Gretel

by Christopher Coleman

  The soft knock on the window above the sink made Gretel shriek, and she covered her mouth with her hands. Her nerves were threadbare, and she momentarily doubted the prism of a face in the window over the sink. She stood and walked cautiously to the window, where the face of a dark-haired boy, frowning, came into focus. He lifted his hand to the window and pointed to the door.

  Gretel walked toward the door and she could see outside that the boy was following her lead. She was more curious than apprehensive, and so opened the door, instantly meeting the eyes of, unquestionably, the most exquisite looking person she had ever seen in the flesh.

  It wasn’t just his face, which as far as Gretel could tell was flawless, it was that the boy seemed to be a perfect amalgamation of all the qualities one calculates in defining a person’s attractiveness. His cheekbones and shoulders were high and broad, and the shape of his mouth and nose seemed to be transposed from a Roman statue. Even the way he stood was just right, with his feet shoulder width apart and hands behind his back, his head tilted slightly forward in cool humility. Even his clothes fit him perfectly. Only in magazines had she seen people of such beauty.

  The boy gave a shy grin and rolled his eyes, embarrassed. “Sorry, hi,” he said, “my, uh, Dad sent me to get his binder. He says he left it on the floor next to the ottoman.”

  “His binder?” Gretel remained locked on the boy, and her words came out robotic like she had been bewitched by an evil master and was repeating a benign test phrase to make sure the spell had taken.

  The boy was her age, maybe a year older, and the exotic combination of dark curls and cold blue eyes were the stuff of key-locked diaries, so atypical in this land of straight blond hair and pink cheeks. She was transfixed.

  “Yeah, you know, like his notebook thing.” The boy mimed his hands in the shape of the object.

  “Oh. Okay.” Gretel opened the door. “Come in.”

  The boy shifted his eyes and looked back at the waiting car, and then stepped through the door; clearly he had expected the girl to just bring him the binder. Gretel noticed the action and blushed, but it was too late to rescind the invitation.

  He took a tentative step inside the house and, spotting the ottoman in the next room, walked quickly toward it, recovering the binder and tucking it under his arm. He lingered a moment in the living room and looked at Gretel. “It obviously isn’t any of my business or anything, but was he able to help you?”

  “I’m sorry?” Gretel responded automatically. It was more a delay tactic than a misunderstanding of the question.

  “My father. Did he help you with whatever he came here for?”

  Gretel considered the question a moment. “He helped me feel a bit better, I suppose, but my mother’s gone missing, and there’s been no sign of her since early yesterday.” Gretel glanced toward the back bedrooms and lowered her voice, “And my father told him to leave.”

  The boy nodded thoughtfully, and Gretel could see him mentally catalog her case. As the son of a System officer, Gretel supposed stories like hers were as common as the sunrise.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The words were unexpected, and they hit Gretel like an iron pan. They were the first true words of sympathy she’d heard since her family’s recent implosion, and it took every bit of composure not to run to the boy, throw her arms around him, and pour her tears onto his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she murmured instead, clearing her throat much louder than she’d intended. And then, changing the subject to thwart any oncoming wave of emotions said, “Do you ride with your father often?”

  The question was a perfect change of pace, and a proud surge of butterflies danced in Gretel when the boy smiled. It was an adult comment, something her mother would have said.

  “Almost never. And certainly not if I can help it.” He paused, and his smile flattened. “I’ve had some trouble with schools lately…always really, and my parents are sending me off in the fall. Boarding school. Outside the city.”

  The boy shifted his eyes around the house, as if indicating its simplicity and rusticness.

  “Not quite this far off, I guess, but near the edges of the Back Country. There’s an academy for boys there—The Hengst Academy?”

  Gretel shook her head and shrugged. Never heard of it.

  “Well, anyway, I’ll be starting there in the fall, I suppose. If my interview today was acceptable.”

  He stopped for a moment and looked at nothing, seeming to consider his life after the summer.

  “So anyway, my father said he’d gotten a new case that was out this way and he needed to stop here before we went home. Though, truthfully, your house is quite out of the way.”

  That was the second jab the boy had tossed at Gretel about where she lived. The first she ignored, but now she was suddenly insulted and angry at the implications. That this land was somehow outside the borders of consideration. And how could anyone possibly survive in such territory? It was an attitude that was by no means new to Gretel—condescension toward Back Country folk, if not outright discrimination, was routine behavior from Urbanists. But she was in her own house and she’d be damned if she would take it here and—especially—now.

  “What is your name?” Gretel’s voice was steel, though her face showed no sign of bitterness.

  “Petr,” the boy replied, “Petr Stenson.” He flashed his perfect smile at Gretel, pleased she had asked.

  Gretel countered with a sarcastic half-smile of her own and said, “Well now that you’ve gotten your father’s things Petr Stenson, please leave my home.”

  Petr’s face twisted into an expression of confusion and humor, not quite sure if the girl was serious. “Did I say something..?”

  “You don’t know better, none of you do,” Gretel clipped. “Goodbye.”

