Man-Eater

The witch had trapped the three of us in a wattle cage. We had been dragged to the back of her caravan after falling asleep to the scent of her magic incense. The hunter that had accompanied us to get firewood was gone, from life. His body was cooking in the witch’s cauldron. She hadn’t been shy about telling us what was in there as soon as we woke up.

Her home was very big on the inside. She had a fireplace under a smoke hole, but her fire didn’t make any smoke. Hugo and Camille shivered from the cold as if this blaze didn’t produce heat. I had to take off my coat from the sweat.

There was a large bed with three mattresses and more blankets that I could count. I was accustomed to sleeping on a beaten dirt floor. Camille shifted as she sat on the hard wood planks. Her mother always had a cushion ready for her. Hugo’s face was stern as he stared at the butcher’s knife resting on the witch’s table, next to the hunter’s clothes and eyeballs.

“It’s better to use the eyes for potions. The texture is not for everybody.” The witch grabbed a bunch of herbs drying on nails stuck to her ceiling beam.

I hadn’t eaten in three days as punishment for sleeping through a morning milking. I had come up with a nasty fever, that were no excuse to the cane nor the cows. The aroma of her witch’s stew made my mouth water. She cooked with her back to us. Hugo silently tried to undo the lock of our cage. It was only rope and sticks, but the knot slithered around solidifying itself at his attempts. I held onto my stomach as I felt a growl about to escape it.

“Are you hungry, little girl?” The witch had the voice of a nightingale.

Camille glanced at me in horror, unable to speak since learning her uncle was butchered. She had been the first to wake up, to one gruesome sight.

“No.” My stomach opposed my quiet reply.

“You’re so skinny. You best eat and become fatter. Girls like you need meat on their bones to grow big and strong.”

“I’m not hungry,” I insisted upon my lie.

“Come here. Come eat.” She was tempting me with her friendly voice.

“Capucine,” Hugo whispered to me. “Do as she says.” He wanted the door open.

That damned door wasn’t an issue once I shrunk as small as a mouse.

“Come sit at my table,” insisted the witch.

I crawled under the wattles. As soon as I was out, I grew back falling down in a tumble.

“Are you alright little Capucine?” She helped me up. “That spell is a tricky one to hold in your state.” She had to be the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Hair thick and dark as mine. Eyes green and shiny like a young tree leaf in spring. Prominent cheek bones and nose as sharp as an arrowhead.

“What have you done to me?” I squeaked.

“Nothing. Now sit, I will feed you.” She went back to stirring.

I glanced back. Hugo gestured at the lock.

“What about the others?” I climbed on a chair.

“We’ll eat them in due time dear.” She served me a bowl of steaming stew. Her little fingers were as crooked as mine.

“Aren’t they skinny too?” I played with my sleeve.

“Not as much as you. Have your parents been taking good care of you?” She pointed at the bruises on my arm. I did not answer, it had her continue, “Do you want to see the future?”

“No…”

“You do. But first you must eat. Go on.”

I munched on a spoonful, then another. By the time I knew it, my bowl was empty. I had never eaten something as delicious as this. It should have made me sick to my stomach. It didn’t.

“It’s good, isn’t it? My secret is this.” She handed me a whole fennel. “It makes the food praiseworthy. If it is love you seek, it’s better to use this.” She showed me a bundle of savory. I knew that smell it grew near the farm. “Now go look in the fire. Tell me what you see.” She sat down to eat as well.

I slid down the chair and settled in front of the toasty fire. At first all I saw were flames. Then figures took their place. The witch, dead in her bed with a slit throat. Hugo standing with the butcher’s knife. Camille running for the caravan’s doors.

“I see an empty cage,” I told the witch.

“What happened to it?” She sipped some broth.

“You ate them all.” I yawned from the warm fire.

“You must be sleepy still. Lay in my bed. It’s very comfortable.”

I followed her orders and crawled under five blankets. It felt like she had stuffed her three mattresses with clouds. But I couldn’t sleep a wink. Once she was done with her meal, she joined me, taking her shoes off before unfolding a new soft woolen blanket over herself,

“Girl, do you know any lullabies?”

“No.” I somewhat returned her friendly smile. I wasn’t used to making such a face.

“Then rub my forehead till I sleep.”

All it took was for me to drag a finger between her brows to have her snore deeply.

“Capucine,” Hugo whispered from the other side of the caravan. “Get us out.”

I snuck out to the wattle cage as my shy smile turned into a tooth-grinding pout.

“How,” I said under my breath.

“Bring me that knife.” He pointed at the table.

I did and he attempted to cut the ropes, but it was like they were made of steel.

“Let me try.” I laid my hands upon the knot.

It almost unravelled itself.

“How did you do this?”

“I don’t know.”

He walked past me to the bed. Just as he had helped slaughter the pigs for winter with his father, he turned the witch’s throat into a gash. She didn’t wake as her blood fled her body. Camille ran out through the doors I followed her feeling my heart break for the woman I helped kill.

We found our way back to the village. I learned my mother had another miscarriage and wasn’t allowed inside all night. My father and her always blamed me for those. But she had them before they adopted me. It had been the reason they had insisted on keeping this baby they had stumbled upon in the woods. They should have left me there. They were bitter as I grew in age. Their only reason for keeping me had become their need for a free farmhand.

