Gretel Pushes Back

by Joan Holub

  She crossed the room in her stocking feet. Just as she was about to open the bedroom door, she heard the witch talking to someone in the cottage’s main room. Who else was here? she wondered. What if her dream hadn’t actually been a dream and Hansel had somehow followed her to this cottage!

  No, the other voice was a woman’s, she realized as she listened in. “What are you up to, Emelda?” it was saying.

  Gretel eased her door open a crack and peeked into the kitchen. Emelda was wearing her witch hat and was sitting at the kitchen table, partially facing the bedroom door. Before her a smallish crystal ball about the size of an orange rested on the tabletop. She was conversing with someone inside the ball, but Gretel couldn’t make out the person’s face. Her voice sounded familiar, though. Then it struck her. It was Mistress Hagscorch!

  “You listen to me, sis,” the GA cook was saying. “If that girl isn’t back at the Academy by this afternoon, I’m going straight to Principal R with my suspicions.”

  Whoa. Mistress Scaryscorch sounds angry! And suspicions? What is that about? wondered Gretel.

  “Now, Cora, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emelda replied in a soothing tone. “What makes you think that girl is here anyway?”

  Gretel’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Mistress Hagscorch’s first name was Cora? And by that girl, did these two mean her?

  Before she could think further, Mistress Hagscorch — Cora, that is — went on. “Don’t you play innocent with me. I’m your twin, remember? And I can always tell when you’re lying.”

  Twins? No wonder Emelda was practically the spitting image of the Academy’s cook except for her one green eye. Gretel had dismissed the resemblance earlier, thinking they only looked similar because they were both witchy and old. But what did Mistress Hagscorch think her sister was lying about? Was it just the fact that Gretel was here at the cottage?

  Just then a sneeze came over Gretel. She tried to stifle it, but wasn’t fast enough. “Ah-ah-achoo!” The force of it rocked her back onto her heels.

  “Later, sis,” she heard Emelda say abruptly.

  Leaping lollipops! Why did she have to get sneezy just then? Gretel sprang back from the door as the thump of the woman’s walking stick came toward the bedroom.

  “You up at last, lazybones?” Emelda called through the door. There was a harsh edge to her voice that hadn’t been there at all yesterday evening.

  Gretel froze, staring at the doorknob and hoping it wouldn’t turn and push the door open even wider. “Almost. Be out in a minute,” she finally managed to squeak. If Mistress Hagscorch and Emelda were twin sisters, that must mean Emelda was a witch after all! Because Scaryscorch sure was. A shiver ran down her spine. However, she was beginning to sense that Mistress Hagscorch might be a good witch, at least compared to this one.

  It struck her now that Emelda had never claimed to be a good witch. She’d only laughed when Gretel asked if she was the good or the bad kind. “Don’t be silly,” she’d replied. She’d been avoiding the question!

  And suddenly, Gretel remembered the crystal ball in the Scrying classroom that Malorette and Odette had passed between them. For a brief second, she’d thought she’d seen Mistress Hagscorch’s face inside that ball. Had it actually been Emelda’s face, though? Could those grimmhorrible sisters have lured Gretel to that classroom just so this witch could catch a glimpse of her and listen in on what they were all saying? Had Malorette, Odette, and Emelda planned for Gretel to end up here? If so, why?

  Deciding escape might be wise, Gretel hunted around on the floor for her boots before recalling that she’d left them under the kitchen table last night. Well, she’d just have to do without them. She ran to the transparent-sugar window and tried to lift it, but it was sealed tight. She was about to punch a fist through it so she could climb out, when the door burst open.

  “What are you doing?” her host demanded.

  Feigning sleepiness and yawning theatrically, Gretel said, “I wanted to get some fresh air to help me wake up. Just trying to open the window.”

  Emelda scowled at her. “It doesn’t open. Come on, the air in the kitchen is fresher.” Caught, there was nothing Gretel could do but allow the witch to take her arm and steer her firmly toward a chair at the kitchen table. The crystal ball was gone now, she noticed. And the door was firmly closed.