  Petr stepped past Gretel out the door, and Gretel followed him onto the porch, standing defiantly with her arms crossed as she watched the boy descend the porch, a look of bemused bewilderment on his face. He took a few steps toward the waiting car and stopped, looking back at Gretel.

  “Just so you know, Gretel,” he said in a way that Gretel could only describe as sad, “and I’m not sure why I’m telling you this.” Petr paused, “but I don’t think he’s here to help you. I know he probably seemed that way. He does that very well.”

  Without hesitation, Gretel snapped back, “Well what is he here for then?”

  Petr scanned Gretel’s body, starting from her feet and working his way up. He then moved his head in a slow arc from left to right, up and down, studying the house and its surroundings, letting his eyes drift over each wooden beam and crooked branch and lowly piece of gravel, suspicious of everything, as if the answer to her question might be found in any one of the millions of insignificant objects that composed the Morgan property.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally, shaking his head slowly, pausing for just a moment in the event the answer appeared at that last moment of surrender. “I don’t know.”

  Gretel opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t invoke a word, and she stood that way as she watched Petr Stenson walk back to the car and the red metal rocket speed down her driveway toward the Interways.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You’re looking much better Heinrich, but now it’s time for rest.”

  The young nurse walked from Heinrich Morgan’s room and gently shut the door, the smile on her face evaporating instantly. Gretel had witnessed this transformation in the woman’s look almost daily since her arrival almost two months ago, and it made Gretel wince every time. It wasn’t a cruel gesture—the frown—Lord knew that if anyone could sympathize with the woman’s duties it was Gretel—but there seemed to be something beyond fatigue and frustration in her face, something measured. Maybe it was hate. But if it was, Gretel couldn’t even say she didn’t understand that.

  Odalinde Merth had come to the Morgan house as a part-time nurse and had stayed well beyond the time Gretel originally imagined. She was certai
n her father would have improved to normal health by now, since that day Gretel had found him sprawled on the kitchen floor clutching his belly, blood streaming from his mouth. And though Gretel obviously appreciated the care Odalinde was giving her father, it struck her as unusual that the nurse remained with them. Not only had her work proven ineffective in recuperating her patient—a sign that it’s probably time to move on—as far as Gretel could tell, she also wasn’t receiving any pay for her work. As it was, the money wasn’t enough for food to sustain the three of them, let alone pay for the services of a private nurse. Since their mother had vanished, Gretel and her brother usually went without at least one meal a day, and occasionally two. Perhaps a deferment arrangement had been made and Odalinde would collect payment for her nursing activities when times improved, but it was simply impossible that she was being paid now.

  Heinrich Morgan’s previously damaged spleen had flared and lacerated the first day Gretel and Hansel had returned to school after their mother’s disappearance. Gretel had arrived home that day to find her father collapsed in a half-naked ball of flesh at the threshold between the kitchen and porch, and on first glance, seeing only the back of him, Gretel would have sworn he was dead. His motionless body was contracted, fetal-like, his arms clutched around his torso as if trying to stay warm. Gretel had stood staring at the lifeless heap on the floor, and almost instantly began preparing for her new life as an orphan, which she supposed would play out in the Northlands with Deda. It would be a hard adjustment, and Gretel knew that though he would take them in, Deda would be reluctant to assume the burden of children so late in life. But they would survive, and Gretel would take on the duties of raising her brother. There were worse lots in life to be sure, particularly for orphans in the Back Country, and Gretel swelled with an unlikely feeling of gratitude. She would take care of Hansel and Deda, and that would be the way it was.

  The moan from the floor had frightened Gretel back to reality, and she quickly re-focused. Her father wasn’t dead. She ran to him, stepping over his body and kneeling down to examine his face, which was bloated with pressure and contorted in pain. He was struggling to breathe, not because of any blockage in his windpipe, but because of the agony that breathing induced. Gretel could see the dried blood on his lips and chin, and when a weak coughing breath finally escaped his lungs, she could see the blood was coming from somewhere inside her father’s body.

  Gretel’s next thought was that Hansel would be home soon, and she would have to mitigate the trauma caused by seeing his father in this condition, so vulnerable, sprawled unnaturally on the floor. Looking back on it now, she remembered that her instincts had been sharp that day, clear and unhesitating, and she was proud of the perfect steps she had taken: dialing the doctor’s number from memory, repositioning her father and covering him with blankets, encouraging him to breathe. Hansel was certainly scared when he finally saw his father that day, but Gretel was all smiles and stoicism, and easily calmed him with the promise that everything would be fine.

  And it had turned out fine, with Gretel the hero. The doctor later credited Gretel with saving her father’s life through a combination of quick action and shock reduction. But, truthfully, she hadn’t really surprised herself at all: the world had unleashed upon Gretel the most lethal of blows—taking her mother—and Gretel had endured. She had thrived, in fact, and the scar tissue of the wound now insulated her from both terror and hysteria. It was her role now, she realized, to be nurturer and parent, and what she had been consciously unprepared to do a few short months ago when her mother first vanished, nature had activated within her.

  And that had been the difference: the newly-nested concept that something else in the universe was in control of such important matters.

