Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales

by Diane Duane

  Zingiber? What the heck is zingiber? Brianna peered at the index listing. Page 966 —

  She paged back through to the entry in question and found herself looking at a double-page spread of strange roots like clutching hands, as well as a fair amount of leafage in odd shapes. Zingiber. The genus containing the true or “common” gingers used in normal spicery, as well as the uncommon gingers (Z. castrava, Z. amnemosyne, et al) used in magic. All varieties originally native to mainland Europe but now widely imported into the New World and Asia for use in sorceries involving mindchange, persistent illusion, edulent work, and fast-growth imaginary constructs. Also used for routine herbal medicine (as a carminative and sialogogue, and for stomach disorders) and culinary purposes (e.g. Asian food, confectionery [gingerbread, etc.])…

  Brianna sat staring at the page. Gingerbread?!

  Her mind went instantly back to the shelf of fairy tale books that still sat above the headboard of her bed. In her mind’s eye Brianna could see the image of two kids standing hand in hand in front of a little cottage with dark golden-brown walls, the windows made of rock-candy glass, the shutters piped around with ornate icing designs, the roof hung with sugary icicles. And outside the gingerbread Dutch door, a little old bent-over lady in a shawl, beckoning them in. Down the years, from the memory of the faintly scandalized eight-year-old witchlet staring at the illustration, the verse floated: “Nibble, nibble, little mouse; who’s that nibbling at my house?”

  When she was eight she had mostly been indignant about how the witch looked. “It’s just a stereotype, honey,” her daddy had said while she sat on his knee and he read her the story. “They didn’t know any better. We know witches aren’t like that.” And she did know it, since her dad was a witch of great experience and skill, living successfully in both worlds and never needing to catch and fatten up any little kids for the table. Nonetheless, that little house had stayed on her mind for a long time. Something about the candy-cane drainspouts, I think.

  Now, though, that house suddenly meant about a hundred different things. Stereotypes. Legend. Heritage. The image you can’t escape, Brianna thought, and can’t understand. The one you try to ignore… unsuccessfully, because it’s just too popular and keeps popping up no matter how many times you try to whack it down.

  There it was, hanging in front of her mind’s eye along with that ancient illustration, but far more glorious in prospect. A short exhibit on the history of the archetype, some illustrations and other-cultural referents—and then standing there by itself, in the middle of the school gym probably, The House. Gingerbread, candycane drainspouts, and all.

  Then Brianna slumped back in the chair. But this is so old….

  She was about to chuck the book to one side when, resolute, that confident voice in her head said, So old that it’s new!

  Brianna stared at the book. But think of all the work, and all the time sorting out the details will take. You couldn’t build a house out of gingerbread. Not really.

  Could you?

  Brianna sat there, no longer really seeing anything around her as she thought. All her mind was taken up with the image of The House. You know, she thought, nobody could have made that up. Someone, some witch, did that. Someone saw it, once. And then the story got passed along verbally…until the Brothers Grimm heard it. And wrote it down, just as they heard it: yet another crazy thing that witches did. Leaving out the cannibalism, of course, which (as Brianna knew from her history of witchcraft classes) came from a different set of mythologies, further east, and had gotten itself embedded into the German motif-set somehow.

  But it doesn’t matter. What old witchcraft did, new witchcraft can do. After all, we’ve got all these new techniques and technologies, so much better analysis of how and why spells work… And it’s Heritage Week. If the project pulls in witchy heritage issues along with the science aspect—

  Brianna sat and thought about that. Synergies. Miss Levenson, her arcane- and parasciences teacher, was all about synergies. Her favorite word. She would absolutely okay this.

  Brianna pushed the book aside and jumped up out of the chair to go upstairs to the storybook shelf in her bedroom. As she passed Mick by, she said, “You know what?”

  “What?” He picked up his pot and turned away from her to dump the spaghetti into the colander.

  “You may just have been right,” she said. “I may just let you live.”

  “Aww, and after I was all set to look into the puppy fat thing for you,” Mick said, making what he apparently thought would pass for big puppy eyes at her.

  “I emphasize the ‘may’,” Brianna said. But she still punched him lovingly in the head on the way out of the kitchen.

