She wrenched open the door. Outside the dense canopy of trees blocked out all moonlight, barely allowing a blinking star, so that all was Stygian gloom. Gretel felt herself hesitate, balking at the awful blackness. She was still clutching her candle stub, but it was a pitiful glowworm of light against such darkness. She would later consider that it was that hesitation that nearly cost them everything.
Hans shouted out, “My hat!” and dashed back into the room for it, his rucksack slung over one shoulder.
In that second, Zelda reached the bottom stair and sent a swift spell to slam shut the door, flinging chairs before it to form a barricade.
Gretel realized that they were trapped. She and Hans—him clutching his rucksack and beloved hat—backed up as far as they could against what had only seconds before been their escape route. Zelda, eyes flashing, clawlike hands outstretched, advanced slowly and surely across the room toward them.
EIGHT
Now I have you!” cried Zelda.
“But why ever do you want us?” asked Gretel, hoping to play for time with talk while she thought of a way to flee.
“Especially me!” Hans piped up. “Why would you want me? I mean, really, I’m no use to anyone. I can understand you wanting Gretel, of course, mind like that could come in handy, but me … ?”
Gretel stepped sideways to tread firmly on his toes. As she was in her boots and he was barefoot this resulted in an ooph followed by silence.
“What an opportunity!” Zelda went on. “Couldn’t believe my luck when I got your letter. All these long years I’ve tried to think of a way of luring you here, and then you write asking if I have a couple of rooms available for a night. Ha!”
“All these years?” Gretel frowned.
Hans found his voice again, though it was somewhat squeakier and quite a bit more trembly than when he had last had it. “You don’t mean to say … You can’t mean to tell us … You cannot possibly be … ? Can you? Are you? Tell me you are not!”
“Of course she isn’t, Hans, don’t be ridiculous.”
“But she might be!” He recoiled back against the stacked chairs at the very idea. “I mean to say, we never saw the you-know-what actually die, did we? She might have survived. She might have.”
Zelda gave an exasperated shout. “Of course she didn’t! You push a witch into an oven and slam the door, doesn’t matter how good she is at spells, she’s going to end up crispy and dead. My poor darling sister didn’t stand a chance.”
“Your sister!” chorused Gretel and Hans.
“That’s right. That’s who you so cruelly, cold-bloodedly murdered.”
Gretel drew herself up. “We acted in self-defense, no more, no less.”
“Says you.”
“We were children!” she pointed out.
“Who can be vicious, deceitful creatures. Everyone knows that.”
“As opposed to sweet, harmless, truthful witches, I suppose?” Gretel asked.
“Not all witches are wicked,” said Zelda.
“True, but your sister was. She kept us prisoner, mistreated us both horribly, and was planning to feast upon Hans, as soon as she had him fattened up a bit.”
At this point all eyes turned to stare briefly at the hugeness of Hans. It was hard to imagine a time when he had needed fattening up.
“We only have your word for that!” Zelda cried. She had begun to prowl back and forth in an agitated fashion, and Gretel noticed the worms and spiders and slugs and now rats that evidently shared her home start to gather behind her like a small, loathsome army. “For years I’ve had to watch you two made into heroes. Money from King Julian, stories in the paper, a free house, on and on and on about how clever you were and how terrible my sister was.”
“I’m sure she had her good points,” Hans ventured.
“Shut up, Hans,” Gretel hissed at him over her shoulder. “And start dismantling that barricade while I distract her. Go on!” She waited until she was sure he was cautiously removing one stick of furniture after another, stepping forward with her tiny candle so that his actions were hidden by the gloom. She reasoned that they were dealing with someone not entirely rational who was clearly harboring a grievance, and moreover resented all the attention she and Hans had received as children. Attention that, no doubt, she would have preferred for herself.
“I can see how that must have been galling for you,” Gretel said, taking a step or two toward the restive witch. It took all her nerve to do so, when her mind, body, and soul were screaming at her, quite convincingly, to run in the opposite direction. “I don’t suppose anyone spared a thought for a grieving sibling.”