  Odalinde glanced up at Gretel and then looked away immediately. “Gretel,” she said, the smile on her face unable to cloak the disdain in her voice.

  “Hello, Odalinde,” Gretel replied in a similar tone, keeping her eyes on the woman as if challenging her to a conversation. The exchanges between the women had devolved to become strictly perfunctory, and if the nurse remained much longer, Gretel knew they would cease entirely.

  But Gretel had considered that end unacceptable—Odalinde had become far too friendly with Father in such a short time, and there were too many unanswered questions. “How’s he doing?”

  Odalinde looked up to meet Gretel’s stare, a look of defensiveness in her eyes. She blinked slowly a few times and nodded, resetting her demeanor, and with a smile said, “Much, much better.”

  “Really? So not just much better today, but much, much better?”

  Odalinde’s smile straightened and Gretel felt her own stomach tighten. The words had escaped Gretel’s mouth immediately, automatically, but it certainly wasn’t an unusual thing for her to say. There was a new combativeness to Gretel that had started that day with The System officer’s son, the day after her mother had gone missing. Gretel had become unrestrained with her challenges and often looked for a confrontation where none existed. And she needed—needed—to have the last word in any debate, no matter how explicitly her point may have been tested and discredited. This new quality had already resulted in more than one afternoon home from school, and kids who had previously spoken to her in class or on the walk home started avoiding her entirely. If she was honest, there wasn’t one person—other than Hansel—whom she could truly call a friend.

  At first she blamed it on a perceived awkwardness from others about her mother and Gretel’s needing space to cope, and to some extent she thought that to be true; but those same kids spoke with Hansel quite easily, and even when they did speak with her, it wasn’t with sympathy or deference, but rather with an abruptness that indicated a certain disapproval and hostility.

  But that was a price Gretel had been willing to pay. She owed it to her mother to become the woman she was meant to be, that her mother had always envisioned. Strong and confident, controlling the situation when it was necessary and appropriate. Gretel knew that she still had a lot of refining to do, and that her mother certainly wouldn’t have approved of her occasional rudeness or insubordination in school and otherwise. But if she had used her mother as an excuse to pity herself, to disappear into a tent of silence and demureness, that would have been altogether dishonorable.

  There had been no official recognition of Anika Morgan’s death. The System had instead ‘Suspended’ the case three weeks into the investigation. But according to the opinions of most, suspensions were rarely taken up again without the emergence of obvious evidence.

  Similarly, Heinrich Morgan’s dedication to his wife’s disappearance lost momentum. He had driven the Interways for the few days following her disappearance, but his poor health, as well as an increasing build up of hopelessness, had left him spending most of the ensuing days in bed. Thankfully, he had been self-sufficient in the basic necessities, and Gretel had mostly avoided him. It wasn’t until the day she found him on the floor that she realized how bad his state was, and Odalinde had shown up at the house only days later.

  Gretel held Odalinde’s look without blinking. If Gretel had been able to retract her last words, to erase the last few seconds of this scene, she would have. But it was said, and she would let the words play out. And besides, that feeling of instant regret had become typical to Gretel, and on some level it was comforting.

  “Do you have schoolwork, Gretel?” It was a common play of Odalinde’s to take the role of the mother. “Your father isn’t been pleased with how it’s been slipping of late.”

  And there the line was crossed. For the most part Gretel had not resisted Odalinde periodically slipping into the character of the maternal head of the house. She was the adult, after all, and performed most of the duties that role required—less one, Gretel hoped and assumed. But Odalinde had increasingly used her own intimacy with Heinrich as a weapon against Gretel, becoming the filter through which any expression of her father ran. “Your father is ready for you” or �
�Your father wants you to know that he loves you.” And so on.

  And indeed, even the disciplining and disappointments were now being contracted out. Of course, Gretel knew that Odalinde had to be lying in some of the cases, but Gretel had confirmed too many of the reports with her father to dismiss them out of hand.

  Gretel clenched her teeth and glared at Odalinde, holding the look for a long moment before walking away, muttering as she left, “My mother would have hated you.”

  She spoke loudly enough that Odalinde certainly could hear her voice, though Gretel couldn’t be sure she could understand the words. If she did, she didn’t reply.

  What Gretel was certain of, however, was that the words were true.

  Gretel hurried into her room and closed the door, and immediately snatched the book from the top shelf in her closet, holding it to her chest as she lay down on her bed. She hadn’t learned any of what the bizarre symbols meant since the day she brought the book home from Deda’s, and she hadn’t been able to find anyone who could translate it. Gretel had hoped that Deda would be able to tell her more about it, but she had seen him only once since that night, and on that occasion he had been distant and cold. The other candidates whom she had hoped would at least have knowledge of the book didn’t, and, in fact, had never even heard of the term ‘Orphism.’

  But the book had become a security blanket for Gretel, and even though she didn’t know what it was about, she always felt better with it in her hands.

  Gretel lay still with her eyes closed and took deep breaths, imagining what she usually did during the quiet periods: her mother walking through the door, weary from her unbelievable ordeal, a wry smile of relief on her face. Occasionally, the image made her hopeful, but mostly it made her cry.