The Wish Giver

by Bill Brittain

  But Henry just laughed. “Silly goose,” he replied, tweaking her nose. “What would the Neverfail Farm Implement Company think if they found their best salesman going off to parties instead of tending to business?”

  Rowena sighed. She was sure Henry liked her. If only he’d come right out and say so.

  “Almost dark,” Henry said. “I’d best be getting back to Miz Ballentine’s.”

  “Can’t you stay just a little longer?” Rowena pleaded.

  “I expect your pa would like you inside and me gone. I’ll just cut across the backyard. Until tomorrow, Rowena.”

  And without waiting for a reply, he stepped off the porch.

  Two more days, and then Henry’d be gone again for another six months. Rowena couldn’t bear the thought of it. From the pocket of her best dress she took out the card she’d placed there yesterday. She pressed her thumb firmly against the red spot and made her wish:

  “I wish…I wish Henry Piper would put down roots here in Coven Tree and never leave again!”

  The spot on the card suddenly felt warm against her thumb.

  Henry had disappeared into the darkness. In the still night air Rowena heard a rustling sound. It was accompanied by grunts and groans and heavy breathing, and it seemed to be coming from the thick grove of trees back where the lawn ended and the fields began. At first Rowena thought it might be some wild critter who’d gotten tangled with a tree limb.

  But then she heard the voice. It was little more than a whisper: “Consarn it! Rowena, come help me!”

  Rowena seized a lantern from the porch, lit it, and held it in front of her as she crossed the backyard to the grove of trees. They grew in a circle, and their tangled branches made it hard for her to enter. Finally she forced her way in and held the lantern high.

  There stood Henry Piper, mumbling angry words. He was bent over, and at first Rowena thought he was pulling up his sock. Then she saw it was the ankle itself he was yanking up on.

  “Henry?” Rowena gasped. “What are you doing, lurking about here? I thought you’d be halfway back to Miz Ballentine’s by now.”

  “Keep your voice down, Rowena. I…I don’t want anybody else to come out here and find me in this fix.”

  “Fix? What fix, Henry?”

  “It’s my feet. They seem to be stuck to the ground. And I can’t move either of ’em, no matter how hard I try.”

  “Henry, are you spoofing me?”

  But Henry wasn’t playing any joke. He stood in the center of the circle of trees with both feet planted firmly together on the earth. From the look on his face, Rowena could see he was plain, deep-down scared!

  “I’m stuck, I tell you,” he said in a quavering voice. “It’s like I was glued to the earth. You’d better get me loose right quick, Rowena Jervis.”

  Rowena knelt and looked carefully at Henry’s feet and ankles. They didn’t seem to be caught in any trap. She grasped his right leg and yanked up hard. Nothing happened.

  “I’ll get Daddy,” she said. “Maybe he—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Henry replied. “If word of this gets out, I’ll be a laughingstock in the whole county. I’ll be finished as a salesman. You just keep your mouth shut and get me loose. Try wrapping your arms about me and lifting.”

  Rowena got behind Henry and threw her arms about him. For months she’d yearned to have her arms around Henry Piper. But not when something like this was happening.

  She heaved upward. For all the good it did, she might as well have been trying to haul a full-grown tree out of the ground.

  “It…it isn’t working, Henry.”

  “Then do something else,” he ordered.

  “Rowena!” It was Mr. Jervis, calling from the back porch.

  “Yes, Daddy?”

  “Are you out there with Henry Piper? That young jackanapes never did say good-bye.”

  Rowena was about to say yes when she saw Henry scowling at her. “No, Daddy!” she called back. “I’m alone. I’ll be right in.”

  “Don’t you dare let on to your father that I’m out here,” Henry whispered through clenched teeth. “I never felt so foolish in my life.”

  “I won’t tell. But I must go inside. Can I do something to make you more comfortable, Henry?”

  “I’m chilly. I need a coat or something.”

  “I’ll just go in the house and…”

  “No! Your pa will get to wondering. Get something from the barn.”

  The only thing Rowena could find was an old horse blanket. She wrapped it around Henry. “That should keep you warm,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll be out first thing and bring you breakfast. Or maybe you’ll get free in the meantime.”

