GRETHEL

NEUN | BRIGITTE

Brigitte awoke to a scream so vivid, she might've thought it real.

Her nightshirt was soaked through with sweat, her lungs ached against her ribcage, and her nails clung to the quilt. She could hear her own breathing, short pants, beneath the boom of the wind as it howled through the window and pressed against the corners of the room. Milo was barking incessantly; he wasn't a dog to bark.

It was dark, impenetrable from beyond the walled confines, but she could see enough. Beside her, Petra snuggled close to her stuffed rabbit and Elisabeth... Elisa wasn't there. Her eyes wandered to the window, beyond, to the woods. She wouldn't.

She couldn't.

Brigitte slipped from the bed, careful not to disturb her younger sister, and pulled on her boots. Her gut tugged to the place beyond the window.

Don't go into the woods.

That was exactly where she planned to go. Elisabeth had gone, and so would Brigitte – even as fear planted dark pictures in her mind. Of the twisted trees and the monstrous shadows, fanged and frightening in her childhood stories. She would brave it, for where else would Elisabeth go? The floorboards creaked beneath her weight and she winced. Petra didn't stir, not even as Brigitte swept from the room and left her alone.

Safety fled from the walls of her house as she searched it once over, an eye always trained on the woods. It didn't shift. So she gathered what she needed. Papa's rifle gleamed in the cabinet. She knew where he kept the key, and retrieved it. The click of the lock shuddered through her but she continued. The weight was strange, foreign, but she shouldered it and moved on. Matches settled, a deep weight, in her pocket.

Her face was sharper in the moonlight, hollows filled with blue moons as she slipped through the back door and into the garden. The pond glittered like a black mirror. Stones like silver pennies. She unchained Milo from his post and took his chain in her hand. Cold against the chill of her flesh. "Come, boy, where is she?"

He tugged towards the woods, and on they travelled. She'd wage war on all the trees in the world, even Yggdrasil itself, to protect her family.

"Elisa!" The wind mocked her words and she armed herself.

The darkness laughed at her. Branches dipped to her and she shouldered between them. A candle flickered, nestled in the carpet of twigs before her, drawn to erratic movement in the dying light. The rifle shook in her hands. She edged around it on careful feet, glancing between the lit flame and the circle it drew in the night, snapping sticks underfoot. Backing to an oak that snaked its roots around the candle, erratic movements slashing at the frigid air, she watched the trees press in and choke the land. Claw marks adorned the trunks here; vicious, desperate lashes at the trees, where creature or something else entirely was unleashed.

Drawn into the woods, Brigitte moved on. Fool's bravery, but an armed fool no less. Not that bullets would do anything against the cold gloom that settled. Never to be touched by man; a natural recoil in each thud of her boot.

Arving Heimlich: a boy whose fate lay bare beneath a white sheet, never found from the bloodied finger spat out at the town borders. His father's white fury etched itself into her vision, vivid. That wouldn't be her father.

She walked some time more, Milo at her side, heavy under the weight of her father's warnings, and the woods continued, and continued, and continued. Long since slackened, her hands waved the rifle without the care for the power she held. Fear receded. Cold swept in its place. The silver stars above guided her as she walked on. How far had Elisa come? Curse her sister and her stupidity, her stubborn will and penchant for recklessness that might have them both lost – and the title bestowed upon herself, protector of the flock. She knew not which direction home lay, and the woods were beginning to seem endless.

That's when something caught her eye: a ribbon flagged from a branch like a wound in the woods.

Hunger twisted her gut and growled out but she studied it. Even Milo snarled. It looked like nothing Elisa wore, red and ripped, but she pocketed it nonetheless. A mark for a change in the woods, an end to the in-between zone, she emerged into the fairytale.

Twig men hung from trees, sallow in the silverlight. Odd, she thought, I wonder who left them hanging so. But where fear should have been evoked, there was none; there was something child-like in the makeshift stitching, the straw bundles, the faceless figures that gazed down on her with the same affection of a child's doll. It was a solemn thought:there was nothing left out here. A sad sort of melody hung between the air, void of singing, of sound, but the rhythm filled her to the point of sobbing. This was the place where dreams came to die. Her own cracked and wept in her heart. A white bird snapped from a branch high above and shot through the tangle of trees.

Milo took off after it, darted into a frenzy, and that was the last she saw of him.

With nothing better to do, she followed it forth. Pine and woodsmoke filled the air, and some awful stench she couldn't recognise. Perhaps Elisa was nearby – she looked to the stars for guidance, and the snap of twigs sounded again in the dark ahead. The bird. The only animal she'd seen in these woods, ever.

Had father awoken to find his two daughters missing, or was he still asleep in the warmth of his bed? What would he do when he found them?

Crackling drifted between the tight-knit branches and an orange tone pressed into the silvered touch that lit the atmosphere. A hand dragged her heart down in her chest and it drummed between her breasts. The rifle bit into her fingers. The trees didn't dance here. No, there wasn't a movement left. The world went quiet.

Elisa stood, stage-centre, in a clearing.