Gretel Pushes Back

by Joan Holub

  Hansel jerked his chin to indicate the ball. “What’s that for?”

  “We should try to contact someone at the Academy to let them know we’re okay,” she explained. After placing the ball in her backpack, she slung the pack’s straps over her shoulder. “Later, though. Let’s get out of here while we can. This cottage may look sweet and cute, but it gives me the creeps.”

  When they got outside, Hansel screeched to a halt. “Wait! I’m starving. All I had to eat last night was raw vegetables in that cellar. And I want to see the portal before we go. Just to make sure no one came through.” He broke off a roof tile just as Gretel had the day before and began nibbling it.

  “No, let’s leave!” argued Gretel.

  Since Hansel wouldn’t listen, all she could do was follow him around to the back of the cottage. Then, while he munched the tile and studied the oven thoroughly, she explained that it had been built by the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker.

  “I knew those Rub-A-Dub-Dub guys couldn’t be trusted,” Hansel exclaimed. “They really are knaves. But they do know how to build an oven. This thing is awesome!”

  Gretel rolled her eyes. “I don’t care how well built it is, it gives me the creeps just as much as that cottage!” She thought back to what Malorette and Odette had said to the men in The Tub. About how the men knew what they were getting into and were well paid for their work and silence.

  Maybe they had known they were building a portal, but she’d bet anything they hadn’t understood what Emelda intended to use it for. In any case it had sounded as if they later regretted their part in the scheme. “I’m not so sure those guys totally understood what Emelda and E.V.I.L. intended to do with the portal till it was too late,” she told Hansel.

  “Well, if you’re right, then they should have told Principal R about the whole portal project as soon as they did suspect the group was up to no good.” Hansel climbed up on the oven and poked his head in.

  “Get down from there!” Gretel exclaimed. “It’s probably still working. For all we know, it might suck you into the Nothingterror, too!”

  “I’m just trying to …” Hansel began.

  But Gretel didn’t hear the rest because her eyes fell on the walking stick. It was still leaning up against the brick oven where the witch had left it. But when Hansel continued to examine the oven’s opening, the stick took a couple of thumping steps toward Gretel. Then it flew into her hand.

  “Yikes! Get away from me, you awful thing!” she yelled at it. She shook her hand free and the stick spun dizzily in the air before falling to the grass a dozen feet away.

  “Run!” she called to Hansel. “That’s Emelda’s evil walking stick. It found me and led me to her cottage yesterday!” She didn’t add that the reason she’d been so willing to follow the stick was because she’d thought it must be her (non-evil) magical charm.

  Finally, her brother listened to her. He leaped down from the oven and the two of them took off down the hill.

  Thump! Thump! “That horrible stick is following us!” yelled Gretel. “Leave us alone!” she shouted back at the stick.

  But no matter what she yelled at it or how fast they moved, they could still hear the stick thumping behind them. They didn’t stop running until they reached the bottom of the hill and entered Neverwood Forest.

  Still breathing hard from her run, Gretel cupped a hand around her ear to listen. “I don’t hear the thumps anymore,” she said after a while.

  “Good.” Hansel pulled Malorette and Odette’s trail map from his pocket. After consulting it, he pointed to where the trail split up ahead. “We go right,” he told her.

  They’d only just taken the fork to the right, however, when they saw the stick standing in the middle of the path ahead of them.

  “What do we do now?” Hansel whispered to her. “We have to go that way.”

  “Follow me. And let’s stick together,” said Gretel. “Er, stay together.”

  With her in the lead, they moved carefully toward the witch’s stick, intending to pass it. Gretel breathed a sigh of relief when she made it past with no trouble. But where was Hansel? She gasped when she looked back to see he had halted next to the stick and was examining it closely.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Our grandfather used to make walking sticks like this one,” he commented.

  “Yes, I remember,” said Gretel. “He sold them in his shop along with the other things he carved. He promised to make something special for me when I was older, but …” her voice trailed off as a wave of sadness washed over her without warning.

