The Girl Gingerbread in the Woods of Winter White

by Bethany R. Lindell

  Katri stomped in a circle on the roof, shaking the wind chimes dangling from one corner. "No no no no!" she shouted, her eyes screwed up shut as she flung her fists about. "Go back to sleep. Go back to sleep now so we can play again!"

  Clatch and Gingerbread shared a look, then Clatch stepped forward to ask, "Play with who Katri?"

  "The unicorn!" Katri stomped her foot. "She told me she would come back and play with me at night when everyone else is asleep, and we would go riding through the woods like before, only I couldn't wait that long! It already feels like forever and she's scared of everyone but me so go to sleep right now, Clatch!"

  The more she prattled the tighter Clatch's shoulders got, until he looked almost as unnerved as when he'd seen Gingerbread fighting phantoms.

  Gingerbread didn't feel any easier.

  "Clatch?" she asked under her breath. "What color are Katri's eyes?"

  "Brown," he answered. "But in this light . . ." He didn't want to admit it either. "They look almost like yours."

  He saw it too then. "Blast. Of all the times to be right." Gingerbread sighed. "I really hoped mine were only playing tricks on me again."

  Above them, Katri crossed her arms and began to tap her toe against the rain gutter. The metallic tink, tink, tink rattled against Gingerbread's eardrums. The little girl's face puckered into a frown around her now shining eyes.

  "What does it mean for Katri?" Clatch asked. "Will she see things, like you?"

  Gingerbread grunted. "Probably. If Dearie wants her to. She didn't use the same spell exactly, so I'm not certain, but Katri shouldn't trust her eyes." She bowed her head closer to his. "Remember our real friend is male, too. Dearie is stealing his form."

  "If Katri saw a unicorn in the wood that first night she would have chased after it without a second thought, but how do we convince a seven-year-old her unicorn is using her to hurt her family?"

  White air huffed out Gingerbread's nose with a snort. "You and you're truth-telling. She won't understand because she won't want to listen."

  Clatch narrowed his blue eyes at her before taking a cautious step forward. The snow crunched beneath his boot and he winced. "Katri . . ." he said slowly. His voice fell into the gentle hush he had used on Klirren stuck in the holly bush. "I need you to listen to me very carefully. Something bad has happened to you. The unicorn- ow!"

  Gingerbread pinched his arm to keep him from finishing. "Ignore him Katri," she called out. "He hasn't seen the unicorn like you and I have. He doesn't know she's real."

  Katri blinked and rubbed her eyes. Did she see me before now?

  "What are you doing?" Clatch hissed, rubbing his arm.

  "Talking to her," Gingerbread shot from the corner of her mouth.

  "You mean like I was? Just before you pinched me with your claws?"

  "You weren't talking to her, you were soothing her like one of your beasts. She can tell the difference Clatch. And if you kept on like that she would have thought you were mad instead of the other way around, and we still wouldn't know anything. Katri!" She lifted her voice to the girl on the wagon. "Have you seen the unicorn every night since you went into the wood?"

  The girl hunched her shoulders against a scolding and kicked the rain gutter with her big toe. "Not last night. Last night she didn't come at all, so I put the magic potion in the porridge so everyone would go to sleep." She beamed with pride. "Now she'll feel safe again and we can go riding."

  "Uh-hm," Gingerbread hummed. "But where did you get that potion, Katri? Did you find it?"

  Katri waggled her shoulders up and down in a sort of shrug. "No, I made it myself. I found the instructions though." She pulled out a folded paper from her pocket and smoothed it out on her apron before holding it out to Gingerbread. "Just like one of Mama's recipes.”

  1 coffee cup of molasses

  most of a coffee cup of brown sugar

  1 pat butter

  sprinkle of almond syrup

  3 spoonfuls of water

  thimbleful of grated twisted saint root

  The neat hand continued, listing out precise instructions even Katri could follow. Clatch swallowed loud again. "Where did you find that?" he asked.

  Katri shrugged and turned the paper over to check for a signature that might have appeared while it was in her pocket. "A tree had it. Like when Eli kept giving his and my sister's names to trees so they'd be together forever." Katri rolled her eyes and pretended to gag. "Like that'll work. But this tree had a recipe to make people sleep, so I rubbed it on this paper with a charcoal stump I had. Do you think a baker left it there for me?"

