“And?” Ripping the house apart feels like it’s meant to be. Like I have to do it. It’s a release I didn’t know I needed until it was happening. “She could have come for us any time, if that’s true.”
“You really think she’s dead?” she questions and I do. In the depths of my soul I know we banished her from existence. Whatever this is, this magic, it’s something else.
“I know she’s dead! I killed her. We killed her. We put her in the oven and burned the body. I know she’s dead. I know she’s gone. And now her house will be gone, too.”
Gretel presses her lips together, silencing her protest and hurries for the table. She stacks the remaining plates and bowls into her arms and carries them into the bedroom, then dumps it all on the fire.
“Thought you said we had to leave,” I say as she rushes back across the cottage.
“I’m not leaving without you. And if you really mean it?—”
“I do really mean it. God, Gret, why else would I have come here? I want you to stop thinking about that night. It’s never coming back.”
“If you mean it,” Gretel says, louder. “Then I’m helping you, because I don’t think we have time.”
“Nobody’s coming. She’s dead.”
“We don’t know that. And there’s clearly magic here. The fires?—”
“Can’t be from her if she’s dead.”
“If she’s alive, the magic might have called her here!”
I catch Gretel around the waist and pull her in for a fierce kiss. When we break apart, she’s gasping, a deep flush in her cheeks.
“If she comes here, she’ll die,” I tell her. “I’ll kill her again with my own two hands. But dead people don’t come back, Gretel. They just don’t. There’s no magic in the world that can bring an evil witch back from the grave.”
“She didn’t have a grave,” says Gretel. “She went into the oven.”
“Back from the oven, then.”
“I really think we should go.”
“And we will,” I promise her. “Just as soon as this is done.”
Gretel helps me as much as she can. The dishes take up a lot of space in the hearth, so after a few more trips, I have to wrench open the oven door.
It’s much hotter than the bedroom fire and chews through wood in a few seconds.
I get one of the window frames out, and a gust of cold air whirls across my face. Somehow, I’ll burn all my memories along with this cottage.
Gretel stops, bracing one hand against the wall and breathing deep.
“Let’s just go,” she pleads, one more time. “Let’s just get the wagon ready and go. We can?—”
She’s interrupted by a loud crack of thunder. Gretel jerks upright, staring at the ceiling. The next second, rain pours down on the roof. The wind howls. My pulse races and something has changed. I can feel it in my bones.
“Thunder,” she shouts. Her eyes are wide with fear when they meet mine. Thunder isn’t right. It’s the middle of winter. It’s not the right time of year for a thunderstorm, and no hot air came to mix with the cold, which has to mean?—
“Gretel,” I shout.
The door of the cottage opens wide. The firelight from the oven dims.
A figure at the door is illuminated in a flash of lightning. Cold scrapes down my spine. Lightning is just as wrong as thunder, but it’s the figure at the door that stops my breath.
It’s a witch.
It’s the witch.
