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On that day Peter had asked me, “I’ll meet you beneath the climbing tree?”
“Always and for the rest of my life.” That had been my response. I touched the bark of the climbing tree’s trunk and asked it to remember that day for me, even if everyone else let it slip away.
Like a magnet collecting iron shavings, I felt my attention being pulled away from the tree, away from the memory. There, on a nearby bench, Gudrun sat with her back toward me. She held up a hand and signaled me to join her with a wave.
I took a breath and circled around to the front of the bench. “Thank you for joining me.” She spoke with a clipped German accent that reminded me of Erik Weber, the man who had been both my uncle and my father.
There before me were the exquisite yet unforgiving features that twice had looked back at me through my mirror. Gudrun had now stepped through the looking glass into the heart of my world. She occupied the bench as if it were the throne from which she ruled. She sat there surveying me, waiting for me to respond, but I stood speechless before her. Her magic was visible to my naked eye, shimmering around her like an August heat rising off blacktop. She tilted back her head, her eternal black pageboy cut falling at an angle along her delicate jawline.
“I have no interest in harming you,” she said. “However, I would have done anything to escape my prison. I would have sacrificed you, your child, your family, anything to free myself, but I am not your enemy.” I examined the gray eyes that shone out from porcelain skin. They radiated a calm certainty that only a person who suffered from no self-doubt could obtain. “I merely took advantage of your true adversaries’ hatred. I used it like a lever to pry loose the hold your fellow anchors had on me.”
I finally found my voice, even though I was still overwhelmed by the strangeness of the aura around her. “Call yourself what you want. You’ve destroyed my life. You murdered my in-laws. You’ve taken away my husband. And by taking away my husband, you’ve endangered my son’s life.”
She held up her hand. “Enough of your litany. I am not responsible for your tribulations.”
“It was your spell—”
“Yes, it was my spell, but my assistant”—the way she said the word suggested she found it a poor translation of the word she would have used if I could speak her mother tongue—“your brother, took liberty with my instructions. Josef wanted to strike out against you personally. I had no such desire.” She offered a slight shrug as if to underline the fact she was confirming the obvious. “I had intended it as a form of penance on his part, forcing him to distribute his lover’s remnants at the points of the sephirot. The sealing of the spell required the presence of burning bodies. I had intended that he offer the tribute to Asmodeus at a crematorium. Instead he took his revenge against you by setting your in-laws’ establishment afire.” She folded her hands on her lap. “Again, I will not lie to you. If my freedom required burning this entire city down around your ears, I would have done it without flinching, but Josef’s actions were unnecessary. They were motivated by his own anger, and I regret not holding the reins tighter.”
My bitterness blunted any sense of caution. “Well, I guess that makes it all right then,” I said, each word laced with sarcasm. “Why are you here? I don’t think you’ve come to ask for my forgiveness.”
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She burst out laughing, a pointed sound that brought images of beer halls and heavy weaponry. “Forgiveness? I have long ago lost the need for that saccharine validation.” Her face smoothed back into a cool mask, with only a small twist on her lips still betraying amusement. “No, I do not seek your forgiveness, nor have I come to sue for peace.” She leaned in toward me conspiratorially. “I could squash you and your frail magic with only a thought.” She paused. “You don’t believe me?”
So far our little talk wasn’t living up to its promise. I felt my face redden. My hands balled into white-knuckled fists. I had grown sick and damned tired of threats, whether they could be backed up or not. “I believe you could try.”
Again she laughed. Her eyes lit up with an odd shade of fondness. “Oh, so you do have some of Maria in you after all?”
She meant it as a compliment but I felt the words curdle in my soul. “If you consider me so inconsequential, why bother with me at all?”
“Sit,” she commanded me as if she were talking to a young child. I didn’t move a muscle. Then came what I perceived as an uncharacteristic gesture. She rolled her eyes and patted the empty spot on the bench. “I never said you were ‘inconsequential.’ Please.” She moved her hand away so I could join her on the seat.
I nodded and sat next to her, turning sideways so she was in the center of my vision. She had been my paternal great-grandmother Maria’s best friend, and from what I’d learned about Maria, that was not a good thing. She turned toward me as well, draping her left arm over the bench’s back. My eyes were drawn to the large opal she wore on her finger. She followed my gaze toward the ring. She held her hand toward me so I could examine the fiery stone.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” She tilted it back and forth so the oval stone burst to life beneath the sun’s rays. “They die, you know? Opals. The fire drains out of them, leaving behind nothing but a cold and worthless stone.” She pulled her hand back and returned her arm to rest on the bench. “Undoubtedly this one too would have faded long ago were it not always on my finger. I never take it off.” Her eyes reached out to grasp mine. “It was a gift to me from Heinrich.” She waited a moment, seemingly disappointed by my lack of reaction. “Dear me, are you so ignorant of your own history?” I bristled at her question, Peter’s natural mother having asked me almost the same thing hours before. “Does the name Himmler mean nothing to you?”
I slid back involuntarily, moving myself away from the ring. Of course I knew the name. Himmler was the epitome of human evil, a Nazi leader as responsible for the death of more than eleven million people as Hitler himself. My eyes narrowed in on the stone. “I would crush the stone to dust and melt the gold that holds it.”
Gudrun pulled her hand back to examine the ring more minutely. Her lips curved up ever so slightly. “It is only a bauble, and a pretty bauble at that.”
“It was given to you by a monster.”
“In your eyes it is somehow guilty by association?”
“Guilty no, tainted yes.”
She raised her head proudly. She pulled the ring from her finger and held it up. It dissolved to dust before my eyes, a gentle breeze rising to carry the fines away. I coughed as I breathed in some of the powder.
“Thank you,” I heard myself saying, even though it seemed an odd act to thank her for. All the same, I did feel more relaxed with the gem gone.
“It was politically advantageous at the time to accept the jewel from Himmler; it is politically advantageous now for me to destroy the gem.” She pursed her lips and appeared to weigh her words. “You have much power at your disposal, but you are far too concerned about what is right, what is wrong.” Her eyebrows rose a little. “You still believe in God, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I said, a bit taken aback by the turn this conversation had taken.
“Of course,” she echoed me. “How do you imagine this God? Is he the great judge? The ultimate arbiter? The father?”
“Well, honestly, I’m not sure that he is a he at all.”
