‘Hans!’
Mother Groening looked shocked. The talk along the table died, and all eyes turned on Hans.
Hans tried to swallow. But the ham caught in his throat and his hunger fell away.
‘I didn’t tell you the whole truth,’ he said. He could feel his face blushing hot.
So he told them how he had first seen the Charcoal Burners in their wicken-shapes, and how the trees in the Black Forest had torn down his home. But something held his tongue when he came to tell about the magic glove, the deadly fair White Lady, and the strange boy with yellow socks. The words wouldn’t come out. Nor did he tell them how he blamed himself for it all.
As Hans spoke, he could see the doubt growing in the faces about the table. He faltered and almost stopped when he reached the part where he had heard his Mother’s death-cry. From there he rushed on, biting back sobs, up until Farmer Groening pulled him out of the haystack.
A somber, uneasy silence followed. At last Farmer Groening said, ‘Now if that isn’t the deepest pile of manure I ever–’
‘Hush, Father, the boy doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ Mother Groening said. She pressed her palm on Hans, feeling his brow. ‘Hans, are you sure you’re feeling well?’
‘I’m fine,’ he answered, putting off her hand.
‘Don't be wishing death on anyone, Hans. No matter how mad you may feel, no matter any unfairness that made you run away.’
Hans pushed himself off the bench. Somehow Mother Groening’s pity was worse than the old farmer’s scoffing. He could feel his face flushing and burning, but this time it wasn’t for any bashfulness.
‘It’s no good telling tales, little Hans,’ said Farmer Groening. ‘Leave that to townsfolk and those with too many hours and not enough work. On farms there’s more work than hours, and tale-telling only brings trouble. I expect it’s the same among woodcutters.’
Hans stared back at him, at all the smiling, pitying, scoffing faces.
‘You don’t know,’ he told them. ‘You don’t know anything at all.’
He turned and banged through the first door he came to, which took him into the kitchen. It was blessedly empty, for as soon as he was through it his ankle gave out from under him and he pitched forward onto a bench by the hearth, staring into the low flames and embers, blinking back tears, as mad as he had ever been.
For awhile they left him alone. He heard voices from the main hall and he was glad that he couldn’t make out what they said, for he could guess it well enough. ‘Very good then,’ he thought. ‘If they think I’m just a runaway child, I’ve no use for them, I’ll take myself elsewhere.’
But where could he go? He remembered his resolve of only an hour ago, that he would hunt down the wicken-things and do battle against them, that he would single-handed roam the Dimmerthal against them. It seemed so empty now. He couldn’t even talk Mother Groening into believing the threat was real. Would anyone else believe him?
His ankle angrily reminded him that he would do no roaming on this day.
He yawned a great cracking yawn. He hadn’t slept much the night before last, and not at all last night. Every time he blinked, his eyelids didn’t seem to want to open again.
‘I’ll close my eyes to rest them a moment,’ he said, ‘then I’ll thank Mother Groening. If only they will lend me a staff to lean on, I can go.’
He closed his eyes. He curled against the stones in the wall by the hearth, counting the aches his ankle gave him.
He fell asleep.
Folk were bustling about the kitchen when he woke. He stole a look about and saw the farmstead women cleaning up after breakfast and starting on the mid-day meal. Everything looked common and every-day. Hans wondered if maybe all the happenings of last night were not a dream after all. When he thought about wicken-things and leaping, house-eating trees, and he looked at the girls of Groening-stead cooking and washing, well, he didn’t know what to think.
Then one girl spoke of ‘the poor lad, the Forester’s son,’ and their eyes turned on him. He closed his eyes all the way, and soon enough drifted back to sleep.
When Hans woke next, the pots were clattering and the girls were rushing in and out of the kitchen. ‘It must be supper-time,’ thought Hans. The smell of roasting meat and gravy bubbling in the pan made his stomach ache with hunger. And yet his mind swam with dreams half-remembered. His neck ached and he shifted on the bench a little.
His dream came back to him. In it he found himself walking up the Road in Dimmerthal, when Father caught up to him. ‘Come,’ said Father, ‘you took it too hard when I said you had to go into the woods with me. It was a joke, Hans, you needn’t run away. Come back home, and everything will be as it was before.’
The door into the main hall opened and he caught some words from the master of the farm.
‘But it makes no sense,’ said one man. Hans thought he knew Bertie Groening’s voice.
‘No real sense, no,’ said the voice of Uncle Groening. ‘Back in Mutterbad town we would laugh at such undertakings. But out here, so nigh unto the forest… Many things appear at twilight that remain unseen in the sun.’
The foreman’s voice said, ‘Weird sights have been seen in the heavens, shooting stars and falling stars and stars with long forked tails. This Winter was a bad one all around, and Spring was wet and wild. The ice shut down the passes for a full month longer than I ever knew, and then floods swept down the main valley. But none of that touched us here in the Dimmerthal. Even the storm of two nights back, the lightning and thunder deep in the Black Forest, never touched us. Here all was dry and calm. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel natural or good.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Uncle Groening’s voice. ‘Something fired that haystack.’
‘It’s as if our valley were wicken-cast with good luck,’ said the foreman’s voice. ‘Or else all our bad luck is being withheld from us, and stored against a later day when it will all be let loose on our heads.’
