The grinding, growing sounds of the trees filled the darkness. For hours Hans sat and listened with growing dread. The ground fogs wrapped about the haystack, hemming them in with dampness and a chill that crept into their bones, their hearts. It was a chill that went beyond the body. There was an odd tang about the fog also, something that Hans could only consider unwholesome and unnatural.
First light came seeping, like dishwater in a dirty rag, through the fog. It was as though the haystack were an island in the middle of the Ocean, and all around it was nothing but the fog.
Hans looked at his companion. The farmhand was sitting quietly on the tightly-stacked brown hay, blinking and looking at nothing. He seemed calm and gentle, his old foolish self. Hans wondered if it had been nothing but a fit that had taken the man in the night, some sending of the wicken-things out of the Schwarzwald.
‘Herr Hans,’ the man said, ‘look there—’
The fog was breaking. Through the clumps of white branches showed, and tree-trunks. In a little while the fog was so thin that Hans could see the trees.
They stood all about the haystack. The roots dug into the earth almost at the foot of the stack.
‘It has come after us,’ said the farmhand, ‘all the way … and yet we came back so far before we found this haystack…’
Hans turned about. He saw that the trees did not wholly cut them off. In the first place, just to the North of them a great boulder shoved its shoulder up out of the ground. There the tree-growth parted, as the furrows would about a ploughshare. The gap between the trees widened on either side of their haystack, and formed a sort of path or opening to the South.
Hans slid down the haystack and stood between it and the boulder. The dark firs, oaks, and birches towered over him. They looked just as old as the trees in the Devil’s Cathedral. They might have grown there for a hundred years.
Behind him Hans could hear the gangly farmhand scrambling down. The man crouched on all fours, craning his neck up and about, squinting up at the tree-growth. His tongue lolled out of his open mouth like a dog’s.
‘Does it move still?’
‘No, not now,’ answered Hans. ‘I think it only grows possessed in the dark of night.’ Hans knew something of the same feeling, for it had been three nights now he had not been able to sleep except during the day.
‘What shall we do, Herr Hans?’
Hans had been thinking hard through the last hours of the night, about what he could do about Otto. He knew the man could overpower him if he wanted to; even if Hans had been as quick and nimble as ever, and not hobbled by the twisted ankle, he doubted he would have been able to slip the man’s long arms and strong hands. ‘One and five make six, and six wins all tricks,’ he had told Father, and now he made up his mind that this should be his byword with Otto.
‘There are two paths forward for us, Otto,’ he said, looking at the man with care. ‘We can go back to Groening-stead and tell them what we’ve found. If you will back my words, even Farmer Groening will have to pay heed. And if Bertie has gotten back before us, his words will be trusted. Or,’ he said, ‘we can do as you counseled — and go into the Schwarzwald.’
‘What,’ whined the gangly man, swallowing so that his throat bobbed. ‘Just the two of us, alone?’
‘Isn’t that what you said? Last night you told me it was my place to go into the Black Forest. I should go, you said, I must go, and go there I would.’
The farmhand looked at him. He blinked.
‘Don’t you remember what you said?’
Otto shook his head. ‘Sometimes,’ he said slowly, ‘strange words come out of my mouth like toads and bugs from a rotten log, Herr Hans. The Groenings know to pay them no mind.’
‘All the same, you said it. I’ve a mind to do it, too.’ He reached down and gripped the farmhand by his collar. ‘Come along.’
‘No, Herr Hans — you mustn’t!’ The farmhand dug in his heels and scrabbled at the hay-stubble with his long fingers.
‘Come on, I say!’ Hans tugged at him, but the man twisted free, and scampered back half behind the haystack. There was no mistaking the dread that was making his limbs tremble.
Hans leaned on the staff. He stared at the farmhand. What was he to make of him? Not to trust him ever — that much was clear.
‘We shall go back to Groening-stead, then,’ he said. Otto’s eyes brightened, and he nodded sharply. ‘Come and help me,’ Hans added, for his ankle was burning again.
They rounded the haystack and trudged down the middle of the lane the trees had made. Hans found himself looking up to either side, unable to shake the feeling that the tall trees with their mantles of leaves were watching him in every move.
Father had said the wicken in the Schwarzwald was old and wild but not evil. Hans knew better now. He wished that Father had known it too. If only he had, he might still be alive.
The thought brought a lump to his throat, and he fought back tears. He shook his head. No more childish wishing for him! Mother and Father and Granny and the girls were no more — they were all of them dead and gone. Hans had to think of himself now. He had to pay back the things that had murdered them. It all lay up to him now.
Far ahead, the misty air brightened, and the gap between the trees seemed to widen. Otto pointed, but Hans had already seen it.
‘A cart,’ he said, and thought straightaway of the carts of the Sooty Prince’s soldiers.
‘It’s the master,’ said Otto. ‘He’s come for us.’
They came closer, and Hans saw that the farmhand’s words were true: it was indeed Farmer Groening, the foreman Anton, and one or two other men. They stood before their hay-wain and looked and pointed up above them. The look on their faces was one Hans would never forget. This was the first time he saw such a look in his life, but it wouldn’t be the last. The farmers were staring up with a look of sick horror.
When they reached the hay-wain, Hans and Otto could see the sight for themselves. And then Hans was sure the same look took hold of his own face.
High overhead, the branches of three trees came together, and wreathed round one another in a kind of knot or noose. This noose wrapped tight about the throat of young Bertie Groening, whose body hung twenty yards above the ground, and swayed a little as the early morning breeze turned the branches back and forth.
