Mischa Fox

©️ August 6, 2011

Originally posted on my DeviantArt. Inspired while reading Tanith Lee’s Redder As Blood dark fairy tale retelling collection, which I highly recommend.

This last screen of spring branches ready for a fight against his forearms stood between the woodcutter’s eldest son Vander and the enchantment beyond of his dearest love. He was young enough yet to believe that the first love would be the richest and therefore the only worth tasting. Vander had aged enough to know the world would deceive him, even strive to split them as surely as a sharp axe splintered the strongest oak. Deep-rooted determination fiercely prepared Vander to fight to mobs to win her and whisk away from this place.

Surely his noble heart in its golden threads and crystal casements would lead them true in the blackest of nights.  Certainly it would point him in the direction he needed to find work and shelter and food for his beloved. Beyond that, they could live off the bliss of twinned hearts. He was young yet. What else do the young need?

Vander was a handsome youth, tall and well-shouldered, with fine calves to fill his riding boots, strong legs and buttocks to fill out his breeches. His hair fell in an artless cascade of auburn waves, as unruly at noon as at waking—the kind girls sigh into as they twine their fingers or pretend to set aright for an excuse to touch it. His eyes burned clear and green with their goodness and righteousness. He still shaved, though he had passed the age for a proper beard. The long, sweaty hours laboring under the summer sun with his brothers and father had left much of him bronzed and exotic in a period when wan faces were whey.

More than one pretty lass clawed up her heart when the telltale signs of love crept across Vander’s face and flooded his joyous veins. Even the goodwives of the town secretly held their breath, knowing themselves that the town-wide grieving had a worthy reason. Even they dreamt of wild nights when their husbands tarried at cards and ale with wandering eyes and hands for every pretty wench in the tavern. That boy was so pure and untouched, he missed every hint and invitation. Besides, he’d set his heart on the maiden beyond the city wall, secured away in the grey stone tower.

Vander pressed through the young tree branches, new-minted in the dazzling light, and carefully stepped free of all but the most stubborn brambles roping about his legs. Before him a delicate spiderweb glittered in sun and dew, arresting his breath. Pausing, he marveled how something so fragile could be so strong and resilient—how something so beautiful could be constructed for such cruelty. Vander memorized the lovely lines of its pattern. He pined to give his lady these things, but dared not—to do so would destroy them. Katrien had her garden, and she could see some of these wonders from her balcony. She could imagine the miracles she missed as he delivered them with his lips. Sometimes if she’d braided a thick lock of her luxurious hair, she let it down—miraculously all the way to the ground and her waiting love—and Vander plaited wildflowers and bluebird feathers as high as he could reach. Sometimes he tucked folded notes with his rough attempts at poetry. He had long since drowned, body lost to the current.

He had told her his name was Vander. It might even have been true, in his swoon. He had told her he was a neighboring prince. He’d meant to say a knight who misplaced his horse—and armor—and weaponry—but his tongue bucked the bridle and plunged cold into the creek without him. He’d meant to say a merchant—suave and debonair, and traveled—and explain later the misfortune of the highwaymen who’d taken him for every last pence, threatening to slice him north or south, depending on the knife’s taste for an opened carotid sensation or humble castration. His damn tongue always bounded away from him. Someday he’d find a way to correct it—but today it only conjured up countless delights with the silvered goddess dwindling in the distance above him. Vander prayed he would not be required to offer up evidence. The pauper played the prince, as best he could, to find the way beneath her delicate laces.

And she was Katrien.

He loved her from the depths of his eyes, and fervently hoped to love her to the depths with something else. His heart thundered at the thought. Surely, since it was love, his imaginings were sanctioned by the heart. Purified, even. He wasted his minutes right through to sunset imagining her anatomy unmasked for his eyes and the moon alone. Her milk breast, her quivering thigh in ivory, the swell of her perfect calf cast in velvet egg white. She would be perfect. She was the goddess, waiting only to wake unto delicious life: to dew in the grass and sun on her skin and his body thriving and twining upon hers. The ultimate waking into carnal bliss burned up each morsel of his brain, twisting in and in upon itself with anticipation and black need.

Truth to tell, he had only ever really seen her face, an eldritch triangle pressed with wide black eyes moister and larger than teacups with a blood-pricked mouth the same smirking triangle as her countenance. Her crown of glory—her gossamer hair, silver as song, sweet as surrender, silken as swimming—spooned over the casement like lazy syrup, magic in every amber-glittering moment. Silver jewelry wove through her tresses rather than about her elegant, slender neck. Pearls and white dove feathers, tiny alabaster carvings and milky ribbons ornamented tiny braids in the rich glittering mane. These he was familiar with.