  Henry sniffed at the blanket and wrinkled his nose. “Phoo!” he exclaimed. “This old thing stinks of hay and horse sweat. Haven’t you got anything cleaner?”

  Rowena glared at him. “You said you didn’t want me to go into the house, Henry.”

  “Then I suppose it’ll have to do.”

  Rowena ran off toward the house, while Henry clutched the smelly blanket close about him and tried to stop the chattering of his teeth.

  Rowena didn’t sleep much that night. She was too jittery and upset—and a little scared—by what had happened. Henry Piper, stuck to the ground—had ever there been such a thing before? By morning she was so logy and puff eyed that her mother wondered if she was sick.

  “No, Mama. Just a bit tired.”

  As soon as she could, Rowena sneaked out to the grove of trees with a doughnut from the breakfast table. Henry stood there, shivering in the blanket.

  “I brought you this, Henry,” said Rowena.

  “A doughnut,” he sneered. “If it wasn’t for coming to see you, I’d be down at Miz Ballentine’s right now, eating ham and eggs. All you’ve got is an old doughnut. Well, I don’t need it.”

  “You’ve got to eat, Henry.”

  “I feel like I’ve been eating all night. Only the food came up from my feet instead of down from my mouth. What in tarnation has happened to me, Rowena?”

  “Henry, I really think I should tell somebody—”

  “You just keep that mouth of yours shut, young lady!”

  “Henry Piper, you never in your life talked to me like that before,” said Rowena. “But…well don’t start worrying. We’ll get you free. Let me find you something to sit on.”

  “I’ve got every right to worry,” Henry replied. “And as for sitting, I can’t do it. My knees won’t bend. I’m stiff from the waist down. Never mind a chair. Just get rid of this smelly blanket.”

  “All right, Henry. But then I have to go to school. I’ll come back, soon as I can.”

  “You’d better,” said Henry sternly. “I’m stuck on your property, so you have to look after me until I get loose.”

  Rowena walked out of the grove of trees. Suddenly she turned and stuck out her tongue at the spot where Henry was standing.

  The school day passed almost like a dream—or a nightmare. Afterward Rowena ran all the way home, hoping to slip in the back door without anybody seeing her. But Mama was in the kitchen.

  “Sit down, Rowena,” said Mrs. Jervis. “I want to talk to you.”

  Rowena put a hand to her lips. Had Mama discovered…?

  “Did you pass the grade school on your way home?” Mama asked.

  Rowena shook her head. “I took the short cut. Why?”

  “Clara Fessengill came by today, and she said Polly Kemp was croaking like a frog in school. I thought you might have heard—”

  “Oh, Mama, you know Polly. She’d do anything to get attention.”

  “No, Clara said it was like Polly couldn’t help herself. As if croaking had taken the place of talking.”

  “Clara Fessengill’s an old gossip…” Rowena began. Then she suddenly closed her mouth, and a little shiver ran up her spine.

  “Excuse me, Mama.” Rowena darted through the back door and out of her mother’s sight. Polly Kemp, acting strangely—P
olly who’d sat right next to her in Thaddeus Blinn’s tent. What was going on?…

  In the midst of the circle of trees she found Henry just as she’d left him. No, not quite the same. “I seem to be losing my voice, too,” he told her in a harsh whisper. “You’ve got to get me loose.”

  “But how, Henry?”

  “Maybe you can pry me free. Get that long branch there.”

  Rowena got the branch.

  “Now bring it over here.”

  Rowena did as she was told.

  “Can’t you move any faster, Rowena?” Henry wheezed. “Now slide the end of it under my foot. No, you ninny, not that end! The other one. Goldurn you, Rowena, stop being so infernally dumb!”

  Could this be the same Henry Piper she’d thought was so marvelous only yesterday? “I’m doing the best I can,” she said.

  “Well, your best isn’t all that good. Now get a piece of wood—not that one, dad-blast it, that one! Stick it underneath the pole. Take it easy there. It feels like you’re tickling my foot.”

