Sweetbread: An Epilogue

My sister had always a soft heart. Soft as sweetbread.

She wept, afterward, over the old woman, notwithstanding. Perhaps because of everything. I remember holding her while she wept; both of us covered in soot, her fingers scalded from holding shut the oven door.

She was silent after the tears. She followed me through the ghastly house with its sweetbread walls and sugared windows. I found the clothes we'd come in, held out her kirtle, and she put it on without a word. She made not a peep of reaction when we found the treasure in the attic, didn't even nod when I asked her to help me fill up the few bags we could handily tote back through the woods.

Maybe… maybe it would be enough. Enough to keep our stepmother's fancies at bay.

"I do not wish to return there."

It was the first she'd said in hours. I paused outside the witch's cottage, turning back over my shoulder to look at her.

"I do not wish to return to them."

I sighed. "Nor do I. But where else may we go?"

She wrung her fingers together in front of her skirt, her eyes cast down and teeth digging into her lower lip. Finally, though, she nodded. "Alright. You're right." She looked back at the house. "Wait a minute. There might be something left in the kitchen."

"The kitchen?" I repeated in horror, but she only nodded.

"Yes. She did not think I paid attention, but I did. I know which of her potions might be useful--if naught else, we can sell them when we get back."

I nodded slowly and followed her back into the cottage, though I stopped in the open arch that led into the kitchen itself. She moved easily through the space, reminding me painfully of just how long she had been under the witch's thumb while the horrid crone tried to fatten me like a prize hog. She gathered some dozen bottles and vials, tucking them with care in between the bolts of silks and satins we had pilfered from the attic before returning to me.

"Let us go."

Though there was no trail this time, she seemed to know her way through the trees. I asked how, once, when we paused to wait out the dark. But all she said was that she simply knew now. As though the forest spoke to her in a way it hadn't before.

I felt the first thrill of fear at that. But I knew that she was still so scared herself… I wouldn't let her see it. I did my best to cajole her into dreaming with me about what kind of life we might have with the witch's pilfered treasure and won a thin smile for my pains. But it was cold and dark, and soon enough we simply huddled together under a gnarled tree as we waited for the deepest part of night to pass. When grayish dawnlight began to filter through the leaves, she was the first to stand. She had gone quiet again, and only answered me with faint hums or single words as we continued on our way. She seemed more comfortable to be leading us now, but something in the set of her shoulders reminded me of… of something. Something I could not quite name.

Eventually, I succumbed to her silence.

When the trees broke apart to reveal the familiar silhouette of our father's house, she came to a dead stop. Then she took off running, and I was only half a step behind her.

The door was already opening as we reached the stoop, and our father was there to meet us, his arms open and his eyes full of tears. He held us close and, over and over, asked for forgiveness, praising the Lord's name.

I hugged him back, but with the easing of my chest came the tightening in my stomach. Had been a spark at first, now it had burned into a slow flame throughout the course of our walk through the forest, back through the trees.

I met my sister's gaze across our father's shoulder and felt a cold streak in my spine.

If my anger was a flame, then hers was the dead cold of darkest winter.

Our father told us that our stepmother had been stricken ill, not long after we left. She lay in her room now, asleep, and had been for days. He did not expect her to recover, though he had been following the physician's orders as best he could.

"Maybe she'll come round to see you," he said to us hopefully.

Neither of us answered him, so he sighed and pulled a hand down his thick beard. There was more grey in it than I remembered.

"I know you must… be angry with me. With us," he said wretchedly to us. "That I--I could mislay you so easily. It's an unforgivable failing in a father."

Lost?

I jumped a little at the cutting edge in my sister's voice. Our father did, too. She had always had a gentle voice to go with her heart.

"Lost?" she repeated, looking steadily at him

Our father looked back, eyes wide with a touch of terror. ".Lost," he admitted finally in little more than a whisper.

I looked down, unable to keep looking at him.

My sister didn't.

Quickly, she rose from our tiny table. "We will visit her, then."