Harriet ate a piece of gingerbread and tingled all over. It was a square meal and a good night’s sleep and a long, blood-spattered howl at the moon rolled into one. She took another piece, and another, avoiding her mother’s laser stare.
We must try to save some for Gretel, Clio said, snatching one more piece before they all vanished. My daughter, you know. You’ll meet her once she’s found.
She ran away? Harriet asked, trying her very best not to look like someone who’d already met the missing girl.
Oh no. Not really. I wouldn’t put it like that. She’s just hard to keep up with. But you’ll meet her very soon. I just know she’ll love you. You’re a lovable lamb.
Clio Kercheval bore no real physical resemblance to the girl in Gretel’s Well, but she talked like her. Bright, innocuous, and a little too deliberate to be truly naive. That’s how a woman might distract you from observing her level of experience and how a girl might distract you from observing her lack of it. Harriet thought of Gretel burrowed at the bottom of a cold, deep well, hungry and alone, her begging mistaken for bargaining.
At about two in the morning, when everyone in the cottage was asleep, Harriet crept out and made her way down to the well, proceeding with caution because of the men in suits she’d heard about. She saw a few of them inspecting footprints in the grass around the rusted loom and others delving into grain bins, which made her cross—that grain was now unsellable and would all have to go into gingerbread. Clio had said that her people knew what they were doing and Gretel would be found before morning, but there they were still looking for her. Harriet wasn’t convinced the suited search party wanted to find the girl. They were disgruntled insomniacs who created disorder to spite others for sleeping.
Gretel wasn’t hiding anymore. She sat with her back against the well’s mouth, fingering the buttons of a thick jacket she hadn’t been wearing when Harriet had first seen her.
You’re the girl who came with something to eat?
Obviously.
OK, but so far you just turn up and shine a torch in my face. How am I supposed to know what you look like . . .
Harriet handed her torch to Gretel, who swung the light around for a couple of seconds and then handed the torch back without comment. She only shook her head a little before sticking a hand into the pocket of her dress and producing a square of paper, which she tore in half and held out. This for the gingerbread.
Is it money? There were numbers printed on it.
Half a lottery ticket. The prize is enough wealth for two lifetimes, so if we win, you only need half.
And you need the other half, Gretel Kercheval? Gretel was too forward. Harriet had to push back, make her acknowledge that they were unacquainted.
Gretel would not acknowledge this. She rubbed the side of her nose. So worried about the other half . . . seems like sharing’s hard for you.
She held out Harriet’s half of the lottery ticket until she took it. She ate all the gingerbread and licked the crumbs out of the packet. As with Clio, the gingerbread didn’t seem to transport her—she just liked the taste. She was thirsty, so she drank from the watering can Harriet brought her.
Why’s this well called Gretel’s Well?
They say . . .
They say . . . ?
They say there’s no story here.
Ha! But there is.
Gretel took Harriet’s torch again and shone it into the well. As usual the light didn’t touch the bottom, so Harriet couldn’t see anything. Gretel had to tell her: Some girl died here.
That’s sad, Harriet said. How long ago, do you think?
A couple of hours ago, Gretel said.
Harriet laughed politely, but Gretel sighed and said: No, seriously.
Where one girl had sat with her back against the well’s mouth there were now two, Harriet Lee and a murderous sprite with two pupils in each eye. Harriet regretted having left the cottage that night.
Gretel said: Thinking about it now, that girl might have had an idea that she’d get a reward if she brought me to my mother. If that’s what she thought, she was right. Mum loves giving rewards. But the girl was too rough. I’d almost left this farmstead and crossed over into the next, and then SWOOSH. I didn’t know what was going on.
So you . . . so you . . . did whatever you did and then dumped her in the well?
Yeah.
Gretel. I don’t know what to say.
The body in the well was Dottie’s, or Elsa’s, or Zu’s. They had lost Dottie and the mad, gory eloquence of the nosebleeds she had when most impassioned. Or one of their leaders was gone: Elsa, with her nascent showmanship and daredevil scythe-spinning. Zu and her tendency to draw them all together: What do we think, lads? If you were unwell or in some kind of disgrace with the other kids, Erzurum Cook would bring you a small restorative or a reset token. She’d say it was from everyone, and you knew Zu had talked them around.
She really scared me—Gretel demonstrated the grab. Harriet screamed.
How could she just suddenly grab you like that?
I’ll tell them what I did in the morning, Gretel said, and Harriet said, I’ll tell them you were scared.
They clung to each other. Did the death penalty apply to them?
If neither of us says anything, she won’t be found, Harriet ventured, in a very small voice so the sound of her disloyalty to Elsa or Zu or Dottie wouldn’t carry.
She’ll be found all right, Gretel said. There’ll be a smell.
We could cover the well mouth.
Too suspicious.
Is that her jacket you’re wearing?
Yeah . . .
GRETEL.
She doesn’t need it anymore.
A bit of an expert on needs, was Gretel. Harriet only needed half of a lottery prize; dead girls didn’t need warm jackets. Harriet didn’t recognize the jacket; something in her still hoped that the well was empty and Gretel had just been exercising her strange sense of humor.
We could . . . move her. Harriet said it, since it didn’t seem Gretel was ever going to. We could hide her.
Gretel looked as if she was having regrets too. Regrets that she’d confessed. Thanks, but let’s leave everything as it is for now.
Are there footholds?
Ledges . . . you can go up and down them like a ladder. But you can’t just—
Helpful Harriet knew where to find rope and rushed it over from the Parker family’s barn. Time was of the essence. All Gretel had to do was pull on the rope when she felt a weight at the end of it. Harriet would follow the weight up and hold her . . . it . . . when Gretel was tired.
Harriet, Gretel said. I don’t make jokes. There’s a body down there. And once you come close to it, you’ll know you can’t move it or hide it. You’re going to get upset.
By the time Harriet lost sight of Gretel’s livid face, her end of the rope had already slipped out of her hand. See you at the bottom. She stopped looking up and concentrated on the torch that spilled light at her feet. Just enough for her to get to the next ledge, and the next, provided she didn’t misjudge distance. Some of the ledges were sticky, and some crumbled beneath one heel so she had to slot her fingers into the earthy gaps in the brickwork of the wall while her foot sought out a new outcrop. The temperature decreased as she descended. She lost feeling in her fingers and toes and kept casting her torchlight back onto ledges she’d just left, checking that she hadn’t left any behind (fingers, toes). She reached out to touch the rope that ran down alongside her, praying that Gretel wouldn’t drop it. She couldn’t hear anything from the world above, but she heard a hectic pitter-patter around her, marathons hurtled through as only many-legged can. And she heard Dottie below, calling out: Who’s there? Don’t—don’t—
Turandot Cooper. Dottie. Relief made her careless. She missed a foothold, pedaled air, and caught her torch before it followed the rope. It’s me. I’ll be there in a minute. It’s all right, Dottie.
The remainder of her descent took longer than the minute she’d promised, but they kept calling out to each other:
You came for me, Harriet, you came for me.
You’re OK, Dottie? Are you hurt anywhere?
Didn’t think anybody would come—because there’s no story—