“Indeed they did not! My only living relative, but did that matter? No! Was I offered any compensation for my loss? I was not! Cast out and shunned as the sister of a would-be murderess, and forced to move away.”
“Hence your globetrotting life since?”
“Oh, the idiots I had to marry in order to support all that traveling, when all I wanted to do was come home.”
Gretel was puzzled. “But this is not the same house, nor the same spot … ?”
“Of course not. I’d never have been allowed to return there and build a new one. When I finally got rid of husband number four …”
“… ah, the conveniently deep diamond mine.”
“Fool shouldn’t have been so trusting,” Zelda dismissed Herr Burgdorf with a rude gesture. “By then sufficient time had passed, and I had amassed a sufficient fortune, to be able to settle here.”
“And take in guests?” Gretel was mystified.
“I was biding my time,” Zelda explained with a smile that was far more terrifying than her scowl.
“For a way to get to us,” said Gretel. “An interesting cover, the lonely luscious landlady.”
“The enchantment was wearisome, and alas its range limited. Gesternstadt was beyond it, so that I could not appear at your door, no matter how much I wished to do so. Instead I had to wait, and to suffer such tiresome clientele.”
“One of whom was the sorcerer, Ernst Arnold, was it not?”
“He might have been,” said the witch, clearly reluctant to help Gretel in any way, however small, however late in the day.
“Well, if it hadn’t been on his map I would never have found your pretty little trap. He must have been here, else why would he have so clearly marked it?”
The witch’s smile broadened, treating her visitors to a view of teeth so ruined and blackened Gretel deduced the woman must have been nibbling on sugar candy and gingerbread every day of her life. “He had a sharper brain than you, it seems, for he encoded his chart beyond your deciphering.”
All at once Gretel saw the truth. “The mark of the cottage on the map—it was not a recommendation but a warning!” She silently chided herself for her own stupidity. Stupidity that had lead them into such terrible danger.
“I might have known,” Zelda was crowing now, “that you’d bungle your way here eventually. You and your oh-so-clever detective work. Pah! All I had to do was set my snare and wait. And wait I would, however long it took.”
“I don’t know whether to be astonished or flattered that you should go to such lengths, that you should carry such a grudge for so long. I think I am both.”
“I want revenge!” Zelda shrieked, which set up a screeching and squeaking from the rats, as well as a bit of sobbing from Hans.
The witch raised her arms and started muttering a hex beneath her breath. Gretel knew she had to act fast, but her options were limited. At that moment Jynx entered the kitchen and flew at Zelda, interrupting her spellcasting. Gretel hissed at Hans, “Get that door clear!” and was about to set to helping him when her candle stub disintegrated, spilling hot molten wax over her fingers.
“Ouch!” she yelped, dropping the burning remains of the candle. It fell not directly to the floor, but into the folds of her dress where it hung on the airer in front of the stove. She was alarmed by the ferocity of the flames that burst forth when the flame met the fabric.
The whole garment went up in a leaping, smoking woomph that instantly ignited the clothes draped next to it. Suddenly the room seemed filled with fire. And screams, not the least of which were her own.
She turned and pushed Hans at the doorway, the two of them with their untied terror barreling through the remaining items of furniture and batting the door out of the way. They fell out into the darkness.
“Run, Hans. Come on, get up and run!” she cried, hauling him to his feet.
Behind them the whole cottage was engulfed in flames with unnatural swiftness, as if the wicked magic that coated it was the most combustible material there could ever be. The gingerbread and barley twists might not have been real but still the air was filled with the smell of burned sugar. From inside the house came the sounds of Zelda screeching and cursing. Something sped through the crumbling doorway toward them. For a moment Gretel feared it was the witch riding her broomstick, but it was the sorcerer’s bat, his fur a little singed. He flitted round in wobbly loops, clearly suffering from the effects of the heat and smoke, before landing on Gretel’s wig, where he latched on tight to the strings of silver bells with his tiny claws.