But her voice. Her voice. That he treasured every morning, bathed in every night. She did not have the piercing silvery pipes of an untouched virgin. Innocence did not bubble forth from her lips. Her voice was low, dark, husky. It unfurled slowly and entrapped like the unexpected teasing warmth and slow victory of a cello discovered under the strident burst of a violin. It was deeper, baked and born of the earth itself. It snatched him in promises of gardens and all that was natural and expected between lover and beloved. Her voice cupped him as surely between his thighs as her hands could have, and under that knowing gentleness, he could have no other mistress.

Long weeks ago, her voice had beckoned his heart into her beauty’s trap. It summoned him back for just a few more notes, just a little closer, until they could spy more clearly. Her impossibly long locks painted every motion of the gust of wind, catching the sunlight like dew and embers. Startled, she’d scuttled back into the tower from the balcony, several feet of her melted metal hair still waved like a banner in the breeze. How he longed to touch it, rub it all over his face, his entire body, to lose himself in her scent—to lose himself completely, offer his body up to hers and hers alone.

Vander had prepared to steal a pair of horses—even the gold for their departure—from the first, but Katrien told him the time wasn’t right. She needed to find a way down, for one. The old woman who kept her here had ways of feeding her and sending her water, but had years since bricked the tower closed. Katrien soothed him with her voice as best she could—dazzled him with her beauty as best she could, even stripping to scandalous nothings to entice his body and mind. They must wait, until the time ripened, until the perfect opportunity arose. For now, Katrien sang and recited poetry as she combed and combed her beautiful hair and Vander tested his grit scaling the wall—he could make a quarter of the way up on cramped toes and bleeding fingers—and weaving his beloved fantastical wild escapes with the road of adventure ending with wealth, joy, and children. As the clouds drifted by, so did the days. And so did their patience.

Vander had begun ditching his duties and slipping off earlier and earlier, or waking prior to dawn and remain undiscovered until the noon meal. At first his brothers covered for his absences, but as the days marched on, his siblings simmered with a deserving jealousy. At last, the second eldest son Jurriaan divulged to their father all he knew: that his brother spent his time east beyond the forest and that it had something to do with a girl. The woodcutter scoffed, and rightfully so—no families lived beyond that edge of town. And as Vander had never left on horseback, so the girl must also slip away on foot for their dalliances. His father made off-color jokes about a bastard grandchild on the way. Jurriaan persisted: his brother headed east every morn and returned from thence every eve. He added that Vander was too addled to speak but the truth, and he claimed this maid lived in a stone tower beyond town. At this news, his father’s face fell stony and grey. “Are you certain? A tower?” With that news, the woodcutter headed back to his work, concern reconstructing his features.

This was grave indeed.

Vander came in late. His brothers had already scattered after supper—some to sweethearts, some to gambling, some to the tavern—and he was surprised to find his father heating evening tea over the fireplace and reading one of the few books in the house. At the sound of the door, he looked up and rose to meet his son. He gestured to the table. “We must talk.”

The younger man took a seat near on the bench to his father’s place at the head of the table, weighted with curiosity. He held his breath close to his chest, praying his father was not about to ruin everything by announcing an arranged marriage.

“I hear that you go out to the meadows beyond the forest rather often. Near the old stone tower.” The son said nothing. “What do you do there?” his father prodded. “You’re too old for chasing toads or pretending at exploring foreign worlds. It’s not hunting season.” The boy remained silent. His love was his secret. She would remain that way. His father sighed. “I’ve heard it’s about a girl. Is that so?” Instead of answering, his son stared critically at the dirt underneath his nails. Both men recognized it as affirmation. “It’s past time I warned you, I see,” the father said, setting his leather-bound tome aside gently, stroking its supple cover. “We don’t speak of it anymore in the village—considered bad luck and all—but a witch took up residence there many years ago. Before you were born—”

The boy scoffed. “Truly, Father? You expect me to believe that? A witch?”

“Quiet. Let me finish,” he replied in such a hushed tone his son leaned back in surprise. “She fed off the children. Children that wandered into her rose gardens. Children she caught in our streets. Some infants even went missing in the night. It came to be that men and women no longer announced the birth of a child to protect them. She found them anyway. The blood on that stone cottage and its tower run at least hip deep. I was there the day they sealed it off. I remember.”

“Sealed what off? The tower?” the son asked, torn between interest and disbelief.

