The Girl Gingerbread in the Woods of Winter White

by Bethany R. Lindell

  Her thoughts quieted as she worked, the sound of the whetstone cutting through her inner confusion. Gradually, questions surfaced like slow fish.

  The Piping Witch spoke in my dream, came the first one as she scraped the stone along the blade. I've had that dream for ten years—longer—and she's never so much as cackled. I enter her woods and suddenly she gets chatty? She pressed down hard enough sparks snapped off the whetstone. Her sword vibrated a growl that traveled up through Gingerbread's bare hands. She paused, finding that newly discovered stillness and holding it tight. Her whetstone hung forgotten over her sword.

  She began the rhythm again. And then there was that boy, she traveled on to safer questions. He looked at me. Spoke to me! Or pointed anyway. Phantoms never know I'm there. They see as well as ordinary people do. Was he a real ghost then, like Clatch thinks?

  Gingerbread frowned as she worked. How did he know Katri was there? Ghosts don't care for the living. Why would they if they aren't in their house or prodding at them with divining rods?

  She tried to remember what the boy had looked like, but his picture was hard to hold in her head. He . . . looked the same as earlier, when his dog was with him, right? No, no I think the eyes were different. And he didn't, I don't know, wisp about like the others do, their legs always turning to smoke when they move and all that. I could pick out every hair on his head, like he had . . . substance.

  Gingerbread frowned harder, lines sinking deep into the skin between her eyebrows. Ghosts didn't have substance. They're ghosts. Transparent, wispy, the remains of a person rather than the remains of a body. They're just as much echoes as the phantoms, only they retain enough of their living selves to be angry about it.

  Her frown lines softened. The boy wasn't angry. He thought I had a tin head for not listening to him, but he wasn't angry. I could see that in his eyes.

  The memory of those eyes flashed through her mind like light in a dark place. They were different. His eyes didn't belong to a lost child. They were older. More like someone who knew loss and grief and pain and let it go because he had learned something else that made it all unimportant. Something beautiful. Something amazing. Something just . . . more.

  Gingerbread couldn't look at those eyes anymore. Even in her memory they stared at her, waiting, asking her a question she wasn't ready to answer. She squeezed her eyes shut so tight purplish-red blotches danced beneath her eyelids, finally blotting out the boy's eyes. This is not the safe question I wanted.

  She blinked her eyes open and found her hand empty. Where's my stone gone . . . ?

  There it was, buried in the snow. She reached down and fumbled it back into her shaking fingers.

  "It's just the cold," she told herself, blowing hot air over her exposed hands to warm them. The shaking still took its time leaving.

  We found Katri after that, and got her back inside Numina's safety in time, which is what matters. Her eyes slid over to the cluster of tinkers waiting near Katri's family wagon. The door was still shut.

  The girl will be fine. Gingerbread returned to her work. We got her back in time, although it was a close thing . . .

  She tried not to think of it, but the memory was as stubborn as the boy's eyes. Her fight with the Piping Witch rose up from the back of her mind, consuming her with every detail. Her sword weighing down her arms as the air moved past her in the witch's wake. The burn of Dearie's embers on her leg. Gingerbread had felt them all, like she felt the wind on her face and the ground underfoot.

  Gingerbread reached down and lightly touched her fingertips to her leg where the Piping Witch had burned her, but found her skin smooth and unbroken.

  She was there, Gingerbread told herself, striking the stone hard against steel. Her nails hurt me. Her fire burned me. Just because Clatch didn't see her doesn't mean I imagined everything.

  But then there was the unicorn. Clatch should have felt its death whether he saw it or not. Unicorns had an old beauty like that. You know they stand by keeping watch, like stars on a cloudy night. But Clatch didn't even sense a whisper of its glory. Katri didn't even roll over in her sleep, although Dearie could have had something to do with that.

  She paused, tilting her head as she thought that through. Could the Piping Witch have hidden the unicorn somehow? Blotted out its presence? She knows enough to blot out her own from Clatch's senses, but can she do the same for a unicorn?

  Gingerbread frowned. I don't know how. But I don't know how she couldn't either. I think the unicorn's glory should have shone brighter so close to the sucking lack that surrounds Dearie. Not that I know one way or another . . .

