The Girl Gingerbread in the Woods of Winter White

by Bethany R. Lindell

  He shrugged one shoulder, glancing at her from beneath his disheveled hair. Gingerbread puffed out her indignation. "I doubt that," she said, snapping the words out brisk as a rubber band breaking. "I doubt that very much."

  She pushed passed Clatch, swinging her arms to keep away his half attempted gesture of comfort. "Why are we dawdling here in the freezing cold? Hurry up and get Silber harnessed to the sleigh. I want this bad idea behind us."

  THE TINKER CHILDREN ooh'ed and ah'ed when they drew close to the Winter Whites. The afternoon sunlight shone soft and gold, sparking fireflies of color inside the ice that covered every tree trunk, every singular pine needle and pine cone, creating a sparkling wonderland of ice and snow. Fantastic blues and violets and reds danced in the ice wrapped around the tree trunks, and frost created delicate patterns on the scores of icicles tinkling soft as wind chimes from their branches.

  Watching over the children's heads, Gingerbread supposed she couldn't blame them for being taken in. The old stick probably designed it that way.

  "How pretty!" one of the middle ones cried, a little imaginative thing wearing a dress that had been mended many times over and socks that had been darned a dozen more. "Nikolas found a window into Fairyland, I'm sure of it!"

  She leaned up on the toes of her beaten up boots, even uglier than Gingerbread's, and clasped her hands together. "You and your fairies Katri!" her older brother, either Jorge or Franz, unless he was Adam, said over her head. "Don't you know a haunted wood when one's right in front of you?"

  Katri pursed her lips into a duck's frown, and suddenly she and her brother looked like matching portraits. "Is not Adam. I'm telling Mama you're telling tall tales again!"

  Adam leaned down. "You do and I'll tell her how you fed all your beets to your goats last night so you could have one of Tante Brunfel's ginger cakes."

  The girl's head sunk into her knit scarf until only her narrowed brown eyes glared out. "What kind of haunted?" she asked.

  "The very worst kind," her brother said without much originality. Gingerbread rolled her eyes. "I heard them whispering about it in town, how hoards of hunters have gone in the Winter Whites and none of them were ever seen again. Not even their dogs came out."

  "Not the puppies . . ." Katri's eyes gleamed with tears.

  Adam nodded with a toothy grin. One of his canines was chipped, turning the other fierce and long by comparison. "Once a great party went in to kill whatever horrid beast was dragging the hunters off. Twenty of the finest hunters this side of the Kreszecks went in, led by the king's own huntsman, Finndrang of Earvl. Finndrang was the best hunter in all the countryside. He could track a field mouse in heavy snowfall and even the wolves didn't dare hunt his prey." Adam peered from side to side, drawing his sister in closer. "Some say it's because not all his blood was red."

  Katri gasped but Gingerbread was quickly losing interest. Finndrang was Nikolas's favorite folk hero, and he'd told tales of him the past fortnight straight. Finndrang the Fearless. Finndrang the hero.

  Gingerbread snorted. Finndrang the Foolhardy more like.

  "His papa was a fairy?" Katri whispered.

  Gingerbread saw Adam nod from the corner of her eye as she inspected the trees lined up before them. No tracks led in or out of the wood, no handy path either. Nikolas had sent a handful of men to search out a way inside that would fit the wagons. Two of the younger fools had dared to step as close as the edge of the wood and were now throwing snow up into the trees while a third boy judged who could hit the highest branch.

  "A fae lord, full silver in his veins," Adam continued. He stood straighter and struck a pose, hand holding his chin in mock thought. "Perhaps that's why Finndrang saw them."

  Katri waited, wide-eyed, but Adam waited too. Finally, she had to ask in a soft whisper, "Saw who?"

  One of the boys' mothers swooped down on the lot of them, shrieking about icicles and eyes and idle stupidity. She dragged the two snowball throwers away, leaving the third boy behind. The nearest child caught Gingerbread's gaze, just by accident, and froze stiff to stare at her. His mother, still dragging him along, glanced back when her boy stumbled against her legs.

  She saw Gingerbread watching and ducked her eyes to her boots as she dragged the boys back to the wagons, but her son stared at Gingerbread's eyes with his mouth open.