  ***

  Being Brianna, all that evening she changed her mind back and forth at least six times about the virtues of this project versus the magic sword. Absolute certainty was not something she had a rep for. But by morning, the gingerbread was beginning to grow on her. Eww, Brianna thought as she got dressed—and she was taking unusual care over it, wearing all new clothes that no one had seen—gingerbread growing on you, weird image, didn’t need that one! The gingerbread project did have this virtue: it sounded good. It had some depth to it.

  Assuming, Brianna thought as she walked up through the school’s front gates, I can get some of these concrete details worked out first. The size was an issue, and there was always—

  —Arthur, standing there by the front doors, with the usual gaggle of adoring ones around him. Brianna’s heart sank. Not what I wanted to be dealing with just yet, I haven’t even had homeroom! She swallowed, and then just went by, letting them see the new skirt and the stylish new shirt-top, perfect for one of those cool Salem mornings: headed on through, acting like she had places to go, people to see.

  “Brianna!” Arthur said as she went by: the tone of voice being half Looking-good,-girl! and half did-that-for-me,-did-you? And there was just enough emphasis on the second half of the tone to push her right by him with a smile that was maybe a little more cursory, a little cooler, than she’d originally intended. She could hear the murmur from the other girls gathered around him, and then a couple of giggles.

  She blushed again, got annoyed over it as she made her way in and down the hall to where her locker was. Never mind, Brianna thought, shoving some books in, taking out some others, now the ball’s in his court. I’m not going to chase him. He has a chance to catch up with me after homeroom. I’ve got an optional free period then: he knows that.

  Homeroom came and went, with the usual subdued gossip and people muttering about unfinished homework or some long-prepared research spell that had gone wrong at the last minute. Brianna sat through it, eager to get out the door and find Arthur waiting for her there in the hallway. When the bell rang for people to go to their first period classes, Brianna lingered, in no rush to be first out. But when she finally meandered into the hall, there was no sign of Arthur.

  Ooookay, she thought, we’re playing it cool. Never mind: two can play at that game. And Brianna headed down the hall and back toward the parascience wing.

  The library was on her way. Brianna paused in the doorway of the glass-walled space and leaned in, looking down between the shelves. “Miss Mona?” she said.

  The librarian put her dark-haired head out from behind a shelf further down the room. “Who— Oh, hi, Brianna.”

  “Miss M, can I hang onto this for a little longer?” Brianna held up the Materia Magica. “I think I’m onto something hot.”

  “Sure, you go ahead. If anyone needs it, I’ll message you.”

  “Thanks—”

  Brianna slipped out again and headed down the hall. She had a couple of stops to make with her other science teachers to clear what she had in mind: that took only a few minutes each. Then Brianna headed toward the labs. They were split between the newer science annex and the older rooms, some of the ancient lead-surfaced lab tables with their arched faucets and little sinks bearing many scars of spells that had gone
wrong: near the glass window looking into Lab 3 was the table that had been turned entirely to stone the time the basilisk got out of its hood. Down past there were the newer lab and technical parasciences rooms: and the first of these, seen through its windows to the hall, looked more like a kitchen than anything else. Brianna pushed the door open and swung in, glancing around.

  She couldn’t think when the subject, or the room, had last actually been called “Home Economics”. These days the class was called “Family and Consumer Science”, and was an elective, taught only for a quarter semester every year because its uptake was just so small. There were usually a few guys who got involved with it, seeing it as a gateway to some kind of career in food service management, and a few girls who were usually already excellent cooks and felt like taking a class that would be no effort for easy credit.

  “Mrs. B?” Brianna said, standing there and glancing around. The place was empty—there were normally no classes this early in the day. “Mrs. Baldwin?…”

  No answer. Brianna was just turning to go when, in the middle of the room, between two of the stainless-steel cooking demo stations, a cloud of black smoke burst up from the floor. Out of it, a moment later, walked Mrs. Baldwin, fanning the air in front of her a little.

  She peered at Brianna through the smoke. “…Wilkes, isn’t it?” she said. “Brianna Wilkes.”

