aimless wandering.
Over the next six days I avoided man as best I could and tried to keep my wanderings to the darker depths of the forest. Early on I came across a lost troop of French soldiers who seemed every bit as miserable as I was. I stayed hidden under a canopy of leaves and branches and watched them as they argued about a number of subjects, including their whereabouts and their dwindling supplies. A couple of them insisted vehemently that they never would have embarked on this campaign if they had known that a devil had been let loose within the Bavarian countryside. When I saw what must have been their commanding officer trying to silence their squabbling with the threat of his saber, I had seen enough and stole quietly away. I shuddered minutes later when I heard the eruption of fighting among them and the death cries that followed. They were as damned as I was.
As I continued with my travels I would go back and forth in my mind between despairing over whether I would ever find Victor Frankenstein to desiring to quit Europe and flee instead to the darkest jungles of the Amazon so I would forever be free of man and my damnable quest for vengeance. All of this left me weary, but I did not allow myself to sleep. I was too afraid of the dreams that would invade my mind.
It was on the sixth day after the feverish control over me had broken that I found myself wandering aimlessly through the forest and my thoughts interrupted by the shouting of men. They seemed to be arguing heatedly, with several of them claiming that the Devil had been unleashed upon their countryside and that that by itself proved the existence of witches. This got me curious, and I followed their voices to see what this was about. Keeping myself hidden behind a thick covering of bushes, I saw that I had wandered near a village. A group of forty or so men and women stood in front of a small wooden cottage, their faces reflecting anger and excitement. As I followed their argument, it seemed as if most of them were in agreement that the woman living in the cottage was a witch, with one lone man trying to argue the ridiculousness of their charges. This man was middle-aged and of strong bearing. Tall, broad shouldered, thick-jawed. He was patiently trying to explain how the belief in witchcraft had rightfully been banished from the minds of all but the most ignorant. One of his opponents, a round-bodied man who had the look of a butcher, took exception to this.
“You calling us ignorant then, Karl?” this man demanded.
“No, I’m not saying that. But let us not travel back a hundred years to those dark years when superstitions ruled. We live in an enlightened age. We now know witches never truly existed. This has been proven beyond any doubt. How could they exist under the watchful eye of the Almighty?”
“Then how do you explain the appearance of Satan? If Satan is running free in the countryside, then there are certainly witches to do his bidding!”
“Come now, Ernst. Let us not jump to conclusions. We do not know that anything has been seen. All we are hearing are fanciful stories, that is all.”
“Fanciful stories? So you are calling them all liars?”
“I am saying that the same hysteria that caused people seventy years ago to burn and drown innocent men and women as witches may be making people now believe they are seeing a devil when all they could be seeing is a wild beast, perhaps an exceptionally large bear, and imagining in their hysteria that this animal is something supernatural.”
“And what of the girls who are being stolen?”
“Again, these are just stories! If you really believe this nonsense about Henriette being a witch, then let us bring her to a court and have them decide her guilt.”
A woman’s voice shrilly interrupted them, yelling out that there was no question about this witch’s guilt. The voice belonged to a plain woman of around thirty who had pushed herself to the front and stood red-faced in front of Karl, the man who was trying to reason with them.
“She has bewitched my husband!” this dumpy frau insisted. “We can prove right now that this is so, unless you are in league with her and wish to keep her evil hidden from us!”
This last accusation of hers got the heavyset butcher scowling suspiciously at Karl, as well as several of the other men edging closer to him. He noticed this and realized that he himself was close to being accused of being a witch, and a cautiousness set into his eyes as he closed his mouth and did not argue any further.
A young woman was dragged to the front by several men. She was of a different type from the frau. Although her dress was little more than rags, it did little to hide the suppleness of her body. Even in her dire situation and with the contempt toward her accusers that hardened her expression, her heart-shaped face and fire-red hair radiated beauty.
Her right hand was grabbed, and the butcher cut it with a knife to draw blood. This blood was then marked on the forehead of a small, timid-looking man who stood next to the frau, and who must have been her husband. Once the blood was spread over his forehead, he yelled out that he was no longer bewitched.
“This witch’s spell has been broken,” he exclaimed. He turned to look at the frau and with a forced smile added, “I no longer desire her, but once again only desire my dear wife!”
“There never was any spell!” the red-haired young woman insisted. “Herr Brunnow is a lecher who has many times tried to put his hands on me! The only reason he has had little desire for his wife is because she is shaped similarly to a hog!”
The wife in question stepped forward to slap this young woman but instead fell to the ground in convulsions. That seemed to be the final straw and the young woman was dragged away while others went to the aid of the convulsing victim. Karl, the man of reason who had tried earlier to argue sense to this mob, stood by helplessly and watched.
I could barely believe what I was seeing. Marking a victim of a bewitching with the witch’s blood to break a spell was an old wives’ tale that had long ago been forgotten, and here it was being dragged out again. Was I the cause of this? Was my being seen in other cities and villages the cause of this resurgent belief in witches? I watched, dumbfounded, as the wood cottage the young woman was thrown into was set ablaze.
They were going to burn her alive.
Without any thought of the consequences I rushed out from my hiding place. At first there was little more than looks of dumbfounded amazement on the faces of the members of the mob in front of me, then several of the men tried to block my advance, but once I knocked them aside, the others ran off. I kicked in the door of the burning cottage and dashed in without breaking stride. The young woman inside lay collapsed on the floor. The fire had yet to consume her, but the smoke was thick inside, and it must have been suffocating her. Although my eyes began to tear badly and the flames licked at my body, I made my way through so I could carry her out to safety. I held her in my arms as I ran from the burning cottage. Once outside, my path was blocked. Many of the men had armed themselves with pitchforks and other weapons and stood waiting for me. The frau still lay flopping around on the ground as if some unseen force had a grip on her and was shaking her like a child would a rattle. Her husband ignored this to point a bony finger at me and shout that I was proof that the woman was a witch. That the Devil himself had come to rescue her.
I slung the young woman over my shoulder, and as the men came toward me with their weapons I batted them aside—not hard enough to kill them but hard enough to send them flying. Soon a path opened up before me and I ran, ignoring the shouts and curses of the men behind me. Within seconds I entered the forest and the safety that it offered. I kept running until I had left the village far behind me. When I came to a clearing and a soft bed of grass, I lay the young woman upon it.
She was unconscious and her breathing remained shallow. While my field of study was chemistry, I had a small understanding of medical procedures, and understood that her breathing was being restricted by the smoke that she had inhaled. I needed to breathe fresh life into her or she might perish where she lay. Gingerly I opened her mouth and blew air into her. After a minute of this she began coughing, and I backed away from her. When she opened her eyes and they focused on me, a dismal look weighed on her features.
“Am I in Hell?” she asked, her voice weak, the effects of the smoke still heavy on her. “Is that why Satan is standing over me?”
“I am not Satan,” I said. “I am a passerby who rescued you from the mob who tried to burn you within your cottage. You are still alive and of this earth.”
She closed her eyes, and for a long moment I became worried that the fire had ended her life regardless of my efforts. But I detected that she was still breathing, even if only shallowly, and her eyes opened again. This time they held a dullness to them as she stared at me.