  Rowena was too upset by all the orders Henry was spouting at her to wonder how he could feel tickling right through the sole of his shoe. “Now push down on the pole,” Henry went on. “Push harder, you silly…oww! What are you trying to do, cripple me?”

  “You told me to pry, Henry. I’m prying. I can’t keep things straight when you’re giving me all those orders at the same time.”

  “You’re just like all the rest. Not enough sense to boil water.”

  All the rest? All what rest? Rowena wondered. But before she could ask Henry, she heard another voice behind her.

  “Rowena, I thought I seen you in here, and…what the dickens!”

  Sam! With a guilty start Rowena turned to face him.

  Sam scowled at Rowena. “Have you and Henry been sneaking—”

  “No! It’s not like that at all.” Suddenly it was important to Rowena that Sam understand what she and Henry were doing in the grove. “Henry’s feet got stuck to the ground somehow, and—”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet they did,” muttered Sam. “Well, I’ll pry him loose in a hurry.”

  Sam put his whole weight on the lever. Henry’s cries of pain were oddly muffled, as if they came from a distant valley.

  “Hush up, Henry,” said Sam. “D’you want to get loose or not?”

  Finally Sam had to give up. “I guess you’re right, Rowena,” he said. “Henry’s stuck fast. It’s eerie. I never saw the like before…. Do your folks know about this?”

  “No, and you ain’t gonna tell ’em, either,” said Henry.

  “Don’t you be giving me orders, Henry,” Sam said. “Now, if we’re going to get you loose, we first have to see what’s holding you down.”

  Sam took out his jackknife and knelt at Henry’s feet.

  “Sam, you be careful,” Henry said. “It’s scary enough, just being stuck here. I don’t want to get cut, too.”

  “Hmmm. That’s odd,” said Sam.

  “What’s odd?” asked Henry.

  “Your shoes. Leather’s all cracked. It looks for all the world like bark on a tree. And the bark goes clear up to your ankles. Well, I’ll soon cut you loose.”

  Sam thrust the knife blade under Henry’s right shoe.

  “Aaarrghhh!” Henry’s scream wasn’t very loud, sounding like he had a blanket wrapped about his head. But Rowena gasped in alarm.

  “You hurt me, Sam,” Henry whimpered. “You cut my foot with your knife.”

  Sam looked up. “Henry, I swear I was digging way down below the sole of your shoe and—”

  “Sam, look at that!” cried Rowena, pointing. “That red stuff on the blade of your knife. It looks like blood.”

  “Blood!” shrieked Henry as loud as he could. “My blood!”

  “But how could…?” Sam began. Then he started digging below Henry’s shoes with his fingers. It was slow going, but finally the earth beneath Henry’s right heel had been scraped away.

  “Look there, Rowena,” said Sam. From the bottom of Henry’s foot were growing…

  “Roots?” Rowena asked, astonished.

  “Roots,” Sam replied.

  “You mean Henry is rooted to the ground like a…a tree?”

  “It seems so. And if we cut those roots, it’d be like stabbing a knife into Henry’s body. It might even kill him.”

  “Don’t do it, then!” moaned Henry. “I don’t want to die!”

  “But what could have caused Henry to grow roots and…?” Rowena began. Then she started trembling and shaking all over as she finally understood the thing she’d done to Henry Piper.

  Roots! Rowena had said the word before, just a short time ago. Last night on the porch—she’d pressed her thumb onto the spot on the wish card and wished…wished that…

  …Henry Piper would put down roots here in Coven Tree and never leave again!

  “Oh, Sam!” Rowena cried as tears filled her eyes. “Ooohh, Saaam!”

  “And…and then I wished on the card that Henry’d put down roots here in Coven Tree. But all I meant was for him to stay put and not be a traveling man anymore. Instead he’s got real roots, and he’s stuck!”

  Rowena barely finished telling Sam and Henry about Thaddeus Blinn’s magic before she burst into bitter tears. “Oh, Sam, what am I going to do?”

  But neither Sam nor Henry was listening. Sam was looking at Henry like he was seeing a dragon or an ogre or some other mystical beast. And Henry was staring with fear and trembling at his own bark-covered ankles.

