The Hexenmeister

They were settling in front of the fire, Mama in her rocking chair, Johannes with his wooden horses, and Inga singing to her doll, when thunderous voices suddenly heralded the bludgeoning of the door. The eldest twin, Johannes, sprung to his feet and instinctively sidled in front of Inga. Mama, dropping the darning into the ancient woven basket near her rocker, walked towards the latched entrance.

With every fist lash, the hammering intensified, and the voices became audible. “Ebba! Ebba, let us in!” The cumbrous oaken door gave one last shudder as Mama yanked the stubby plank out of its brackets, causing the pungent stench of sweat, blood, and woodland to seep into every crevice of the little room as it slammed open and spilled the agitated men inside. “It’s Jakob, Ebba. To trap the beast, he and Heinrich went into the forest. The fools!”

With quickly called commands, “Hurry, Johannes, help me clear the table, and Inga, fetch the wound care,” the three of them moved in unison. Mama and Johannes cleared room for the mangled man, and Inga scurried to the weathered hutch, brimming with Mama’s carefully collected tools. Each ledge was overladen with dried plants, poppets, oils, candles, swathes of hoary cotton, and herbs blended with tallow. Inga knew there were even more gifts from nature hidden within the many drawers. The instruments of wise women like she would one day become.

     “Ah, thank you, my Inga,” Mama murmured as she took the uneven snippets of fabric already soaked in thyme water. “There, there, Jakob.” Reaching her hand back to no one in particular, she asked for the Tincture of Poppy and, without pausing her carefully gentle cleansing of the angry gashes etched into the man writhing on their table, poured a little into Jakob’s open mouth. “Though there are fewer wounds than I would have expected, he has lost a lot of blood. Here.” She gestured to a cleaved muscle near his ribs. “And here. Another wound is just over there. It’s not as profound as the others.” 

“Can you save him, Ebba?” Mama looked up into the soppy blue eyes, boring holes into her own soft brown orbs, and lifted her bony shoulder almost imperceptibly. “Konrad, there isn’t any way to know. Make yourself of service and remove his boots and breeches. We start by cleaning him up. From there, we shall see. Inga! Grab a threadbare blanket to cover Jakob with, and have a thicker woolen quilt ready for after he’s all patched.”

Mama’s most valuable possession was ticking away the seconds next to the narrow stairs in the corner that led up to the loft. The men, looming awkwardly over the table, observed her precise and rapid movements as she tended to the patient, with the clock towering above them all. Jakob whimpered as Mama administered more elixir, sending him into another stupor.

“Tell me, Konrad.” Mama glanced up before centering once more on her patient. “Where is Heinrich?” Johannes and Inga gave each other a look as the men in the room shifted uncomfortably but remained steadfastly silent. “I see. Did you retrieve his body for his mother? She will want to bury him in the churchyard.”

Emmerich cleared his throat and glanced around furtively. “Not to be disrespectful, Hexenmeister, but there is something worse than a grieving mother to concern ourselves with. We will leave the sympathies to the womenfolk. The beast did this. There isn’t much time.” Konrad, Peter, and Nikolaus all exchanged scowls. Their eyes couldn’t hide the fact that they were all in agreement. They had to hasten.

She looked up again then. “The beast, you say? Inga, come here, my flower, and thread this needle for me.” Mama ran her eyes over the unconscious frame, laying deathly still, and made a small hmph as she cleaned the last of the grime from his wounds. ”And I suppose you think this beast is not a common wolf, am I correct?” She found it difficult to hide her opinion from the villagers, who were now going to fear Heinrich would return as something otherworldly on the third night. 

“What common wolf steals children from their beds? Is an earthly wolf capable of rotting our crops in the fields? Everything he touches dies. He moves like a whisper.” Konrad stood tall and straight again, his body taking up a prodigious amount of the recently insufficient area of the unpretentious room, and he set his stony stare on the slight woman in front of him. “We will leave you to your mysteries,” he grunted, derision in every syllable, jerking his scraggly chin towards the door and spurring the others into motion.

As the last to pass through the uneven frame of the entryway, he turned and gave a look that spoke as clearly as his parting words. “I suggest you save Jakob, Ebba. A witch’s worth runs out when she no longer serves a purpose.” With the slam of the door, Mama began packing the battered man’s wounds with an aromatic salve, the last step of preparation before the needle.

     “Johannes?” Inga turned to him. “What did he mean by that?” His dark eyes regarded her for a moment before he turned to their mother. “I think he meant Mama can’t let Jakob die.”

