Free Gretel by Christopher Coleman Page B

I’m no threat.” She snorted a laugh at this last notion.
    “You’ll need more rest; and your wound will need another application.” The woman’s tone suggested there would be no further discussion, and she walked quickly to the door, opening it and then pausing. “And the road,” she said, “you can see it from here.”
    ***
    The next morning Anika woke to the sound of wood being chopped just outside her window. There was a deliberate, grotesque nature to the sound that she had never noticed before, no doubt now occurring to her because of her current circumstances. Her first thoughts were of her children, and then her ankle, and she immediately thrust her leg away from the wall to reveal what she already knew: the chain remained.
    The fresh smells from the kitchen continued to drift into her room, and once again her appetite was activated, the memory of last night’s pies momentarily nudging its way into her mind. But Anika had eaten heartily only hours ago, and now that her hunger—along with the other necessities of warmth and sleep—had been appeased, the idea of escape strengthened and quickly positioned itself to its proper place at the helm of Anika’s concerns. It was clear the woman intended to keep her; what her intentions were beyond that was still the question.
    Geographically, Anika was close to the Interways, that much the woman had revealed. In which direction she could find the road she didn’t know, but working on that mystery was putting the cart before the horse. As long as she remained chained to the cabin floor, she might as well have been on the moon.
    She had already assessed the thick clasp of metal that was wrapped around her leg, and it looked on its face that the only way out of it—other than cutting off her foot—was with a key. Or else an extremely hearty tool, which she doubted would be conveniently resting somewhere nearby.
    Instruments from a slaughter house.
    Anika knew her share about slaughtering animals, she had been killing chickens since she was younger than Hansel and had never seen anything like the set up in this room. And it wasn’t just because of the furniture. A slaughterhouse attached to the main living area? Who would ever design such a thing? What type of person would allow the gore and filth and violent noises that accompanied the killing of animals to be only paces from her kitchen and sleeping quarters? And there wasn’t even an entrance to the room from the outside. Why would a woman want to herd filthy pigs and goats through her home when a door built into the wall was a much easier solution? Anika told herself it was possible that the room was originally intended as a bedroom and was later converted to a slaughterhouse, but on some level that theory was even more frightening.
    Anika’s mind leaped back to the current situation. She needed to get her bearings and plan out what to do next. Was it two days since her accident on the road? That seemed right, but she couldn’t be entirely sure. She’d taken a blow to her head—a considerable one—and it was possible she’d been unconscious for longer than a day. Either way, Anika figured the longer she stayed locked in the room, the more her chances of escape diminished. She had to figure something out soon.
    She suddenly realized her vision was improved and once again felt the area above her eye. She was astonished at how small it felt, shrunken and compressed and immediately reconsidered the length of time she had been out. She’d received her share of shiners after all—they were an accepted part of life on a farm, particularly as a child—but the injury she’d sustained in the forest was blunt trauma, a deliberate strike with a weapon. And this injury appeared to be healing in a fraction of the time of any normal black eye. She couldn’t see her eye, of course, so there was probably still some discoloration, and judging by her fingers, the white paste was apparently still being applied while