  It must be this place, Gingerbread told herself as she flipped her sword over and began the rhythm of stone and steel on the other side. The Winter Whites had their own presence before the Piping Witch came. That's probably what drew her here in the first place. She must be using it to amplify herself somehow. That might even explain the change in my dream.

  Gingerbread paused as she suddenly remembered. And why the witch said the same thing when I fought her in the wood! I knew I heard those words before!

  Her satisfaction at finally placing them died quickly. I don't dream things before they happen, or I never did before. Something else new. Joy. She rolled her eyes. I already have a second sight. Am I growing some kind of foresight to go with it?

  Gingerbread brought the whetstone up from the tip of her sword with a piercing note and shook her head. "What a nuisance."

  But it was by far the least frightening conclusion she could think of.

  She laid the whetstone against the hilt, trying with desperate concentration to only think of the rhythm and the succession of notes as she sharpened her sword. The snow, her own lonely tracks and no others, her vanished wounds when Gingerbread knew she'd bled. The fact Clatch had felt nothing . . . Either the Piping Witch left those marks and vanished them along with herself or I fought her only in my mind. It can't be both ways.

  Is this what it's like to go mad . . . ?

  Her hand shook as she brought the whetstone up off her sword, making the last note quaver. You knew this was coming, she told herself. Ever since Mother set her fire. It's an inescapable fact. Dearie having her last laugh against the family that killed her. But does it have to be now? Panic welled up in her lungs like well-water to drown her. I'm only fifteen. Dearie consumed my whole life and now she gets to take my mind too before she kills me? It's not fair!

  The words slapped her self-pity away. Gingerbread jerked up. Her eyes stung as the world turned wet, but the tears evaporated against the heat of her eyes before they could run down her face.

  Don't whine. Since when is life fair? she asked herself, mouth souring. You should have expected this the moment you realized you couldn't escape the Winter Whites. Gingerbread frowned. Why didn't I?

  An ache started in her fingers, seeping down into her wrist. Gingerbread looked down and found the whetstone clutched tight between her white fingers. She forced them loose and slipped the porous stone back into the pouch at her waist.

  She was just tugging her gloves back over her wrists when a squeak and slam behind her shook the camp. Katri's father stood gripping the lower door of his wagon with rough hands, leaning out of the top half. White clouds obscured his mouth as me panted.

  "She's awake! My Katri's all right. She keeps asking about her stupid goats and the lambs, if they're warm enough. She's all right!"

  Someone pushed him from behind, and he undid the lower latch with clumsy fingers. His cousin had to steady him to keep him from falling to the snow.

  Old Nan followed him out, her great-niece at her elbow. She beamed down at the tinkers and every one of them sighed their relief.

  "Girl won't even lose any toes," she gummed past her few remaining teeth before creeping her way down one step. The old woman stopped to gather her balance before tackling the next.

  Most of the aunts and nieces followed her, leaving Katri inside with her mother. The men pounded each other on the back
, Clatch somehow keeping his feet when Katri's father slapped his shoulder as he thanked and congratulated and thanked him some more before jumping back through the wagon door.

  Clatch glanced up and caught Gingerbread's gaze. He stiffened before turning away.

  Gingerbread let herself feel relief, but her thoughts kept spinning in her head leaving her dizzy and sick. She leaned forward off the borrowed stool and threw two of the logs waiting nearby on the fire. The tinkers would remember the cold now that they knew Katri was safe.

  The wind picked up, making the underfed flames gutter and hide under the logs until it passed.

  "Don't huff. It's unbecoming," Gingerbread said as she lifted her sword off her knees and slid it back into its sheath. "Katri is safe, especially from you."

  The wind rolled against her face in little waves of silent laughter.

  Gingerbread narrowed her eyes against the wind until it fell flat. The light between the trees glowed with an inviting stillness.

  I can't avoid it, she thought as her gaze pierced the trees. My future is gone. I will lose my mind and it will kill me. But I will not let her steal my soul along with the rest of me.

  "You made a mistake breaking my mind, witch," Gingerbread said to the wood. "Now that I know I'm crumbling, I don't have to worry what else you're going to take from me. I'm going to make sure I drag you down with me now. And I promise you, you stole your last child."