  Gingerbread shivered, the ice of the trees sliding down her throat to drop into her belly. "I have no doubt."

  "It worked just like they said it would," Katri said, but her lower lip bulged out in a pout. "On everybody 'cept you."

  She glared at Clatch and the hairs on the back of his neck stood in the static storm of her new eyes.

  "What about me?" Gingerbread asked, getting the girl's attention. "Don't I have to sleep too?"

  Some small annoyance pinched Katri's mouth and her eyes fed it until jealously bloomed in ruddy patches across her cheeks. "No. The unicorn said you didn't have to sleep since you're old friends. I wish you would though," she said almost to herself.

  Gingerbread went so still. She tried to move, tried to ignore it, but the old fear slunk inside, twisting up her guts and stealing her breath.

  "Ginge . . ." The warmth of Clatch's hand on her arm couldn't thaw out the ice freezing her. "What does that mean?"

  Ice cricked and cracked and her breath came back in shallow pants she couldn't control. "I don't know," she lied.

  Dearie wants to see me.

  A slow, sloping sound cracked the lingering ice paralyzing Gingerbread. Her eyes slid upward, goosebumps all across her skin. Katri's mouth opened wide as barn doors in a yawn. She tried to hide it with both her hands, but her mouth gaped around her fingers. Gingerbread's eyes flicked to the peppermint stick forgotten in the gutter.

  "She's falling asleep," Clatch realized at the same time, already running ahead and shouting, "Katri, come down from there before you tumble off."

  Gingerbread was only a step behind him, trying to pull enough peppermint leaves from her bundle for the girl. Her fingers only found two left in her pouch, and she pulled broken leaves from her own to try to make up the difference. "Here Katri." She held them up to the bleary-eyed girl stepping for the ladder with her arms out for balance. "Now what does Dearie want with me?"

  Katri paused near the top of the ladder and blinked down at Gingerbread. Her eyelids had sunk to half-mast and another yawn bullied its way out of her mouth. "Who?" she asked after it escaped.

  "Dear- the unicorn, What did she want with me?"

  Katri twisted forward again and shrugged, her little arms wobbling. "She said you took something of hers last time you played together. She's not mad anymore though, and she promises you're still friends, but she wants it ba-ah-ack!" The girl yawned again, covering her mouth with one hand. Her legs and arms trembled, and she lost her grip on the rail. Clatch reached up and caught Katri under her arms before she did more than sway backwards.

  "Whoa, gotcha goat girl, I gotcha," Clatch said, hoisting Katri up against his shoulder. "You all right there?"

  Katri wobbled out a nod, then rested her head on Clatch's shoulder, one arm around his neck. Her eyes closed and a smile ghosted across her face with a sleepy sigh. "Katri?"

  Her eyes stayed closed and her chest rose and fell in sweet, even breaths.

  Gingerbread shook the girl. "Katri! Wake up, no sleeping yet! Where is she? Where did the unicorn go?"

  Katri stayed asleep, dragged under by the spelled molasses thickening the air.

  "Blast them all to buckwheat!" Gingerbread swore. She tore herself away, kicking up snow as she paced, fingers shoved through her hair. "Now what? They both want me there, wherever they are, and I only have half a clue what either of them want!"

 
"Well the unicorn wants your help—the real one anyway," Clatch said, hefting Katri higher when her head lolled. "But what was that about Katri's unicorn wanting something back? What did you take from the Piping Witch?"

  "Nothing." Gingerbread flicked her fingers like her name alone left oily residue behind. "I want nothing of hers either. The only thing Dearie ever gave me was-"

  She stopped and turned the end of her sentence over in her mind.

  Clatch did not like that look on her face, like waves crashing into each other from different directions. "Would you come out of your own head for two seconds and tell me what you're thinking?" he demanded. He glared at her, looking fierce even with Katri draped over him like a limp blanket. "That's your problem you know. You think and think and think and never tell another soul what it is you're thinking! If you ever do go mad Ginge that's what'll do it, not some witch."

