned her hands and watched the blood, black in the moonlight, drip between her fingers and onto the ground.
“I’ve failed him,” she said, out loud and to the forest, for every creature to witness.