“Heavens, no, lad. The property.” The woodcutter leaned back into his chair, staring before him as if seeing it all afresh. “We sought far and wide for—for another of her ilk, I suppose—to seal off the wickedness, to keep her corruption locked within, unable to stalk our offspring. We spilled the blood of six bulls that day—six prize bulls!—to lock the circle around that farmstead. The wise woman hired proved her worth—the witch never broke through.” He shook himself back to the present and locked eyes with his son. “And I feel I don’t have to tell you what the she-devil looked like, past her midnight hair and sky-bled eyes.” The boy showed no reaction—at which the clutching in the old man’s chest released. His son had not laid eyes on the sorceress. He was not under her spell. “Of course, she would be a hag now, tangled thin locks, dagger-talons from hell, and the crumpled skin of age.”

“Could it be,” the boy asked slowly, “that she used her black magic to get a daughter?”
The woodcutter cocked his head with concern. “You’ve birthed hunting dogs with me. You know what goes into it.”

“You just fretted I might have been taken in by a sorceress’s charms,” Vander indicated. “It is equally feasible, isn’t it, that a man some time ago, would have succumbed?”

“Aye, it could.” The woodcutter tamped tobacco into his pipe with shaking hands. “I may as well admit this. Not all of the bodies of the babes were accounted for.” The woodcutter stood abruptly as his son’s mouth opened. “No more of this foul talk. I’m off to the tavern.” He shook his pipe in his son’s direction from the door. “And you stay clear of that cottage and that tower until we know more of the enchantments on it. God alone knows how long that hideous thing might survive out there in the dark and the blood-drenched earth.”

His gaze locked on his prize, the empty balcony far above. Katrien had not shown her face yet, leaving Vander to assume she still slept. His bow leaned against the wall back at home, unstrung and at the end of a long walk, so hunting wasn’t an option. While he waited, he decided to explore the overgrown grounds.

The grass nearly brushed his hips across this swathe of mostly open but rugged land. Stunted trees dotted the horizon, but most had frozen dead in their shapes long ago. Strong winds carried off spindly wooden limbs and their crooked scratching fingers, leaving them half-buried underneath the meadow weeds and bramble for him to trip over.

The gutted remains of other, smaller stone structures poked their fingers hopelessly to the sky. Vander waded his way over to the nearest, taking care to watch his step.
The vine-riddled asymmetrical shapes that thrust a foot or so above his head became the remnants of a brick wall—probably the very wall that used to surround the property originally, splitting the garden from the main estate. His heart thudded. Or the wall his father and the townsmen built.

His father’s warning gonged in his head. His father was a practical man. There had to be something left that would prove his father’s tale. The charred remains of a woman and the pyre she burnt on, perhaps. A sign the men left to rot in decades of rain, warning travelers out. With some difficulty, Vander pulled himself up onto a section of deeply corroded rock, and balanced himself with his hands on the pillar climbing a few feet above. He paused there, letting the view seep in to his skull.

Well-hidden from passersby spread a garden as neat and fine as needlework. Flowers of every shape and hue jettisoned free of the soil to dance in the breeze. White, purple, red, or yellow flowers skipped next to orange and pink and blue. Green leaves unfurled like proud flags toward the sun on strong, nodding stalks. The fragrance was heavenly, and Vander drank it in deeply as he clung to the stone pillar, lightheaded.

Across the spray of living color stood a small stone structure with a thatched roof, mostly intact. Before the wall, it may have been a shed or perhaps even a cozy one-room house for a groundskeeper. The more he saw of the stone ruins peppering the landscape, the more Vander had the sense that at one time this place had been the site of a great manor. And the more he saw, the more his curiosity stirred his stomach and anxiety bred beads of sweat upon his brow and palms. If he careened forward on his tiptoes, he could just make out from here a tidy black path snaking from the small stone hut left through the blinding gardens and out through a crack in the walls—in the direction of the tower.

“You don’t belong here.”

He jumped half out of his skin, shrieking and scrabbling to keep hold of the stone pillar with both hands as his ankles buckled. A stooped, cragged old woman stood at his back. Her hair formed a staticky halo in the sunlight. Her eyes squinted up at him, smashed black beetles nearly reclaimed to earth by the snagged and leathered skin. The crone looked like she easily had been his grandfather’s grandmother. She shooed him with her gnarled cane, holding a bucket of gardening tools tight in her other fist. “You should leave.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“You should be! Breakin’ in ta ‘n old woman’s home,” she snapped, and somehow her scalding sneer added at least two feet to her height. Vander hung his head, abashed. He truly felt guilty for trespassing and likely startling the old woman worse than he had been. He opened his mouth again to apologize. “Well? Don’t perch up there gapin’. Get gone! I got me enough troubles without the likes of you wretched delinquents scatterin’ about!” He squatted on his haunches and stared at the harpy. “What you waitin’ on, boy? Get!”