  “Henry did put down roots. Real ones, just like you asked for,” said the awestruck Sam. “Magic—that’s the only thing that could have done this.”

  “Just like Polly Kemp’s croaking,” said Rowena. “She got one of the cards too, and it must be the same magic that—”

  “Never mind Polly Kemp.” Henry’s voice was like the rustle of wind through leafy branches. “What about me? I’m the one who’s stuck here. And it’s getting worse all the time. Bark’s creeping up my legs. I’m getting stiffer and stiffer. Food seems to be coming up to me from the roots growing out of my feet. And now it’s getting hard for me to talk.”

  “Sam,” Rowena moaned. “He’s turning into a…a…”

  “A tree,” said Sam.

  “Rowena, do something!” Henry yelled hoarsely.

  “Calm down, Henry,” said Sam. “None of us have had much experience with magic. It may take a bit of time to figure something out.”

  “But I haven’t got time,” Henry said. “I’m changing…changing….”

  “Maybe I should go looking for Thaddeus Blinn,” said Rowena. “Maybe he’d come back and revoke the wish. He’s only been gone two days. He can’t have gotten far.”

  “No,” said Sam with a shake of his head. “A human couldn’t go far. But Blinn seems to be a creature of magic. He could be on the far side of the moon by now.”

  “Then maybe Daddy or Mama could think of something.”

  “Most likely you’d just start ’em worrying, and they’d spread word about Henry all over town,” Sam replied. “Then we’d have people milling around out here and either laughing at Henry or else giving advice that isn’t worth a hill of beans. I say we keep this to ourselves. Rowena, you were the one who took the card from Thaddeus Blinn, and you made the wish on it. So you’ll have to find a way to release Henry from the spell. Nobody else can do it for you.”

  “And hurry!” Henry added.

  “But I can’t think of anything,” said Rowena.

  “Then the least we can do is make Henry comfortable until you come up with an idea,” said Sam. “Maybe if we pulled up the weeds around his feet, it’d help.” Sam Walked in a circle about Henry. Then he bent down and picked up a leather case from a clump of weeds. “What’s this?”

  “That’s what I keep my catalog and order blanks in,” Henry said. “Don’t you go opening that, Sam Waxman.”

  “All right, Henry. I’ll just put it in the barn where it won’t get wet. Rowena, yo
u start pulling those weeds.”

  As Sam left the clearing, Rowena began yanking at the weeds. Henry started giving orders like a slave driver. “Don’t get too close to my feet, Rowena…. Take bigger handfuls, Rowena…. Pile ’em over there, Rowena…. There’s one you missed, Rowena….”

  “Henry Piper, you shut your face!” Rowena snapped suddenly. “I’m doing the best I can. Don’t you think I feel bad enough without you jawing at me all the time?”

  “You’re to blame for me—”

  “I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way. Oh, Henry, whatever happened to all the nice things you used to tell me about how pretty I was and all them fine places you visited? If I’m at all special to you, you shouldn’t be carrying on this way, even if your feet are stuck to the ground.”

  “Special? That’s a laugh.”

  “But the way you used to talk, I had to be special, Henry.”

  “Listen, Rowena Jervis: I’d have said you were Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba if that’s what I had to do. Anything so you’d tell your papa how nice I was and I could sell him more machinery.”

  “Henry, you…you can’t mean that!”

  “I do mean it! Fall in love with you? D’you think I’m an idiot? You’re nothing but a silly, lovesick goose.”

  “And you are a worm, Henry Piper!” Rowena cried out. “If I’d known for a second you didn’t mean all those fine things you said, I’d…I’d…”

  “You’d never have made that stupid wish. And I’d be free instead of stuck here talking to you.”

  “I’ll get you free somehow,” said Rowena through clenched teeth. “If only to see you getting aboard the train and headed out of town. Forever!”

  “But until I get loose, you’ve got to care for me, Rowena. You’ve got to do anything I want.”

  “But only until I find a way to remove the spell. After that—well, you’d just better watch out, Henry Piper!”

  Sam walked back into the clearing. He carried a paper sack, a bucket of water, and a small spade. He took a handful of powder from the bag and sprinkled it around Henry’s feet.