Read Online Gretel by Christopher Coleman - Free Book Online Page A

hope in The System and their rules, which apparently required at least another full day for her mother to remain missing before they began a search. And when they finally did, Gretel guessed, they would do so under the assumption that their mother had left them for bluer skies and a new life, and not that she was in trouble or dead. Okay. That was fine. At least they would be looking. It was more than she and her family were doing now.
    Gretel’s hatred for her father flared with this thought and again she became disgusted with his lack of masculinity and fortitude. She knew her mother would be doing more for him if the situation were reversed, and even if he was hurting physically this morning—which no doubt he was after the chaos of last night—his wife was missing, and he should never give up.
    As if on cue, Heinrich Morgan opened the door to his bedroom and walked out, passing through the kitchen to the porch where Gretel had first heard the news of her mother’s absence only yesterday. Yesterday. It seemed like weeks, and Gretel’s spirit was momentarily buoyed by the brief time span.
    Heinrich put on his boots, still muddy and wet from last night’s search, and walked toward the door.
    “Where are you going, Papa?” Gretel’s voice was calm, sympathetic.
    “Check on your brother in a few minutes, Gretel. He’s in the fields.”
    “Where are you going?” she repeated, this time with more urgency.
    “You know where I’m going. Check on your brother.” Her father opened the door and walked out toward the truck, Gretel right behind him.
    “I’ll come with you, Papa. Let me help. Last night it was too dark, but today—”
    Gretel’s words were interrupted by a voice Gretel hadn’t heard come from her father’s mouth in quite some time.
    “You will stay and check on your brother as I’ve instructed! That is what you will do!” Heinrich frowned and opened his mouth as if to say more, then gingerly stepped up into his old pickup and drove off.
    As Gretel watched him drive away, the tears came again in force, though this time in silence. She watched until the truck was out of view, confirming that her father was indeed heading north to the Interways, and then walked back to the house where she sat down on the porch again and began to thumb slowly through her dead grandmother’s book.
    It was a rather ridiculous waste of time, she thought, looking through the book, since she couldn’t read a word of it. But it comforted her and made her feel more connected to her family somehow.
    According to Deda, the symbols and letters that made up the text were similar to Ancient Greek, and the book itself contained the practices and mythologies of a religion hundreds of years older than Christianity. How he knew all this without being able to read it was still a bit unclear to Gretel, and her grandfather had deflected the question during their powwow in his kitchen. Clearly he had some familiarity with the language, or perhaps her grandmother did, and had explained it to him. Either way, as Gretel now reflected, he had been holding something back.
    Gretel tried once again to decipher the sentences, recognizing that many of the letters in the book were the same as they were in English—the ‘A’s’ and ‘N’s’ and ‘T’s’ and such—but it was all gibberish, and her light-hearted stab at amateur cryptography left her brain sore.
    Still, the age of the words and the feel of the book kept her rapt, and she looked through the pages slowly, as if actually reading. The book kept her mind off her mother—and her father for that matter—and she suddenly felt very grateful that her grandfather had encouraged her to take it.
    Orphism .
    She would research the subject the next time she went to town and could stop in the library. Or maybe she would ask some of her teachers when she returned to school, though she doubted any of them would be familiar with such an exotic text.
    If she and her family had still gone