The Witch's Trinity (3 page)

I could not concentrate on anything after he said the word
cakes.
In his city, they still had cakes? We had not made sweets for years now. Not even for fests. Sweets required flour.

“There is a reason for every circumstance we face. A reason why the flower droops, why the clouds bloat and thin and drift away. An explanation for the dropping of a kettle, for the goodwill of your neighbor, for the five fingers upon each hand. And God alone knows these reasons,” he said. “I am seeking God’s counsel for why the fields do not bear grain. I am journeying our countryside so that he may guide me and usher me to understanding, and then, perhaps, to remedy.”

I felt a surge of relief within me, and judging by the respectful but obvious clamor his speech created, I was not the only one. He was going to find out why the harvest was withheld! Thank God in heaven! And more than that, he would fix the problem! He was better than prayer, better than sacrifice. He was an actual man, gliding across our snow-covered hamlets, doing the work of God.

“What is God’s reason for punishing you? Why do you not have fullness upon your tables and in your bellies? You are desperate to know why, and I am here to move the questions from your tongues to Christ’s ear. We of the Holy Roman Church believe that just as God punished the world with a flood, he is now punishing you with famine. If we can discover the particular people who cause all to be blamed, you can again gain God’s mercy.”

Women and men made the sign of the cross and then kissed their clasped hands in pure joy. I felt my stomach shift within my body, as if my very organs were calling out to the friar for help to fill them.

“And so, neighbors, maybe you already know whom God is angry with, but you have not been able to think the thought. But I urge you to give in to it. It is of no advantage to protect those who make your children cry with hunger. Pay attention to those around you. I am here now. You may seek me out to whisper into my ear.”

I was so happy, my fingers clenched in my lap. I knew he would find no one in this village whom God wanted to punish, but surely he would move on and find the true offender in another village. He would rearrange our lives back to the way they had been. He was a good man.
Thank you, thank you, God!
I mouthed.

“And now then, let us hold the mass,” he concluded.

The priest continued sitting in the background as the man in black and white led us through the calls and responses, as he poured the tiny measure of Christ’s blood into the goblet, as he held aloft the small loaf that we would all nick with our teeth for a crumb.

Yes, we all suffered from hunger in our homes, but the church had reserved bread so that we might still hold communion and call Christ into our bodies.

As I knelt before the long robes and sipped from the goblet and bit at the rock-hard loaf, I felt an infusion of blessing. It was like a wedding day, or the first day of true warmth after a long winter. The friar was like an altar carving come to life, one of the old saints surging forward with Christ’s power in his gait and a Christian fire in his eyes. I could have kissed his robes, lifted the hem to my lips and inhaled the dust and incense that clung to it. I didn’t, though. I returned to stand with my family, rosy and uplifted.

As the brightness of the friar’s robes faded in my mind, I could not feel my feet. It was dark now, and the snow was a layer upon me—I carried its weight as well as my own. I stopped walking and listened. I heard no other stepping in the wood, saw no sign of Jost or anyone else. I was utterly alone. And then I felt a tingling at each knob of my back: the fear of the woods.

All my life I’d heard tell of the beasts that skulked in the forest after nightfall. A man who by day gathered kindling would by night crouch down until his fingertips scratched the dirt. His jaw would lengthen and the sinews of his arms and legs would knot and twist. His body would hair itself coarsely. Lifting his face, he’d stare at the tops of the pines until claws dug into the ground beneath him and a tail sprouted from him, and he’d open his mouth to sing the howl that curdled the soul, that made lovers turn in bed and touch each other’s faces to confirm the smoothness. Owls would lully their cry too, in tandem with the wolf, calling out to all creatures that death was only a bound and a bite away.

Into this wood I plunged, witless. I began singing a tune to keep me moving. “I Must Go Walk the Wood” was its name, and ’twas a song of love and forlorn wandering:

Thus am I banished from my bliss

By craft and false pretense,

Faultless, without offense,

As of return, nothing certain is,

And all for fear of one.

I sang it with a ragged laugh, and after “and all for fear of one” I could remember no more. Some days my mind was like a sprawling tatter of twigs left behind by a summer bird.
Evergreen tree, evergreen tree…My bed shall be under the evergreen tree!
Wasn’t that the way the song continued? I suppose I sang partly for Jost to hear, would that he might. Otherwise, I would walk to the crisp yawl of the owl until snow or wolf brought me down. The snow diminished, became little drifting thoughts about my head. I had been here too many years. The only one my age was Künne. All else gone. All sleeping with their name scratched in wood above them. A moon lent some light, what little it could pass me through the disapproving shadows of the trees. I wondered if Hensel watched my movements from above. Did he wish anything to do with me now? I was no winsome lass. My breath clouded the air in front of me and I stopped finally, flesh cold as any a butcher put to ice. I had not kept track of my path. I did not know which way home might be, or if the door would even be opened to me if I could find my way back.

Perhaps the friar could bring harvest back to our fields, but I was lost and in darkness. How could I benefit from his work? I did not expect to leave the forest. “Hensel, I will join you this night,” I said, sinking to my knees in the snow. “The door of the house you built is barred to me. Our son is abroad wandering, with no ken that I do the same. And she who hunches by the fire…Oh, Hensel, you see what she has wrought!”

And then a voice spake into my ear: “By craft and false pretense!”

I whirled around with my hand clutching my throat.

No one was there.

I lunged to my feet and heaved myself through the trees, running as fast as I could.

