Gretel

by Christopher Coleman

  Marcel sighed, and his mouthed turned down in sadness.

  “But the truth is this, Anika: when death is upon you, when the horizon is no longer an abstraction, when morbidity is no longer a passive thought but rather a place you can feel in your belly and taste in your mouth, your decisions waver. The concept of death and the reality of it are two very different things. And death is upon me now, and I plan to fight it. I…”

  “You haven’t explained where I come in,” Anika interrupted finally. Her words were curt and emotionless, intended to be in harsh contrast to her father’s dramatic explanation and tacit plea for sympathy.

  “The concoction is not a potion of youth; it does not undo disfigurement or trauma or disease. A man with one leg could not drink the mixture and suddenly grow a new one. Nor will a cripple walk or a dwarf grow. The potion simply feeds those healthy cells that exist, and, more importantly, arrests their natural march toward degeneration.”

  Anika could tell it was the first time her father had ever explained the details of the potion, as he knew them to be, and now that he’d begun the words spilled from him with ease.

  “Oh, there have always been stories of course, according to your mother there were certain additives that would strengthen bones and taper teeth, perhaps even make them grow larger. And of course there are always the vanity claims of clearing complexions and strengthening hair. But even if those rumors are true, Anika, by the measure of rumors, they’re rather benign. It is a well-accepted, centuries-old truth that the restorative powers of the potion are limited. It is not a cure for death. It is a prevention.”

  He paused then, signaling the import and relevance of the words that were to follow.

  “Unless the subject is close kin. In that case, there may be the exception. There the possibilities may become more variable.”

  Anika nodded slowly in disappointed understanding. Then she smiled softly and shook her head. “So this is why I’ve gone through all of this? This is why my family was destroyed? My children made to suffer? My husband left to raise them alone?”

  “Anika, Heinrich is…”

  “Shut your mouth! Don’t you dare speak aloud the name of anyone in my family!”

  Anika gave her father the chance to challenge her command, and when he didn’t, she continued.

  “Not even the promise of youth? You’ll have me tortured—and my children if necessary—to live a few more decades—a century maybe—as a deranged old man?”

  “Not Gretel and Hansel! I did not…” Marcel broke into a desperate bout of coughing. He stood awkwardly, attempting to get leverage on it.

  “And what is it about life that you so cherish, father? Tell me. Is it the loneliness of it? Or perhaps it’s your lack of contribution to the world? And lifelong lack of ambition. Yes, that must all be it. Who would want to forfeit such a meaningful life as that?”

  “I was good to you, Anika.” Marcel extended his arm and formed his crooked hand into an accusatory point. His other hand he kept pressed to his mouth in anticipation of another coughing bout.

  “Yes, father, you were. But what now? Your children are raised. Your wife is gone. And even if you can be cured by my death, you’re old and frail. What will you do with your immortality other than hoard and treasure it for its own sake?” The edge had left Anika’s voice now, as if she were offering her father one last chance to recognize how horribly wrong all of this was.

  “My new life will be different.” Marcel’s eyes shifted in doubt. “I will make it into something valuable.”

  “Your life was valuable father. To me. To Mother. And to Gretel and Hansel. But it’s become rotted. Nothing good will come in the future. Death is necessary, father, for everyone.”

  Marcel sat back on the sofa and stared into his daughter’s eyes. “No, Anika,” he said, “today only your death is necessary.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “But my mother is…was older than you.”

  “No Gretel, she’s not,” Odalinde replied. “Not by quite a bit.”

  The woman hesitated a moment and then strode the few steps to her secret cabinet behind her, simultaneously fishing something from her pouch. Without seeing it, Gretel knew at once it was the key she and Hansel had ‘borrowed’ only days ago. She plugged the key into the lock casually, with no concern of the potent little spies that ostensibly surrounded her. It was so unlike the times Gretel had seen her in the past, hunched and secretive, a compact wall of back and shoulders.

  Both children sat mesmerized as they watched Odalinde reach into the cabinet, fumbling only briefly before pulling out the large black book that Gretel now recognized, without an ounce of doubt, as Orphism.

  “I told you!” Hansel whispered.

  Odalinde frowned and gave Hansel a narrow sideways stare, which the boy received and dropped instantly. “I suspected it was you, young man,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t…” Hansel’s tone was more pleading than whimpering, but he was teetering on tears.

  “It’s okay, Hansel. It really is.” Seeming to sense Hansel’s descent toward a breakdown, Odalinde walked slowly to the boy and kneeled by him, resting her upper arm across the back of his chair, keeping her forearm raised to gently pet the back of his head with her hand. “It was never either of you I was worried about.”

  It was the first act of real warmth Gretel had seen from Odalinde since her arrival, and the gesture comforted Gretel in a way she hadn’t felt since she’d lost her mother. But the scent of the ongoing mystery was strong, and she had no intention of losing it.

  “How is it that you can be old enough to remember my mother being born?” Gretel asked. “That’s not possible.”

  Odalinde looked squarely at Gretel and then stood straight, gripping the book with both hands so that the front cover faced forward. She framed it against her chest and said, “As I said, the story is long, but the short answer to your question is this book. This book is how it’s possible.”

