Forceful Justice by Blair Aaron

from God's way. Elsa, still laughing at Priscilla's reaction to her joke, looked over at the twin girls, immediately recognizing their familiar glare when they were up to no good. Elsa caught her breath, folded her billowing dress down, and sat on the edge of the bed.
    “Ok,” Elsa said, “let us see what thing you have stolen from Father O'Grady's shed again.”
    “Oh no,” Sarah said, fighting back a snicker, “this is not from the shed,” while the other sister dug through a cloth bag, tossing aside the thousand things in her way.
    “It's so dark in here, Elsie. I'm afraid I lost it,” Sarah said, the twin digging in the bag.
    “You can't serious Sarah,” her sister said. “This is the best thing we have ever gotten for our collection.”
    Elsa watched them toss the conversational ball back and forth, her anxiety growing as she anticipated just what “thing” the girls had stolen. While she waited, she tried to make a point to them about the consequences of breaking their moral code not to steal anymore. “You were so young when you developed the habit,” Elsa said, as she waited. “We--that is Father O'Grady and I, along with the rest of the community--thought you might grow out of it. Girls, it's wrong to steal, you know this. You could hurt someone.”
    “Here it is!” Sarah said, ignoring Elsa's warnings. She pulled out a rag folded over some mysterious object, and presented the ball of cloth to Elsa, both the girls' expressions resembling that of a cat who had caught a rat and wanted to show their prize to their master. Elsa took a deep breath, and took the present from Sarah's outstretched hand, trying to guess what the cloth hid beneath its layers. She slowly opened the folds of the cloth to reveal crushed red ivy, folded in an irregular, ugly pattern.
    “Girls,” Elsa said, trying to catch her breath. “Where did you get this?”
    “What is it?” Priscilla said, trying to peek. “I want to see.”
    Sarah smiled without hesitation. “We got it from the man in the woods.”
    “Ohmmmmm,” Priscilla said. “You should not have done that. Oh you're in trouble now.”
    “Do you mean the man who apparently saved Lili?” Elsa asked Sarah, her eyes dilating with panic.
    “Yes ma'am!”
    “Oh dear God,” Elsa said, dropping the ivy down onto the floor. Priscilla, though the same age and stature as Elsa, possessed a mind far younger in years than her body. Priscilla approached the wad of cloth laying there on the floor, and it seemed to all of them, the ivy nestled in the rag waited for each of them to hold it, as a baby who's been separated from its mother might. All four girls stood there in silence, before Elsa told them what they were to do.
    “Sarah and Chloe, you made a grave mistake. How many times has Father O'Grady made it clear we are not to go near the edge of the forest?”
    Sarah could see trouble was on her horizon, again. “Yes, but you don't understand. We didn't get the ivy from the woods. We got it from the man who came out of the woods,” she said.
    Elsa thought for a second about the man whom she watched last night, lying in the grass, unconscious, as Father O'Grady sent for medical help to bring him to shelter. The image which had been burned into her mind from the moment she laid eyes on him, a fact Elsa had unconsciously ignored, did indeed feature a beautiful, yet poisonous red ivy encircling the contours of his comatose frame. Her mind raced, attempting to separate the different potential reasons she panicked so strongly upon realizing she was so close to the red ivy. She wondered if Sarah's gift made her nervous because it came so recently from the magical woods that surrounded their village and therefore might still exude intoxicating influences. Another reason, however, might be that the plant and its evocative color reminded Elsa of a still stronger emotion regarding the stranger who ventured into their tiny community, an electric feeling she had put in the back