Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories Read online

  ***

  IN THE KITCHEN, the door opens, and my nephew Hans comes in. In an instant, his eyes take in everything. “Aunt Antje,” he says. “I can’t believe it. You! Hiding—”

  I pick up the largest and sharpest of my kitchen knives. Hans is a member of the Dutch Nazi party, to my shame and the shame of his mother. He will report this—and that can’t be allowed. I don’t truly think in that instant. I knew the first day what I would do if I had to. Holding the knife so that he doesn’t see it right away, I step in close and stab him in the back. He falls, but he doesn’t die right away. I pull the knife out and stab him in the heart, as he lies on the floor of my kitchen.

  His eyes grip mine in that final instant of his last breath. “Them instead of me?” he whispers as he dies. He is crying, not from the pain, I think, but from the anguish of being murdered by his mother’s sister. Them instead of me? Your own nephew?

  ***

  I OPEN MY eyes and my blond nephew Hans stands by my bed, not speaking. He brushes a stray hair from my eyes, and suddenly I am terribly frightened of him. He smiles at me, a cold, heartless smile. I am helpless, and he knows it.

  He reaches for my forehead and suddenly the gray cat is there, leaping onto my bed and hissing at Hans. Hans backs away; the cat’s fur stands on end, and it spits like a snake. Hans retreats some more, back into the corner, and finally he vanishes like mist on a hot morning.

  ***

  I OPEN THE door to the tiny, hot attic room. There’s nowhere to hide here, really. Everything depends on no one coming to search.

  “It won’t take long for Hans to be missed,” I say. “They’ll come looking, and they’ll take me away. You must find somewhere else to hide.”

  “There is nowhere else to hide,” Jacov says. “Or perhaps there is, but we have no way to find it, not now, not like this. We have another way.”

  I look from his face to the others. “I don’t think this is a way I will like,” I say.

  “We drew straws,” Jacov says. “Adult men only.” But the one who steps forward, Karel, is only a boy, no older than my nephew downstairs. His liquid green eyes shine with fear, but he doesn’t protest Jacov’s plan. “Karel will take the body, and the knife, to the park after dark. When the police come, he will confess to the crime, then shoot himself with your nephew’s gun.”

  “No,” I say. “I killed Hans. I’m the one who should pay for it.”

  “Listen to me, Antje,” Jacov says. “You are the only thing standing between us and death. If you die, we all die. This way, only one person dies. Two people,” he corrects himself. “Karel, and Hans.”

  I turn to Karel. Seeing me looking at him, he squares his shoulders and looks at me straight, though his green eyes are still wide with a child’s fear. “Let me do it, Antje,” he says. “It’s the only way.”

  ***

  MY NAME IS Antje, and I am a murderer. I don’t remember who I murdered, or why, but I think I must have had a reason; I don’t feel like the sort of person who would kill without a good reason.

  On the television, they broadcast news of a trial, men who killed civilians in a place called My Lai—“over a hundred unarmed children, women, and old men.” I am relieved that this seems to be unacceptable.

  The cat sleeps on my lap. I’m so glad no one else seems to see the cat; this way, they can’t take him from me. “Karel,” I whisper, and the cat looks at me with heavy-lidded green eyes.

  ***

  THE ISRAELI SUN is hot, even hotter than the Texas sun in summer. For a moment I stand bewildered—what am I doing here, standing in a foreign desert—me, a Dutch housewife? Then I bend to plant the carob seedling and everyone applauds. Jacov is here, and others, and I find myself looking for Karel before I remember that he isn’t here because I killed him.

  The carob trees melt around me and I am in my kitchen in Amsterdam, surrounded by my cats. There is blood on my hands, and I look down at my nephew, his eyes glassy, his jaw slack.

  I am aghast at my crime, horrified beyond measure. For a moment I almost turn the knife on myself.

  Then, slowly, I lay it down and begin cleaning up the blood.