  “Orphism?”

  Odalinde’s eyes sparkled at the sound of the word, and a sad smile drifted across her lips and then receded. “Yes, Gretel, Orphism.”

  Gretel shook her head slowly in disbelief, blinking several times. She realized now that she hadn’t truly believed Hansel’s story about his discovery in Odalinde’s cabinet. Particularly after searching it herself and finding it empty. If pressed for the truth, she would have said she even considered that Hansel had made the whole thing up to get her attention, and that she was willing to entertain him, thankful for the fact that he was talking to her at all, thankful that he had weathered the loss of his mother with such courage. It was true she had hoped the book would be there, but wasn’t so surprised when it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been her same book.

  “Is that…is it the same as the one I have?”

  Odalinde nodded. “It is.”

  “I told you,” Hansel said again, this time to no one in particular.

  “How many copies are there?”

  Odalinde smiled again, this time fully and warm. “It’s an excellent question, Gretel. An excellent question. There are a handful maybe. I know of at least two others. But the truth is I don’t really know for sure.”

  Odalinde straightened her smile now. “Your book, it was given to you by your grandfather? Is that right?”

  Gretel nodded.

  “When was that?”

  “The night my mother disappeared. When we drove to his house trying to find out what happened to her.”

  “Before that day, the day he gave it to you, did your grandfather ever talk about the book? Or mention anything about it that you might remember?”

  Gretel didn’t need to think about the answer. “No. Nothing. I don’t think he knew that I’d ever even seen it until that day. I used to look at it all the time though. Up on the shelf in the basement. And when I got older and could reach it I used to read it—well, look at the words anyway. But I never let him know that I’d found it. It always seemed like
a thing to keep secret.”

  At this last remark Odalinde nodded again. “Yes, it does seem like that type of thing.”

  “But when he saw me with it,” Gretel continued, “that night in the basement, he just gave it to me. Like he wanted me to have it and was waiting for me to ask. So maybe he did know that I’d found it. I guess I can’t be sure.”

  “Did he tell you anything about it after he gave it to you?”

  “Why? What does it say?” Hansel chimed in. “What’s the book about?”

  “In a moment, Hansel, okay? I’ll tell both of you. I promise.” Odalinde’s voice was calm and reassuring, and she stroked the boy’s head as she stepped toward Gretel and kneeled in front of her, waiting for the answer to her question. “What did he tell you, Gretel?”

  “He just said that it was very old. That not many people could read it. And that my grandmother liked it. ‘Treasured it,’ I think he said.”

  Odalinde nodded politely and then asked slowly, “Could he read it, Gretel? Did he say whether he could read it?”

  Gretel immediately shook her head. “No. He couldn’t read it. At least that’s what he told me.”

  Odalinde let out a sigh and stood up again.

  “But…” Gretel stopped.

  Odalinde froze, her eyes encouraging.

  “I think he was hoping that I would be able to read it. Or that I could learn to read it. I don’t know exactly. He wanted me to have it, that’s for sure, but he was strange about it. Sad or something.”

  Gretel thought back to the scene in Deda’s house and then shook her head quickly.

  “But he’s sick—dying I think. He was probably just having a spell. That’s what my mother always called it when Deda acted strange.”

  Odalinde nodded and let this last piece of information sink in.

  “This book is bad, isn’t it?”

  Odalinde’s eyes searched the room for an answer to the question, a signal to Gretel that the woman had never thought about the book in these terms. “Yes Gretel,” she said finally, “it is bad.”

  “And it’s bad because…” Gretel’s eyes darted furiously as she was suddenly flooded with the rain of discovery. “…it’s some kind of black magic book, right? A book that tells how to live forever. That’s how you knew my grandmother. And how you were there when my mother was born. That’s right isn’t it?”

  Odalinde gave a tired grin. “You have amazing intuition, Gretel, as I knew you would.”

  Gretel said nothing, her look never wavering as she dismissed the compliment and waited for actual confirmation. She couldn’t have said exactly how she figured everything out so quickly, but she suspected Odalinde was right, she did have exceptional instincts.

  “Perhaps not forever,” Odalinde admitted softly, “but yes, in essence, that is what the book does.”

  “How old are you then?” Gretel asked, and saw instantly in Odalinde’s face that this question was one that tortured her, one that she fought every day to keep her mind from exploring.

  “I don’t know exactly, but very old. Much older than I should ever have allowed myself to become.”

  Hansel smiled, almost laughing at this exchange. He looked to Gretel for the whimsical reveal of a teasing punchline, a wink or a punch to the shoulder perhaps; but he saw only cold seriousness in his sister’s eyes.

  Reflexively, he reached for his face, forming a dome over his nose and mouth as if ready to sneeze. Gretel at first took the gesture for one of shock, the stifling of a gasp, but her brother then lurched forward from his chair, his hands fixed in place as he dashed toward the front door, fumbling with the knob until finally turning it just in time to direct his cascade of vomit away from the kitchen floor and onto the porch. He stumbled a few more steps until he was fully out of the cabin and in the sanctuary of cool Back Country air. He descended the stairs until he reached the gravel driveway where he could freely release whatever sickness remained. Gretel listened to her brother wretch once again and then heard his breathing steady as he let out some hybrid of a wretch and a scream.

