Anika frowned and shook her head. “There I mean, on the top of the crane.”
The captain squinted and shivered his head, clearing his eyes. “I don’t know.”
He called for one of the two deck officers, whom Anika had agreed to unbind from their cable restraints, to come take control of the wheel, and then he walked to the door on the side of the bridge and out to the open-air bridge wing.
Anika followed and now stood beside the captain. The crane was massive, rising above the wharf like a dragon, but the ship was still far enough away that the top beam of it was still visible. From the distance at which they were now, approaching it from the side, the object at the top looked like the profile of some type of giant perched bird.
“It’s a statue,” Anika said. “It has to be. But why would they build a statue on top of a crane? It must be some sort of religious symbol. For protection or safety or something.”
The captain stood with his mouth open, his eyes narrowed, trying to hone in on the figure. “They wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“They wouldn’t build a statue on top of a crane. I’ve been to this port dozens of times. That’s a person up there.”
Anika walked up to the railing of the bridge wing and leaned across it, trying to get as close and as clear a vision as possible. If it was a person, he was as still as stone.
And then he moved. The figure turned toward Anika like a giant, motion-detecting camera. She was still too far away to make out any features of the person, but she could tell it was looking down at her. “Oh god,” Anika said, putting a hand across her mouth.
The figure then extended its arms straight out on either side of its body, its feet still together so that it appeared as if its legs were one. It looked like the silhouette of a cross, Anika thought, a black shadow against the backdrop of a white sky.
The figure then tipped its head backwards, bowing its back so that its face was up to the sky. How he kept his balance, Anika couldn’t have imagined, so fearless was this person, daring death to show its face.
“What is he doing?” the captain asked.
But as the ship drew closer to the wharf, Anika’s eyes began to center on the person, and she could see that it wasn’t a man at the top of the crane at all. It was a woman, and there was something in her movements that was now beyond just terrifying. It was familiar.
“Tanja,” she whispered.
“Who?”
Anika couldn’t take her eyes from the woman, who had now regained her erect position on the crane and was staring back towards Anika.
She was watching her. Anika was certain about that.
And then with the movements of some giant insect, the woman pivoted on the crane, away from the water, and sprinted the length of the enormous steel jib in the direction of the frame.
Anika’s adrenaline seethed. She kept her eyes fixed on the woman until she was out of sight, mesmerized by every step of her movements.
“Did you see that?” The master hissed, staring over at Anika. “What..? What did I just see?”
“How much longer until we dock.”
“I...” The captain was still numb with amazement and disbelief.
“How much longer!” Anika screamed.
“Just minutes.”
Anika ran back to the main bridge and confronted Petr, grabbing him at the shoulders. “I saw her! I saw her just now!”
“Who?” Petr asked, and Anika could see Petr questioning her state of mind.
Anika composed herself. “Tanja. I saw her. She was on the crane, and...and she saw me. I think she was...”
“Was what?”
“I think she was waiting for me.
“It’s impossible,” Petr said, “how could she know you were coming?”
Anika shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. How did I know to come?”
Petr lowered his gaze to the floor, considering the logic of Anika’s statement—or, perhaps, her lack thereof—and then nodded, accepting that anything was possible. He looked up again. “What are we going to do?”
“It’s going to take a while to fully bring the ship in and for the captain to register with the harbor. So in the meantime, I’m going to the deck. I want you to wait here. No matter what, Petr, don’t come. The captain has promised to allow you safe passage back, no charges, so you can’t get involved in any way. No matter what. Is that clear?”
Petr nodded.
“And I love you Petr. Like you were my own. And I wish I could tell you to tell Gretel and Hansel how sorry I am. And how much I love them. But I can’t. And you can’t ever tell them about this. About the Eastern Lands or Tanja or, most of all, that I lived beyond that day on the lake. I fear it will be too much for them to hear, and they’ll never forgive you for keeping it secret. And you need them Petr. You’re going to need them. They’re your family. Along with Mrs. Klahr. And I always want you to have each other.”
“Gretel is gone.” Petr said flatly, nullifying Anika’s words.
“She’ll be back, Petr. Or you’ll go there. One day. I know you’ll be reunited. Have faith.”
Petr let Anika’s last words stand and then brought them back to the moment.
“I don’t think I want to know what your plan is, but I’m asking anyway. What’s up on the deck? What should I ignore no matter what?”
Anika took a deep breath and then stretched her neck to one side and then the other. “She was waiting for me to come and now I’m here. Now I’m going to wait for her.”
Chapter 32
TANJA COULD SMELL HER childhood arriving on the ship, drifting over the harbor like a pungent mist. Or perhaps it was the childhood of her daughter, Marlene. Or son, Gromus. All three were so distant now that, for Tanja, they had merged into one muddled abstraction from which she could find few tangible visual memories. Smells were different though. Through some miracle of olfactory evolution, she could still detect the aroma of past days, days so old they’d been forgotten by time itself.