Things began to explode inside the cottage. Gretel took Hans by the hand and the two of them ran for the cover of the trees. It was not until they were both utterly out of breath and unable to take another step that they sank down behind a fallen oak, crouching low, and turned to witness the final moments of the gingerbread house. The inferno lit up the black night, sending multicolored sparks and tongues of flame bursting high into the inky sky. It was a wonder the forest itself did not catch fire. Even the smoke was of a sinister and uncommon variety, stinking of burning candy and smoldering decay, mottled green and purple against the blaze. As they watched, the building fell in upon itself.
“Good heavens!” Hans gasped. “That has surely finished her!”
Gretel wanted to agree with him, but she had just noticed the darker smudge of smoke in a singular shape that escaped from the chimney seconds before the collapse of the cottage. It might have been nothing more than the contents of the kitchen going up. It was probably that, she decided, and not worth mentioning to Hans.
Deciding it best not to venture far without properly studying the map and regaining their wits, the duo trudged in what they hoped was a straight line until they could no longer smell the fire nor hear the crackling of the flames. They found a hollow tree, clambered into it, and passed the remainder of the night in fitful, dream-peppered sleep.
Gretel was awoken by a painful crick in her neck and the sharp light of a summer dawn. She unfolded herself from the tree, scrambling out to sit on a mossy rock. Hans puffed his way out after her, leaning back against the trunk of their makeshift boudoir.
“I say,” he rubbed his eyes as he spoke, “the birds in these parts kick up quite a racket. Bit early for such chirpiness, I’d have thought.”
“They have the advantage of heads free from the aftereffects of cocktails,” she pointed out.
“Well they might show a little consideration for the rest of us.” He groaned as a tuneful blackbird landed beside him and began welcoming in the new day.
Gretel pointed at the sagging, not to say squashed, rucksack still attached to her brother’s back. “What did you grab?” she asked. “Let’s see.”
He shrugged the thing off and delved inside, pulling out treasures one at a time. “Pack of cards … cigars … oh good, my lighter,” he said, pausing to test it out, then flinching as the flame reminded him of their narrow escape of the night before. He went back to rooting through the bag. “Some black bread … a bag of toffees, glad I thought to bring those … another pack of cards … and this,” he declared, emerging to hold up a loop of wire.
“Which is what, exactly?”
“The thing that will catch us breakfast, sister mine: a snare!”
“I see. And how many times have you successfully set a snare?”
“Well, none. Point of fact, I’ve never set one unsuccessfully either, which could be seen as giving me a 100% success rate. All a matter of how you view it really.”
“I view it realistically, Hans. Which means that black bread and those toffees are all we have between us and a diet of woodland herbs and water.”
“Don’t be so defeatist. I shall soon have us a plump young rabbit.”
“Oh? And how many of those have you seen since we entered the forest?”
“Well, none. But we wouldn’t, would we. I mean to say, they are shy creatures, born to move with stealth and guile and general all-around cleverness.”
“Which won’t keep them out of one of your expertly constructed snares?”
Hans gave a harrumph and selected a cigar from the box, leaning back, eyes closed against his sister’s disapproval and their difficult situation both.
Gretel took stock of their situation. They were lost in the woods, both dressed like imbeciles, without their precious camping equipment, and decidedly rattled after their encounter with the witch. She lamented the loss of her lovely linen dress, and then recalled how quickly it had become ablaze. What manner of dye did they use in modern fabrics, she wondered? She looked down at her nightdress, which was splattered with dust and filth from the cottage, and mud and woodland detritus from their night spent alfresco. Her poor lorgnettes were similarly encrusted with dirt, but otherwise undamaged. Her short cape at least provided a little modesty, and the map was still snugly in its pocket. Her boots, for all their ugliness, were a godsend. She put her hand up to test her wig. It appeared to have withstood the ordeal well, and was still in good shape, complete with all its bells and bows, and the addition of one small, slightly sooty bat. Hans, in his Chinese silk pajamas and Bavarian hat, looked like a lost player from an amateur opera group. Their supplies were pitiful. She had with her neither comb nor powder. Things had, on the face of it, come to a pretty pass. Still, there was the map, Hans’s lighter for starting a fire, and food enough for half a day.