  “No, I mean, I think he actually made this one,” Hansel clarified. He waved her closer and then pointed to a tiny carving of a duck down near the base of the walking stick.

  Gretel bent down to look. She rubbed the pad of her fingertip across the duck as Hansel held the stick. “That’s Grandfather’s trademark!” she said in wonder. “He carved it on every item he made.”

  “I know!” said Hansel. “So what happened? Did that witch buy it from his shop and then turn it evil?”

  Gretel straightened up, frowning. “Or maybe she stole it. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  Hansel rotated the stick in his hands and squinted at something on it. “There are some tiny letters here under one of the knots, did you notice?”

  “Nuh-uh,” said Gretel. Now that she knew their grandfather had made the stick, she kind of wished she could hang on to it as a keepsake. Too bad Emelda had made it evil!

  “F O R G R — I can’t quite make out the last four letters.”

  “Let me see.” Gretel started to reach toward the stick, but just then Hansel’s stomach growled. “You’ve hardly eaten a thing today, have you? Just that one thin roof tile,” she said sympathetically.

  Remembering how the walking stick had seemed to grant her rhymed request once before (unless it truly had just been heading for home), she tried again. “Hey, stick. We need something to eat — and make it sweet.”

  Suddenly, the stick took off. Thump. Thump. Thump. It blazed a new trail straight through the underbrush, wide enough for them to follow single file.

  “Wait for us!” Gretel ran after it and so did Hansel. Unfortunately, they soon wound up at the cottage again.

  “You dumb stick!” yelled Gretel. “You led us right back to this same grimmcreepy place!” The stick looked a little droopy at her scolding.

  But as Hansel reached up to a window shutter and broke off a piece of gingerbread cookie, Gretel remembered that she had asked the stick to find them something sweet.

  “Mmm, good,” Hansel murmured as he crammed the cookie into his mouth and chewed.

  Gretel looked at the stick in apology. “Sorry, I guess you were only following my orders.” Without warning, the walking stick leaped into her hands. Yikes! She started to throw it away again, but then under her fingertips she felt the carved letters Hansel had discovered. She turned the stick till she could squint at them.

  “F O R G R … Hey, wait, there’s a bigger space between the first R and the G. I think it’s two words,” she told Hansel.

  He cocked his head, and spoke between bites. “FOR GR? What’s that mean?”

  She squinted harder until she could make out the last four letters. “The other letters are ETEL?”

  Hansel straightened and chewed really fast as if he had something important to announce. He swallowed and then at the same time, the answer burst from them both. “FOR GRETEL!”

  Gretel looked from the stick to her brother. “Grandfather must’ve meant this walking stick to be mine! When I was lost and it led me through Neverwood Forest, I thought it might be my magical charm,” she confessed to him now. “But it can’t be, can it? Because magical charms only do what the person they belong to tells them to do, and this stick was obeying Emelda.”

  Hansel wiped a smear of pink frosting from his chin with the back of one hand, then licked it off his knuckles. “She must’ve put a spell
on it. To make it think it did belong to her — for a time. But Grandfather made it for you, so I bet that any spell that witch put on it was broken when she was sucked into the Nothingterror.”

  “Do you think so?” Gretel asked wistfully. At her question, the stick leaped from her arms. In a patch of dirt near the cottage, it drew a big heart. Then it returned to her hand, snuggling into it.

  Hansel grinned. “I think it’s saying, ‘I’m Yours.’ Or maybe ‘Be Mine.’ Sort of a stick valentine.”

  Flap! Flap! Just then, a flock of geese appeared overhead. The kind that carried things from here to there in the Academy’s Grimmstone Library. In groups of three these geese were pulling fancy chariots, hitched by long ribbons to each of the vehicles.

  When the geese flew in for a landing, Gretel could see GA students seated inside the chariots. There was Jack and Jill! And Red! And also the butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, and Hagscorch, too! Everyone was out looking for her and her brother!

  First out of the chariots was Jill, who raced to hug Gretel. “I’m so glad you’re okay!” she cried. When she stepped back, she added, “And I love your haircut. Cute!”