  “That’s right.” It had been a couple of years since Bri had taken Home Ec, but Mrs. Baldwin was as famous for her memory as for her other oddities, which stuck out somewhat even at Salem. Mrs. Baldwin seemed sometimes to be genuinely rooted in some other century—only visiting or working in this one because the pay and benefits were better. And if there was a teacher in the place who genuinely looked like a witch, it would have been Mrs. Baldwin—though of course no one would have dared say as much to her, since she also taught the Power Potions class without ever referring to a text, and no sane person was going to get even slightly rude to a person who could keep that kind of dangerous stuff contained in her head. She did, however, wear shawls and strange-looking old gingham dresses; and she had the somewhat wayward white hair, the classic longish nose, the classic “crone’s” narrow chin, those little wrinkled eyes… as well as a complete disdain for the magical “plastic surgery” that could have left any thoughtful witch looking her waist size instead of her age. No one was clear why Mrs. Baldwin was so insistent on letting her body look so traditional, especially in Salem. But anyone who thought about asking her probably also immediately thought about the Power Potions class, and shut up.

  “So what brings you in today?” Mrs. Baldwin said, moving over to one of the demo stations to turn on one of the cooking hoods and clear the smoke away a little.

  “I need some advice,” Brianna said. “I want to build a classical witch’s gingerbread house. Full size.”

  “Why, goodness, Brianna dear,” she said—and Brianna blushed because it was so bizarre to be called “dear” by a teacher—”doesn’t a gingerbread house seem a little…retro?”

  The word “retro” itself surprised Brianna, coming from Mrs. Baldwin’s mouth. “Well,” Brianna said, “right out of the box, I guess so. But say ‘witch’ to half the population, at least in the same sentence as ‘fairy tale’, and they’ll say ‘gingerbread house’. Seems like a cultural slamdunk as a Heritage Week project.”

  This line had worked as well a few minutes ago with Mr. Johannson, the General Arcana teacher who was coordinating the Parascience Fair entries, as it had with Brianna’s own parascience teacher Miss Levenson. Now Mrs. Baldwin blinked at her thoughtfully. “Unless,” Brianna said hurriedly, “you think it was just a myth…”

  “Oh, not at all,” Mrs. Baldwin said. “That kind of thing wouldn’t just occur to some 17th-century peasant out of the air, as a rule. It’s the construction that’s likely to be a problem.” She pulled out a lab stool and sat herself down on it.

  “I did some research last night,” Brianna said, “and some of the sources aren’t even sure it was actually made of gingerbread. Some versions of the story just say ‘bread.’”

  “I know,” Mrs. Baldwin said, “but it probably was gingerbread. Bread was considered holy in those days: staff of life and all that. But specifically, you have to put salt in bread, not just to make it palatable, but to stop the yeast from working before you bake.”

  “And salt’s one of the antimagic elements,” Brianna said, “like plain cold iron and running water.”

  “So there you are,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “You try building a magic house out of bread, you’re going to run into trouble. Early gingerbreads, though, wouldn’t have had salt in them: not just so that the flavor of the ginger wouldn’t be interfered with, but because there was no yeast or other leavening to worry about—they were more like cookies than cakes. The cakey gingerbreads decorated with gold leaf and all that fancy whatnot didn’t start turning up until the eighteen hundreds.”

  “Oh,” Brianna said, and pulled open her notebook again to start making notes. “Great! So… how do you build a gingerbread house with magic?”

  Mrs. Baldwin blinked at her. “One big enough to house an old woman and a couple of kids,” she said, “and an oven big enough to shove one of the kids into when he gets fat? Brianna dear, I’m a cook, not an architect. I’ve done a lot of regular gingerbread houses at Christmas time, with magic and without… and believe me, even a little one with walls no taller or wider than a cookie sheet can be a nuisance to keep standing. All mine needed cardboard reinforcement layers. I don’t even want to think about how much marshmallow fluff I used as mortar last year. Or how long it took me to get it out of my hair.” Mrs. Baldwin actually shuddered. “And as for what they used in the old days, well, I doubt they had marshmallow fluff… so your guess is as good as mine as to what spells or mortar they used. Do tell me what you figure out.”