  “Who were you talking to a little bit ago?” Gretel asked as she moved her feet around under the table, hunting for her hiking boots. They didn’t seem to be in exactly the same spot she’d parked them last night.

  Instead of admitting she’d been talking to her twin sister, Mistress Hagscorch, Emelda just shrugged. “Must have been the wind you heard.” It was, of course, a reference to Gretel’s pathetic attempt at a lie yesterday when she’d been caught eating a piece of the witch’s cottage.

  At last Gretel’s toes touched her hiking boots. She tugged them toward herself under the table, using her feet.

  Meanwhile, Emelda pulled a black cloak from a hook on the back of the kitchen door — a door that could lead to freedom if only Gretel could get through it. “I made oatsqueal for breakfast. Eat up and then come out back. I’m heating up the brick oven behind the cottage to bake bread later today and could use your help when you’re ready.”

  “Wait. Oven?” Gretel’s worst Hagscorch nightmare had just been rekindled. Where was this bread Emelda planned to bake? she wondered as she grabbed her boots and pulled them on. There was no dough rising on the kitchen counter. She supposed the witch could have made up the dough earlier that morning and taken the loaves outside already. Still, she had a very bad feeling about this!

  Emelda paused, her hand on the door. Quirking an eyebrow, she looked over her shoulder at Gretel. “Is there a problem?”

  “Um … it’s just that I really need to be heading back to the Academy,” she replied. “So maybe you could sketch me a map to show me the way?”

  Emelda threw back her head and cackled. “All in good time, dearie.” Then she picked up her walking stick from beside the door. “I’ll be outside. Don’t leave yet. You’ll never make it without a map and I’ll be happy to supply one if you’ll only help me with my bread first.” With a twist of the jawbreaker doorknob, she pushed through the door and outside.

  Unsure what to do next, Gretel let her empty stomach decide for her. A little breakfast might help her thinking skills. At the stove, she lifted the lid from the pot of oatsqueal and spooned a large helping of the steaming porridge into the candy-cane-patterned bowl her host had left for her on the counter.

  There was a small glass bottle of cinnamon mixed with sugar on the table, so after she sat down again, she sprinkled it onto the oatsqueal. Oops! She spilled some. As usual, she couldn’t seem to eat without making at least one small mess. When she began stirring the mixture into the oatsqueal, it let out a frightful shriek that startled her so badly she dropped her spoon. With a clink, clink, clink, it bounced off the table and clattered to the floor.

  Mistress Hagscorch’s oatsqueal also made a sound when it was being stirred — but it was a shrill sound, kind of like a cross between a badly played violin and a whistle. In Gretel’s imagination, the sound Emelda’s oatsqueal had made was more like the scream of a torture victim!

  After retrieving her spoon, Gretel washed it at the sink, and then she quickly gobbled down the oatsqueal. It wasn’t nearly as tasty as Mistress Hagscorch’s. Plus, it had big gray lumps in it. Clearly, Mistress Hagscorch … um … Cora was a better cook than her twin sister. No wonder Principal R had chosen Hagscorch over Emelda for the job at Grimm Academy.

  With her stomach full now, Gretel returned to the problem of escape and finding her way back to GA. At least now she had her boots and wouldn’t have to walk back in her stocking feet! Remembering what she’d overheard Mistress Hagscorch say about going straight to the principal with her suspicions if Gretel wasn’t back at the Academy by that afternoon, she doubted very much that Emelda had contacted him last night as sh
e’d promised. So maybe the first thing she should do was try to reach someone at GA herself.

  Jumping up from the table, she clomped over to the kitchen cupboards and began opening one after another to search for Emelda’s crystal ball. Was it possible that Hagscorch had found out about Malorette and Odette leading her into the woods and leaving her there? she wondered. Had the sisters admitted that they and Emelda had planned for Gretel to wind up at this gingerbread cottage?

  She poked through a cupboard filled with baking supplies such as sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder. Finding no crystal ball, she shut that cupboard, too.

  Think, think, think, she chided herself as she continued to search for the ball. If she was right that the two sisters and Emelda had plotted to bring her here, then for what purpose?

  “I bet it’s got something to do with E.V.I.L.,” she muttered to herself.