  Still, nothing moved. The fire dared to flicker out of hiding and soon lapped up the sides of the logs, snapping and crackling merrily.

  Gingerbread read the Piping Witch's answer in the hollow light between the trees.

  We'll see about that, my girl.

  THE CARAVAN WOUND THROUGH the Winter Whites with more care than the day before. Katri's disappearance had frightened the older ones, and they kept a closer eye on their children.

  Makes my job easier, Gingerbread thought where she sat next to Nikolas in the lead wagon. Only Clatch and the hunter Friedrich ranged out ahead of them, searching for small signs of danger that the cumbersome wagon wheels would obliterate. Even Nikolas remembered now that snow and ice were just as dangerous as witches, although it didn't keep him from talking.

  "It wouldn't surprise me if all your stories come from here, Girl Gingerbread," he said as they guided the wagon train through the Winter Whites. "All this frozen tundra to get lost in, barely any animals to live off of. Scores of people must have gotten lost in here, never to return. Your Winter White's reputation could be saved with a decent map and a good compass!"

  He boomed laughter that had Friedrich flinching into a crouch. The hunter scowled back at Nikolas but held his silence as he continued pacing the snow in cautious, even strides. He passed the phantom of the young mother collapsed against a tree without batting an eye, but Gingerbread's stayed with her as she rode by. The woman's strength had all gone, used up just to get this deep into the wood, but she still rasped out frantic calls for her stolen child. She couldn't be thirty.

  "Mm," Gingerbread grunted as they passed the poor woman, but didn't say anything else, afraid of encouraging Nikolas to talk more. She kept feeling his sideways looks as they clattered along and knew he was trying to draw her out of her shell.

  His eyes stared at the side of her head, but Gingerbread stubbornly ignored him. "You are terribly quiet today, Girl Gingerbread," he said.

  Gingerbread didn't answer, listening to the gentle ringing of Klingeln's harness bells. Nikolas waited on her, his expectant eyes on her ear.

  "I'm always quiet," she said to put him off.

  "Yes, but never terribly so." The bench creaked as Nikolas leaned toward her. "Is it young Katri that bothers you? You heard the old woman, she won't even lose her toes."

  Nikolas chuckled, but his relief took up as much room as the rest of him. Gingerbread sat squashed on the bench between the pair of them.

  "My ears work well enough, Nikolas," Gingerbread snapped. "I'm sure the girl will be as fine as the rest of us, although how well that will end remains to be seen."

  Nikolas didn't rise to her bait. "Then what bothers you, Girl Gingerbread?"

  "Nothing," she snapped. "I'm just tired, Nikolas."

  The harness bells rose, jangling sharply ahead of them. Gingerbread sat straight up in her seat and Friedrich froze in his half crouch as Clatch tried to soothe the reindeer snorting and stamping in the snow. "What's wrong with her?" Nikolas called out.

  Clatch pulled at Klingeln's harness, pressing her furry sides with his legs to try to regain control of the large animal. "I don't know. I didn't see anything."

  Klingeln's antlers fouled up in one of the lower pine branches and knocked loose a storm of icicles. Clatch cut himself off with a gasp and threw an arm up to protect his face as they fell across his head and shoulders.

  "Nicholas!" the big man cried, standing from the bench and nearly tipping the wagon with his weight.

  "I'm all right!" Clatch was already calling back, waving his arm as Klingeln huffed and snorted. Snow dusted up around her hooves as she pranced sideways, preparing to bolt. Her eyes roved wild with fear.

  Friedrich leapt and caught the strap laying along the reindeer's cheek before she could gather her weight on to her back legs. She rose up on them instead, trying to throw off the small man and Clatch clung to her back.

  "Blasted beast, stamping at nothing!" Nikolas said as Friedrich lunged for the harness and dragged Klingeln down with his full weight. The bells along her harness rattled. "Get off her, boy, before she takes off with you! Losing a reindeer is an annoyance but losing you-"

  He expelled a great breath of air instead of finishing his sentence when Clatch's boots hit the snow with an icy kush. Clatch smiled breathlessly at his step-father over Klingeln's back. "If she bolted with me on her, I would guide her back," Clatch assured Nikolas. "And the icicles all caught on the wool of my hat."