Hugo was welcomed as a hero, and the next day there was a feast for him. Ever since our return, Camille stuck to him like glue. Getting turned down for hugs until she discovered that she could earn them by pulling my hair in front of him.

Five years later, I had my first blood. I was the one promised to him not her. Hugo was there the morning it was announced to me. He had a grin telling me I was lucky my father did not hand me to the first old man who asked. I would rather have been married to a lonely sober old man then him. He acted like he had not outlived his childhood glory and turned to alcohol like his father.

At our wedding, he kept boasting he was saving me for a “second” time. We could all hear the laments of his father, about his son begging to have me as his wife. I might have been a milkmaid, they were nothing but swineherds that didn’t even own their herd.

Camille tried to seduce him into spending the night with her. That was a relief, until he insisted on bedding me. Hugo took his time drinking beforehand, recounting his fight with the witch and his rescue of us two helpless girls. I corrected him in my thoughts, remembering too well what the witch had taught me. He dragged me to his bed that night, all it took was one swipe of a finger on his forehead and he fell asleep.

That night I stared into the fire. Hoping I would see a future without him. I watched as horror revealed itself in the flames. It was his dream. I knew what he had wanted from me. But I didn’t expect his fantasy to be him forcing himself on me, no matter how much I cried or called for help. I almost threw up.

That night I didn’t sleep, and in the morning, I had made a blend porridge he ate in silence before apologizing for what he thought he had done to me. He blamed the alcohol and left to tend to the pigs his father pretended to own. He didn’t want me near those beasts and asked for my parents to pay him for my work on their farm. The only payment he received was half a bucket of milk. I was expected to use it to feed my new household.

The next night he laid his hands on me again, and I had him sleep again too. This trick lasted five more years until people started to wonder why I wasn’t with child yet. This is when he started to spend the evenings with Camille. She gloated about it not knowing she was giving me reprieve from his presence.

One night he came back with her and caught me staring into the fire. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I had seen the future for the first time since we had encountered the witch. Hugo would chase me in the woods with his butchering knife, I would fall then—

“Are you a witch?” Hugo pondered as Camille was about to leave.

“No.” I stood up and stretched. If I needed to run soon, I had better have been ready.

“You shared a meal with the witch. You ate my uncle.” Camille had drunk too.

“Hugo told me to follow her orders, to get us out.” I tried not to glance at the door too much.

“No, I didn’t.” He frowned stuck in his heroic falsehoods. “I unlocked to cage as she slept and slit her throat.”

“You looked like you were about to lick that bowl clean. You’re a man-eater.” Camille made an attempt to corner me, but I stepped sideways towards the door.

“She must have used magic to make it taste good.” I knew that wasn’t a proper defense, but I was a starving child at the time.

“It smelled foul. How could you think the old hag’s soup was good?” She was wrong, that woman hadn’t been a hag.

Now that I was grown, her image haunted my reflection every time I stared into still water.

“I don’t know.” I was almost out the door when Hugo stepped in my way.

“Why can’t you have children.” He pushed me back by the stomach.

The knife was hoisted to his belt.

“Maybe I’m sick like my mother.”

“But she’s not your real mother,” Camille pointed out. “You were adopted.”

“They found you in the woods. Dad kept telling me you were a changeling.” Hugo’s eyes were turning cold, and his hand hovered over the handle of his knife.

I attempted to have him sleep. Camille caught my wrist,

“Have you been using spells on him?”

I exhaled once and pushed my way through them, out the door. I heard Camille shout that I was a witch but didn’t look back, because I knew he was right behind. I fled into the woods wishing I had seen the end of my vision. I wasn’t aware of how long he had chased me. I fell over a root, and he caught up catching his breath while looming over me with his knife.

Hugo’s eyes were the same as the night he slit the witch’s throat.

“Please Hugo I haven’t hurt anybody.” I knew I couldn’t reason with him. Maybe I could buy some time.

“But you will.” He looked down on me, stepping closer.

I crawled away on my back. Little by little, as a figure carved itself behind him.

“You’d be dead without me,” I reminded him.

“You’d still be living with that witch—”

A big hand grabbed his head. One breath and it plucked from his body. Blood spewed everywhere and the knife slipped from his limp grip. I took it and jumped to my feet. By the moonlight I saw the creature that had done it. Hair as red as flesh, skin as green as moss. This ogre was as tall as two men. He pinched the cleaver out of my hands while gobbling up my husband’s head.

His eyes weren’t cold, and he seemed to wonder what he would do with me while weighing Hugo’s body in one bloody hand.

“No run?” His voice came out in a rumble.

I didn’t have anywhere to run to. Hugo had chased me out, and Camille was probably telling everybody I was a witch. If I returned without him, I was good as dead. The ogre looked around and moved to leave with his boon.

“Wait!” I ran after him.

He stopped and turned to me.

“I can cook,” I continued.

“And?” He raised a brow.

“I can cook him for you.” I wasn’t safe among humans. I never had been.

A gentle smile etched itself on his face,

“Cook for Kelemen?”

“Yes.” His presence unwound my shoulders as I gazed up at him.

“Not human.” He squinted “Witch? Witches good with human meat.”

“Maybe I am.” I grabbed my own thumb.

“Maybe?”

“Probably.”

We heard people cry out Hugo’s name in the distance. I was about to panic. If the ogre left without me, I would surely get caught and—

“Come. Kelemen no hurt little witch.”