Vander slid down the rest of the wall, trying to land gingerly around her priceless plants, but slipped, nearly twisting his ankle, as he came down on something hard. He cried out in surprise and when he got his feet solid under him, he twisted down to grab whatever it was to pull it out of the way of the ginger feet of the old harridan. She squawked and rushed at him, scaring him several awkward hops to his left along the crumbling wall. The crone bent over the spot, nearly obscuring his view of something narrow and white with a slight curve getting stamped with feet and cane, quickly buried under the rich soil. She spun on him fiercely, screeching and thrashing at him with bucket, cane, and thick yellowed misshapen nails. “Get away from here now! Nothing to see! Just old Griet—and if ya be comin’ to ogle old Griet, ya need yerself some new eyes, ya do!”

Vander’s hands leapt up to protect his face from her sudden lunge and fell flat on his back hard enough for all the air to explode from his lungs. His right hand landed on something hard and smooth. It was a little bit larger than his hand, and he scuffled it under his back and into his belt, secure and hidden beneath his shirt before the old woman saw it. He held up alternating hands as he crab-walked away from the incensed old hag’s fetid breath rolling from the furnace of her near toothless mouth and the rough claws that must have been grown in another era altogether. He spouted off apologies, but she had none of them. When he finally scrambled to his feet, he put up both hands in surrender, and tried the only gamble he could think of. She was the old witch his father spoke of! She had to be!

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m just here about your daughter.”

“Daughter?” she blurted, stopped dead in her tracks, swaying under the impact. “What’s this about then? Old Griet ain’t got no daughter.”

“I apologize,” he tried with his most winning smile. “I must have taken you for younger than your years.” The crone snorted. “She must be your granddaughter.”

She stepped toward him menacingly, bristling with all four and a half feet of her frame, the motley rags of dirtied reds, blues, and blacks—even a touch of green—swirling about her and raising like hackles. “What are you about, then?”

Vander backed away from her. “I apologize—I see I was mistaken, I thought you were the maid’s guardian, and I came to ask her hand.”

“What maid is this?” she demanded with her years-cracked voice. “I just keeps to m’ garden. Keeps the bad ones away.” Grabbing Vander’s shirt, Griet yanked him down to eye level, voice dropping to a whisper. “And you best get away, lad. There be beasts hereabouts. They come at night. Always at night. One lurks here, taste for blood in its mouth. It’s not safe. The beast will swallow you whole. You and your lassie, if’n yer not safe.”

“Beast? What beast?”

“It sucks the meat from men’s bones. They came here before, to nail it in. Didn’t work. Came again, with mortar. Didn’t work. The beast cracked the bones of the dead and sucked the marrow. They came a last time, with some witch from the south. The men sealed the wall, the woman danced, half-naked and chanting to a bonfire, throwing in all sort of things—crow’s wings and rabbit’s tongues. Some whole things, live and screaming. They called it magic. Madness, I say.” She shook her head, staring so intently over Vander’s head, he turned to see. Two crows—maybe ravens, hard to say—hopped on the roof tiles of the tower. “An’ it’s best not to mess with crows. They’ve ways, the crows. They see things.” Griet cleared her throat harshly, shaking him for his full attention. “The beast leaves me enough alone, and the town these days, but that’ll change. It gets hungers. No stopping it then. You know what’s good for ya, boy, you’ll leave. And ya won’t come back.”

Vander straightened. “And if I don’t believe this madness?”

Griet grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him to the black earthen path. As suspected, it ended at the base of the tower, beside a tangle of briars, vines, and a twisted, stunted tree, half-dead. Before them a patch of stone spread, quickly and poorly mortared. Griet grabbed his hand as she clawed out some of the deteriorating mortar. “Here.” She patted his palm on it, hard. Splintered, rotting wood. The first barrier over what was clearly the only door. “Now you see. Now you know. Walls don’t always hold. Go.”

The crone pushed him in the direction of the town and hobbled off to her hut and her gardens, muttering to herself, abruptly oblivious to Vander altogether. He stared after her, his hand still blindly feeling out what evidence crumbled beneath it. He had no idea what to make of it. Witches, monsters, God knew what else. A door that had been sealed decades ago. A garden an old woman thought was adequate protection. Idly, he pulled out the piece he’d found in the garden to have a good look at it. His blood rolled cold, backward up his veins.

In his hand he held a fresh white human scapula.

One thing was true. He had to get Katrien and they were leaving this place today.