  Suddenly, she remembered about the porthole or portal or whatever, and what she’d overheard Odette say about it while hiding in the Bouquet Garden yesterday: “And now that the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker have finished building the portal (or porthole), it won’t be long till —”

  Till what? She was stumped again.

  Since she’d finished going through all the cupboards by this time, she started searching through drawers. Unless that crafty Emelda had taken it with her, the crystal ball had to be around here somewhere!

  Gretel thought back to other snatches of conversation she’d overheard two days ago when she visited The Tub for candles. “You can’t tell us you didn’t know what you were getting into!” Malorette had shrieked at the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. And Odette had added that they were “well paid” for their labor. Had those little men been working for Emelda? Maybe they had built this gingerbread cottage. One of the men was a baker after all. But she hadn’t noticed any porthole-shaped windows anywhere.

  Gretel straightened and slowly looked around the tiny cottage. If I wanted to hide a crystal ball where no one would think to look for it, where would I put it? she asked herself.

  Her eyes flicked to the icebox next to the stove. Hmm. She opened the icebox door and carefully surveyed the contents. A glass jar of what appeared to be eyeballs momentarily startled her, but on closer examination, they turned out to be pimiento-stuffed green olives. Phew! She moved the jar, a dish of butter, and a bowl of eggs aside. And finally, there behind them was the crystal ball. Grimmtastic!

  Hurriedly, she set it on the table. Then, using a general, all-purpose spell she’d learned in Scrying class, she called up an image of her dorm room at the Academy.

  “Crystal ball, give me a peek

  At the vision that I seek.”

  Red wasn’t in their room when the image of it appeared, however, so Gretel widened the view of Pearl Tower inside the ball to take in its central common area. As the image came into focus, she saw Red and her friends, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel sitting together on cushions or chairs, talking. Their voices were muffled, though, so she couldn’t tell what they were talking about.

  Frantically, she called out to them. Going quiet, they looked around in confusion, as if they had faintly heard her. But then, wavy lines began to run through the image in the ball, and seconds later it went dark.

  “Gretel? Where are you, you lazy girl? Get out here, now!” Emelda called from somewhere outside. Gretel’s heart leaped into her throat as she heard the thump, thump, thump of the witch’s walking stick coming toward the door. The jawbreaker doorknob rattled.

  She needed to hide the crystal ball — fast! As the door began to open, she rolled it across the floor like a bowling ball, sending it straight through to the bedroom she’d slept in. It came to a stop under the bed. Score!

  Emelda was now standing in the doorway, glaring at her. She tapped the tip of her walking stick on the floor impatiently. “Tick-tock,” she said, meaning that time was passing, of course.

  “Sorry. Can I just have another minute?” Gretel asked, trying to sound as apologetic as possible. “Your oatsqueal is just sooo delicious. Much better than the kind served at the Academy. I just can’t stop eating it!” she lied. She went to the pot and began spooning a second helping into her bowl.

  Emelda gave a snort, but Gretel could tell that it pleased her to think that her oatsqueal was better than her sister’s. “Well, hurry up and eat. We haven’t got all day,” she grumbled. “There’s only a small window of time before —” Her words petered out and she clamped her lips shut.

  “Before what?” Gretel asked, stirring her oatsqueal. Hmm. Window, she thought. I bet one of the cottage windows is the portal! But even if that were true, she wasn’t sure she was quite brave enough to try one of them and see where it might lead.

  “Never mind,” muttered the witch. She waved her stick in the air. “Just get a move on!” Then she turned away and thump, thump, thumped back outside.

  Time to make her escape! It was now or never, thought Gretel. She ran to the bedroom and grabbed the witch’s crystal ball to take with her. Once she was safely away from the cottage, she could try to use it to contact her friends again. In her haste to be away, however, she didn’t get a firm hold on the ball. It slipped from her grasp as she ran into the kitchen.

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed as it fell to the floor. Bonk!

  She expected it to break into a thousand pieces, but luckily it didn’t. Instead, it just rolled onto the rug beneath the table. As she dropped to her hands and knees to crawl under the table and retrieve the ball, she heard some faint thumping noises.