  Gingerbread's eyes slid to him above her thin mouth. "My eyes," she told him. "The only thing I ever got from the Piping Witch are my eyes."

  Grotesque horror wrinkled Clatch's nose, wiping out his brief wide-eyed shock. "What, you think she'll try and rip them out of your head?" He tried to laugh it off, but the sound was short and strained, like hearing a rusty hinge squeal.

  "She tried to take over my body once," she told Clatch. "I was six. Before that my eyes were strange, but no one could ever put their finger on why. After though . . ."

  She stared at her hands a moment, feeling Clatch's eyes on her crown.

  Gingerbread gripped her sword and lifted her head. "It didn't take of course. I'm too stubborn to listen to people, much more have them control me from the comfort of my own head, but I still got her eyes." She swept a hand up to encompass them and held tight to her sword with the other. "I started seeing phantoms after that. It's how I know I'll go mad like Mother. Something of the Piping Witch stuck inside me, just like it did her."

  "And she wants that something back," Clatch said slowly. "To fill up her new body."

  A lump rose up in Gingerbread's throat, and she didn't know if she wanted to cry or throw up. She forced herself to do neither and gave Clatch a dry twist of her lips. "It would seem so."

  Clatch stared at her again. He was getting very good at it and Gingerbread shifted her weight between her feet. She glanced down at the blackened toes of her boots then back up with a scowl. "And what are you thinking, hm? You've got that tinker twinkle in your eye you get when one of your little soldiers won't march in line. I am not one of your tin toys."

  She crossed her arms and put her weight on one foot to scowl at him. Somewhere Clatch had started pacing, his back bent forward and Katri dangling over his shoulders like a sack of flower. Gingerbread rolled her eyes and stepped across Clatch's track as he turned. He nearly ran her down like an iron horse, stopping so suddenly the girl dropped into Gingerbread's arms. Gingerbread took her and carried her to her family wagon, sitting her on the step next to her mother.

  "I'm thinking," Clatch said as he threw himself forward again, tapping a finger against the transparent stubble on his chin. "I'm thinking we need a plan. A plan to find these two and then help the unicorn . . . steal himself back."

  He stopped at the end of his line and raked his splayed fingers through the cold air, dragging it toward him and holding it there.

  Gingerbread's eyebrows fell into a flat line. "Well this should be good," she muttered before raising her voice. "All right then Clatch. What great plan can do all that?"

  She waved a hand in a mocking invitation that Clatch missed, so caught up in the workings of his mind. Shame. Gingerbread rolled her eyes skyward. I got the sarcasm balanced just right.

  "We know what the unicorn wants, well-" He paced to the opposite end of his track and pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees. "We know what they both want. The unicorn his life back and the Piping Witch . . ."

  He lifted an arm halfway up and glanced at Gingerbread, but couldn't say it.

  "Since we know that, perhaps we can get them to come to us. Lure them out instead of us searching all the Winter Whites for them."

  "With me as bait?" Gingerbread raised an eyebrow. "As flattering as that is, it won't work. The unicorn is asleep, remember? The only one that can come to us is Dearie, and she basically has us surrounded where we stand."

  She shrugged one shoulder, only stating the obvious, but Clatch eyed the trees in their winter jackets with round eyes. A set of icicles jangled musically above them as the wind softly laughed.

  "Spying old nag," Gingerbread said loud enough to be heard. The wind picked up to a run and lifted the ends of her hair to play with the strands. Gingerbread slapped them back down.

  Clatch looked as pale as a phantom himself, edging into translucent. He ducked his head and focused on his track in the snow. "Forget plan A then. Plan A never works anyway. You just have to get through it before you think of something better. If they won't- can't come to us, we'll have to find them." He stopped and about-faced toward Gingerbread, so sharp she jerked. "You said you saw the unicorn's phantom before tonight. Can you backtrack it like you did with Katri?"

  Gingerbread narrowed her eyes in thought. Very slowly, she shook her head. "I never actually saw him. I felt him, sure enough, but I couldn't even find his shadow in daylight. He's so much older than the other phantoms, Clatch. I can't see him proper enough to follow him. That must be why he had to wait for me to dream about him."

  "Because he's fading?"