  “Uh,” Brianna said, “okay…”

  She went out sadly. And it was all looking so promising until now, Brianna thought. I don’t have time to work all this out from scratch. If I just did a miniature one… But that would be lame. Especially after what she’d had in mind for the magic sword: the real thing, full size. This would just be too much of a comedown, and once again her rep would suffer.

  Outside the Home Ec lab door she paused, looking up and down the hall and wondering where to go with this next. More research, she thought. It’ll have to wait until the afternoon: I’ve got Spell Construction next. Or else just dump the whole idea and go see if the magic sword thing is still alive…

  She sighed, and strolled, and thought: and then off to the left, as she passed the organic parachem lab, something caught Brianna’s eye.

  She paused. What the heck is that? Brianna thought. On the lab table nearest the door to the hall stood a perfectly clear construction, like glass, spiraling up three feet or so from some kind of pedestal. At first Brianna thought it was some kind of strange lab glassware she’d never seen before—something left over from one of those rainy-day situations where Mr. Donswitz the parachem instructor started hauling out his alembic collection. But no, there was just this twisted column of glassy stuff, sparkling slightly around the edges with the greenish-white sizzle of the remnants of spell artifact: and standing there, watching it, a guy in jeans and a T-shirt and a jeans jacket, his arms folded, looking vague.

  Brianna stood still and tried to remember who he was, but she couldn’t find a name to pin to the face. It was a nice enough face, under shaggy, not-quite-stylish hair. A Salem student, yes, but not one Brianna had ever spoken to. “He’s in a different circle,” was the way Brianna’s crowd at Salem would usually put it—meaning a different social circle as well as a different magical one. On the surface, the saying might just indicate a preference for a particular kind of witchcraft. But normally, truly, it meant somebody was too dumb, too plain, too angry, too weird, too… different.

  He looked up at her now, and Brianna was startled by the intensity of the gaze: blue, like almost everythin
g else about him, but not the worn blue of the denims. A paler blue, like early sky or cold water: uncertain. Or if there was certainty, it was the kind that was thinking, This is going to go wrong too, isn’t it.

  Brianna blinked, and then pushed the lab door open. “Uh,” she said, “hi.”

  “Hi,” the guy said, looking slightly shocked.

  “You looking for Mr. Donswitz?” Brianna said, going over to the table and looking at the strange twisted thing. “I think he’s out this week.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Uh,” the guy said, “no. I just wanted to get this done before class started.”

  “What is that?” Brianna said. And then she laughed. “Sorry. I’m Brianna.”

  “Dirk,” he said. “Dirk Willis. Yeah, I know.” He looked up at the glass thing. “It’s called a barley-sugar twist.”

  “A what?’

  “Barley sugar. It’s a kind of candy they used to make in Europe. Sometimes they would make sticks of it that were twisted like this. But it’s also an architectural form: they named this style of pillar out of the candy—”

  “Barley sugar,” Brianna said, staring at it. “Is this actually sugar??”

  Dirk laughed, looking embarrassed. “Uh, yeah. It’s a pun: I did it to win a bet. Someone in my physics class bet me that nobody could actually make a weight-bearing one out of sugar. Dumb bet.” He said this with satisfaction, but no malice. “See the way this twists, three times in twice the twist’s width– “ He pointed at one section of the pillar. “It’s incredibly strong. DNA has the almost same twist: the main difference is that the interior bracing in DNA is more obvious. It’s another echo of the helical shape that keeps turning up in nature…”

  Brianna stood there nodding and looking at the column. Inside, though, she was seeing once again that image from the storybook on the shelf over her bed. Not just the gingerbread house, itself, but the detail. The candy slates on the roof, the sugar-glass panes in the windows, the porch. With pillars that looked like this—

  Brianna looked at Dirk, who had his head a little on one side, and was eyeing his creation while he talked like someone already wondering whether there wasn’t something wrong with it and whether it could be improved. “…not really about sugar, though, but they were always giving it weird names. They also called it the Salomonic column, but it didn’t actually have anything to do with King Solomon. It was just that in the Vatican there are these two big columns, and they were supposed to be the original front columns from the great Temple in Jerusalem, their names were Boaz and Jachin, and they—“