GRETHEL

ELF | ELISABETH

The trees had recoiled around her as she sat at the fire. Huddled against the cold, she listened to the beautiful lady's stories with awe. Her vague outline creased the forest and her snow white skin broke into the fire, but she didn't sit any closer. Elisa could make out a heap of material hunched over her shoulders, sharp juts in the mass of her robes, but nothing more.

Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and two children. Sadness tinted her voice grey and her fingers spun a shapes in her silk black hair. Elisa leaned in closer.

The children were beautiful, so dear to the woodcutter's heart, but one day he cast them out into the woods. You see, he had no money and no food for his dear children, and his wicked wife – the children's step-mother – whispered a many evil thing in his ear. Her eyes, shattered beyond a single colour, looked about suspiciously and her voice dimmed to a whisper.

Now the boy was crafty, and he learned of this plan and was prepared, but the sister did not have so much. She spent her days weeping and cleaning, for she longed to see the world outside the woods. And she did. One day she came across a wonderful little cottage.

Steps approached and stopped just as soon. The beautiful lady withdrew without having finished her story. "Where were you?" It was Brigitte.

Elisa didn't answer. She had no answer. The beautiful lady's voice still sang in her skull; she wanted to hear the rest of the story, to find out what became of the boy and the girl and their cruel step-mother, she wanted to collect the scattered words and piece them together before her. But the lady didn't appear again and the story remained untold.

"Papa told you – I told you – not to go into the woods. And alone!" Brigitte threw up her hands but Elisa wasn't looking. "Foolish girl. I should've left you to die wölfe for all you do, not trekked into the middle of a forest, and under the moon no less, just to find you all in one piece and without my way home."

Exasperated, she settled a few feet away and rubbed her hands before the fire. Conversation passed, one sided, always received without an answer, and it was only when Brigitte questioned the fire they now sat around that Elisa faced her. Then, she turned away again and resumed watch over the lady's seat. Brigitte said nothing for a time, and then she exploded before the open flames.

"Why can't you just listen? And why now, in the middle of the night, it's freezing–" indeed, the temperature had plummeted so severely "–what if Papa finds us gone? You'll be in for a beating then, or I suppose it'll be my fault. Brigitte, look after your sisters. Brigitte, do the chores. Brigitte, this, Brigitte, that–"

Elisabeth stood. The words died on her tongue.

Brigitte aimed the rifle, but it was not Elisa she aimed at. The sights passed straight through her sister, as if she were but a spectre to the thing behind her, the unfurling shadow person who reached over seven foot tall in a black mass. She thumbed down the hammer.

"What are you?" Her hands shook but the rifle didn't stray. Twigs cracked beneath her feet as she skirted around the fire's reach, and the thing lifted a gaunt arm. Elisa copied in near perfection, her fingers stretching wide – pointing – at something off in the woods. Brigitte fought the curiosity that dragged her eyes from the thing and her puppet sister. Had her papa known about this? Another step yielded.

Elisa looked longingly into the woods, then to her sister. Brigitte's expression was uncontrolled, eyes wild, lips quivering, but there was resolution between the iron sights of the rifle. The fear she wore melted beneath it, that hope, and the girl curled her finger around the trigger. So much power packed neatly into the hands of a child – as was the way of the world. They watched one another.

"Bri, it's me." It wore Elisa's voice and her mouth, but it wasn't her.

"No, it's not." Her voice cracked and whined and she hefted the rifle higher in the nook of her shoulder. It slipped but she didn't let it fall. The fire and spit. The smoke blew in her face and made her eyes water. Still, she watched the ventriloquist and the pretty little marionette.

Elisa's golden locks whispered around her cheeks. Papa had never told them why the woods was forbidden, but she supposed she knew now, there was no insanity to cloud his judgement and there was none in hers as she stared death in the face – as real as the trees, and the pond, and the fire that warmed her boots – attached to her little sister, her Elisa, by some invisible strings shackled at her arms. Did death feel steel? Would the bullets rip apart his robes, pierce his ribs and force his immortal blood from his body? The woods bristled around them.

"What are you?" Her scream whittled the trees down to nothing and the thing took a step closer. She watched in horror as slender fingers, greying to the colour of ash, leaked over her sister's shoulder and spilled onto her dress. Tipped in pointed nails.

"Elisa, move." Recognition bubbled into her eyes and swept over the edges, as if her name was a key and her lock was broken. Brigitte's face crumpled as she crashed to the floor before her, hands locked together in a plea, trembling against the cold. She begged her sister not to do it, it's me, watched the rifle slip, inch by inch, down the tired girl's arm until she was suddenly without intent, a child stuck, mid-game, in the mock western with her little sister.

Elisa watched her glass eyes shatter and a sob break from her lips. Papa was right; the village people were wrong.

The trigger bit into her bone as she pulled it back and fired.