  Gingerbread jumped. "Bite your tongue! He's not dead yet, and he won't be as long as we do something useful." She got enough of a leash on her temper to settle down into a simmer. "The fact that he is still alive affects his phantom as well."

  "Well I don't hear you coming up with any bright ideas, so fine. What do you suggest we do Miss Gingersnap?"

  She pinned him with her eyes, but Clatch didn't flinch. Gingerbread stared him down a long moment, then drew in a deep breath of air through her nose, filling her lungs so full her head tilted back.

  "It seems to me," she spoke just as slow, "that the real trick is getting the Winter Whites away from the Piping Witch. The Evergreen Unicorn's life is in the wood, in its growing and dying and growing again. It fell asleep when he did, and she took over when he couldn't stop her. If we give it back to him, maybe it will be enough he can take back the rest of himself from Dearie."

  "Right . . ."

  Back and forth and back again. "Can't you stand still for one conversation?"

  He didn't hear her. "Then the question becomes how do we take a wood back from a witch?"

  Clatch finally stopped moving and stood in his deep trench, his face conflicted. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and hummed roughly in the back of his throat. "I think I just overshot every strange thing Niko ever said, even in his stories." His eyes focused on Gingerbread's face, his blonde eyebrows leaning against each other over his bright eyes. "Have I told you you make life an adventure Ginge?"

  Gingerbread lifted her chin, writing off the heat prickling her cheeks as her eyes sparking. "You could stand to mention it more."

  "I could." Clatch nodded, tapping at his chin again. A disbelieving laugh puffed out of him. "I'll have to. Especially after we pull this off."

  Gingerbread shifted and shook her head. Ever the optimist.

  "Now how to track them down. Wolves leave tracks, and rabbits and boar and elk, so unicorns must too. Or the witch! Yes, we'll follow her back. You said they're battling someplace, yes?" He glanced at her as he turned, only giving Gingerbread enough time to draw in air. "And Katri said the witch has been visiting camp disguised as a unicorn, so we'll find those tracks and follow it back to the both of them. Now, for a plan of attack we'll-"

  "Clatch!"

  Gingerbread stepped in front of him, forcing the tinker boy to stop. He flinched, then scowled and pulled away. "What? I'm on a roll here Ginge, so what?"

  "A roll of bad ideas maybe." She laid a hand on Clatch's wrist to show she only meant to speak plain. "If she can curs
e a unicorn and steal his life and his wood and his face, I don't think the Piping Witch will have left us tracks to follow back to her lair."

  Clatch threw up a hand and scrubbed at his scalp, Gingerbread backing out of his way. He reached the end of his tether, pivoted around on one heel, and laced his fingers together behind his neck so that his elbows hung down, bobbing as he stalked through the snow. "Fine, fine. We'll think of something else."

  "This isn't a place where you can 'think of something else' Clatch. You just have to do and hope you don't get pulverized or turned into polliwogs in the process."

  Clatch jerked his arms up. "Well what do you suggest we do, Gingerbread? Wander around the wood for hours with no idea what we're looking for?"

  "No, because I know exactly what I'm looking for and you aren't coming with me."

  The red of his face reached the edge of his hat. "You and your stupid insistences! You don't have to face her alone Ginge!"

  "Of course I do! No, listen Clatch-" She grabbed his arm as his feet started churning up more snow. "This is my curse, my phantom. And that means I have to face her and no one else can."

  Clatch looked miserable beneath his fury. "Why?" he asked.

  Because I have to face her. Because I have to break this hold Dearie still has over my life. Because I don't want her to burn you if I fail. So many reasons, none of them he would accept.

  "Because you have to get the other tinkers somewhere safe. We can't just leave them out in the snow. They'll freeze." She poked Clatch's chest with a finger, reminding him of practical things. Things his rational brain could take action against.

  He still hesitated, shuffling from foot to foot, wanting to move and think their way out. But he looked at Katri and her mother slumped against their own door, incapable of waking enough to crawl into their own beds three feet away.

  Clatch spun and swore and it took the restless fury right out of him. He sighed, his arms falling by his sides and his shoulders fell away from his hung head.

  "I hate this," he said.

  Me too.