  For a second she went still, fearing that Emelda had returned. But then she realized that this thumping was coming from below the floorboards under the table.

  And then a muffled voice from below cried out, “Gretel, is that you?”

  She’d know that voice anywhere. It was Hansel’s! So her dream that he was here last night hadn’t been a dream after all!

  Gretel set the witch’s crystal ball on the kitchen counter. Then she shoved the table aside and peeled back the rug. There was a wooden trapdoor under it! Quickly, she pulled it open, only to find that an iron grate covered the opening below the door. Through the grate she could see a small room below. And inside it she saw Hansel!

  “Get m-m-me out of here!” he hissed, shivering with cold.

  “Don’t worry. I will.” She rattled the grate hard, but it wouldn’t give. Then she noticed the keyhole at the side of it and groaned. “It’s locked!”

  “So find the k-k-key,” Hansel urged her, his teeth chattering.

  Gretel jumped up and began to search the drawers again. Though she didn’t remember seeing a key while she was looking for the crystal ball, she could have missed it since she hadn’t been looking for one then.

  “How did you wind up down there? The witch?” she called to her brother.

  “Yeah. I didn’t wake up t-t-till just a little while ago. It was last night when she tricked me into this cellar, though.”

  “Cellar,” repeated Gretel, as she pawed through a drawer filled with odds and ends such as pebbles and twigs, bunches of dried herbs, and (shudder) bones! Ick. Why would anyone save bones? She hoped they came from a chicken, not a child! She slammed the drawer shut.

  Her brother, being the dictionary wiz that he was, felt the need to define the word she’d echoed for her. “A cellar is an underground r-r-room used to store root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and —”

  “I know what a cellar is. I just didn’t know her cottage had one,” Gretel interrupted as she reached into a cupboard. She lifted out a jar filled with brightly colored balls. Its label read: SOUR CANDIES.

  After giving the jar a shake and listening for the clink of a key, she pried its lid open. Instantly, the candies inside began to shout insults at her, such as “Your breath is so bad you’d make skunks run away” and “You’re so dumb it would take you an hour to make minute rice.” Quickly, she snapped the lid in place and shoved the jar back into the cupboa
rd.

  “Hey!” Hansel called out in a hurt voice.

  “Wasn’t me saying that,” Gretel explained. “It was a jar of magical mean-talking candies. Sour ones. Probably the kind Cinderella’s stepsisters eat! Ha-ha!” She made the little joke in hopes of lifting her brother’s spirits, but he was apparently too tense right now to even chuckle.

  On top of the counter sat a canister labeled QUICKOATS. She supposed it was what Emelda had used to make the oatsqueal. Could she have also hidden the grate key in the oats?

  Gretel pulled off the lid to check, hoping the oats wouldn’t start squealing or shout more insults the way the candies had. Luckily, they were quiet. But as soon as she reached down into the oats to feel around for the key, her hand became inexplicably stuck.

  “When I got to the c-c-cottage last night, the witch started to c-c-claim you weren’t here,” Hansel piped up. Gretel heard him hopping around below in the cellar, trying to stay warm. She needed to get him out of there!

  “Uh-huh,” said Gretel. She tried to pull her hand out of the jar, but it only sank deeper. It seemed that these quickoats were very much like quicksand!

  “But then I spotted your b-b-boots under the kitchen table, so I knew she was lying,” Hansel went on. “Finally, she t-t-told me you’d gone down to the cellar to fetch something for her. So she showed me this trapdoor. I was climbing d-d-down inside to find you when she gave me a push. I must’ve hit my head because when I woke up, you were standing up there.”

  “Oh,” Gretel said, only half listening. She’d stopped trying to pull her hand out and was now just holding it flat with her fingers spread out. Gradually, her hand rose to the surface of the oats, and, little by little, she managed to roll it to the side of the canister and climb her fingers up the side until she could pull her hand completely free. Phew!

  Hansel paused, then said, “Not my b-b-best idea, I guess. It was stupid of me to t-t-trust her — especially after she’d lied to me.”

  Hansel didn’t own up to his mistakes very easily. At least not to her. The fact that he’d admitted he’d made one now softened her heart toward him.