  ***

  MY NAME IS Antje, and I am a murderer. They have strapped me down again, I’m not certain why. The hospital staff doesn’t like me. I make trouble for them.

  Hans is here again, in the room. He sees that I am helpless, and approaches me. He brushes the hair from my face, and a smile curls gently. For a moment, I am certain that he has a right to do as he likes to me—kill me, take my mind, poison my heart. I murdered him. It is his right.

  I shake my head.

  “Go away,” I whisper.

  Hans hesitates. His face wavers; I see him dying at my feet, his face full of hurt and anguish. How could you choose them instead of me? Your own sister’s son?

  “No,” I say. “You have no power over me, Hans. I am not afraid of you. I killed you because I had to. I killed you because you would have betrayed us. It was necessary. I am guilty, but it was not wrong.”

  Hans touches my forehead. For a moment I touch the edge of the familiar curtain of despair. But I think of Jacov, and the others who lived, and even Karel. “It was not wrong,” I say again.

  Like a shadow vanishing in the light, Hans disappears. I close my eyes. Beside me on the bed, the cat kneads my hip with his paws.

  Tomorrow, I think. I will find a way out of here.

  I am Antje Steenstra, and I am a murderer, but I had a good reason. Twelve people lived who would have died if it were not for me. I am strong and God is with me. There is a way out of this place, and I will find it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

  IN THE WITCH’S GARDEN

  THIS STORY STARTED with an image: the ruins of civilization, glimpsed through swirling snow. If I could have told it in any medium, I would have made a movie. The problem is that I know nothing about making movies, and the learning curve seemed awfully steep. So I turned it into a story, instead.

  ***

  Inspired by “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen

  I HEARD THE girl before I saw her: dry, hopeless sobs from a child unused to having anyone pay attention to her tears. “Hush,” I called softly, breaking through the brush to reach her. Someone from the station might still hear her, and come after her.

  “Who’s there?” she cried out. “Help me, I’m lost.”

  I used my knife to cut away the last of the bushes. She drew back in fear when she saw me, and tried to struggle to her feet, but fell back in pain. She must have sprained an ankle when she fell down the embankment. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, and gave her my most reassuring smile, but the sight of my missing front tooth only frightened her more. When I knelt by her side, she overcame her fear enough to touch my gray braids with a fingertip. She had never seen gray hair before, as all the adults in the station maintained the appearance of youth—or so I was told by my mother, when she warned me not to go near the vast dark building so close to our valley.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “Can you help me get home?”

  “I am not from your station,” I said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “But I can take care of you. Climb on to my back.” She wrapped her legs around my hips, and her skinny arms around my neck. “I’ll take you to my home.”

  She was as light as a flower—eleven years old, I guessed. I broke into a trot once we reached even ground; the more distance I could put between her and the station, the better. I had always wanted a child of my own, but no matter how many men I seduced, I never managed to make one. Now the Goddess had sent me a child. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I will be a good mother to you.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I said, did you have a mother back in the station?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m a made-child, not a born-child. I have no parents.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Gerda. Do you want to know my number?”

  “No,” I said. “The
re are no other Gerdas here; we don’t need numbers. My name is Natalia.”

  “The Natalia my age isn’t very nice,” Gerda said. “But the ten-year-old Natalia, she isn’t so bad.”

  “There are no other Natalias here, either,” I said, and shook my braids so that the beads strung on them clacked against each other.

  Over another hill, then down into my valley: a cottage surrounded by a garden. Gerda looked around in wonder. As a station child, she would have found any garden strange and impressive, but my garden—inherited from my mother, who was also a witch—truly was strange: I grew an orange tree and a lemon tree, and the rosebushes and hydrangea bloomed in the spring when the hills beyond my garden were still covered in a deep layer of snow. The creek that flowed through my garden never froze. My magic was not perfect, but it served me well. I carried Gerda into my cottage, and set her down in my chair.

  “I’ll make you something to eat,” I said, and put a pot on the stove, with dried corn kernels in it. “Tell me how you came to leave the station, Gerda.”