“Anika,” she whispered, the glowing sound of the name tingling the drums of her ears.
Tanja stood inside the wharf master’s house behind the boy who had supplied her with the container ship’s origin and name. He was in her grasp, though not clutched with aggression, her arms motherly draped across the boy’s chest with one hand circling back to his shoulder, her nails tickling the side of his neck. She tapped the skin below his jaw every few seconds, a constant, dull reminder of their potential.
The boy’s father lay on the floor beside the desk, decapitated. Unlike his son, the wharf master hadn’t possessed the same instincts for survival or distrust of his fellow man.
Despite the violence and gruesome scene, however, the boy didn’t struggle under Tanja, and, in fact, he seemed relatively calm. Tanja figured the boy probably hated his father and was, on some level, relieved at his sudden demise.
“We can do this, can’t we Rolf?”
The boy frowned and nodded. There was no other answer to give.
“Then let’s recapture what we’ve discussed. When the captain comes to pay his port dues, what will you tell him?”
The boy swallowed. “That there has been an incident,” he said. “That there have been reports of a sighting. Of a person atop one of the cranes. And that the Port Authority has begun investigating. And I will ask if he, himself, saw anything while coming in.”
“And then what?”
“When he says that he did see something, if that is what he says.” The boy paused, not confident in this portion of the plan.
“It’s what he’ll say,” Tanja whispered to his ear.
The boy nodded. “When he says he, too, saw a person on the crane, then I will inform him that he will need to wait here until he can be questioned, and that his crew will need to stay on board until given clearance to debark.”
“Very good.”
“You must understand, this is not how it would work. The ship’s master will question my
knowledge about these procedures. He’ll ask for my father. He is an experienced captain and will know this isn’t the protocol.”
“Did you not tell me he didn’t radio you about his position while en route? As per nautical law?”
The boy nodded.
“And thus you will tell him that you reported this dereliction to the authority, and they have identified his ship as suspicious and subject to inspection.”
“But—”
“Why did the captain not radio the harbor?” Tanja asked, already knowing the answer. Knowing that the Morgans aboard were somehow responsible. “Why would such an experienced captain not follow such basic protocol?”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Then it is enough to warrant questioning from the authority. And combined with the sighting of a deranged person scaling cranes around the wharf, there will be no bending of the investigative protocol. Besides, his suspicions are unimportant to me. I only need a moment to get on the ship, to see them up close. I only need to touch them. Smell them. Taste them.”
Tanja lifted her chin and closed her eyes, inhaling the stale air of the wharf master’s house.
The boy seemed to realize that questioning this mad woman’s displays and rants would be a grave error. Tanja had strayed off into her own story, one about which he knew nothing and would be wise to leave alone.
She looked over the boy’s shoulder now at the emptiness of the air before her, her eyes wide, as if asking some invisible being for understanding. “I know at least one Morgan is aboard that ship. I know it. But I’ll need to see them for myself.”
Tanja released the boy from her grip and motioned for him to sit down at the desk, and then she walked from behind him, striding absently past the boy’s fallen father, whose blood had pooled back into a shadowy corner near the back wall.
She reached down and lifted the head of the corpse and walked to a tall trashcan in the corner of the office and dropped the skull in, pushing down on it until it touched the bottom of the bin. Next she grabbed the headless corpse by the collar and hoisted it to its feet, lifting and carrying it easily to a front corner, wedging the body between the trashcan and one of the office’s four filing cabinets that lined the southern wall. She then moved another one of the cabinets in front of the body and stacked yet another on top so that the corpse was now entirely hidden from view. The setup wasn’t going to fool any hounds on the hunt, and the office itself wasn’t going to win any decorating awards, but the covering was sufficient for now, at least from the captain who would soon be entering, presumably sitting on the visitor’s side of the desk during his visit.
Tanja took a seat against a sliver of space on the interior wall that faced the quay, across from the desk between the entrance and the structure’s lone window. She turned and looked out the window every few minutes, following with interest the process of mooring the ship, calculating when the captain would be arriving at the door.
The boy sat across from her, staring at the space where his father lay hidden and headless. “He was bad to me,” he said. “And to my mother. She killed herself because of it, I think. He beat her. And then left her for another wife.”
Tanja followed the boy’s eyes and then looked back to him. “I didn’t know that. Not those details, of course. But I could guess he wasn’t a good man.”
“I’m glad he’s gone.”
Tanja hadn’t planned to get into this much depth with the boy; she was confined here until the ship was fully moored and was just waiting for her moment to board.
“If only it was my stepmother too.”
Tanja smiled. “Perhaps that can be arranged.”
The boy finally looked away from the burial site and back to Tanja, narrowing his eyes, understanding her implication. “What do I have to do?”
“Do you have a gun?”
TANJA RAN HER FINGERS over the face of the captain of the ESC Mongkut as she walked from the wharf master’s house, ruffling his hair as she did. He shuddered at her touch, but didn’t turn to look at her, focusing instead on the wharf master’s son and the revolver pointed at him.
