I spent the rest of the day in the garden, uprooting stalks of dry vines and turning over soil. I hadn’t realized how hard I had been tearing at the dirt until I stabbed my palm with a twig. Hissing, I brushed my hand on my apron. A trickle of sweat dribbled between my shoulder blades. The grey sky erased the last of the sun’s rays, prematurely ushering in the twilight.
My thoughts buzzed around the waitress job I had committed myself to at the pub. I wondered if I had done the right thing. It might give the town the wrong idea and tarnish my family’s reputation. Locals were always looking for a reason to slander our name. I could only hope I hadn’t offered them an opportunity.
I took the petite watch that had belonged to my mother from my breast pocket. With a gasp, I jumped to my feet and rushed into the house.
Theda had left to visit her sister in Belnon over two hours earlier. It was nearly seven and Edgar had yet to eat. I hadn’t heard a peep from him since I had gone out to the garden. Never a good sign with my little brother.
“Edgar!” I called, untying my apron and brushing my hands off on my white buttoned shirt, “Edgar! Where are you?” Thudding into a chair at the kitchen table, I unlaced my boots. The damp hem of my work trousers stuck to my ankles as I peeled off my soiled socks, “Edgar Roux, answer me!”
I trudged towards our bedrooms only to find them empty. Perplexed, I walked into the back parlor to find the door to the main house ajar. Theda and I had opened a front room on the second floor for Lieutenant Gruber. It was a nicer one with a large hearth, tea table and a desk to do all his work and take his meals alone. Far from us. Yet, he interrupted our lives with the startling abruptness of heat lightening.862Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQpdNIj2gwc
In my bare feet, the marble floor of the foyer burned with cold. I tip toed in the semi darkness up the stairs. In the silence, blood shushed through my ears.
“Edgar?” I whispered.
Gruber’s room was in the middle of the hall. Before I could pass by without being noticed, the door swung open. I jumped back, eyes wide.
He had removed his uniform coat and was clad in his taupe undershirt, dark green suspenders stretched across his broad shoulders. His boots echoed on the hardwood floor as he closed the distance between us. Light spilling from his room illuminated his face. He was so handsome it was almost off setting.
“Miss Georgiana? What are you doing up here?” He asked, looming over me with his honey brown eyes searching my face, “Lose something?”
My mouth went dry. I couldn’t tell if he suspected me of trying to snoop in his belongings or perhaps that I was looking for him. I shook my head fervently and broke eye contact.
“My brother- I can’t find Edgar,” I stammered out, trying to move past him.
Gruber moved to the side, holding out a hand to stop me. His thick fingers grazed my hip bone. I swallowed down a cringe.
“Are you sure that’s the only reason you are in my section of the house?” His breath stirred the stray wisps of hair at my temple.
I glared up into his leer, “Quite sure, Lieutenant.”
“Georgie?”
Edgar’s silhouette appeared at the end of the hallway.
“Seems you were telling the truth,” Gruber smirked without breaking eye contact, “About this at least.”
I pushed past him, trying to control the trembling in my limbs. He stalked close behind.
“Is everything alright?” Edgar asked, brow furrowing. I grabbed his shoulders and leaned into his face.
“You scared me! I couldn’t find you.” I chided, glancing into the room from which he had emerged.
Edgar tugged himself and rubbed the back of his little neck, “I didn’t mean to.”
“What were you doing?”
“Looking at mother and father’s wedding pictures.”
Gruber chuckled behind me, the sound like a knife scraping a plate, “Go easy on him, Georgiana.”
The Berchten’s familiarity with my name was almost more than I could bear at that moment. Before I could react, a door downstairs flew open with a bang. Heavy jack boots cracked against the foyer floor.
“Lieutenant!” A hoarse holler echoed up the stairs.
All three of us sped down the hall. I paused at the landing and peered down into the dimly lit entry way. Gruber cranked down the stairs and met Sergeant Domnin where he doubled over, leaning his hands on his knees. Edgar raced down with me trailing behind him.
“Are you wounded? What happened, man?” Gruber demanded, steadying Viktor with a hand on his shoulder. The left side of Viktor’s field jacket was black with blood
“It’s not mine,” Viktor managed, “Quick, in the farm yard. It’s Maier.”
Gruber and Viktor rushed outside. By the time Edgar and I made it to the warmly lit kitchen, the two men were carrying in their injured comrade. I didn’t recognized the Berchten but I could tell he was a sergeant like Viktor. His helmet had fallen off, revealing mussy yellow curls. I pushed away the wooden bowls and candle holders from the table and they dropped him down onto the surface.
“What happened to him?” Gruber demanded as Viktor ripped open the man’s shredded pant leg.
Edgar let out an impressed scoff at the mangled flesh on the soldier’s thigh. Gruber’s face paled, his lips growing thin. Viktor tore open a packet of sulfa powder with his teeth and sprinkled it over the grotesque wound.
“Wolf," he stated with a brief glance to me, “He was coming to relieve me from the watch and one attacked him.”
Gruber groaned, “Should we move him?”
“I don’t know, I can’t tell-“
I sidled up to the table next to Domnin without thinking. Sticking my fingers in the wound, the soldier gasped and sat up on his elbows. His skin was sallow.
“Is it bad? How bad?” He stammered.