Vander traced his path homeward as long as the hag remained in sight. At first chance, he squatted down in the towering grass behind a stunted tree out of sight and waited until she disappeared. He forced himself to wait until she finished whatever task she’d been about. When he figured she’d probably vanished into her hovel, Vander ventured out and sprinted straight for the tower.

“Vander! Whatever are you shouting about? I’m feeling quite wretched—” Katrien began, wan face hanging from her limp neck as her tiny hand parted the gauzy curtains to peer down at him. Her tangled moon petal locks swept in the wind as if ashamed for her lover to catch her this way.

“Katrien! This is important!” Vander called, striding close to the base, cranking his neck to look up at her and balancing himself with his hands against the warm grey stone. “Do you remember where you were born?” She blinked at him several times, her wide black eyes shuttered away in time with his heartbeats. “What I mean is, do you remember your mother? What she looked like?” Please don’t say raven hair and sky eyes, he thought, steeling himself even so for confirmation of his father’s suspicions. “Was she set in with you, or where you born there?”

“I don’t understand,” she replied at last with a firm shake of her head, locks shimmering like water dappled by the sun. “I have always been here. In the tower. Sometimes there are noises from outside—or below. Such strange sounds below. Sometimes I wonder that the whole place doesn’t shake on my head,” she gulped, edging out into the sunlight. The beast in the basement—still alive? Vander kept his thought to himself, not wanting to upset the beautiful woman before him. Even disheveled and clad in her simple nightgown, Vander’s chest swelled to nearly bursting. “There is a woman, she sees that I am fed and clothed. That I do not have chills or drafts. I think she is nearby. Is she a mother?”

Vander hung there, his heart dangling over an abyss by a string, his mouth by a change in gravity. This beautiful, wonderful girl had no grasp of family, or even a loving hand. The dearth of knowledge of other human touch or affection or the burning fire of rage or sorrow had never touched her. She was pristine—and somehow, Vander sensed, empty. Vander glanced over his shoulder. Griet had left Katrien in a tower, an innocent babe and orphan, after the mother had died. What sort of a monster could do such a thing? To such a charming girl? To a child?

“No,” he replied at last, “but I think I’ve met the one of whom you speak. I take it she cared for you, must have found you after your mother passed?”

Katrien cocked her head to one side and studied him. Now he understood entirely these motions of puzzlement—as if she tongued the throbbing emptiness a tooth had been. Or, perhaps, prodded at notions completely alien. “She must have done so. I do not remember.”

“The door appears jammed—how does she come up to you to care for you?”

“She doesn’t,” Katrien replied with a light shake of head, pulling her thick snowy tresses back from her face with both hands—even paler than her powder white face. “There is a rope I keep that she ties bundles to.”

“Perfect! Throw it down! We must leave at once!” She cast him a look. “Trust me!” Katrien disappeared back into her chamber and brought out a length of aged rope, flinging it down to him. Vander tugged at it, testing his weight against its strength, and cursed. “It won’t hold.”

“You must tie what you wish to send up to the bottom, then I can pull it up.”

“But I don’t wish to send anything up, I wish for you to come down.” Vander paced and fretted and mumbled to himself as she watched him with concern. “You are in grave danger. We must leave. Tonight.”

“Danger?” Katrien quailed, pulling back from the balcony, liquid eyes seeming to dart in all directions. “But why? I have been safe here for so long—it is my home!”

“I don’t know. People in town, they’ve been telling me it’s not safe.” His equilibrium lurched at a sudden black thought. “You… you will come with me, won’t you, Katrien?”

“Oh, Vander,” she sighed, hurrying and leaning over the very edge of the railing. Her voice filled with such warmth and passion, it left him as giddy and senseless as too much ale.

Katrien filled Vander’s head: the moon white curve of her cheek, her bottomless eyes; the button nose above the ruby lips; the way her dainty head rolled on her long neck. As she leaned down, her nightgown caught on the stonework, the scooped neck giving him a peek of the tops of her breasts.

The chill morning air pressed her nipples through the thin cloth. It was all he could do to keep from swooning in anticipation, to keep from finding some clawed path up to her with bloodied hands and broken nails and not caring at the pain for the tugging promise of first immersion. Strands escaped from the impossible highway of hair, her river ribbon-twined and half-braided, smothered in an embarrassed flush of dew. The banner danced over his cheeks and lips, whipped around his chest and waist and kissed the backs of his knees. He caught fistfuls of it up in her hands and inhaled deeply as he held it to his face, to his chest. Her hair.

