It was a long time before Hans could stop shivering. At last he propped himself up on one elbow and stared back down the Road.
Low against the star-flecked sky, the Black Forest stood about the valley’s end as grim as ever. A breath of wind came wandering up from there, bringing no sounds, only cold and a hint of unknown smells. The night seemed to lie in peace. Hans could hear no grinding tree-growth, no splintering walls, no earthly voice or cry.
Was it all a bad dream? he wondered.
He walked back down the Road. He slapped his feet on the hard ruts, humming and making any sound he could to push aside his thoughts of what he’d seen.
‘It was a dream,’ he said. ‘How else could trees grow up so fast? When I get back home I’ll find everything just the way it’s always been.’ But his heart told him no.
The Road took him down to the Black Forest. There it stopped. The trees grew right in the Road as thick and tall as house-trees. They looked as if they had always been there.
The Road no longer turned around behind the wood-cutter’s house. It no longer ran East alongside the Forest. House and sheds were gone, swallowed by the woods.
Hans stood at the new end of the Charcoal Burners Road and didn’t know what to do. The trees over his head seemed no longer to be growing in that crazy madcap way. They stood quiet in the starlight just like any other trees. But they were wicken.
The ground fog spread up between the trees out across the open ground. Hans shuddered to think of walking in among those tree-things.
‘Well, you’ve got to, so don’t go weeping over it,’ he told himself. ‘Go on now, do it.’
He ducked under the branches. He held his breath but the branches neither moved nor clutched at him. He crept up to a birch-trunk. It had sprung up only an hour ago, but it was as thick as a hundred year old tree. The wicken-branches over his head swayed a little, but they let him be.
Hans now stood upon the very brink of the Black Forest. He stood in its shadow but not yet inside it, not yet.
He peered around the trunk.
He saw a few broken timbers and boards that might once have been part of the wood-shed. The wood-shed had held together better than the house. The trees hadn’t meant to smash the wood-shed. Nobody lived in the wood-shed.
Where his home had stood, Hans found the trees grew thickest. He could make out nothing of the house beyond some splinters and rags. He stared at the mess. His heart sank in his chest. Nobody could have lived through that.
He slapped his head and groaned, ‘Ah! You stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing!’
A shape crawled onto the heap that had been his home.
It was the shape of a boy. He stood upon the wreckage with a lantern in his hand. He seemed the same age as Hans, though smaller and thinner. He was a dark boy with long hair. His coat was fine and new and his socks shone bright canary yellow. His breeches were satin, he wore silver buckles on his shoes, and his proud face was grinning.
Hans hated him.
The boy glanced over his shoulder behind him. ‘There’s nobody,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’ asked a voice.
It was a woman’s voice, and it was the loveliest voice Hans had ever heard. He crept around the birch-trunk to see her better.
Beyond the boy, half-mantled in the fog, stood a Lady all in white. She was tall and slender. She was as pale as mist in moonlight, and her dress was silver like the stars. She was a wicken-thing beyond any doubt. And yet her fairness beckoned Hans like some fatal star. She was like a figure from old nightmares he had dreamed long ago, half-lost in the fears and desires of childhood.
‘No one is there?’ she asked, in that silvery, bell-like voice of hers, with the oddest hint of an accent. ‘No one at all has lived?’
The boy with yellow socks held his lantern higher. He shook his head. ‘He’s dead, or gone. What do you want him for, anyway?’
‘You dolt, who are you to question me?’ said the Lady. ‘He must be there. Don’t you even know how to look, you block-head?’
The boy dropped to his knees before her. ‘Please, please forgive me,’ he begged.
‘Ah! Well, never mind,’ said the White Lady. ‘It is as it must be, I suppose. One can’t blame even you for everything.’ She stroked the boy’s black brushed hair, that was caught into a pigtail with a velvet ribbon. ‘But the Sooty Prince is still to be reckoned with. You must keep after him. Never let him waver or fall prey to his vices. Mutterbad and all its folk must fall! The King must win his Needle back! A great deal is resting on the sooty ones – and on you. Will you keep your trust?’
‘I will for you, Mother,’ answered the boy with yellow socks. He looked up and his face shone with pride once more. ‘If they slack, I’ll beat them!’
‘You may try that. If it fails, take that.’ The White Lady pointed to something on the ground and the boy stooped and picked it up. It was the glove that Hans had found in Mankiller’s knot.
‘That is my gauntlet Clutchfast. It is Wicken through and through, and it has much strength. Show it to him as my badge should he grow unruly. Though it was not meant for you, I grant you the right to use it upon such creatures as those rascals. By Clutchfast I will know where you go, and through it you may call on me. Use it and you will tame him.’
The boy pulled on the glove. It seemed to fit his hand quite well. He set down the lantern and knelt before the White Lady. With the glove he raised the hem of her long silver-lace skirt and brought it to his lips.
Hans stared at the wicken-lady. He had never seen anyone to match her. She was so fair his heart half broke just looking at her. Even with his nose gooey and his cheeks raw with tears, he knew he had fallen in love with her. He wished he could take the place of Yellow Socks. He felt a sharp bite of jealousy when she leaned down and placed a kiss on the boy’s brow.
‘There now. I forgive you,’ she said. ‘But quickly, away with you. Already they must be far away down among the houses of men-folk.’
Yellow Socks tucked the falconer’s glove under his belt and strode around the wreckage. The fog swirled up about his legs. He reached the Forest’s edge. Hans ducked behind the birch-trunk as the boy walked past.
Behind him, the fair White Lady trod a circle among the splinters. She was humming a song so beautiful it chilled Hans to his marrow.
‘Come to me my darling,
It’s you I’m singing to,
Come to me my darling,
My lips are sore for you.’
Among the trees the White Lady stooped down into the fog behind the ruins. She went down on all fours as small as a weasel and crept inside, still singing the soft and fretful song.
Hans knew he had to make up his mind now. Should he chase after Yellow Socks or go on spying on the mysterious wicken-lady? His heart longed to stay with her. At the same time he felt shy of her, and fearful. Something in his heart told him she was deadlier than all the trees together, and that she would not take it kindly that he watched her unawares.
Yellow Socks marched away up the Road, swinging his lantern beside him. Already the lantern was fading in the creeping fog. And yet Hans wavered, still drawn to her singing.
‘Come to me my darling,
So long I’ve wanted you,
Come to me my darling,
It’s you I’m singing to.’
Her song was growing inside him, chilling his heart and stealing through his blood. He knew he had to go to her. She was calling and he must go. He stood even with the birch trunk. Now he stood out upon its farther root. One more step and he would stand inside the Black Forest and she would have him, he was sure of that. And he wanted her to have him. He longed to be hers and to kneel before her as Yellow Socks had done, and maybe even win a kiss from her, burning cold upon his brow.
‘No, no,’ he whispered. He clenched his fist and fought against it with all his heart. Now the last of the White Lady’s skirts had trailed out of sight underneath the house ruins. He could see only fog and trees rising out of it and the splinters that marked the graves of his family. Her weird singing faded down under the wreckage and her pale cold fairness drew him no longer. Maybe that was what told the difference, or maybe he was stronger than he knew.
Hans turned and ran after the boy.