  Gingerbread ducked her head to hide them and then scowled at herself. It is not your fault, she told herself again and made herself open her eyes to stare back at the boy. He gasped, nearly swallowing his own tongue and Gingerbread knew what he saw. Not just strange eyes the color of liquid amber with fiercely hot whites at their centers instead of inert black pupils. He saw the curse. The pollution that let her see the phantoms wandering through their old lives and kept her from trusting anything her eyes told her.

  Adam grinned, his mouth curling up his cheek. "All the ghosts of course."

  Katri's eyes flicked wider, but then she remembered this was her brother. She slid him a narrow glare. "What ghosts?"

  "The ghosts of all the dead people." Adam rolled his eyes. "All those hunters that went into the woods who never came out? The children dared by their friends to go inside who were never seen again? They're all still in there Katri. Walking their old paths, trying to find their way out."

  "Mama." The boy tugged hard at his mother's apron. "Mama she's got witch's eyes! Mama!"

  His mother shushed him loud as a hissing snake. Nearby the old nag's ears pricked upright. She shifted from hoof to hoof and rumbled uncertainty in her chest as the tinkers passed her to the other side of the wagons strung out in a long line.

  He's not wrong, Gingerbread thought, but her unease built up behind her eyes until they ached. How many others can see it too?

  The ache burst off in hot sparks that popped from the corner of her eyes, singing her long eyelashes black and leaving pinpoint burns high on her cheeks. They stung, but the ache behind her eyes dulled into something bearable. Gingerbread raised her fingertips to the burning high on her cheek, wincing when she touched the new roughness added to her tanned skin.

  Katri still didn't believe her brother, but doubt lingered behind her eyes. "Papa says there's no such thing as ghosts. People go to heaven when they die." She lifted her chin. "And all the puppies too."

  Gingerbread wiped the grimace off her face. It doesn't matter, she chided herself as she tugged her gloves back on with three sharp pulls. They look like freckles to everyone else. Lots of ordinary girls have freckles.

  How many ordinary girls can see the boy still standing there?

  Gingerbread paused in her last tug, eyes flicking back to the third boy standing before the trees. No one came for him, not a mother or any other of the myriad of kinfolk traveling en masse with Nikolas. He stood there, head craned back to stare up at the trees.

  I . . . don't recognize him from the wagons . . .

  "Ah!" Adam leaned closer, his chipped tooth showing jagged behind his upper lip. "What if they can't? What if . . ." He loomed over Katri. "Someone in there is keeping them trapped in the wood? What if the beast that killed them isn't a beast at all, but a lady? A tall lady in black robes with crows on her shoulders and horrid, warty hands? She hunted the hunters and lured in the stupid children. She caught them all. Every one of the king's best huntsmen too."

  Katri's doubt thinned. "Says who?"

  "Finndrang!" Adam raised his hand to take an oath, the other solemn against his heart. "He said so when he returned to where the king's soldiers camped beneath the mountain. He came out alone. 'Finndrang, fearless one, where are the others?' the soldiers asked. 'I don't know,' said Finndrang. 'We were separated inside the trees.'

  "'Then why have you returned without them?' the knights asked him. 'Didn't you search for them?'

  "'I began to,' said Finndrang, 'but as I went deeper into the wood, figures emerged and began to follow me. I could see the trees through them, and they had horrid, unearthly expressions on their bloodied faces. Some were burned. Some we
re blue and frozen. They stood in my path and warned me back.'"

  The wind blew across the frozen evergreens, tinkling their icicles. The boy's coat, too big for his thin body, hung unmoving around his knees. His face was thin as well, underfed, but otherwise he appeared in good health.

  "The knights asked him, 'Warned you of what? The animal lurking in these woods?'

  "'Not an animal,' Finndrang said. 'They warned me of a woman. One said she flicked her finger, and he dropped down dead. Another that she sniffed, and she lost all the air in her lungs. A third said she fixed him with her horrible stare, raw and gold as live embers, and he burst into flame and perished.'"

  Pressure built up in Gingerbread's eyes again, spilling across her face as heat. She stepped closer to the boy and her cheeks began to burn like she stood too close to a fire. Don't go in, she wanted to warn him. You mustn't go in.