“Katrien,” he began slowly, rubbing the rich silver white locks together, so strong and resilient in his palms. “How fast can you plait your hair?”

Vander raced all the way home, dodging felled trees littering the grasslands as agilely as he avoided branches and stumps in the forest. Only once he slammed the cottage door shut behind him did he pull heaving breath after heaving burning breath into his lungs. Leaning against the door, his thoughts flew so fast in his skull—like flocks of terrified birds—he could not grasp a single one. Oxygen surged to his brain, supplying control, catching the thoughts in flight one by one.

First, bags. Easy. Vander dug out his own satchel, rather roomy by itself, before hunting down in a thunderous panic the bag the family used to haul potatoes and firewood in. When he finally found the blasted thing, he slipped out to the small shed that housed the horse and three goats in winter. Sweat trickled down his back with every nervous glance over his shoulder in his effort to remain unseen while he rummaged about in the tack stall that also served as a supply shed. Vander pulled up the saddlebags his father used on his occasional trips to the nearby villages. His hands scrabbled up a few long, sturdy leather thongs and two belt-like straps that had long since gathered dust after the object that originally bore them had fallen into disrepair and later rot. He would use these to lash the bags and supplies together.

Racing back into the house, Vander upended the cooking area as well as most of the cupboards in his pursuit to get back to his beloved Katrien as fast as he could. He loaded the largest satchel with enough rolled up bedding for two, a change of clothes, and a spare cloak for Katrien. The two saddlebags came near to bursting with the food and basic cooking implements he packed. Guiltily, he filched what coin his family had scraped together in a hidden stash, telling himself over and over that he could always repay his father in the future.  He left his own satchel for Katrien’s things—and prayed to God he wouldn’t have to waste precious minutes trying to dissuade her from her more frivolous belongings they could replace once they wed and settled in a town.

The door smacked open, allowing chill tendrils to worm terror into his spine as they gusted his hair. “VANDER!”

The youth dropped his provisions and slammed his back against the wall, facing his father. The old man’s face was red with drink, quivering with rage. “What’s this I hear from Jurriaan, tells me at the alehouse that he sees you running away?” His father’s eye fell on the bags at his feet. “Stealing? From me? Your own father? After I fed you and clothed you and raised you all these years?” Vander flinched at the rebuke, shrinking down inside of himself with remorse. The door banged shut behind him, leaving the woodcutter wounded and lost, eyes wild for an answer. “How could you?” he choked out, gripping at the pains in his chest.

“We’re in grave danger, we must leave tonight—”

“We?” His father shook himself. “You mean your young maiden?” He sighed, and ambled over the table with a noticeable sway to his steps. He took his seat and beckoned Vander to join him. Vander stepped closer but chose to stand. “What is it? Money? I can find a way to get you that. I can, somehow! Is she in the family way? We can arrange a discreet wedding. Or the services of an herbwoman… if that’s what you want.”

“Oh, Father, I wish it were as simple as that!” Vander burst. “Katrien and I must be away tonight—”

Leaping to his feet with both fists slamming into the table boards, his father’s face purpled with rage. “WHAT? What. Did. You. Say?” he demanded so hotly Vander thought he saw smoke and flames erupt from his lips. “You dare say that name in my house?” His callused fingers dug tight into Vander’s shirt and injured his chest. He choked the boy as he shook him furiously. The fireplace crouched so close behind that it scalded the back of Vander’s legs. “I see now,” he murmured, studying his son’s terror filled eyes. “I should have known all along. That damned witch has you under her spell! You know not what you’re doing—but that’s fine! I’m going to take care of this tonight!” He dropped his son unceremoniously on the floor and pulled a key from his pocket. “And you’re not going anywhere until this is done!”

“But Father—”

“Enough! This is for your own good, boy!”

“But Father!” Vander shouted, scrabbling for a handhold on his father’s legs. “If this witch is as powerful as you say, she’ll find us! She’ll kill us! Katrien and I must—”

“You foolish boy,” his father snarled at him, hauling him up roughly by the collar, “Katrien is the witch!” Shock left Vander gaping like a fish in his father’s grip until the man dropped him. “I am ending this tonight. That witch is going to burn! And you! You—are staying—right—here!”

With that, the woodcutter slammed the door shut and locked it. As Vander laid smashed and dumbfounded on the floor, he barely registered the sounds of his father barricading the only door to the small cabin from the outside.

The witch? She couldn’t be! Katrien was the very height of loveliness!  She was pure as an angel! Bile raced up and down his throat. Burn her. Dear God, they couldn’t! She was just an innocent girl! Couldn’t his father see? Griet had changed her name with age as the townsfolk forgot her and stamped her own onto the child she fed!

