Unspun

by Ruth Nickle

  Once the last plate had been cleared and the guests departed, however, they were left with the ruling council of a kingdom and two women rendered exiles from their family home by the kingdom’s negligence. The servants and guests departed and the shift from gathering of friends to council of war was unstated, but unmistakable. Introductions had been made during the feast and it now was not only permitted, but mandated, that they turn their discussions to what had brought the Hoffmans so far from home.

  “We have asked much of you in agreeing to the terms of our protection,” Prince said. “In the past, this alliance has been a straightforward thing. You have recently been gracious with your allegiance and generous with your trust. What do you wish in return?”

  The nutcracker had passed to Lena, which meant the answer was her responsibility, but she yielded to Anna with a nod and allowed the other Hoffman to speak with the confidence of someone who had overcome every temptation to change her mind.

  “The Mouse King committed crimes against my family without your interference,” she stated. “It is my right to demand that you make amends for that, if not to me, then to Rebekah’s heir.”

  “You are a guest and an ally,” Salam of the coffee-growers scoffed. Looking at him, and at the other counselors, it was like watching the childhood ballet come to life. It was so distracting she could hardly focus on his words. “It is not your place to demand.”

  “I disagree,” Prince said.

  Mother Gigogne, whom the prince had described as a compromiser and who did not, as far as Lena knew, have a troupe of clowns hidden under a giant skirt, nodded towards Salam. “Had she a seat on this council, she could command an army or demand our aid,” she said. “Since she is under our protection, I believe she is merely entitled to defense.”

  “I disagree,” Anna and Prince chorused. At his inviting look, Anna added, “We should be entitled to acts of restitution and that must include eradication of threats originating in your kingdom.”

  “But is he of our kingdom?” Soledad of the chocolate-producers asked. “He has been in exile for over a century—”

  “But kept alive by drawing on this land’s power,” Prince concluded. “When he was near death, he survived because Marie’s alliance with us tied her world to ours.”

  “Then he will continue to live as long as that alliance does,” Anna concluded.

  “But he could be bound,” Great-great-grandmother proposed.

  “We have attempted that in the past and failed,” the prince said. “I concur with the Hoffmans that it is our duty to defeat him as we should have done in the days when Herr Drosselmeier doted on young Marie Stahlbaum.”

  “Is it possible?” Lena’s question left silence in its wake, but was meant for the prince, not his waffling counselors. She kept her gaze on him alone, and he held hers until he was prepared to give his answer.

  “If we sever his tie to this kingdom, he will be nothing more than a man,” he said. “He will be as mortal as any other.”

  “But it would require you, Lena, to renounce your claim on this kingdom,” Great-great-grandmother added quietly. “I understand that you have no reason to be loyal to us, but that is not a decision to be taken lightly. It would protect you from that sorcerer, but we could not intervene if you came under attack by another.”

  It was unfair to say so when she had been fed and fawned over so well, but the homesick anger that she had brought with her had a place here as well. “Would it mean that I renounce my family’s ties to this kingdom forever or just for this generation?”

  “You would be cut off while he lives,” Prince said honestly, “and I am unsure of how long it would take for us to re-forge the link between our worlds. It may be within your lifetime or in a future century.”

  “But it would allow him to be defeated now,” Lena said, “and we would be freed from his sorcery.”

  “If all goes according to plan, yes,” he answered. “If you would like some time to consider . . . ”

  “I accept those terms,” she interrupted.

  In this place where joy and camaraderie had been on hand since her arrival, it was startling to see tears on the face of a few people. Anna was among their number, but she did not speak in opposition.

  “It is more important to protect my family than anything else,” Lena explained. “I am willing to sacrifice the happiness I have felt here tonight if it means that the danger we now face will be eradicated.”

  “Your mother’s daughter,” her great-great-grandmother whispered.

  She wasn’t really sure she was following in her mother’s footsteps in this decision. She did, however, feel that she bore at least one resemblance to Rebekah Hoffman. “I am no warrior, but I hope I learned some of my bravery from her.”

  Anna’s fingers wound through hers, and they waited for a response hand in hand. None of the counselors gave further input, but every set of eyes was on Prince. By the time he spoke again, his words carried the weight of a decree.

  “In the name of your family’s loyalty, it shall be as you wish.”

  * * *

  Laurie returned from Thanksgiving break to find leftovers in the fridge and Lena in apparently good spirits. She didn’t seem bothered when Lena had little excitement to report, but she also hadn’t been made privy to any of the powers and plans that were centered around this two-bedroom apartment. She did comment that Lena should have gotten more rest on her days off, but left her alone after that.

  Prince and his council had set a date for one week from her return to her own world. It seemed sufficient time to eradicate any immediate threats that might interfere with the ritual and would give Lena time to reconsider if she felt so inclined.

  By the time the hour arrived, however, Lena was feeling as restless as an outnumbered soldier anticipating some kind of ambush. She had been assured that she was anything but outnumbered, but there was no guarantee that this would go as anticipated, and her appetite disappeared entirely, though it was a case of nerves and not sorcerous compulsion that kept her underfed this time.