Above me, as if spoken from a high bough, came the voice again: “As of return, nothing certain is!” I turned and ran the other way. I feared to look up to see her, for it was certainly a woman, and only willed myself God’s speed. Suddenly the snow felt like a kitchenful of women pressing their knife tips into my skin. Above me, she whistled the song. She was keeping pace. What creature was she? She used the air as verily as earth, and soundlessly. “Jost!” I screamed. And then, because I was confused, “Hensel!”

She laughed at that, a sound so evil that I stopped myself, as one transfixed, to hear it. She used her wickedness to draw my eyes up, up, until I saw she dangled in the air, her dark, uncovered hair coiling and uncoiling around her head in the wind.

“We will feed you,” she said. On her forehead was an impurity above her left eyebrow. She carried the mark of the devil, a kiss from fetid lips that stained her skin red.

I took one step backward, and then a second, and then her hand was on my shoulder and she was behind me, turning me to face her. Oh, the heavy iron weight and iciness of that hand! It froze down through my cloak and into the very chambers of my heart.

I stared into her wicked face. She was comely and her lips full and lush, yet I could not admire what Satan had kissed. Her eyes shone with unholy interest in me, and my spine hunched further to lower me from her gaze. This horror traveled the air! She stepped upon mere wind! I tried to run, but she held me in thrall. And then I saw that I knew her. She was from a different village and I had seen her at Michaelmas, as all the townships gathered to share our feast.

“Old Güde,” said she, “the famine ends here in the forest. I trust you are ready.”

She showed me her palm, crusted with blood. With a cry, I pulled it to my mouth and tasted. Animal blood. Meat. With that taste in my mouth, I no longer wished to run from her.

“Come and eat,” she said.

I followed her into a clearing where six women scratched designs in the snow with their fingers, bent intent on that purpose. I did not understand the chanting. All I saw was the fire and the pig on the spit above it.

They ceased their movements, fingers dangling, eyes hooded, and watched me approach.

“Do you give yourself to him?” she asked.

I faltered. The smell of the pig was strong. I knew its skin was crispy with hot fat. I knew the succulence would drench my fingers.

“Old Güde,” said one of the women, “it is only a simple agreement. To sign the devil’s book and then to eat.”

I walked closer to the fire. I was surrounded by crows and the women all gone.

“Faultless, without offense,” sang the air.

Behind the glow of the fire, I saw him. The cloven hooves to match those on the spit. The unearthly sound as he walked to me in the snow. He had a strong body, haired like an animal, and held a book.
God has forsaken me,
I thought. For he had the face of Hensel, my husband of years past, the most gentle being I had ever known. This beast had his eyes, the ones that rollicked me into bed and through and into his hands.

“Güde,” he said, and his voice too was Hensel’s, hushed. “I cannot bear to see you starve.”

My lips parted and tears came to my eyes. Sweet Hensel! No matter that he came to me amidst all manner of depravity, with cloven hoofs and women in a circle becoming jet-black birds. It was he, my one true love.

He never let go of the book, but somehow both hands were caressing me, pushing off the hood to stroke my hair. I threw my head back, careless as a girl, to feel those hands again. I pressed against him—madness, and devilment; surely it was a trick.

“I love you still,” he said.

And although I could not see them behind me, I knew all the crows nodded and looked at each other sideways, cocking their heads to position their eyes.

He pressed hard against me, and I jumped to the side instantly, eyes wide. It was true what the tales told. The devil has an ice-cold prick. I felt it even through all the layers of wool I wore. I fell to the ground and sobbed, staring at his cloven feet. This wasn’t Hensel after all! I sank into the snow, deeper and deeper, until I felt it would completely swallow me. My hands shifted in the snow to push me back up, but it was as if I pressed them against well water.

A crow walked to me, black claws carefully treading in the snow. It was the woman from the air, from Michaelmas. She lifted one wing, as large as my arm, and used her beak to pry loose a feather. She offered it to me. A pool of blood appeared in the snow.

Suddenly I was sitting up and the book was in my lap. The snow was solid beneath me.

“Sign and you may sup,” said Hensel.

I was at eye level with the pig on the spit. It stared at me wildly. I could sense nothing now but the agonizing aroma of its crackling fat. And then I felt as if I tipped backward, but it wasn’t me, it was the pig, spinning on his spit. Both of us rolled our eyes. The forest flickered, completely black for a moment and then lit by the fire again.

In despair, I dipped the quill in the pool of blood. He pushed a kiss into my mouth. With their wings, the crows stroked me. The pages of the book fluttered impatiently. A drop of blood landed on the page.

“She’s as good as signed,” said Hensel, and I realized anew who these creatures of the forest were.

“No,” I shouted. “I know how to write my name, and I have not signed!”

Yet, as I stared down, the blot lengthened and thinned. Soon it was a
G.
And then the
ü,
and the
d.
It was spelling out my name.

“No!” I shouted, and slammed the book closed.

Everything vanished. It was pure darkness without the pig’s fire. I held my breath and listened but no one moved in the dark. I was profoundly alone. Then I saw a basket in front of me, loaded with meat. I stood up. I was unsure if I had signed or not. “Hensel,” I whispered to the forest. I knelt and dipped both hands and fed myself, keeping my mouth close to the basket, gorging as fast as I could. The meat was hot and filled with juice. I fed with frenzy, in disbelief of the taste that was so extreme and so
good.
I closed my eyes to better savor the fibers mashing between my teeth, threading into the spaces where teeth used to be. The meat was so succulent, it was as if I could drink it; grease filmed my lips.