Vander scrambled to his feet and cast about the tiny house in a panic, quickly shouldering his bags and snatching a bow. His inebriated father may have locked the only door to the house—but he had thought nothing of the windows!

Vander hissed her name up at the balcony, each word a little louder than the last. They had to be moving now, and with both his father and Griet riled up, he had no idea how much time they had. He couldn’t even guess what mad plot they would fix on this beautiful innocent girl or himself for aiding her. “Katrien! We must go!”

Suddenly she flooded the balcony, bursting from between the thin curtains to her room. Vander’s tongue dried in a speechless coil in his mouth. The harsh sun may as well have pitted her features all the months he’d pined for her. The three-quarter moon caressed her thin and delicate fey features, leaving her great black eyes twin under-mountain pools and her lips stained with sacrificial rubies and berries. Faint blue shadows tinted her throat and traced her collarbones to her slender shoulders. Her milky complexion smoothed down her chest, plunging into cool blue between the swell of her pert breasts nestled in the bold bodice—each breath nearly loosing them from her white gown entirely.

Vander coughed and tried to shove his mind firmly back to the task at hand. It didn’t matter if she would become his wife soon—if he let his thoughts wander, in all likelihood the two of them would find themselves caught in the act of passion by the mob of villagers throwing torches at the two of them for witchcraft.

“Oh, Vander,” Katrien gushed in a loud whisper, gripping the railing as she leaned over to him. Her perfect breasts seriously threatened escape, and Vander couldn’t help but be mesmerized with them and with thoughts of how full and soft they would feel in his hands. God, he wanted her! Much more of this and he’d explode! He had the sudden sensation she’d finished a thought and waited a reply. He cleared his throat awkwardly and she straightened to her full height, running her strawberry tongue along her pearlescent teeth peeking out from between her parted lips. He bit his lip and nearly groaned as he thought of other things her lips and tongue could busy themselves with. Good God, what was wrong with him? He clapped his hands to his temples and shook his head.

“I said,” she repeated slowly with emphasis, “I’m not sure if this will work. It would take me days to braid this as tight and strong as you said—weeks even.”
“Let’s see what you have.”

She reeled the braid in arm length by arm length, pale as the gibbous midnight moon above. When she had the great mass coiled, Katrien tipped over the railing and let it slither through her hands and down the cold stones like a great dead snake. Vander hobbled backward as it gained speed, afraid the weight of it might knock him senseless. When the great white beast stilled, he stepped closer to inspect her work.

Large portions of it had been woven together prior to his request. These showed themselves as accents, some only the width of his thumb heavily threaded and beaded with round silky stones. Larger sections were nearly the width of his wrist, elaborately decorated with of what looked like once fine ribbon and tarnished silver jewelry. Vander believed at least one length had been artfully twisted with necklaces and bracelets. It made sense—if she had never seen how another woman wore them, how was she to know what they were for? All she would understand was that she found them pretty. Flowers, long since dried, and what he took for crinkled fall leaves embellished a section here or there. Many of these sections had been artfully twisted and knotted together. The rest of the length she had bound together with whatever she could find, about a foot each.

He ran a few of the silky beads between his fingers as he took in her entire masterpiece. Vander gasped, opening his hands as he realized the beads were pearls. Real pearls! He hurriedly tried to inspect the silver jewelry, but found himself hobbled in the moonlight. If the pearls were real, so might the gemstones and silver! Good God, Vander whistled to himself, Katrien was wearing a queen’s collection of precious jewels and had no notion of it! Vander smirked to himself. Perhaps they weren’t going to starve after all.

The old witch must have hidden the riches she had stolen from her prey in the old tower before her demise. The townsfolk had not sought to recover anything—perhaps they had not known; perhaps they were superstitious. Either way, there was little likelihood that any of the local peasants would come forward now to claim their heirlooms.

Struggling to fit the hefty rope into his hands, he gave several tugs until he was satisfied. “This should hold your body weight. You can use it as a rope to haul down your belongings and climb down.”

Her black eyes fluttered wide. “My belongings… but I don’t have any way I can carry my clothes and brushes! I don’t know what—”

“I brought an extra bag just for you. Here, I’ll tie it to the end of the braid here, and you can haul it up.”

Katrien pulled the bag up quickly, and was halfway through her gauze curtains when she froze. “But, Vander, how do I get down? It’s so far, and I’m afraid of the fall!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be right here to catch you. Better yet, I could meet you part way and guide you down.”