  “My friend, Kai—he’s the eleven-year-old Kai—a few days ago he went to look for the edge of the station. He wanted to look at the outside, even though that’s forbidden. Now the Snow Queen has taken him.” The first kernel of corn in the pot popped, and Gerda jumped at the sound. “What is that?”

  “Popcorn,” I said. Another kernel popped, and she jumped again. “It’s just the sweet center of the corn; the warmth of the fire helps it burst out of its prison. We’ll eat it in a moment—serves it right for seeking to change its nature. Go on about Kai.”

  “They told us never to speak his name again. The Snow Queen takes only disobedient children, so he must have deserved what he got. But he’s my friend. So I thought I’d look for the edge of the station . . . ”

  “Just to take a look outside, like Kai?”

  Gerda shook her head. “I thought maybe he’d gotten lost in the station.”

  The popcorn was almost done. I shook it a few more times and took it off the stove, then sprinkled it with a pinch of salt and set it on the table. “Eat. It’s very tasty.” Gerda looked at it dubiously, then took a single fluffy kernel and crunched into it. Her face brightened and she took a handful. I wet a cloth in cold water and then sat down at her feet, easing off her shoes. They were bright red and gave off an acrid odor. Her left ankle was swollen and bruised; I wrapped it in the cool cloth and drew the footstool over for her to rest it on.

  “What happened then?”

  “Someone began to follow me. I was afraid; I was in a forbidden corridor. A really forbidden corridor. I started running, and I pushed on a door and found myself—”

  “Outside.”

  “Yes. They always told us we would die if we went outside. It’s safe only inside the stations. Is that true?”

  “No, it isn’t true,” I said. “I’ve lived outside my whole life, and I’m not dead yet.”

  “Then perhaps Kai isn’t dead, even if he stumbled out like I did,” Gerda said. “Have you seen Kai?”

  “I saw no boy leave the station,” I said. “If I had, I would have brought him here, just as I brought you.”

  She looked down at the last of the popcorn and her eyes grew suddenly wide. “Are you the Snow Queen?”

  I chuckled. “If I am, it’s a good thing you were disobedient, isn’t it? Haven’t I been kind to you so far?” But her eyes were still wide and afraid, so I said, “No, I am not the Snow Queen. I am only Natalia, a gardener and a witch. Finish the last of the popcorn, now. Your ankle needs rest, and so does your heart. I’ll give you some tea and put you to bed.

  I would need the second bed, I thought, as I heated the water; I would bring my mother’s old bed down from the attic. I sweetened the tea of forgetfulness that I brewed her with wild honey. “You’ll wake when you’re ready,” I said as I gave her the cup. Gerda drank the tea, and closed her eyes and slept, right there in the chair.

  ***

  THE FORGETFULNESS HERBS are not perfect; if something reminds you of what you’ve forgotten, the spell can be broken. So while Gerda slept, I took my scissors and cut away her dress, her stockings, and even her underwear. Around her neck was a snug cord strung with a metal chip: G2117F, it said. Her tag. I studied that for a long time; I was unfamiliar with the magics used by the station scientists, and if I cut that cord away, I wasn’t sure if it would hurt her. I tugged at it a bit, and by and by the cord stretched until it was loose enough that I could slip it over her head. When she was naked, I wrapped her in a blanket and lay her on my bed. I bundled up her clothes and her shoes and that tag, and put them away in the attic of my cottage.

  Gerda’s hair and skin smelled like the chemicals she washed with, so I warmed water and steeped marigolds and rose petals in it, and bathed her with that until she smelled like me. While she slept, I made her a dress, so that she would have something to wear when she woke. I disapproved of children wearing shoes, but her feet were delicate and fragile from her life on the station, so I also made her a pair of sandals.

  When Gerda woke, I smiled at her and said, “Are you feeling better, my darling?”

  Gerda blinked. “Who are you?” she said.