  "'I was soon surrounded by scores of them, and they all said this woman killed them dead. I recognized some as hunters I went in with this very morning. They are crying out still in their unearthly voices. Don't go in-'"

  Don't go in.

  "'-or you will find the Piping Witch.'"

  Large wet tears clung to Katri's lashes as she leaned away from her older brother. Adam laughed. "Careful Katri. Your tears will freeze to your face if you cry!"

  Katri sniffed and wiped her watery eyes on her mittens. "It's not true! None of it's true. This is just one of your stupid tall tales, even if Finndrang's in it. Isn't that right, Fraulein Gingerbread?"

  Gingerbread had stopped listening minutes ago. Don't go in.

  But he already had, a long time ago.

  "Fraulein!" Katri tugged hard at her capelet, breaking Gingerbread's attention. "Say he's telling tall tales!"

  "Huh?" She blinked in surprise at Katri's flesh and blood face pouting up at her. Farther off, Nikolas shouted to ready the wagons. The men had found a way in. "Oh. No. It's not true. Not a word."

  Her eyes returned to the boy standing apart from them and staring up at the trees.

  THE FORGOTTEN PATH through the Winter Whites had frozen as solid as the trees themselves, preserving the open spaces between the pines and giving them a snowy road to travel down. Sunlight hit the trees far above their heads and fell through the layers of ice like a ball dropping through pegs, until it was reduced to an effervescent shimmer that glowed from the thick coats of ice, as real as fairy dust and twice as heady. Soon the tinkers' voices glided among the trees on ribbon-like melodies.

  Gingerbread did not join them. "Keep it down you gear heads!" she hissed back at them, but they ignored her over the sound of their accordion.

  The girl scoffed. "In one ear and out through the nose. If they attempted this on their own they would be fertilizer by now," she said under the music as she once again swept her eyes over the blue-frosted trees, scowling at the absence of shadows. Gingerbread pursed her lips. "So you banished them, did you? No room for them in your picture perfect storybook world?" She huffed out white vapor. "How predictable of you."

  With such wide avenues of untouched snow to travel, they made easy progress through the Winter Whites, until they were lost in an ocean of frozen trees. No stars. No sun. No landmarks to guide them. It wound her nerves tighter than fiddle strings until her shoulders and back ached when they stopped long after sundown. The glow of the trees faded far slower than the sun itself, giving them light to steer by. They would have pressed further, but the animals insisted, in their way.

  "Pendulum minded beasts!" Nikolas thundered as Klingeln pranced backward, threatening to tangle herself in the traces. Silber tossed his head when she knocked into his haunches, rumbling irritably. "You aren't happy in your harness, but you refuse to leave it! Like all women you are impossible to understand!"

  Gingerbread slid her eyes to him. "Here I thought you were ignoring me before."

  "She's overtired, Niko," Clatch said from Klingeln's head. Her front hooves lifted from the ground, spraying powder-fine snow. Only Clatch's strong grip on her halter kept the reindeer from rearing high enough to strike at him.

  He dragged her weight back down with visible effort as Klingeln snorted and grunted deep in her long neck. Gingerbread stayed out of her way, seeing glimpses of white at the edges of the reindeer's eyes. She looked around herself as surreptitiously as possible, but didn't see anything except the same trees that had surrounded them all day.

  So why is my skin crawling?

  She wrapped her capelet closer to her shoulders, her fingers weaving into the basket hilt of her sword where both hid beneath the fabric. Clatch's soothing murmur receded to the background of her hearing, a steady rhythm beneath the snorting and stamping of the reindeer. One by one she distanced herself from the sounds of the tinkers. The creak of wagon wheels stilling. The growing talk of the drivers. The grateful moans of their families as they disembarked and stretched their knotted backs. Even Nikolas's booming voice faded away in Gingerbread's ears, letting new sounds take the forefront. The old nag's whickering as she paced the outer edge of the corral, the agitated ringing of harness bells, the obtrusive silence of the sheep. The animals sensed it too. Something eerie lingering in the wood . . .

  The sound of hard impact knocked Gingerbread out of her trance. She snapped her head back to the wagons, sword half drawn, before the billy goat ran at the assembled animal pen to slam his horns against one of the posts, startling the sheep.

