Ring of Fire(84)

"Yep. Ain't it great! The CEO's office is just sitting there, ready for us to move in."





Nissa eyed him carefully. "Us, Claude?"





"Us, Nissa. I'm not talking anything permanent, unless that's what you want." There was a twinkle in Claude's eyes as he continued. "What d' ya say? Wanna shack up?"





Nissa's laughing assent was punctuated by her punching his chest.





A Matter of Consultation


S.L. Viehl




"Now I know how Hansel and Gretel felt." The spring breeze had Sharon Nichols buttoning her jacket as she eyed the forest. Her paramedic training hadn't covered hikes through the woods. "How did they find their way out? With a trail of bread crumbs?"





"They torched the witch and ran." Anne Jefferson also scanned the tree line. A registered nurse, she'd grown up in the backwoods of West Virginia, and unlike her friend felt almost at home. "Not an option today."





Ragged stumps lined either side of the forest path, but the woodcutters had barely made a dent in the dense groves of oak and birch. According to rumor, none of the locals went into Thuringenwald unless they desperately needed firewood, venison, or the witch.





Their patients didn't need chopped wood or deer meat.





"One thing." Sharon glanced sideways at the nurse. "Becky said if she lives in a gingerbread house, she's got dibs on the chocolate. All the chocolate."





Anne grinned. Some of their needs were serious, while others—like Rebecca Stearns's pregnancy cravings—were just plain painful. "Fair enough, but if she's got anything that even remotely resembles coffee, it's mine."





The forest canopy made the air lacy with sunlight and shadow, as disparate as the well-endowed, dark-skinned Sharon and the pale, redheaded Anne. Oddly, the sight of a black woman and a white woman together didn't seem to shock the natives as much as what they wore. Their clothes, like both women and a huge chunk of the town of Grantville, West Virginia, had traveled back in time to land in the middle of seventeenth-century Germany.





Time would eventually catch up. In three hundred and seventy years.





The carpet of twigs, dead leaves and moss grew thicker, and made crunching sounds beneath Sharon's sneakers. "You really sure this witch can help us?"





"Mathilde said Tibelda was the only decent healer the prostitutes in Jena had, before the burghers drove her out." Anne didn't think much of those upstanding citizens, not after hearing what they'd done to many of the refugee women from Palatinate. "Her knowledge of the area alone could save us a lot of time and foraging."





"I hope so." Sharon ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch. "Why does she live all the way out here by herself?"





"Remember how twitchy these people are." Anne paused to adjust the straps on her backpack. "A cow drops dead, the local healer gets blamed, then someone starts piling up wood and asking who wants extra crispy or original recipe."





"Better keep that in mind, nurse." Sharon tilted her head and squinted. "I think I see something up there."





The cottage that appeared around the next bend wasn't made of candy, but the mud-brick walls and thatched roof looked solid enough. A large patch of ground on one side had been cleared to make way for a thriving garden. As they drew closer, Anne smelled freshly cut rosemary, and spotted some familiar white and pink flowers in the garden's front row.





"See those?" She pointed out the blooms. "That's yarrow. It's an excellent astringent and coagulant, and even works as bug repellent. This is definitely the place."





"Why do we need her?" Sharon asked as she went to knock on the front door. "You know more about plants than anybody."





Anne thought of her grandmother, who wouldn't be born for three centuries. "We need her. This is her turf, not mine."





The door opened an inch, and a suspicious eye peered out. "Was willst du?"





"Guten morgen, Frau Tibelda." Being more fluent in German, Anne handled the introductions. "Mein name ist Anne Jefferson, könnten sie mir bitte helfen?"





The door opened to reveal a gaunt, elderly woman wearing a plain peasant's dress. A faded cloth covered her hair with the ends knotted under her prominent chin. She gave both women the once-over, uttered something scathing, then shut the door.





Sharon frowned. "What was that?"





"She said she doesn't perform abortions." Now Anne hammered on the door. "Bitte, Frau Tibelda, ich bin Englisch Krankenpflegerin!"