  The instant she let go, Red wrapped Gretel in another hug. “I was so worried about you! And ditto on the hair.”

  Some of the other girls came to hug her and admire her new hairstyle, too. Including Snow White, who added, “Ms. Goose let us borrow the library geese so we could come to your rescue. It was Principal R’s idea to bring the chariots. He would have come with us. Only, not knowing how E.V.I.L. planned to use the portal, he decided to stay at GA in case the Society was plotting an attack on the Academy.”

  “You know about the portal?” Gretel said in surprise, glancing around the group.

  Everyone nodded. As more GA students gathered near, Mistress Hagscorch came over and pinched her cheek. “You little dearie! It’s good to see you’re okay!” Over the cook’s shoulder, Gretel saw Jack talking to Hansel a distance away. When their eyes caught, Jack flashed her a heart-meltingly dimpled smile and sent her a thumbs-up.

  Before she could smile back at him, the cook drew her attention again. “After Hansel left with the map to find you, I was in such a stew I hardly slept last night! Right after breakfast this morning, I took the whole problem of my sister to Principal R. And here we are.”

  Mistress Hagscorch paused to gaze toward the cottage. “I’d heard that Emelda had copied my gingerbread cookie recipe to make a life-size house to live in. Is she in there?”

  Gulp! Gretel knew she’d have to break the bad news about Emelda being sucked into the Dark Nothingterror, but before she could say anything about it, Jack and Hansel came over. Somehow, Jack managed to pick up right where Hagscorch’s story had left off. “This morning, Principal R called everyone who might know anything into his office,” he told Gretel. “Together we all tried to figure out what Mistress Hagscorch’s sister and E.V.I.L. could be planning.”

  “My stepsisters are in deep doo-doo for their part in all this,” Cinderella noted gaily. “They’ve been suspended from the Academy ‘until further notice’.”

  Rapunzel punched a fist in the air. “Yeah! It’s about time!” Other students giggled at this.

  Gretel grinned, too, glad of the news. Those two had been trouble with a capital T at GA for a very long time. And now she might never have to see them again!

  As the others talked, Mistress Hagscorch started toward the cottage.

  “Wait! We have to tell you something,” Gretel called out.

  Mistress Hagscorch turned back. Before anyone else could speak, Gretel and Hansel rushed to tell their story. The cook gasped when she learned that her sister had locked Hansel in the cottage cellar and had tried to send Gretel to the Dark Nothingterror in order to bring Ms. Wicked back to Grimmlandia. Although appalled at her sister’s actions, she turned quite pale when she learned that Emelda was now lost to the Nothingterror herself.

  “If we’d known what she was up to, we never would’ve taken her dough to do the job,” said the baker.

  “We’ve seen the light now, though,” said the candlestick-maker. “And we’re here to make things right.”

  “Come on, then,” the butcher said to the other two men. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.” Off they went, with tools they’d brought with them, to tear down the brick oven.

  Determined to help, everyone else followed. Together, they hauled away the bricks the workmen tore down. Using sledgehammers, they reduced the bricks to rubble so there’d be no chance they could ever be used to build a portal again.

  When Gretel found herself kneeling in the grass and wielding a hammer next to Mistress Hagscorch, she paused to give her the drawing she’d found in the cottage kitchen.

  Mistress Hagscorch’s yellow eyes lit up as she grasped it in her clawed hands. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t believe Emelda saved this after all these years. We never got along well. Not since we were this age, at any rate. And after Principal R hired me instead of her to cook for the Academy, things between us grew even worse. I fear that may be one reason she got involved with E.V.I.L. — to try to make her mark some other way.”

  She pushed a lock of her straggly white-gray hair behind one ear. “Still,” she said with a sigh. “For better or worse, she was … is … my sister.”

  Gretel thought she understood how you could care deeply about someone close to you without liking or approving of their behavior. But though Hansel might occasionally say or do something that annoyed her, at least he was not evil. Far from it, in fact!

  Mistress Hagscorch gazed toward the Wall. “The Nothingterror is a better place for her, really. She can make all the evil plans she wants to there, but Grimmlandia will be safe because she won’t be here to carry them out. Besides, she’ll have Ms. Wicked for company. They should get along just fine since they’re so much alike. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes.”

