THE HUNTRESS: VENGEANCE

With Christmas, came snow. It would fall from the heavens and settled upon the earth, covering it in white. Everywhere she looked, the whiteness stretched on and on, as if endless. It was a beautiful sight. But, all Debbie felt was cold.

Her breaths, loud in the silent room, spread across the windowpane; they trembled, matching the shivering of her frail body. Bare: that was all the world seemed in her eyes. A sea of nothingness in which drowned the colours beneath. Just as the house drowned her in darkness.

It was a beautiful house, to be sure, nestled in a picturesque neighbourhood in the suburbs of New York. But it was haunted by a mother’s grief and tainted by a grandmother’s scorn.

From beyond the glass, laughter drifted into the air as children battled their way with their small legs through the snow. Debbie heard nothing but the silence – it pressed against her, leaking into her mind through her ears, deafening. The children’s grins were a welcome sight; different from the scowls she usually saw on her grandmother, or the blank stares of her grandfather.

How she yearned to be among them, to taste the falling snow on her eager tongue, to laugh and jump and run and play – among the joy of Christmas.

But she never could.

A figure, familiar and friendly, trudged through the snow in bright yellow galoshes. Snow dotted her hair, like stars strewn across the night sky. The girl drew Debbie’s attention, and she smiled. It was another Christmas, long before this one, at the age of seven, that she had first met this girl. A soaring ball, snowfall, a curious little girl sitting in the snow, and a girl seeking what was lost; it was their own little fairy-tale.

Jhanvi Achari, peering over the white-painted fence of the Staffords’ backyard on the shoulders of her cursing sister, had first glimpsed the sad girl that frightfully grey day. To her, with the eyes of an eight-year-old still in love with enchanted stories of princesses, princes, and evil witches, it was like a story out of a book. The girl sat forward, unaware of the newcomers, her dark hair spilled over her shoulders – a curtain over her face – as she studied the red ball in the snow. The incessant slaps against her legs from her older sister, who grew increasingly impatient, could not bring her from her daze. From that day, and until her last day, Jhanvi had become the prince who rescues the princess.

Her curiosity got the better of her that night. As her mother made her father tea, she bounced at her side and told her, “There’s a girl! Mom, Mrs Stafford has a girl in her house, did you know?” The frown on her mother’s face was lost on her. “She’s my age, too. If I’d known, I’d have made her my friend ages ago.”

Her mother’s explanation of the girl being an orphan and Mary Stafford’s only grandchild was not enough – was not right; she was told that when a parent, or a grandparent had such responsibilities in their hands, their protective nature would become overwhelming. She stopped as soon as she had begun – “It’s not right to talk about others.”

No, Jhanvi thought, it wasn’t the true story; Jhanvi had seen her face that day, even tried to speak to the girl: she knew that girl was trapped.

“Hey! Girl.” Jhanvi called from over the fence.

Debbie glanced up, wide eyes meeting Jhanvi’s, her hair fell back to show her face. Brown eyes, Jhanvi had thought, just like mine.

“That’s our ball. Bring it over here.” Her sister pinched her tender skin, already stinging from the slaps, this time. “Ow! Please.”

Her small legs shook when Debbie stood. Hours had gone ignored in which she sat in the snow; it had melted underneath her, seeped into her pajama bottoms and left the cloth wet under her coat. She bent to pick up the ball, as heavy in her hand as her tongue felt in her clenched mouth; but did not approach the girl over the fence.

“Hurry!” Jhanvi beckoned her forward.

Debbie stood still. Exasperated, and growing just as impatient as her older sister, the unfamiliar girl sighed loudly and thrust her hands into the air. Rolling her dark – pretty, Debbie mused – eyes, she glared mildly down at the seven-year-old. Another girl’s voice, much older, came from the other side of the fence. It was raised, snapping out words in a language completely unknown to Debbie’s ears. The stranger replied with as much bite in her words.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting it. Shut up, Sanah.”

There was a loud thud against the fence, it shook, and a yelp, when suddenly the girl was toppling over the fence and into the snow in the Staffords’ backyard. Debbie jumped back, tripping on her feet, and fell into the snow.

“Get the cricket ball!” the voice called, and this Debbie understood, too. “And let’s see if your scrawny ass can climb over the fence or not.”

Crunching, the sound of boots in the snow, told them the older girl had left. The two girls’ eyes met.

“This is your fault,” Jhanvi grumbled. She crawled towards Debbie in the snow. “Give me the damn ball.”

As Jhanvi snatched it away from her loose grasp, she scrutinised the girl. She had seen Mrs Stafford, sometimes in the streets, at the supermarket, most of the time at the front of her house, and Jhanvi knew, she swore, the aging woman was white. This girl was not; really, Jhanvi couldn’t make out where she was from. Perhaps the girl had just tanned under the sun, but she never saw her outside, so she doubted it. Her dark hair was a curly mass atop her head, completely different from Mary Stafford’s sleek blonde hair. But, then again, her sister had told her genetics weren’t that simple, and Jhanvi had never met Mr Stafford, nor this girl’s mother and father.

Her eyes strayed to the girl’s feet. “Don’t you have galoshes of your own?”

The little girl shook her head. The black galoshes on her feet were far too large to be her own; in fact, she had found them in the closet downstairs, and recognised them as her grandfather’s old, forgotten galoshes, from the days he was healthy.

“What’s your name?”

The little girl shook her head again.

“You have to have a name.” Jhanvi wrinkled her nose in thought. “I’ll call you Rapunzel, even though your hair is so short.” She reached out to touch it, but the girl shied away. “You can call me Jhanvi, or Prince, to your Rapunzel. You should grow your hair out like mine. It’ll be nice.”