  Anna was the one to answer the doorbell a minute after the summoning, and she entered the bedroom with Prince in tow. In addition to the usual sugar plums, he carried a silver knife, a small sack, and a tightly furled flag of some kind.

  “You left nothing behind you in my realm?” he asked without preamble. Lena shook her head. “Then we may proceed.”

  They went to the bench where they had first met, but this time, Prince walked by her side instead of materializing out of thin air. They had first become allies there and it seemed only appropriate to do all important rites in the same location. The sack, when upended onto the lawn, contained soil and nothing more. Prince handed over the flag with the same ceremony that usually attended a military funeral. Perhaps the analogy was not inappropriate.

  “In order to renounce your link to my kingdom, you must swear a blood allegiance to this world,” he stated once the knife was laid between them. “It will not require much blood, but the power of the spell lies in your loyalty to one world before the other.”

  As her loyalty to his domain had been tenuous at best, she felt no real need to retain the connection. It did cause a pang to think that she was denying one of Mom’s final wishes, but she was certain that Mom, of all people, would understand this being a matter of life and death. She looked away from the knife and tried to not think of how much blood he would need. Her gaze fell instead on the white flag with a golden rose at its center, which she had only seen flying on the ramparts of his castle.

  “Why did you bring your flag? I’m not swearing loyalty to your kingdom.”

  “No . . . ” He avoided her gaze. “But it is an important token for me.” He shook his head and returned to the previous subject. “Are you ready to give your loyalty solely to your world?”

  “All of my loyalty is to those here,” Lena answe
red, “so it might as well be official. How do I do that?”

  He was silent for a long moment before picking up the knife. “How do we do it? I have placed the kingdom in the hands of the counselors so that when I swear my loyalty to this world, the kingdom will not be left without a leader.”

  It took a moment for his words to dawn on her, but suddenly they did. “What?”

  Before she could ask for further explanation, he sliced a thin line across his palm and pressed the wound against the small mound of earth. “By my life, by my being, by the beat of my heart, I will defend this world and those in it.”

  “What did you do?” Lena shrieked.

  “Lena,” Anna interjected, “you asked for the bond to be severed.”

  “My bond,” she shouted. At a loss for anything else to do, she swept her hand across the mound of dirt, but she had no power of her own to cancel the vow. “I said nothing about cutting him off from his home!”

  “It is the only way to ensure that the tie is severed,” Prince said, extending the knife to her. “You must do the same.”

  “You have to take it back,” she demanded.

  “It is done.” Blood oozed from his palm and color drained from his face. “Will you not swear the same allegiance to the world you are so eager to protect?”

  His grand gesture was so unexpected and absolute that she still had not thought through any alternative options. There was no guarantee that, if she refused to complete the rite, it would invalidate this contract. He was here as leader and expert and there was no path to take but the one that led forward. She made an identical cut on her palm, but the tears that followed had nothing to do with the pain. They made no sense when she was severing a bond that she had barely discovered. The tears were for no one but the prince who had just sent himself into exile for her sake.

  “By my life, by my being, by the beat of my heart, I will defend this world and those in it.” She wept. “That now includes you.” She pressed her hand into the soil.

  He customarily reserved physical touch for greetings and goodbyes, but he gathered her into the kind of embrace that only family shared. “It includes both of us,” he reminded her.

  Part 3: Shneim Asar Chodesh

  Prince left for parts unknown looking like an ordinary man, and Lena could only think of what he had said in a council of war in a fairy tale kingdom: The Mouse King will be as mortal as any other. There was no mention of Prince getting a job or crashing on Anna’s couch until he could pay rent. They agreed not to discuss the rest of their lives until the crisis came to an end, but she had to wonder if he had given thought to what would happen after the war. For all she knew, he didn’t plan to survive that long.

  Anna spent the next two nights at Lena’s place curled next to Lena in bed; neither of them needed to say that they felt the need to stick together at this moment. The initial pain faded only slightly at first, but on the third day, they visited the empty house. No prince, ersatz or otherwise, paid them a visit, and the summoning yielded no results. They took it as a sign that either the prince’s obligation to her had been severed or, worse, he was not alive to receive the summons. There was no sign of struggle in the house, but the magical equivalent of radio silence was ominous.

  There was nothing left to do but try to move on with the life that had been interrupted by her own fairy tale. Two days before the semester resumed, Lena returned a few of her things to the house as a first step in reclaiming her home. She did a load of laundry and ate pizza there, as those seemed the most domestic ways to reclaim her homeland, but she made sure to set the nutcracker back in his rightful place on the mantel. Whether there was any power in it or not, it was undeniably the home’s protector.

  She still waited for some sign that all had not been lost on that night, but life went on without him as it had while her mother had been alive. She tried valiantly not to mind that, but the scar on her palm served as a reminder of her own guilt.

  Life plodded on at times, but the normalcy of it became a source of comfort and reassurance. Months passed, college continued. There were days when she could laugh at things without putting them into the context of grief, and there were days when she couldn’t face the prospect of leaving the sanctuary of her room. Slowly the pleasant days began to outweigh the painful ones.

