One Witch at a Time Page 6

  He wanted to find out.

  At that same moment Susanna Louisa found her voice. “I know—”

  Rudi elbowed her, more forcefully than he’d intended, but it did the trick. She held her tongue once more.

  “Don’t stand there letting winter into the house,” called Ludwig. “Come inside and warm up!”

  Rudi’s thoughts were crowded aside by the delicious aroma of something cooking. Before they knew it, he and Susanna were ushered into the cottage and served a small but tasty meal of mutton-bone soup, and cabbage fried in a bit of bacon fat. It was the best meal Rudi had eaten in months. He was immensely grateful, all the more because Ludwig and Agatha clearly had so little to share.

  Agatha bustled from larder to table, in an effort (Rudi suspected) to keep Susanna Louisa’s mouth full for as long as possible. Ludwig kept up a brisk conversation as they ate. He was hoping for a thaw, so that he might find the boot he’d lost under the snow last September. He remarked how Rudi and Susanna seemed quite ordinary, despite all the stories he’d heard about the peculiar folk of Brixen. There was only one thing Ludwig did not mention during the meal—the giant witch. And Agatha said nothing at all.

  There were many questions Rudi knew he ought to ask. And yet his sharp edge of purpose had dulled along with his hunger. Petz wasn’t so terribly bleak after all (now that he was warm and fed), and the people were cordial and welcoming. Why did he need to go any farther, and risk the wrath of the witch of Petz? Couldn’t they just stay here awhile, and leave the beans with Agatha? She had found them in the first place. She must know where to return them to.

  But Rudi knew he could not leave the beans with Agatha, any more than he could have left them at the border. He knew better than anyone else that magic half-returned is magic not returned at all. He must deliver the beans to the Giant’s doorstep, as his own witch had instructed.

  And yet, instead of asking the questions that ached to be asked—about the witch of Petz, or how Agatha had come to possess the magic beans, or why she was being so secretive—Rudi simply said, “Thank you for your kindness, Master Ludwig. The dinner was delicious.”

  “None of this ‘master’ nonsense, now. Call me Ludwig.” His jolly mood vanished, and his eyes bore into Rudi’s. “And now your stomachs are full, will you listen to reason? Don’t go near the witch’s fortress. Nothing good can come of it.”

  “I’m grateful for your concern,” said Rudi, and he meant it. “But we must. Our own witch has sent us.” He felt an unexpected relief at being able to speak openly of witches. Besides, Susanna had been right. The sooner they finished their errand, the sooner they could go home.

  “What sort of witch sends mere children to do her bidding?” growled Ludwig.

  Pride and loyalty welled up in Rudi’s chest. “The Brixen Witch trusts me.”

  “Us,” corrected Susanna Louisa. “The Brixen Witch trusts us.”

  Rudi shifted in his chair, and his face burned. But she was right.

  Ludwig worked at smoothing his unruly hair. “As long as I live, I’ll never understand the likes of witches. I hope your own witch has provided you with a means to get back to Brixen. Because our witch has long ago laid a hex on the borders of Petz.”

  “We know,” said Susanna, her eyes wide. “If you so much as step across the border, you’re turned to ice and you shatter into a thousand pieces and blow away and are never seen again.”

  The snow finch, Rudi recalled with a shudder.

  “Quite so,” said Ludwig. “You hear that, daughter? Even foreigners know how foolish it would be to try to leave Petz.”

  Agatha made no response, but sat demurely at the table, hands in her lap. “It’s an old story,” she said finally, fixing her brown eyes on Rudi. “Everyone has heard it.”

  “As well they should,” said Ludwig, with a pointed glance at his daughter. Agatha’s face remained expressionless, though she would not meet her father’s gaze.

  Rudi observed this tense exchange without remark, and wondered what they were really quarreling about.

  Then all at once he understood.

  Agatha had been to Klausen and back, hadn’t she? Which meant that she had crossed the enchanted border without the aid of the magic beanstalk, and yet somehow she had not met the same fate as the snow finch. And she had done it, Rudi was sure, without telling her father.

  “Don’t worry,” said Susanna Louisa, oblivious to the friction between father and daughter. “Our own witch helped us get here, and she will help us get home again.”