  Odalinde retraced Hansel’s path across the kitchen floor, following it to the threshold of the open front door. She paused, submitted a brief check of the situation in the driveway, and then closed the door until it was open just a crack.

  “He’ll be fine,” she said, “everyone is frightened the first time they hear about the book. It’s not an easy thing to digest.” Odalinde rolled her eyes and smiled weakly at her unintended pun.

  “Is it really true though?” Gretel asked, now fully realizing the significance of what was being revealed here. She wasn’t worried about Hansel; it wasn’t the first time nerves had caused the reaction she’d just witnessed. “Is it true anyone that can read this book could live forever?”

  “Well, it’s not quite that simple.”

  Odalinde walked back to the table and sat across from Gretel.

  “Even if you know the language, or it’s been translated for you, there are delicate skills you’d need to master—medical skills among them—and there are several quite obscure ingredients you’d need to be able to recognize and find.” Odalinde paused and then nodded. “But, yes, eventually you could figure it out. More practically though, you could find someone who already had all of these skills.”

  Gretel was curious about the “medical skills,” but she put it aside for the moment.

  “So then I don’t understand,” she said, “why is the book a bad thing? I mean, I know people have to die to make room for new people, but…I don’t know…life is good, right?” Gretel lingered on the last word, not sure exactly what she was trying to say.

  “This is not about life, Gretel, this is about death: what happens to your physical body after it’s been born into this world and then deteriorates from time or is ravaged by trauma or disease. We are meant to die. All of us. Avoiding death is unnatural. It’s the opposite of nature, in fact.”

  Odalinde spoke quickly, never taking her eyes from Gretel. She stopped and searched the girl’s face, looking for a sign of understanding that the truth she’d just heard should never be doubted. Odalinde took a slow breath and then continued, this time with less frenzy.

  “Life, however, is something else. Life is always with you. Even after your body dies. Life is energy, and energy can’t be destroyed. Life is your spirit or soul or a dozen other names that have been given to that thing—that force inside of you—which lets you know you’re alive. It’s the force that comforts you and motivates you, makes you love and sympathize. You, Gretel, have a strong awareness of Life. Stronger than most. That is part of your heritage and it will never go away.”

  “My heritage? What does that mean? I don’t understand.”

  “The energy of the universe is available to all of us, Gretel. It flows through everyone and makes us who we are. And, if we wish, often with much trial and persistence, we can manipulate this energy to make things happen for us. To direct things toward us. For some, like you—and me, I suppose—that ability comes much easier.”

  “So is it some kind of magic?”

  “I suppose that’s a way to look at it, except that magic implies something otherworldly and exclusive. This isn’t witchcraft. The energy of Life is the most common force in the universe. So common, in fact, that most of us ignore it. The way we ignore sunlight or oxygen.”

  “So this book, Orphism, explains this power? How to use it?”

  “In a way that’s what it does, yes. But the truth is the power of Life can’t fully be explained in a book. It must be felt, experienced, individually harnessed for whatever purpose a person wishes to use it. Most people, even if they could read the language in the book, wouldn’t have the discipline or insight to understand—on the deepest level—exactly what the book explicates. But the people who wrote the book, Gretel, they understood these things quite well. They were a group very strongly aware of the world and the offerings available to them.”

  “But you said the book was bad. So peopl
e can use this power to do bad things?”

  Odalinde gave a tired sigh and rubbed the heels of her palms against her temples. “I don’t believe the intention of the book was bad. Not originally. It was just the result of natural curiosity and exploration. And to answer your question: Oh yes, Gretel, people can use Life to provoke a great number of bad things. Unbounded really. You see, Life doesn’t distinguish between good and bad—those are human adjectives that we assign to things based on an accepted set of social values. If a man were to inherit a family, for example, and then kill the children so that he may bear and raise only his own, we would consider that man bad, and our system of justice would likely deem it so bad he would be killed as a result. But when a lion does the very same thing—kills the offspring of other lions so that only his genes move on—we distance ourselves from judgment, accepting that the world of the lion operates by different rules. Well, in a way, Life sees the world the way we see the lion: objectively, without prejudice. If a person is knowledgeable of this Life power, he can use it however he sees fit. Even in a way that we would describe as bad.”

  Odalinde stood and walked back to the door, opening it just wide enough to check on Hansel again, before walking back and sitting at the table.

  “I know this is a lot to hear right now, Gretel, and much of it you probably don’t believe. That’s okay. Where this power comes from and how it’s used is not important right now. All of that is something you’ll need to explore and come to believe on your own.”

  Odalinde stretched her arms across the table, her palms facing up, beckoning for Gretel’s hands. Gretel offered them freely, and the touch of the woman’s hands again awakened some hibernating memory of her mother.

  “But the power of this book is real. And I have the feeling it has to do with your mother’s disappearance.”

  Gretel’s breathing shortened, and she could feel the muscles in her shoulders tighten. She squeezed Odalinde’s hands tightly. “You think she’s alive, don’t you?”