She seemed relieved by that news, but she still bit her lip under troubled eyes. “That would be very sweet of you, Vander… But I still don’t understand how I’m going to get down.” Those midnight orbs drew him in. “How am I supposed to use my hair to come down if it’s attached to me?”

Vander drew in a long slow breath. He had determined much earlier in the day that she might balk at this. “We have to cut your hair.”

“Cut… my hair…” she drawled, touching the snowy rope with her hands. “My hair…”

“We’ll have to cut some of it to get this to work, but hair grows back, Katrien. I know you prize it, and I know it will take a very long time, but it will grow back. I promise. And I would find you just as beautiful if you were bald as an egg.” That part was true—her face was so flawless, the frame hardly mattered. Her face showed that she was far from impressed. “Think, love, of all the fun you will have with fashionable hats and scarves, with new ways to adorn yourself, the new styles you may tease out of your hair you never could before. And we don’t have to cut it all,” he added quickly. “You could cut it shoulder length if you want—or maybe waist length. I think we could even get away with ankle length, if we fasten one end of the rope at the base of the balcony and you jump the last few feet.”

“My hair, my hair,” she murmured to herself as she paced, the syllables caught on the wind and carried down to Vander’s straining ears. When she finally turned back to him, his beautiful bride looked about to cry, and that sad face hammered chisels into his heart. “Very well. I shall sacrifice my hair. For you. For us.”

“Thank you, my love,” Vander replied tenderly, blowing her kisses. “I’ll wait for you here until you’re ready to jump.”

Katrien panicked then. “No! That won’t work! I haven’t got a shears—not so much as a butter knife am I allowed! I have nothing to cut with.”

“I’ll send my hunting knife up to you.”

“That won’t help much—I will still need help to pack, or we shall be trapped here all night, and those horrible people will be here soon! What if they burn us? Oh, I couldn’t bear to watch you in agony!”

Vander whispered soothingly to her, but it became quite clear she would not calm down. “Very well, my beloved! Then it seems I must come to you.”

Katrien patted her lustrous eyes and dainty nose with a frilly handkerchief. “Oh, you are such a dear! I love you so!”

Heartened by these words, he neared the wall and felt around within his best boots for a crack between the cold grey stones that would fit his toes. Finding one, he pulled himself up on her hair, and she screamed.

“That feels like murder!”

“I’m sorry, love—but there’s only one way up,” Vander called, hopping back and craning his neck to try to get a good view of her. “I’ve an idea… why don’t you sit down. Where your hair slips tight over the railing, press down on it with all your might. It will still hurt and probably leave you quite a headache, but it also should lessen some of the pressure.”
So they tried again. He huffed with effort, desperate now to find numbing toe holds or hand holds, even when they stripped the skin from his fingers and cracked and peeled back the nails. He muffled his curses so that she might not hear. She gripped the braid a foot or two from her perfect skull, panting and tucking her head into her shoulder to stifle the screams of pain the few times she had to hold her lover’s full weight.

And so it went, until he finally heaved over the railing, one leg at a time, releasing his grip at last and collapsing at the feet of her hunched form. Through his damp forelock, Vander made out the hem of her dress, white satin beneath the fine rose-kissed lace gown she always wore. The sleeves covered her nearly to her bone-white fingertips as she held out her dainty palm to him. “Your knife, Vander? Before I lose my nerve?” He slipped it free from its sheath and offered it up to her while he recovered his breath, arms still shaking from the effort of the climb. He caught the moon’s gleam off of the ivory combs holding her hair back from her face, perfectly angled to align with her delicate cheekbones. Vander watched rapt as she rose like the spume of a wave, swirling upward like a dancer as she whipped the knife freely into the open arms of the black empty night.

Vander opened his mouth to protest, but she suddenly snatched him up in both fists–good God, she was strong! Now, with finger widths between their faces, he saw hers, causing his insides to shrivel. Her eyes were indeed the size and breadth of his hands—and as faceted as a jewel, as wet blackberries. Three smaller black eyes angled out from either side of her perfect alien face. Her salt white teeth proved themselves as little sharp fangs nestled away behind the blood-wet lips as her jaw distorted and distended. Now, she scuttled forth from her nest, her lair, on silent, silk-tipped nimble white legs, each of the eight long and graceful.

Vander screamed as the great spider’s legs engulfed him, beginning to plait their luscious white silken strands, first to silence then to keep. Later, she would dine on him, savoring the rich taste of his blood, endless compared to that of the birds and small animals she had subsisted on for these long years. She would feast on him, relishing each morsel to the last of his flesh bits as they aged appropriately in her silver nets. Later, she would pluck out his bones and weave them into her plaits, pearl sticks against the silver.