“Help me!” she begged. “Please.”
And then the sounds of pursuit drew nearer, and David saw a horse and rider bearing down upon the clearing, the rider’s bow drawn and ready to release its arrow. The deer-girl heard them too, for her back legs tensed and she bounded toward the cover of the forest. She was still in midair when the arrow struck her neck. The blow threw her body to the right, where it lay twitching upon the ground. The deer-girl’s mouth opened and closed as she tried to speak her final words. Her back legs kicked at the dirt, her body trembled, and then she stopped moving.
The rider trotted into the clearing upon a huge black horse. He was hooded and dressed in the colors of the autumn forest, all greens and ambers. In his left hand he held a short bow, and a quiver of arrows hung across his shoulder. He dismounted from the horse, drew a long blade from a scabbard upon his saddle, and approached the body on the ground. He raised the blade and struck once, then again, at the neck of the deer-girl. David looked away after the first blow, his hand against his mouth and his eyes squeezed shut. When he dared to glance back again, the girl’s head had been severed from the deer’s body and the hunter was carrying it by the hair, dark blood dripping from the neck onto the forest floor. Using the hair, he tied the head to the horn of his saddle so that it hung against the flank of his horse, then placed the carcass of the deer across the horse before preparing to remount. His left foot was already raised when he paused and stared at the ground. David followed his gaze and saw the discarded core of the apple at the horse’s hooves. The hunter lowered his foot and stared at the core, and then in one swift movement drew an arrow from his quiver and notched it to the bow. The tip of the arrow was raised toward the apple tree and came to rest pointing straight at David.
“Come down,” said the hunter, his voice muffled slightly by a scarf across his mouth. “Come down or I’ll shoot you down.”
David had no choice but to comply. He felt himself start to cry. He tried desperately to stop himself, but he could smell the deer-girl’s blood on the air. His only hope was that the hunter had enjoyed his sport for the day and might see fit to spare him as a result.
David reached the base of the tree. He was tempted for an instant to run and take his chances in the forest, but it was an idea that he rejected almost immediately. A hunter who could kill a leaping deer with an arrow while riding on horseback would surely be able to hit a fleeing boy with greater ease. He had no choice but to hope for mercy from the hunter, but as he stood before the hooded figure, he looked into the deer-girl’s sightless eyes and wondered if there was any hope of mercy from someone who could do such a thing.
“Lie down,” said the hunter. “On your belly.”
“Please, don’t hurt me,” said David.
“Lie down!”
David knelt on the ground, then forced himself to lie flat. He heard the hunter approach, and then his arms were wrenched behind his back and his wrists bound with coarse rope. His sword was taken from him. His legs were tied at the ankles, and he was lifted into the air and slung over the back of the great horse, his body lying upon that of the deer, his left side resting painfully against the saddle. But David did not think about the pain, not even when they began to trot and the ache in his side became a regular, rhythmic pounding, like the blade of a dagger being forced between his ribs.
No, all that David could think about was the head of the deer-girl, for her face rubbed against his as they rode, her warm blood smeared his cheek, and he saw himself reflected in the dark green mirrors of her eyes.
THEY RODE FOR what seemed to David like an hour, perhaps more. The hunter did not speak. David felt dizzy from hanging across the horse, and his head hurt. The smell of the deer-girl’s blood was very strong, and as their journey drew on, the touch of her skin against his grew colder and colder.
At last they came to a long stone house in the forest. It was plain and unadorned, with narrow windows and a high roof. To one side was a large stable, and there the rider tethered his horse. There were other animals here too. A doe stood in a stall, chewing on some straw and blinking at the new arrivals. There were chickens in a wire run and rabbits in hutches. Nearby a fox clawed at the bars of its cage, its attention torn between the hunter and the tasty prey just beyond its reach.
The hunter dismounted and detached the deer-girl’s head from the saddle. With his other hand he lifted David and slung him over his shoulder, then carried him to the house. The deer-girl’s head made a soft thudding noise against the door as the hunter raised the latch, and then they entered and David was thrown upon the stone floor. He landed on his back and lay there, dazed and frightened, as, one by one, lamps were lit, and he was at last able to see the hunter’s lair.
The walls were covered with heads, each mounted upon a wooden board and fixed to the stone. Many of the heads came from animals—deer, wolves, even a Loup, which seemed to have been given pride of place at the center of the display on one wall—but others were human. Some came from young adults, and three came from very old men, but most seemed to belong to children, boys and girls, their eyes replaced with glass equivalents that glittered in the lamplight. There was a fireplace at one end of the room, and a single pallet bed beside it. Against another wall stood a small desk and a single chair. David turned his head and saw dried meat hanging from hooks at the other end of the room. He could not tell if it came from animals or people.
But the room was dominated by two great oak tables, so huge that they must have been assembled within the house itself, piece by piece. They were stained with blood, and from where he lay David could see chains and manacles on them, and leather restraints. To one side of the tables was a rack of knives, blades, and surgical tools, all clearly old but kept sharp and clean. Above the tables hung an array of metal and glass tubes on ornate frames, half of them as thin as needles, the others as thick as David’s arm.
Bottles of all shapes and sizes, some filled with clear liquid while the rest had been used to store body parts, stood on shelves. One bottle was filled almost to the top with eyeballs. They seemed alive to David, as though being wrenched from their sockets had not deprived them of the capacity to see. Another contained a woman’s hand, a gold ring upon its wedding finger, red varnish flaking slowly from its nails. A third contained half a brain, its inner workings exposed and marked by colored pins.