  Any remaining doubts Gretel might have had about Hagscorch being a good witch had completely evaporated by now. And her former fear of the cook was replaced by feelings of sympathy. “Even if your sister and Ms. Wicked become friends, I bet she’ll still miss you,” she said.

  Mistress Hagscorch nodded. “We kept in contact with weekly crystal ball visits.” Her voice broke a little and a tear rolled down her cheek as she added, “Despite our disagreements, I’ll miss talking to her.”

  Gretel wished she could help. Suddenly, she remembered that she had Emelda’s crystal ball. After slipping her bright-blue backpack from her shoulders, she unzipped it and reached inside. Then she handed the ball to Mistress Hagscorch.

  “My sister’s?” she asked in delight.

  Hansel came over just then. Gretel nodded. “Maybe you can send it to her so you two will still be able to talk once in a while. I heard that Principal R was able to launch that trouble-making sprite Jack Frost over the Wall inside a glass snow globe.”

  An evil mastermind, the sprite she’d spoken of had recently plotted to use Snowflake’s magical ice and snowmaking abilities to rule Grimmlandia. When he hadn’t succeeded, he’d asked Principal R to send him to a place where he could realize his dream of becoming an evil puppet master. Principal R hadn’t hesitated to oblige!

  “So sending your sister a crystal ball should be a piece of cake,” Hansel agreed.

  “Snowflake and Rapunzel have gotten pretty good with their catapulting lately. They’ll help, I’m sure,” Gretel added.

  Hansel’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “But wouldn’t your sister or Ms. Wicked or other members of E.V.I.L. be able to use the ball to communicate with their E.V.I.L. counterparts in Grimmlandia?”

  “Oh!” said Gretel. “I hadn’t thought about that!”

  The cook had begun polishing the ball with the edge of her apron. “Luckily,” she told them with a smile, “I know a lockdown spell that would make it so my sister, or anyone else using her ball, would only be able to contact me.”

  Gretel smiled. “Problem solved.”
/>   “Last brick!” yelled Jack from across the yard. He brought down a hammer on it, smashing it to bits. Everyone cheered.

  Now that the oven was completely dismantled and the bricks all pounded to rubble, Mistress Hagscorch stood and stretched. “I bet you’ve all worked up an appetite, haven’t you?” she called out to the dozen or so students who had made the trip to the cottage.

  A chorus of “Yeah” greeted her question. With a touch of her wicked humor, she added, “And from the look of you all, I’d say you could use a little fattening up.”

  Laughter erupted at this familiar phrase. For once, Gretel giggled along with everyone else. And just like that, the last of her fears about the cook fell away.

  “So what are you all waiting for?” Mistress Hagscorch said. She pointed at the gingerbread cottage. “Go. Eat. My sister built it using my recipe, so it’s the one thing around here that’s tasty!”

  No one needed a second invitation. The students descended on the cottage like a swarm of locusts and had a great deal of fun eating it to the ground. The furnishings, tableware, and other things that remained were loaded into chariots.

  “These are artifacts that must be stored in the Grimmstone Library,” Mistress Hagscorch noted. “Whatever crumbs remain behind can be left for hungry critters and time to destroy.”

  There wasn’t room for the students in the loaded chariots, so only the three workmen from The Tub and Mistress Hagscorch rode on them back to the Academy. “See you at dinnertime,” the cook called back to the students as the geese lifted off.

  The students groaned. And Gretel knew why! Having eaten their fill of the cottage, she doubted any of them (including herself) would want dinner that night, despite the deliciousness of Mistress Hagscorch’s cooking.

  “I hope we don’t get lost on our way back,” Red said anxiously as the group of students headed into the forest on foot. With her poor sense of direction, she’d gotten lost many a time, even around the Academy.

  “Don’t worry,” Gretel told her. “Hansel’s got a map.” Then, with a grin, she brandished her walking stick. “And my magical charm is good at blazing trails!”