  “But while we’re in Petz, we are on our own,” Rudi added. “We must venture to the witch’s lair but avoid the witch himself, if we want to go home again.”

  “Which we do,” added Susanna Louisa.

  “Of course you do,” said Ludwig, his face softening. “But truly, I cannot advise you. You’d never catch me anywhere near the place.”

  “If you keep to the shadows, you’ll manage. The Giant’s eyesight is lacking, and so is his hearing.” This was Agatha, who still would not look at her father as she spoke.

  “He doesn’t sound very worrisome, for a witch,” said Susanna hopefully.

  “He makes up for it in other ways,” answered Ludwig, still frowning at his daughter. “They say he can smell a drop of blood a mile away.”

  “Pardon me,” said Rudi. “Why do you call your witch ‘the Giant’?”

  “He’s a great huge man,” answered Ludwig. “As tall as three men, with legs like tree trunks. Some say he was born that way. Others say he grows year by year.”

  “He’s an evil tyrant,” said Agatha, and now her eyes gleamed in anger. “Whatever he can, he takes for himself, and all the better if it makes us suffer. Every scrap of firewood thicker than my finger. Every scrawny rabbit we manage to snare. If anyone in Petz so much as sprouts a turnip seed on their windowsill, he takes it.”

  “So he does,” said Ludwig sadly. “He made off with every cow and chicken and goat long ago. Some folk say he’s hoarded the summer itself, to better control all its bounty. Then he doles it out as he sees fit. Without the meager sustenance he provides, every last one of us would freeze to death, or starve. We’re forever on the brink of both at any rate. Never mind that we are prisoners in our own country.”

  Rudi considered all this. How lucky were the folk of Brixen that they could trust their witch, and that she treated them with fairness and respect? She was powerful enough that—if she wanted to—she could be as merciless as the witch of Petz.

  “Listen to me now,” continued Ludwig. “About this errand of yours. You may think you have everything in hand, but—”

  A sudden scrape of chair legs, and Agatha stood. “I will show you the way.”

  12

  They stared at her, all three of them.

  Ludwig was the first to find his voice. “You will not! I just got you back from who-knows-where. I’ll not risk losing you again!”

  Rudi’s ears perked up at this. So Ludwig knew that Agatha had been gone. But he was not sure where she had gone, and now Rudi was certain that Agatha did not want her father to know.

  “You heard what he said, Papa. He cannot disobey his witch.”

  Ludwig rose from his chair, fists clenched at his sides. “But you have no such duty. You’re my daughter, and you’ll stay home, where you belong!”

  Agatha gestured toward Rudi and Susanna. “These two are strangers here. You know they will fail miserably without someone to guide them.”

  Rudi managed to feel grateful and insulted all at the same time.

  “Daughter!” said Ludwig, drawing himself up to his full height, which was considerable. “I’ll not tell you again. You’ll stay home, where you can’t get into any more trouble!” With that, he tossed Rudi and Susanna their coats and knapsack, and bundled them outside. Standing with them on the doorstep, he shut the door and rubbed his arms against the cold.

  “Excuse my daughter. I don’t know what’s come over her. For three days she was gone, w
ithout a word. Drove me nearly mad with distress and worry. I feared the worst—that she’d tried to escape across the border. That I’d never see her again. When she finally came home, just today, I was relieved beyond words. But you heard her in there. I think she ventured up to the Giant’s fortress.” Ludwig shivered, and shifted from one foot to the other to keep warm. “And that worries me nearly as much.”

  “Why did she do that?” asked Susanna, and Rudi wondered the same thing. But it would explain how Agatha had come to possess the magic beans.

  Ludwig adjusted the hood on Susanna’s coat. “She hates the Giant, as do we all. But I think she hates it even more that no one dares to defy him.” He shook his head sadly. “I fear it will cost her dearly one day.” Ludwig’s face clouded. “As for yourselves, don’t make the same mistake. Listen to what I’m saying. You have been charged with an impossible task. Go home to Brixen, while you can. If you can.”