And there were worse things than those, oh, much worse…
He heard footsteps approaching. The hunter stood over him, the hood now lowered and the scarf removed to reveal the face beneath. It was the face of a woman. Her skin was ruddy and unadorned, her mouth slim and unsmiling. Her hair was tied loosely upon her head. It was black and white and silver, like the fur of a badger. While David watched, she released her tresses, so that they fell in an avalanche across her shoulders and down her back. She knelt and gripped David’s face with her right hand, turning his head back and forth as she examined his skull. She then released his face and tested his neck, and the muscles in his arms and legs.
“You’ll do,” she said, more to herself than to David, and then she left him to lie upon the floor while she worked on the head of the deer-girl. She did not say another word to him until her work was complete, many hours later. She raised David and placed him upon a low chair before displaying to him the fruits of her labors.
The deer-girl’s head had been mounted upon a piece of dark wood. Her hair had been washed and spread out on the block, held in place by a thin glue. Her eyes had been removed and replaced with ovals of green and black glass. Her skin had been coated with a waxy substance to preserve it, and her head made a hollow sound when the huntress rapped upon it with her knuckles.
“She’s pretty, don’t you think?” said the huntress.
David shook his head but said nothing. This girl had had a name once. She’d had a mother and father, maybe sisters and brothers. She would have played and loved and been loved in return. She might have grown up and given birth to children of her own. Now all of that was lost.
“You disagree?” asked the huntress. “Perhaps you feel sorry for her. But think: in years to come she would have grown old and ugly. Men would have used her. Children would have burst forth from her. Her teeth would have rotted from her head, her skin would have wrinkled and aged, and her hair would have grown thin and white. Now, she will always be a child, and she will always be beautiful.”
The huntress leaned forward. She touched her hand to David’s cheek, and for the first time she smiled. “And soon, you too will be like her.”
David twisted his head away.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”
“I am a hunter,” she replied simply. “A hunter must hunt.”
“But she was a little girl,” said David. “A girl with the body of an animal, but still a girl. I heard her speak. She was frightened. And then you killed her.”
The huntress stroked the deer-girl’s hair.
“Yes,” she said, softly. “She lasted longer than I expected. She was more cunning than I thought. Perhaps a fox’s body might have been more appropriate, but it is too late now.”
“You made her that way?” David gasped. Even though he was frightened, his disgust at what the huntress had done suffused every word. The huntress looked surprised at the venom in his voice and seemed to feel that some justification of her actions was required.
“A hunter is always seeking new prey,” she said. “I grew tired of hunting beasts, and humans make poor game. Their minds are sharp, but their bodies are weak. And then I thought how wonderful it would be if I could combine the body of an animal with the intelligence of a human. What a test it would be for my skills! But it was hard, so hard, to create such hybrids: both animals and humans would die before I could bring them together. I could not stem the bleeding for long enough to make the union possible. Their brains died, their hearts stopped, and all my hard work would turn to nothing, drop by red drop.
“And then I had some good fortune. Three surgeons were traveling through the forest, and I came upon them and captured them and brought them here. They told me of a salve that they had created, one that could fuse a severed hand back upon its wrist, or a leg to its torso. I made them show me what they could do. I cut the arm from one of them and the others repaired it, just as they said they could. Then I cut another in half, and his friends made him whole again. Finally, I severed the head of the third, and they fixed it again upon his neck.
“And they became the first of my new prey,” she said, pointing to the heads of the three elderly men on the wall, “once they had told me how to make the salve for myself. Now each prey is different, for each child brings something of itself to the animal that I fuse with it.”
“But why children?” asked David.
“Because adults despair,” she answered, “while children do not. Children accommodate themselves to their new bodies and their new lives, for what child has not dreamed of being an animal? And, in truth, I prefer to hunt children. They make better sport, and better trophies for my wall, for they are beautiful.”
The huntress stepped back and regarded David carefully, as though only now becoming aware of the nature of his questions.
“What is your name, and where have you come from?” she asked. “You are not from these lands. I can tell from your scent and your speech.”
“My name is David. I came from another place.”
“What place?”
“England.”
“Eng-land,”
repeated the huntress. “And how did you get here?”
“There was a passageway between my land and this one. I came through, but now I can’t get back.”
“So sad, so sad,” said the huntress. “And are there many children in
Eng-land
?”
David did not reply. The huntress grabbed his face and dug her nails into his skin. “Answer me!”
“Yes,” he said, reluctantly.
The huntress released him.
“Perhaps I will make you show me the way. There are so few children here now. They do not wander as they once did. This one”—she gestured at the head of the deer-girl—“was the last that I had, and I had been saving her. Now, though, I have you. So…Should I use you as I used her, or should I make you take me to Eng-land?”
She stepped away from David and thought for a time.
“I am patient,” she said, at last. “I know this land, and I have weathered its changes before. The children will come again. Soon it will be winter, and I have food enough to keep me. You will be my last hunt before the snows descend. I will make you a fox, for I think you are even brighter than my little deer. Who knows, you may escape me and live out your life in some hidden part of the forest, although none has yet managed it. There is always hope, my David, always hope. Now, sleep, for tomorrow we begin.”
With that, she cleaned David’s face with a cloth and kissed him softly on the lips. Then she carried him to the great table and chained him there in case he tried to escape during the night, before extinguishing all of the lamps. In the firelight she undressed herself, then lay naked upon her pallet and fell asleep.
But David did not sleep. He thought about his situation. He recalled his tales and returned to the memory of the Woodsman telling him of the gingerbread house. In every story, there was something to be learned.
And, in time, he began to plan.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the huntress awoke and dressed herself. She roasted some meat on the fire and ate it with a tea made from herbs and spices, then came to David and raised him up. His back and limbs ached from the hard table and the constraints placed upon his movement by the chains, and he had slept only a little, but he now had a sense of purpose. Up to this point, he had been largely dependent upon the goodwill of others—the Woodsman, the dwarfs—for his care and safety. Now he was on his own, and the possibility of survival lay entirely in his own hands.