  “I’m your mother, sweetheart,” I said. “You’ve been very ill. Don’t worry; everything will come back in time.”

  If Gerda had been a born-child and not a made-child, it’s possible that the forgetfulness herbs would not have worked at all. But she remembered no other mother, and so she accepted my word when I said I was she. And I discovered (as I had suspected) that I could be an excellent mother: patient, loving, and affectionate, much as my own mother had been. As the spring and summer passed, I taught Gerda the names of all the plants and trees in my garden (pretending, of course, that I was re-teaching her what she had forgotten). I showed her how to brew an herbal tea that would stop a woman’s labor if it was too early, or calm someone crazy with fear, or cure a cold. To toughen her feet, I encouraged her to kick off her sandals whenever she pleased, and by the time I could smell the tang of frost when I left my valley, the sandals were gathering dust under her bed, forgotten.

  Gerda told me sometimes that she still didn’t remember anything from before her sickness. I always sighed and shook my head and said that perhaps those memories were gone forever, but Gerda wasn’t to worry; we would create new memories together.

  Then I got sick.

  Gerda put me to bed, and brewed me teas to bring down my fever and ease my aches and pains. She had learned well, and in a very few days I felt much better again. But I was weak and fussy, the way people often are when they’re getting over being sick, and Gerda thought she’d look for the candied orange peels that we had made a few months earlier; those, she thought, would perk me up.

  The candied orange peels weren’t in the kitchen. Gerda tried the cabinets in the herb-drying room, but they weren’t there, either. Nor were they in the coldhouse, nor the root cellar, nor the pantry. Dozing in my bed, I could hear Gerda looking for something. Then I heard the creak of the ladder to the attic. I could have shouted “No! Stop!” and invented some excuse for her to not go up there, but in truth, after all those months, I half believed myself that I had borne Gerda from my own womb, and raised her from her infancy.

  I heard Gerda’s footsteps, but something was different about them. She set a jar by my bed, and I looked over: the orange peels. Then I saw a flash of red: the shoes. On her feet.

  “Mother,” she said. “Where can I find the Snow Queen?”

  I closed my eyes and turned away from her. “I should have burned those clothes,” I said. “But I was afraid the smoke would poison the hydrangeas.”

  “The Snow Queen,” Gerda said. “I’m only angry because I was looking for Kai, and now—I don’t even know how much time has passed.”

  “Eight months,” I said.

  “Now how am I going to find him?”

  “There is no Snow Queen,” I said. “It’s a story told to frighten the station’s chil
dren. To keep them from trying to go outside.”

  “Kai must be somewhere,” Gerda said.

  “If I’d seen a boy leave the station, I’d have brought him here—I told you that.”

  “Would you have dosed him with tea, and told him he was your son?” Gerda asked.

  Still facing the wall, I smiled a little. “Maybe,” I said. “What I really wanted was a daughter.”

  “Do you know anyone else who might have taken him?”

  I shrugged. “There are settlements to the south and the west. Perhaps he found his way to one of those.”

  Gerda kissed my cheek. “I have to go look for Kai, Mother,” she said. “Will you help me find him?”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “I can’t leave my garden,” I said. “If I leave my garden, the orange trees will die, and the lemon trees, and the roses . . . .it’s almost winter. Without my magic, the garden will turn cold. Can’t you wait until spring?”

  “It’s already been too long.”

  “If you must go,” I said, “Take my heavy cloak, the one hung by the door. There’s magic in the wool, and it will keep you warm. Also—” I reached under my own collar, and drew out a claw on a leather thong. I pulled it over my head and gave it to Gerda. “Keep this with you. When you are ready to come back, speak my name three times and hold this in the palm of your hand. The claw will point back to my house.”

  Gerda hung the claw around her own neck.

  “Good luck, stolen daughter. Come back to me soon.”

  I did not tell Gerda that the claw would let me scry her. After all, my mother hadn’t told me that either, when she gave me the claw to wear. What mother would?