  Rudi swallowed the lump in his throat. “Truly, I wish we could.” He pulled up his own hood and studied Ludwig’s worried face. Though he had only just met Ludwig and Agatha, Rudi was already fond of them both. He didn’t want to betray Agatha’s secret. But Ludwig had been generous and kind, and didn’t deserve to suffer needless worry.

  And so Rudi ventured a suggestion. “Perhaps Agatha should come with us, then. We could help each other. She can help us avoid the Giant, and we can make sure she doesn’t do anything reckless. We can make sure she gets home to you safely.”

  Ludwig considered this for a moment. “I don’t think I can stop her, in any case. You might as well have each other to look after.” He pulled out a huge handkerchief and blew his nose. “There’s no sense putting it off any longer, I suppose. Are you ready?”

  “We didn’t bring any mittens,” said Susanna in a small voice.

  She was right. When they’d left home this morning, they’d never imagined they’d be going all the way to Petz.

  Ludwig gave a weak smile. “Wait here.” He disappeared inside the house for a moment, and then returned with his arms full. He handed them pairs of shearling mittens, which were too big for Susanna Louisa, but she pulled them on without remark. Now Ludwig tied Susanna’s hood snug under her chin. For good measure, he wrapped a woolen scarf several times around her neck. He offered his fur-lined hat to Rudi, who took it with a surge of gratitude, for the cold was already making his ears ache.

  “Bring them back to us,” Ludwig told them. “And tell us how you fared with our hexenmeister.”

  Now the cottage door opened and Agatha appeared in the doorway, bundled in her own shearling coat and hood.

  Ludwig busied himself inspecting Rudi and Susanna, and then nodded in grim satisfaction. “I ought to be the one going with you, but I’m not so nimble anymore. Besides, I’ve seen too much of the world to be brave enough for such a task.” He turned and shook a thick finger at his daughter. “If you’re not home again soon, that Giant will deal with the likes of me, witch or no witch!”

  “I’m very glad of it,” said Agatha, and she threw her arms around her father’s neck. They stood for a moment wrapped in a fierce embrace.

  “Could I have one of those?” came a small voice. Susanna Louisa’s.

  Ludwig’s pained face crinkled into a smile, and he hugged Susanna, too. “You’ll be back again before you know it.”

  Perhaps it was Ludwig’s great size, or Agatha’s testy, tearful mood, or both, but to Rudi’s mind, Susanna Louisa looked suddenly very small. Too small to be venturing so far from home.

  And he was responsible for her.

  Time to accomplish the task at hand. Do it right, Rudi told himself, so you only need to do it once. He shook Ludwig’s hand without a word, lest his voice waver and betray his own fears. Ludwig gestured up the hill toward their destination and stood on the doorstep, his jaw set and his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  There was nothing to do but set off. Rudi, Susanna, and Agatha trooped up the snowy lane in uneasy silence, past weather-beaten houses optimistically adorned with mistletoe. Rudi glanced over his shoulder. Ludwig still stood on the doorstep, watching them, his thick shock of hair a bright daub against the gray house. He was too far away now for Rudi to see the expression on his face, and Rudi was grateful. It made the leaving easier. No wonder Agatha charged ahead, never once looking back at her father.

  Rudi thought of his own parents. They were sharply aware of the benefits to be gained by Rudi’s acquaintance with the Brixen Witch. And yet, Rudi knew that if it were up to them, Mama and Papa would never allow Rudi to have dealings with their own witch, much less the witch of Petz.

  But it was not up to them. And it seemed the same was true for Ludwig and Agatha.

  The three travelers continued up through the village, which looked to be held together by ice and pure luck. Small children tumbled past, as round as snowballs in their layers of warm clothing. A thick-coated dog trotted up to greet Agatha and sniff the newcomers. A bundled woman pulled frozen shirts and trousers off her wash line, stacked them like kindling, and carried the stiff pile into her crooked house.

  Once again, Rudi was struck by how familiar it all seemed. Except for the outward details—the decoration on the houses; the stubborn winter; and, not least, the outline of the peak that loomed above—daily life in Petz seemed very much like daily life at home in Brixen.

  “The folk of Petz seem content enough,” he remarked. “Considering your giant witch is such a tyrant.”

  “What choice do they have?” snapped Agatha. “They make the best of a bad situation.”