Tanja had planned to fall in behind the captain after he entered the wharf house, and then with his back to her, sneak off while he conversed with the wharf master’s son about port dues and waybills.
But there was no guarantee she could pull off the trick without being seen, or that the boy would have followed the plan at all. For all Tanja knew, once she had left the house and the boy was alone with the captain, he would have told him the whole story and immediately phoned for the authorities.
But then the gap had opened, the universe had made its offering, and she, in turn, had made the promise to the boy to kill his stepmother as payment for holding the captain hostage. She had no intention of ever fulfilling the promise, just as she didn’t expect the boy could keep up his end of the deal, at least not for long. The captain would eventually talk the boy out of going through with the plan, or perhaps trick him somehow, forcing the boy to drop his guard while the captain secured the gun.
But a few minutes would be enough, Tanja thought, as she walked the length of the wharf to the water’s edge, approaching the giant ship port side. She had waited for the stevedores to finish tying the ship off and then scatter before approaching, knowing that, according to Rolf, there would be no unloading of cargo until tomorrow morning.
She looked at the sky once and the darkening clouds that were bringing the night early, and then stepped up on the large bollard that rose from the harbor like an iron mushroom. She stood in perfect balance on the bollard as she gazed up the length of the thick mooring rope that led to the bow of the ship. The climb wouldn’t be the easiest thing she had ever done, but her will was never stronger.
She gripped the rope with both hands, as tightly as her muscles would allow, and then dropped her body off the side of the wharf so that she was hanging over the waters of the harbor. She took a deep breath and then swung her legs up to the rope and wrapped them around, pretzel-like. She said a prayer of thanks to the Orphic gods, whom she’d all but forgotten over the centuries, and then began her climb to the deck of the container ship and the blood that would bring her eternal youth.
Chapter 33
TANJA WAS HALFWAY UP the mooring rope when Anika spotted her again, moving quickly, like a robed beetle escaping from the jaws of some large, predatory insect.
Anika had positioned herself at the top of a small stack of three containers, and now had a panoramic view of the harbor. She had watched the captain enter the wharf master’s house, and then, minutes later, watched the same woman she’d seen on the top of the crane exit.
Tanja.
Anika prayed the ship’s master wasn’t dead—he had shown her kindness and dignity, in spite of the horrors she had brought to his ship—but she also had to assume the worst. It was too late though, she thought; whatever had been done was done. There was only the future to deal with now. The future—the realm where punishment existed.
Tanja dropped out of Anika’s view soon after beginning her ascent up the mooring rope, but now, seconds later, she was visible again, working her hands steadily over each other as she progressed toward the ship.
Anika prepared her body for the fight, tensing her muscles and slowing her breathing, and then dropped down from the top container, finding a foothold and grip on the top of the middle one, focusing now on the forecastle of the ship where Tanja would, presumably, be emerging any minute.
She stared at the empty rail at the front of the ship, hearing the breathing as the woman below it drew closer. She fell from Anika’s sightline once more for four of five seconds, and then she saw the first hand grip the railing. The other one followed a second later, and moments after that, the woman was standing on the bow, smiling.
Tanja’s breathing labored, and Anika could see the sweat pouring from her twisted, mangled face, but she seemed to be regaining her stamina quickly.
“You are no
girl,” the woman shouted, fighting the words through the wind, “so you must be Anika Morgan. The mother. I would love to meet your daughter, the one whose fame is equal to yours. Where is young Gretel? Have her come to meet me.”
“You’ll never meet her. You’ll be dead in minutes and she’ll live a long happy life. And when she eventually dies, she’ll live in peace in the glory of heaven while you burn, stretched on the racks in the depths of Hell.”
Tanja laughed, and Anika could see, even from a distance, that her teeth were formidable still. She tried to imagine her age and the thought boggled Anika’s mind.
“So you’re alone then. I must say I’m disappointed. But not completely. It will make things easier for me, certainly. I am curious though, Mrs. Morgan—or is it Ms? I believe I heard somewhere in your story that your husband was one of my daughter’s victims.”
Anika didn’t waver. “She killed many people throughout her treacherous life. As I’m sure you have. And most of them were more innocent than my husband. I don’t cry for him anymore.”
Tanja looked intrigued by Anika’s hardiness. “And how is it that you managed to escape the wrath of Marlene. How is it that you’re still alive?”
Anika jumped down to the top edge of the lower container, and then down once again until she was standing on the forecastle less than ten yards from the ancient monster.
She glared at Tanja. “I didn’t escape it. The torture and villainy that Marlene inflicted on me, I feel it still. But you should also know how Marlene felt our wrath, the wrath of the Morgans. And there has been no sight in my life that I’ve enjoyed more than watching your daughter’s head explode.”
Tanja’s smile lingered for a moment and then slowly faded, her face gradually turning to tension and anger.
“And as it concerns your last question: I’m not alive anymore, Tanja. I died already. Just as you will today.”
Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4) Page 24
