Free The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman

leave until the next morning, and the next time Hensel took himself inside me it was only us two. And thereafter, in bed, on the table, on the hillside, or on the granary floor as the mill ground the grain, it was only us two, no spies at the window. I loved what Hensel did, how he could push himself so deeply into me. I loved all the words he whispered to me, how he bit his lip in agony, how I was all the time pressing a cloth between my legs to catch the drippings as they came. There had been one more child, a little body sleeping in the cradle, but she was crafted of air and only stayed a moon’s cycle. Only Jost survived, the one who’d benefited from the neighbors hooting and whistling him into life.
    When Hensel sickened from the plague, I never believed it could take him. He was so loud, so rough! What could ever defeat him? And yet his skin purpled and blackened and he writhed under the weight of those hideous bubbles. Künne and I used compresses upon his skin, and they did bring him easement and his moaning did abate. But they could not save that man whose soul was a very bear, grinning its way through all the honey and his large paws knocking away the bees. After we buried him, I remember thinking that I would never have a man inside me again.
     

     
    “What are you dreaming on?” asked Irmeltrud.
    “My wedding day with Hensel,” I replied.
    “Oh. I wondered if you might be casting your mind to Künne,” she said. “Preparing your way to farewell.”
    It took me a moment, blinking, to think of what she meant. My mind was now caught in the image of her wedding day. I had waited outside the cottage with the others, not hooting at the window, but nevertheless with a broad smile. Irmeltrud was sweet back then. She wanted to be the miller’s wife. And I thought too of how I’d given them the bed and let Jost prepare for me a mattress of clean hay in the corner, for I knew my days of producing children were long over. How Jost seemed to love the rut as much as his father, and brought Irmeltrud to the bed often. I tried not to hear but the cottage was tiny. And I remembered the first season when the grain had been ruined. Künne…Preparing your way to farewell… What gown would Alke wear for her husband on their wedding day? The fire had taken her nightgown. Who would embroider the tiny flowers when my fingers were so cramped and old? Were there flowers in the fire? My back was hot from sitting on the hearth. My skin prickled; my own gown was too close to the fire, might burst into flame.
    Why would I need to say farewell to Künne?
    I had given my body to someone who wasn’t Hensel. I had freely moaned with him and never fought him off. I had welcomed him as a bride. It wasn’t wrong if it was only a dream. The dogs had watched us. The lamps had plunged us into darkness, but I still felt the lamps at my back. All the heat of the lamps in the snow. It was hot, and the man was back there too. Not Hensel. Not even pretending to be Hensel. A different voice growling into my hair. A hot voice pressed into my back, ready to burst into flame. And what had he said? My gray curls falling into my face while he bucked into me. While he spake into my curls. While my curls singed. They were witches, and what had he said?
    Preparing your way to farewell…
    Was my back on fire from the heat of him? Or the dogs’ lamps?
    You signed the book, he said. But I never did, I never did, I never did, I never did.
    Irmeltrud was slapping me. “Would that you don’t awake,” she was muttering. She pressed a wet cloth to my forehead and grunted. I was on the ground. I could reach out and touch the closest leg of the table’s bench. “Are you all right then?” she asked.
    “My head hurts….”
    “You were in a stupor and fell to the ground. Your head hit first.”
    “Is there blood?” I asked.
    “No. Simply a tumble as a child would take. You shouldn’t have sat so close to the fire; it made you dizzy.” She sat me