  As if to prove her point, a scrawny tabby cat came padding from behind a splintered shed. She mewed and wound herself around Agatha’s boots.

  “Pretty kitty!” said Susanna, reaching for the cat.

  An exposed claw shot out and raked a deep scratch across Susanna’s borrowed shearling mitten.

  “Bad kitty!” Susanna cried, jumping back to hide behind Rudi. “Why does she like you and not me? Is she yours?” For the cat had resumed rubbing against Agatha’s ankles, and now it was purring loudly.

  “Shoo!” said Agatha, shaking her foot. “Not mine. She lives under the shed.”

  Rudi knew a thing or two about bad-tempered cats. His own barn cat, Zick-Zack, had not allowed anyone to touch her since she was a kitten. Now Rudi stomped his foot and said, “BOO!”

  The cat arched her back, hissed, and shot under the shed.

  “I seem to have a way with cats,” said Agatha. “I don’t know why. You’d think I had a fish in my pocket.”

  This caused Susanna to blink in recollection. She reached into her own coat. “I have beans in my pocket. Want one?” She popped a tiny pod into her mouth and crunched.

  Agatha gasped in horror.

  “Don’t worry,” said Susanna, opening another pod to display its contents. “They’re not the magic ones. See? No keyhole mark.”

  Rudi winced at the mention of magic. Such talk might be commonplace here in Petz, but he was from Brixen. And in Brixen it was bad luck to talk of such things.

  Agatha narrowed her eyes. “I suppose that’s how you got here? You climbed the beanstalk?”

  Rudi nodded, but then he frowned in puzzlement. “You too?”

  “How else could I have traveled all the way back from Brixen so quickly?”

  “Not Brixen,” corrected Susanna, still munching. “We saw you in Klausen.”

  “Brixen, Klausen,” said Agatha with a wave of her hand. “All the villages on the far side of the mountain are the same to me.”

  Rudi took notice of this remark. To him, the villages were as different as night and day. But they were foreign places to Agatha, and so he held his tongue. Still, something about her words nagged at the back of his mind.

  “We never saw you,” said Susanna. “Or heard you. On the beanstalk, I mean.”

  They had left the village behind and now were climbing through a scrubby, sparse woodland. Agatha took Susanna’s hand and pulled her up the snowy sl
ope. “I didn’t see you, either. And yet here we are. Does it really matter how we got here?”

  “No,” said Susanna Louisa.

  Yes, thought Rudi. Once again, something nagged at his mind. It was like trying to catch a tiny fish with his bare hands. The silvery thought kept flitting through his fingers. He rubbed his neck. He didn’t want to upset Agatha further, but there were things he needed to know. “About those beans . . . the ones you gave to Susanna . . .”

  “Those beans!” Agatha turned on Rudi. “I wish you would stop talking about those beans! The only thing worse would be if you told me you’d brought them with you back to Petz.”

  13

  “Oops,” said Susanna, skidding to a stop on the icy path. “Then I suppose it’s worse.”

  Agatha dropped Susanna’s hand and stared at her, aghast. “I should have guessed,” she said, almost to herself. “Why else would you have come all the way to Petz? You mean to return the beans to the Giant, don’t you? That’s your errand?”

  Rudi hesitated. How easy it would be to say no. One simple word, and he could melt Agatha’s anguish and see her smile. He could drop the beans where he stood, and be finished with them forever. He and Susanna could go home. One simple word.

  But something happened to the word as it formed on his tongue, and it came out a wobbly but unmistakable “Yes.”

  Agatha’s face became as pale as the sky. “But you can’t! Do you know what I’ve endured because of those beans? He came storming after me, vowing to spill the blood of whoever stole his magic. I barely escaped with my life! And then I got lost. For three days and nights I wandered in the mountains. I worried poor Papa half to death! It was only luck that led me to the valley, and to the village.”

  Rudi’s mouth fell open. “That’s how you came to Klausen?” He recalled seeing her in the marketplace. Her tangled hair. Her muddied boots. And then he thought of the snow finch. “But the hex on the border . . .”

  Agatha groaned in frustration. “There is no hex on the border! It’s nothing but a fairy tale, to frighten us. To keep us from leaving.”