“Hmph, there is no such thing as allowing him to die or forcing him to live,” Mama called out softly. “Johannes, please put another log into the fire and place the warmer in your bed. Inga, pull an elf-rune candle from the cuddy, and place henbane oil in a small lamp. Then put on the kettle of water for the tea. You’ll use mostly lavender with a small pinch of mandragora and vervain for Jakob, so he will rest and not tear his wounds open again. Then pour a second cup of our nightly tea, as it's long past time for dreams.”

“Yes, Mama.” They both moved as briskly and efficiently as their mother. The cuckoo chimed then, twelve times, causing Ebba to click her tongue and impatiently survey the man she’d pieced back together one last time before covering him and moving to get a pillow. He stirred with a low moan just as Inga appeared with the tea. “Thank you, dear. Here, Jakob. Slowly now. Ah, ah, ah, that’s it. Good. Let’s lay you back now.” And his snores began before she’d finished settling him in. 

“Alright, my little sprites, let’s get you ready for bed now.” The warm cloth removed the soot from their bodies, and her soft hands smeared the thick ointment from top to bottom. “Inga, name the elements in the bedtime ointment, please.”

“Rendered fat from a suckling pig mixed with beeswax,” she sang out as she did every night. “And in equal parts, lavender oil, mint oil, and rosemary oil.” 

“Very good. Clever girl, you are.” Mama pulled Inga’s favorite nightshirt over her head. “And into bed with you. Now Johannes, what is in the bedtime tea we are very late to have this evening?” 

With Mama rubbing in the ointment, he answered grudgingly in the way every bored child would, intoning, “It is valerian, chamomile, and milky caps with one spoon of honey as it steeps.”

“Ah, and you are as equally clever as your sister, if not as agreeable! Now up into bed, right then, yes, and one big sip for you.” She held the wooden cup to his lips. “That’s plenty. Very well, lie down. And now it's your turn, Inga. That’s it—one good, long swallow. Lovely, lay your head down, please.”

     “Mama?”

“Yes, Johannes?”

His little face took on a look of rumination as he formed his thoughts properly. “Why did Jakob and Heinrich go to hunt the beast?” He watched her and waited patiently. 

“Because man often forgets that life isn’t a childish game with minimal consequences.”

“So,” his nose scrunched up even further. “It was a game for them to hunt the beast.”

Ebba watched her children struggle to learn a new lesson, so she carefully considered her convictions before responding. “Well, no, I don’t think it was a game. Jakob and Heinrich failed to understand the repercussions of their quest.” Inga turned onto her side and pulled her doll closer, and the last log Johannes had tossed into the fire popped loudly. “They believe the starving wolves that have been hunting in the village are straight from the bowels of hell. Evil. But all they are is part of nature. Nature has had a difficult year.”

Her hand smoothed Johannes’ flaxen wisps of hair away from his forehead before continuing. “Jakob and Heinrich wanted to take up the mantle and fight the forces of evil. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize two intensely important things. First, they never considered they would not be victorious. Arrogance always leads to ruin. Most importantly, something humans fail so often to grasp is that what is evil to one is survival to another. Survival is natural, an instinct within all creatures, great and small. And what is natural is neither good nor evil. It just is.” 

“Are you scared of the wolves, Mama?” Inga yawned. Her hair fell over her eyes as she squirmed deeper into the covers, and Ebba pushed the golden locks back behind a tiny ear before answering.

“Not even a little bit. The forest gives us everything we need. And we respect it. Plus, we can’t forget the offerings we leave for all the creatures that make up the fae. We live in harmony. We live with veneration in our hearts and reverence in our actions.” Johannes yawned now and drew a smile from his mother. “We only take what we need, give all that we can, and follow the code of the forest.”

Mama stood and kissed them each on the head, and one last “Mama?” was tossed across the warm air of their cozy cottage on the edge of the treeline. She smiled tolerantly before turning back. “Last question, Johannes, and then you’ll join your sister in slumber.”

“What will happen to us if Jakob dies?” The question hung heavy in the small space between them, and she forced forward the most tender smile she could muster.

“The forest protects us, my brave little man. Have you ever noticed the baubles that are left on our doorstep?” His sleepy little nod caused his hair to fall back over his brow again. “Maybe you’ve also noticed that when all the goats in the village stop giving milk, our goats give us twice as much. When the crops fail, as they have this year, our garden grows twice the yield of the year before. And when sickness passes through, the herbs and berries I need appear the moment I set out to find them. We never go without, so if we are in danger, sanctuary will be offered.”

With that, Johannes drifted off, and Ebba moved her rocking chair to the side of the smooth, dark wood, where a half-witted man lay sallow and still after learning a powerful lesson. The fire crackled and filled the room with an orange aura; the darning needle clicked against the thimble in rhythm with the clock. “It’s all fun and games until the forest is tired of playing.”