  He took off the warm hat and shook it out, scattering icicle tips and ice dust through the air in a glittering cloud. He shook out his hair as well before jamming the wool cap back over his red ears.

  Gingerbread sighed in quiet relief. No visible scratches.

  Nikolas snorted as loud as the reindeer. "Stay off her, boy. If she wants to knock loose icicles, she can very well get herself killed. She doesn't have to take you with her." Nikolas shifted on the hard bench before jerking his thumb out behind them at the stalled wagon train. "Now put her with the others. You're holding up the wagons."

  Clatch shook his head as he led Klingeln passed and Gingerbread spied his small smile. Her gaze followed him, hidden beneath her eyelashes. She waited for him to look up and share the joke with her, but he kept his eyes down until he passed.

  The air trapped in Gingerbread's throat turned brittle. It crackled against the roof of her mouth. Good, she told herself. He's better off this way. You know that. Otherwise, he would be around to watch you lose your mind. Is that what you want? No.

  It didn't stop her throat hurting, but she knew it was still true.

  Nikolas made a disgustingly sympathetic sounds. "Ah . . . so that is your trouble."

  Gingerbread's eyes cut to the big man. He stiffened, just enough to give Gingerbread a mean sense of victory.

  "What are you imaging now Nikolas?"

  The lead tinker chuckled as he tapped the reins against the horse's back. The wagon jerked forward, lurching Gingerbread against the bench's wooden side. "Lots of things, at every moment." He nudged her with his meaty elbow. "Why didn't you just say you and my boy had a fight?"

  Gingerbread rolled her eyes to the trees marching past them and thumped her chin on top of her fist. "Because we didn't." She didn't mean to say anything more but her irritation bubbled inside her, percolating to a froth between her ears. "And what business is it of yours if we did?"

  Nikolas's bright eyes blinked at her over his beard. "Past the fact he's my boy? You and I are friends, Girl Gingerbread."

  "You mean 'employer', Nikolas."

  "I am th
at too, but that does not mean I don't worry when something is wrong with you. So tell me, what did you fight over?" He swept a large hand, inviting her to unburden herself.

  Sparks spit from Gingerbread's eyes, biting against her cheeks. Blast them! Her temper boiled over.

  "We're not fighting! I told you, I'm simply tired, Nikolas! Tired of repeating myself to you a thousand and one times how tired I am!"

  Nikolas kept his nearest eye on her, the other vaguely attentive to the road ahead. He closed them both and shrugged. "Very well, you're tired. So sleep."

  Gingerbread scoffed, crossing her arms beneath her half cloak and slouching against the wagon to watch the trees with half-lidded eyes. "You don't pay me to sleep."

  "True," Nikolas conceded as he nodded his head, "but you did us a great favor last night, finding Katri. And there are more than enough wary eyes watching now."

  Gingerbread stared at the road, unconvinced. Nikolas only waited a breath before shouting, "Sleep! What good are you to us with your eyes so dull and heavy, eh?"

  He grinned at her, beard twitching. Gingerbread stared him down, but her eyelids drooped.

  "Fine," she said, then jabbed a sharp finger at him. "But you wake me if so much as a snowflake falls."

  "Yes, yes," Nikolas agreed too readily, waving off her words. "Just sleep, girl."

  Gingerbread eyed him another moment before flipping her hood up over her head. The fur trim caught the glow of the trees, granting her relief from the constant light. The wagon bench bit into her side, but the rocking of the wheels soon lulled her out of her full awareness. Gingerbread dozed, her eyelids falling but refusing to close entirely. All was quiet. She had pointed the tinkers as far from the deep wood as they could go on their clunky wagon wheels and the phantoms stayed quiet, only a handful drifting through her line of sight . . .

  Without her sense of time, she didn't know when she first noticed the presence following them. It appeared like moonlight shining from behind thick clouds and grew fuller with every step, until it became a steady companion walking on the other side of the trees. Gingerbread tried to turn her head and catch a glimpse of it, but her body felt so heavy she couldn't move.