‘News that is too good will always turn bad,’ quoted Farmer Groening. Hans could see the old man’s stern face as he would say such a thing.
‘Charcoal Burners!’ spat another man, his voice heavy with loathing.
‘See you come back as quick as you can,’ said Farmer Groening. ‘But do not risk the darkness, Bertie. I have a bad feeling here, that–’
But then the door was closed again and Hans heard no more of what they said. He turned on the bench and found that someone had lain a woolen blanket over him, and put a pillow beneath his head. ‘Mother Groening, no doubt,’ he thought, and fell once more asleep.
Some time later, he was sitting by the fire. A bowl of porridge lay in his lap. Mother Groening tended to the pots over the fire. Hans watched her, but she didn’t look up. When she did turn, he saw it wasn’t Mother Groening at all, but his own Mother. She smiled at him, took his hand and kissed him. ‘Why won’t you come back to us, Hans?’ she asked.
He woke up with a jolt.
This time he could find no reason why he had awakened. The kitchen was quiet. The fire in the hearth had fallen into a low happy glow of embers and ash. Most of the candles were out and the windows were quite dark. The whole house seemed to be asleep.
Then Hans heard whispers and furtive murmurs from the far corner of the kitchen near the back door. He could not at first make out what they were saying. One voice he thought was Mother Groening’s and the other was a man’s. All at once the man’s voice grew louder and broke into laughter.
‘The boy’s tale is not so far-fetched as your good Farmer thinks,’ it said. ‘I have walked in Schwarzwald, sister, and seen what you have never dreamed.’
‘Hush now, you’ll wake the whole house,’ answered Mother Groening. Hans heard the back door open and felt the cool night air flood the frowsy kitchen. ‘Go home, Wendel, do not say such things, you know Farmer Groening has banned you from our house for it.’
‘Very good, sister dear, I’ll go. But mark my words, the Farmer and his folk are not long for this world, and you must look for me to save you. I can, you know. Only look out for the ground fogs. The ground fogs are coming!’
‘Yes, Wendel, very good, they are coming, now good-night to you.’ And Hans heard her shut the door.
After that the kitchen was still but for the hissing from the embers. Mother Groening did not stir from the door. Hans lifted his head a little and saw beyond the cutting-table and the iron cauldron before the fire, where Mother Groening’s shadow loomed against the wall. He saw her shadow-shoulders rise and fall and fancied he heard her sigh. She came back into the kitchen, fingering her bunch of keys in the way his own Mother always had when she had too much worry on her mind.
This gesture, so well-known, made his heart ache. He sat up in the blanket and rubbed his eyes.
‘Mother Groening?’
‘Hans!’ She came to him right away and he dropped his head into her arms. ‘How are you, child? My, how you have slept! I saved you out some supper there on the side table, some cold soup and bread and meat. And there in the corner is Bertie’s trundle-bed, you will find it easier to sleep on.’
‘Where is Bertie, then?’
‘Oh, the Farmer sent him to your house, to let your Father and Mother know you’re all right. I expect they gave him supper and he’ll be sleeping in your bed tonight, so you may rightly take his.’
Hans shook his head but could not bear to quarrel. He rose, leaning against the hearth. His ankle burned and would only take a little part of his weight. He leaned against Mother Groening, and she bore him to the table and sat him down. He ate all that she put before him and drank cool well-water from a glass beaker. It was like being home again only very much nicer, the way he didn’t quarrel, and Mother Groening petted him and gave him whatever he wanted without being asked.
Then she bound up his ankle in some rags and tucked him into the little trundle-bed and kissed him good-night, and she went upstairs to her own bed. But she left the candle burning, and Hans felt glad for it.
He lay thinking for awhile. Sleep wouldn’t come, and no wonder, he thought, for he had slept all day. He sat on the edge of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees. Then he got up and hopped to the back door.
He felt a strong need to go out into the night, why he didn’t know. And yet at the same time he felt an almost-equal unwillingness that bordered upon dread.
‘Don’t be a baby,’ he told himself, and wrenched open the door.
He went out onto the back porch among the work-tables and storing-bins. He leaned upon the rail and looked about.
The night was huge and empty and dark. The sky was spattered with stars peeping through the rents in the clouds. There was no moon for it had sunk at dusk tonight. Everything was quiet and still, there was no wind.
Hans found his thoughts turning back to the fair White Lady, the wicken-lady he had spied upon in the wreckage of his house. In the deep night she no longer seemed part of his dream, but all too real. She lurked somewhere in the night, Hans knew, along the edge of the woods, haunting strong men’s nightmares. He shuddered. And the strange boy Yellow Socks was abroad as well, with Corbluncz the Prince of the Charcoal Burners. How was it the farmers hadn’t seen them? Somehow it made it worse that they hadn’t. It seemed proof to Hans that the Sooty Folk were up to no good, that they must hide where they went and what they did.
He stretched and yawned. He turned to go back inside but then he stopped.
At the end of the porch someone was leaning up against the post and watching him. The way the man held himself, it seemed he had stood there all this time, waiting for Hans to come out, knowing that sooner or later Hans would have to come out.
In the cold starlight Hans knew the man’s face.
It was the gangly, odd-eyed farmhand Otto.
For a moment they stared at each other. Then the farmhand leapt over the porch-rail and ran off.
‘Hey!’ shouted Hans, but the gangly man vanished in the dark.