  September 3rd was to be a special occasion. She had survived shneim asar chodesh; the year of mourning rituals was behind her, and she had returned home for the installation of her mother’s headstone, but the anniversary also meant meeting with Anna and a few others to remember what Platoon Sergeant Rebekah Hoffman had taught all of them. While the crowd at the funeral had overwhelmed Lena, the small group at this memorial was a kind of tight-knit family. They spent the afternoon together recounting the life lessons and tongue-in-cheek moments of wisdom that would have comprised Rebekah’s ethical will.

  Lena had hoped to see a familiar man with clear blue eyes and a military bearing there, but she had no such luck. Yet it was on that day that a box of sugar plums was left on her bedside table, and though she had sworn by her blood to have no dealings with the magical, she welcomed its unmistakable glow.

  Breadcrumbs

  by Jeanna Mason Stay

  Every day was much the same for Gretel. She awoke, suddenly, to a piercing scream echoing through her nightmares, accompanied by the smell of gingerbread. She startled from bed, her heart pounding. She told herself that it was just a dream, but that was a lie.

  To push the memories from her mind, she rose, headed down the narrow stairway into the kitchen, and began her day’s work. She cooked porridge for breakfast over a little stove, made up frybreads in a pot. The oven stood neglected, used only when absolutely necessary; Gretel had no taste for baking and ovens.

  She worked until the rest of the household awoke. Her father always came downstairs next, already fully dressed, ready to slip out and away as soon as possible. It had been over five years since her stepmother’s death, since Gretel and Hansel had returned from the forest, but her father was still the tiny man he’d been then.

  Gretel often wondered if it was the memory of his guilt that kept him from looking her in the eye when he mumbled his “Good morning” and scurried to work. Had that one small choice—his choice to abandon his children—shaped everyone and everything in Gretel’s life?

  When Hansel came down from his bedroom, though, she doubted it. “Hello, dear sister,” he’d say jubilantly, planting a quick peck on her cheek. “I think I shall go out today to try to bag a stag.” Or maybe, “I’m off to spear a deer.” When he’d laugh at his own rhyme, Gretel couldn’t help but laugh with him. Hansel was what he had always been—funny and likable and full of plans. He spent his days hunting and making friends in the nearest town and doing who knew what else. The terror of those days in the gingerbread house in the forest hadn’t cast their shadow on him.

  Maybe if his had been the hands that pushed. Maybe then he would still hear the witch’s screams in his nightmares.

  Gretel would stir whatever she was preparing on the stove that day, whisking the sounds out of her brain. Hansel would grab some frybreads from the table and head out the door into the forest. She wondered how he could do that, walk into the woods so nonchalantly. But she noticed he never headed the direction they’d taken that day so long ago, and he always followed the signs he had cut into the trees. Notches in wood don’t disappear like breadcrumbs.

  With the men gone, Gretel would be mercifully alone again. She did not go into town often, as they did. The townsfolk all knew her family—they had even known her stepmother—but no one knew what had happened those months when Gretel and Hansel had disappeared. Since no one knew the truth of her family’s story, they could not know the truth of her. And because they did not know her truth, everything felt like a lie.

  Her housework, on the other hand, was dependable, understood. She swept, sewed, gathered vegetable
s from their little garden plot. Quiet, peaceful work she could relax into. Each activity was automatic, her hands and fingers going through the motions she’d set for them and repeated daily through the years. That way she could set her mind adrift, floating on a sea of soothing nothingness until the men came home at night and she was wrenched back into the world.

  It had been five years. Surely life should have gotten better by now. And some days it was. Some days the supper conversation was gentle, or laughing, or loving, full of the events of the day and thoughts of the future—but then she would remember.

  She remembered the blankness in their father’s eyes when he and their stepmother took them into the woods to die. She remembered how he wouldn’t lift a hand to save his own children. She remembered the fear when she and Hansel knew they were lost, how their breadcrumb path had been eaten away by birds they hadn’t thought to plan for. The hope when they saw the gingerbread cottage in the forest. How that hope turned to horror, days and nights and weeks and months of it, ending in the final horror of the witch’s burning flesh.

  Remembering, she would rise from the table, politely excuse herself to her room, and scream her rage and despair into her pillow.

  Such was every day for Gretel, an endless round of remembering and forgetting and restlessness and stillness.

  She couldn’t say exactly when she decided to leave. It was like baking—there was no single moment when a loaf went from dough to bread, it was simply a process of time and heat. Maybe it was watching her father slink off to work every day, never meeting her eyes, yet never seeking forgiveness. Maybe it was the way Hansel laughed when she shuddered suddenly as the oven door caught her gaze. Maybe it was the slow-burning realization that they could all easily spend the next ten years together as they had spent the last five, nothing changing. She was nearly seventeen now; most of the girls in town were betrothed or married, heading out to new lives and worlds. They were not her friends, and she did not envy them, but maybe a seed of change had come free, floated away on the breeze, and settled in her soul.