Debbie only stared.

“Where’s your mom and dad?”

Debbie shrugged.

“I live down the street.” Jhanvi pointed behind her. “We’re the house with the big snowman. Me, my sister, and my brothers all made it. It’s really big. You should come see it.” When she grinned, the two missing front teeth could be seen – it was an adorable sight. “Maybe we can make one together, too.”

Silence was not the response she wanted and Jhanvi began to tire of it, but she liked the girl, she was small and cute, and the only girl around her age in their neighbourhood; and so, she continued trying to befriend her.

“Do you know why I called you Rapunzel?” After the girl shook her head, Jhanvi continued, “Because Rapunzel was locked away by an evil witch, just like you. You’re locked away, aren’t you?”

Slowly, hesitantly, Debbie nodded.

“I knew it!” She shuffled forward on her knees and grabbed the girl’s hands. “I’ll get you out. And then we can live together, like the prince and Rapunzel. We can be best friends. And we’ll build snowmen, and play, and have sleepovers together every night. We’ll have lots of fun!”

A smile, though minute, pulled at Debbie’s lips. It trembled and almost fell, but she maintained it, her facial muscles unsure. It sounded like Heaven. And so she nodded, far more certain this time, and much happier.

“Jhanvi!” the older girl’s voice was back. “Hurry up, idiot, we want to finish our game.”

Jhanvi threw the ball over the fence from where she sat, her other hand still holding Debbie’s, and gave a small smile of satisfaction when she heard her sister grunt in pain.

“Go away!” she called. “I’m playing with my new friend.”

After that day, Jhanvi would visit the Staffords’ backyard every day. Sometimes her Rapunzel was there, sometimes she wasn’t. But she would always wait for her. Whatever few minutes she got with her, was more than enough, and much more for Debbie.

As the girl, thirteen now, glanced up from the freshly fallen snow, her eyes searching for Debbie in the windows of the Staffords’ house, she smiled when she found the twelve-year-old girl in the living room window. They shared a wave and a smile, the sad girl and the self-proclaimed prince, and it was set, that if either of them could be truly happy, it would be with each other.

With Christmas, came the cold. Debbie sat in front of the fire, her legs crossed on the soft maroon rug at her grandfather’s side. Seventeen… it had been seventeen years since she breathed her first breath, and her mother breathed her last; seventeen years since Mary Stafford first held the little girl in her arms, cleaned of her daughter’s blood, and cried, for the first time, until her last, from the loss of her only child; seventeen years, long and hard, since the Stafford family was ever, truly happy.

Debbie had been young when her grandfather had gotten sick. Before that, he was a cheerful man with a bright smile and big, warm hands that would hold Debbie’s own when they danced to Louis Armstrong in the living room. Now, he was a shell of that man, who had once stood between her and her grandmother’s disdain. Now, he could do nothing, say nothing, just watch with two empty eyes as his wife shouted at their grandchild and locked her in her room.

What had happened, how his brain made him so ill, she still did not know. Her grandmother would not tell her; she would never understand; she knew that, her education having been at home with a private tutor from the church; but an explanation, however small it might have been, a name to put to the sickness, anything, would have been a kindness to her turmoiled mind and broken heart.

Debbie stared into the fire, its crackles and snaps loud in her ears.

“Lauren?”

The tears that rolled down her face felt warm in the firelight. The gentle touch of her grandfather’s hand against her curly hair was so faint, she might have missed it, if she had not been paying attention.

“Dearest.” His speech was still, at times, slurred; when once he had laughed loud and clear.

“Yes, daddy?” There was a tremble, a breathless shuddering in her voice.

Usually, her grandfather was silent, as still as a mannequin… or, a corpse. It was a habit of hers after all these years to watch him and hope to hear him speak; when he did, in those rare, wonderful moments, it was to his daughter he spoke, the memory of her death, her funeral, faded in his ailing mind. It was like he saw her there, where Debbie stood, where Debbie sat, as if he heard her in Debbie’s voice. And though it hurt, just a little, Debbie still felt her heart swell at the sound of her grandfather’s voice. She would be his Lauren if it gave him some form of contentment.

It took a moment, the fire hissed, the great grandfather clock ticked, before he answered; an old movie hummed from the television, as if far away, the Christmas lights blinked – on and off, on and off, on and off… And Debbie thought he might have gone quiet again. But the murmur of his deep, kind voice joined the noises of the room with three words that crushed her heart.

“I missed you.”

She sniffed. The tears had grown cool against her skin when she finally wiped them away. Her forearm glistened with their wetness. Sighing, Debbie leaned against her grandfather’s chair, her stare never leaving the flames, as if it granted her some form of solace.

“I missed you, too,” she whispered.

Deep down, under the illness, she thought he knew everything, still remembered. He loved his daughter like she was the light of his life. With her death went that light, and it would be difficult to forget such a thing, even if his brain deceived him. She thought so, because sometimes, there was a melancholic gleam in his eyes, when tears would well up and his mouth would turn down as if in grief. She was sure he remembered, that his daughter had died, and in her place lived her own child. And yet, at times, he still called her Lauren.

“Lauren?” He had begun to stroke her hair, and Debbie leaned into his touch. She missed her grandfather; perhaps, more than even her mother. With him, at least, she had some memories – six years of precious memories where he loved her and she loved him.

“Hmm?”

Within the second when his hand stilled, before the hand on the cluck struck its new home, Jeremiah Stafford’s eyes seemed to clear and, with tears glistening in those warm brown eyes, he whispered down to the girl, “I’m coming, baby. I’m coming soon. Wait for me. Daddy’s coming.”