My sister’s heart has always been soft, soft like sweetbread.
She cried for the old woman, despite everything..or perhaps because of it. I remember holding her as she wept, our bodies covered in soot, her fingers burned from holding the oven door shut.
Once the tears faded, she grew quiet. She followed me through the dismal house, its sweetbread walls and sugared windows haunting the silence. I found the clothes we had arrived in, offered her the kirtle, and she put it on without a word. When we found the treasure in the attic, she showed no reaction, only nodding vaguely when I asked her to help me fill the few bags we could carry through the woods.
Maybe… maybe it would be enough. Enough to shield us from our stepmother’s whims.
“I do not want to go back there.”
It was the first time she had spoken in hours. I paused outside the witch’s cottage, glancing back at her.
“I do not want to go back to them.”
I sighed. “Nor do I. But where else can we go?”
She wrung her fingers in front of her skirt, eyes lowered, biting her lip. After a moment, she nodded. “Fine. You are right.” She looked back at the house. “Wait one minute. There may be something left in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?” I said, horrified, but she only nodded.
“Yes. She never thought I paid attention, but I did. I know which potions of hers might be useful. If nothing else, we can sell them when we get back.”
I nodded slowly, following her back into the cottage. I stopped in the open archway leading to the kitchen. She moved through the space with ease, a painful reminder of how long she had been under the witch’s thumb, while the crone had tried to fatten me like a prize hog. She gathered a dozen bottles and vials, tucking them carefully between the bolts of silk and satin we had taken from the attic before returning to me.
“Let’s go.”
Though there was no visible path this time, she seemed to navigate the trees with an instinctive ease. I asked her how, once, when we paused to wait out the darkness. All she said was that she simply knew now, as if the forest spoke to her in a way it never had before.
A shiver of fear sparked within me at that, but I could see how frightened she was, and I refused to let her sense my own unease. I tried to distract her, speaking of the life we might build with the witch’s stolen treasure, and I earned a faint, weary smile in return. But the cold and darkness soon wrapped around us, and we ended up huddling together beneath a gnarled tree, waiting for the deepest part of the night to pass.
As gray dawnlight began to seep through the leaves, she was the first to rise. She had fallen silent again, responding to me only with quiet hums or brief words as we continued onward. She seemed more at ease leading the way now, but something about the way her shoulders were set made me uneasy, as if something within her had changed..something I couldn’t quite name.
Eventually, I lapsed into her silence.
When the trees finally parted to reveal the familiar shape of our father’s house, she froze. Then, without warning, she broke into a run, and I was only a step behind.
The door was opening as we reached the stoop, and our father greeted us with open arms and tears in his eyes. He pulled us close, apologizing repeatedly, his voice thick with emotion, praising the Lord’s name.
I hugged him back, but alongside the relief swelling in my chest, a simmering anger stirred deep within me. It had begun as a spark, but the long journey back through the woods had turned it into a steady, burning flame.
I met my sister’s gaze over our father’s shoulder, and a chill ran through me.
If my anger was a flame, hers was the cold, dead stillness of winter’s darkest depths.
Our father explained that our stepmother had fallen ill shortly after we left. She was in her room now, asleep for days, and he didn’t expect her to recover, though he had been following the doctor’s instructions as best as he could.
“Perhaps she’ll rally when she sees you,” he offered, trying to sound hopeful.
When neither of us responded, he sighed deeply and ran a hand through his thick beard. It was more gray now than I remembered.
“I know you must... be angry with me. With us,” he said, his voice full of guilt. “That I... I could lose track of you so easily. It’s an unforgivable failing for a father.”
“Lost?”
My sister’s voice cut through the air, sharp and cold. I flinched, and our father did too. She had always spoken softly, matching the kindness of her heart.
“We were lost?” she repeated, her eyes locked on his with an intensity I hadn’t seen before.
Our father stared back, eyes wide with a flicker of fear. “...Lost,” he whispered, almost too quietly to hear.
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