I let out my breath and grabbed a clean dish rag from Edgar’s outstretched hand. Pressing it to the bite, I peeked over at the man's face and shook my head, “From what I can tell, it missed the main artery. Besides, if it was nicked, you would have been dead by now.”
Viktor retrieved a roll of gauze from the inside of his jacket, “Hell, Maier. You survive six months on the northern front in the bloody trenches without a scratch and then you get your ass handed to you by a dog.”
“Oi! Don’t give me that- it was a big,” Maier gasped, his blue eyes wide with indignation despite his condition, “That was a beastly monster-“
I pushed him back onto the table, “You’re going to be fine.”
“You sure, Miss?”
I paused and stared down at my bloodied hands. I was aiding my enemy. There was a real human being under my hands, not just a Berchten caricature in a poster of government propaganda. My stomach fell, "I'm sure.”
“Just the same,” Maier closed his eyes and pointed to Viktor as we field dressed his leg, “Viktor. The letter to my Greta. If anything should happen-“
“Nothing is going to happen, stop talking like that. You heard Miss Roux.” Viktor cut him off with a firm shake of his russet head.
“I should go fetch the medic from town and a transport for him,” Gruber backed up to the door. I peeked over my shoulder at him and noticed that he was looking rather green, his eyes glaring across the room and far away from the bloody scene.
He didn’t wait for us to respond but burst into the courtyard. A motorbike revved to life and he skidded out into the night. Viktor scoffed.
“Seems our fearless leader has a bit of a difficult time with blood,” he smirked to himself, helping me tie of the bandage, “Where did you learn to do this?”
His abrupt question caught me off guard, “My mother. She was a nurse in the first Empirical War.”
“You’re very good. You didn’t join your own nurse corps?”
“I wanted to stay away from the mess of it.” I explained.
Viktor retrieved a flask from his coat. Opening it, he sat Maier up, “Drink. It’ll help.”
Sergeant Maier sputtered after taking a swig, “I’m sorry about all this, Miss Roux. You wanted to stay away and here I end up bleeding on your kitchen table.”
I managed a tired smile as Edgar silently brought me a flannel blanket from the parlor, “No need. You rest now.”
Picking up a half a loaf of bread and an apple from nearby, I coaxed a protesting Edgar to his room.
“Eat this and then go to sleep,” I instructed firmly, pushing him gently into his bedroom, “You have had enough excitement for one evening.”
“But I want to know what happens-“
“Nothing else is going to happen, you saw it all. Theda would be horrified.” I rolled my eyes and closed his door.
I entered the back parlor to find Viktor Domnin at the hearth. The round faced clock had left a clean white halo on the wall paper, Viktor flipping it over in his hands. I paused at the door and watched as he gently bumped up the minute hand.
“It was slow two minutes,” he murmured as he replaced it over the hearth.
I coughed into my fist, surprised that he sensed my presence. Joining him by the flames, I stared up as the second hand made its rhythmic dance around the hour. Viktor tapped a cigarette from a full pack into his hand. He held it out to me in a silent offering. I shook my head.
Viktor tucked the smoke into the corner of his mouth, “Maier is asleep. I think you were right about the other night.”
“Right about what?”
He lit it and drew in a breath, “I should have shot that wolf dead. Damn stupid.”
I didn’t voice my thoughts. I had been saying that the wolves in the forest are attacking because they were hungry but my suspicions were growing.
The surrounding woods were old and the people of Belnon had dwelt under their thick eaves for many generations. In years past, during times of war, they trained the wolves from deep in the hinterlands to protect them from their enemies. I wondered if the Resistance was at the root of the seemingly innocent attack.
“Strange isn’t it,” Viktor growled into the firelight, “That animal looked like it was well fed. Or perhaps the fur was just too thick. What do you think?”
Inhaling through my nose, I shooed away the creeping feeling that Sergeant Domnin was reading my mind. I turned to leave, “I didn’t see the creature.”
Domnin whipped his head towards me and locked me into his startling blue gaze, “Tell me this, I’m curious. The Black Gytrash?”
“The Pub in town? I told you why I had to get a job there-“
“No, no. What does it mean?” Smoke wafted from his nostrils, “I’ve heard it’s from a myth.”
I faced towards him and folded my hands in front of me, “They used to tell us stories as children, mostly to keep us from getting lost in the woods. The Gytrash is a shapeshifter, it can come in the form of a rabbit or horse. A large black wolf with gold and red eyes. Its presence can mean either a good omen or bad.”
Viktor scoffed, his expression growing somber, “So our presence here has called this spirit of the forest upon us?”
I smiled quietly, “So it would seem.”
His eyes drifted down to my stained hands in front of me. It looked like I had been canning strawberries all afternoon. Before I could draw them back, he reached towards me. Grasping the back of my hand, he held it palm up and fished a handkerchief from his pocket.
“You did well tonight,” Viktor commented, his dark eyebrows furrowing as he rubbed away the blood stains, “Thank you for your help.”
I waited for the same revulsion to rise up that did when Gruber touched me. But it never came. Instead it was like a flint being struck against my nerves.
I didn’t see the hands of an enemy. In that quiet moment only disturbed by the ticking of a clock, Sergeant Viktor Domnin was terrifyingly real. As real as Maier had been on the kitchen table.
I ripped my hand away and the kerchief with it, "Please don't touch me again."
The whirr of a Berchten medical vehicle outside shattered the moment. I strode back into the kitchen to help ready Sergeant Maier to be moved.
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