She unfolded the map, laid it on another mossy stone, and smoothed out the worst of the crumpling. After wiping her lorgnettes she was able to scrutinize the finer details the sorcerer had drawn and noted. The general area of the forest was plain to see, with its points of ingress and egress. The main path was marked clearly, along with tributary routes and dead ends. There were worryingly vague patches bearing words like “tight” or “boggy” or “tricky,” and rather good sketches of wolves and bears at irregular intervals. She looked again at the witch’s house. It was depicted as a simple woodland cottage, though now that she examined it more carefully she noticed a curious symbol drawn upon the door. Presumably it would have meant something to someone of a sorcerous ilk. Tracing their journey with a finger she worked out that they were not, in fact, far from the path, and could rejoin it a little way on. They would then be able to continue in the direction marked. She estimated that, with luck and a following wind, they had three days’ marching ahead. They would have to sleep where they fell, and hope that Cornelius Staunch’s tracking skills were up to finding them before they succumbed to hunger. The endpoint on the map was cloaked in mystery, with swirls and curious emblems the significance of which she could not fathom. After the revelations regarding the witch’s cottage, these took on a sinister aspect to Gretel’s eyes. But the point was evidently important to the sorcerer. It was, she was certain, where he would have gone on his secret sojourns. It was, she was equally certain, where she would find either the man himself, or the answer to the question of his fate.
She got stiffly to her feet. “Come along,” she said firmly. “We have a job to do, Hans. And if we want to eat proper food and to ever get out of these woods, this map, and this case, are the things that will deliver us. We go on!”
NINE
Fifteen minutes of struggle through the undergrowth did indeed see them reunited with the main path, which gave Gretel hope that they could, after all, navigate accurately with Ernst’s map. The day was hot, so that neither of them felt the absen
ce of proper clothes particularly, but Hans was suffering the hazards of walking without shoes. His progress was punctuated by cries and yelps as he trod on thistle or nettle. Soon, however, he learned his painful lesson and scanned the ground ahead for safe places on which to step.
Jynx, after the exertions of the previous night, slept inverted, dangling from Gretel’s wig. However much she disliked the appearance of the thing against the pale beauty of her headdress, she could not deny that he had been instrumental in their escape from the witch. It seemed he too wanted to find the sorcerer, and had decided that sticking with Gretel—or possibly with the map—was his best chance of being reunited with his master.
As they walked on, Gretel noticed the character of the woods begin to alter. The trees were planted closer together, blocking out more of the summer sun. There was a predominance of pine, spruce, and larch now, with the broader-leafed trees fewer and smaller. The flower-filled glades disappeared altogether, and with them the smell of roses and small, sweet flowers. Instead the pungent smell of pine began to catch in the back of Gretel’s throat.
They ate the bread and most of the toffees during the first two hours of walking. At one point Hans happened upon a briar and filled his hat with juicy blackberries, which sustained them for a further two hours, and left them both with purple-stained mouths. They drank from brooks and springs when they came upon them, with Hans bemoaning the lack of ale and Gretel dealing with the growing urgency of needing an impromptu water closet of some sort. Eventually she had Hans stand guard while she crouched behind an ivy-clad tree.
“Who am I guarding you from?” Hans asked.
“Not who but what.”
“What?”
“Bears perhaps. Or wild boar. Or wolves,” she explained.
Hans gasped. “Is that when they get you, wolves and whatnot? While you are so indisposed? Seems like unfair play to me.”
Gretel emerged from behind the tree, hoping the leaves she had used in place of paper did not turn out to be poison ivy. “I doubt such animals have been taught the rules of polite society, Hans. We are beyond any such etiquette here.”
The Sorcerer's Appendix Page 8