  Gingerbread shot her sword home with a loud click. "Katri! Get your blasted goat penned before he lets loose the sheep!" she shouted across camp at the wayward girl. Katri jumped where she stood watching the ice glowing, animal feed sloping out of her bucket. She jumped again when the ornery old goat bumped her with his horns as he ate the feed off the ground.

  Gingerbread hissed through her teeth. "Fanciful child. If her attention wanders any farther, we'll all be lost by midnight."

  Which wasn't so far off now. Gingerbread blinked against the changing light and realized most of what remained now came from the central campfire crackling behind her like a granny with no one to speak but herself. The trees remained dim as unlit candles despite the warm yellow light, even though they had glowed all afternoon.

  Gingerbread frowned, her lips pursing as she scanned the trees around the clearing. "Fire is fire, whether it feeds on wood or stardust. So why take one and not the other . . . ?" Her eyes landed on the fire itself, feeding in delight on the tinder the tinkers had brought with them. She grinned in wicked understanding.

  "Ah . . ." She continued her slow turn. "I see. Brings back some bad memories, does it Dearie? All it needs is a baking sheet and a locked oven door, hm?"

  A sudden, fierce wind whipped over Gingerbread, pulling at her hair and pinching her face with sharp fingers. Several of the tinkers cried out in surprise behind her and the sheep bleated as the cold stabbed past their woolly coats into their pale pink skin. Gingerbread raised her cloak, shielding her face with it, but stood her ground. The fire snapped and guttered . . . then the wind died in a fitful wheeze.

  The tinkers grumbled about the cold, but quickly forgot the sudden whip-crack of air. Gingerbread emerged more slowly from behind her capelet. The campfire was already rising again, picking itself up the logs with flickering fingers.

  Gingerbread exhaled, then shook the stray snow off her capelet and threw it back over her shoulders. "Don't huff and puff you old biddy," she spoke to the still air poised between the trees. "You're not a wolf."

  No, certainly not a wolf. A wolf would not fear the fire with so many fat sheep penned close. Perhaps, if they were quiet, and Gingerbread kept the fire very high, they could pass the night in silence.

  Laughter boomed over the nervous mutterings of the tinkers.

  "Ah!" the big man exclaimed, a glint in his eyes Gingerbread had only seen imps possess before. Nikolas turned to the gaggle of children pressed into their mothers' skirts. "The old crone knows we're here," he whispered so that all camp heard.

  The childre
n gasped and clung tighter to their mothers. One of the smaller ones whimpered and squeaked, tears in his eyes.

  "Scared, little Franzi?" Nikolas asked. The boy nodded without lifting his head from the rough fabric of his mother's apron. Nikolas chuckled and the adults all laughed with him.

  Gingerbread narrowed her eyes at them. They could stand to be scared themselves.

  The big tinker grunted as he lifted the anxious child. "Do you know who the old crone is, little Franz? Have I not told that tale to you yet?"

  Franz must have shaken his head because Nikolas's laughter thundered loud enough to fill the clearing, pushing the darkness back another few inches. "Well! Gather round the fire, all of you, and I'll tell a tale that will give you more shivers than this winter's night. The tale of the Piping Witch."

  Shudders shook Gingerbread's spine like a shanty in a storm. The air beyond the fire's light hung thick between the trees, filled with a presence that waited hungrily.

  So much for a silent night. Obviously with Nikolas around to stir up old memories, they would need stronger defenses than silence.

  "Girl Gingerbread, come and join us!" Nikolas called out behind her.

  Gingerbread turned her head as she drew her sword. The children and most of the adults sat around the fire, Nikolas at their center, highlighted by the blaze. The tinkers sat out of the snow on their much-loved carved benches, painted with holly and boughs of firs holding candles. Those that didn't have children on their laps busied themselves with whittling knives or sewing needles. The old men puffed on pipes as finely adorned as the old benches. Clatch had his full array of metal tools spread across his lap, and he bent over one of the boy's tin soldiers as his mechanical surgeon. They all stared, some eyeing her bare sword.

  "I think not Nikolas," she called back. "Some of us still have work to do." She stabbed her sword into the thick snow where the light of the fire met the presence of the wood. Pulling it along with her, she walked at an angle, slicing a point into the blue and violet snow.