Chapter 8: Caught

Hans straightened – and twisted back down again right away. His ankle was three times bigger than the other one. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a time.

He scrabbled at the hay. He dug and he burrowed and squeezed himself inside the haystack.

At last Hans had hollowed out a good-sized hole inside the haystack and blocked the way out with straw.

He huddled in the warm darkness, breathing softly, listening for the soldiers.

For a long time he heard nothing but his own breath and the little rustling sound the hay made against his chest.

Hans leaned his head upon the hay. In the dark warm hole he felt his weariness stealing over him. It was robbing him of fear and the sharpness of his wits. His ankle eased a little. His fists unclenched. His neck softened and let go.

His eyes closed, and he dreamed about the trees springing up and crushing his home.

‘Hello, little rabbit,’ said a voice.

Hans started. How long had he been sleeping?

‘Are you nice and safe in there, rabbit? Of course you are. We tracked you here, little rabbit. We’re out here all around your little straw house.’

The voice was low and gruff. The words were coarse. The tongue was the one used by the Charcoal Burners.

They had found him.

‘Come out, little rabbit, come out. Come out and play with us.’ A chortle sounded from another throat.

Hans lay quite still. He hardly breathed.

He thought to himself, they couldn’t know he was there. They couldn’t be sure. Maybe they had followed his tracks, but if they knew for sure he was still here in the haystack they wouldn’t be talking now. They would be poking their pikes into the pile and digging at it with knife and sword. So they were only guessing. Maybe if he were very quiet, they would make up their minds they had guessed wrong. Maybe they would give up and move on.

‘Did you hear me, little rabbit? Come out. Come out now!’

Outside the haystack Hans heard whispers and feet shifting and a growl from a big, hungry belly.

‘No? Won’t you come out and play with us, little rabbit? Well, now. It seems you’ve made yourself a little home here. It seems you like your little home. Is it warm enough for you, little rabbit? Is there a hearth to warm your hands? Of course there is, every good home has its hearth. But I don’t see any smoke from your roof. Did your fire go out on you? Oh then we’ll help you, little rabbit, seeing you made us such a good sneak when you came to pay us a call. We’ll light your hearth for you, you little sneaking rabbit!’

The words ended in a bark of mean laughter. Then Hans heard a new sound. It was soft and dry and rustling, almost hissing. It grew louder and crackling sounds joined in. A gleam shone through the hay and Hans smelled smoke.

They had set fire to the haystack.

Smoke swarmed about Hans. Flames lit up the hay. He turned about and about like a dog going to bed. He dug deeper and scratched higher. But the flames were roaring now and the smoke stung his throat and tears were blinding him. He could find no way out.

‘Very good!’ he shouted, coughing smoke. ‘I’m coming!’

No one answered him. Beyond the flame-roar he couldn’t hear a thing.

‘I said, I’m coming out!’ he shouted.

Still the quiet lingered out there. Then a voice answered,

‘Come out, then.’

Critique of Chapter 7

Does every chapter need magic? And how extensive or deep must the magic go?

Chapter Seven is mainly an action chapter: Hans, after sneaking into the Charcoal Burners’ camp, spies on Yellow Socks and Corbluncz (where does Bardelys dream up such awkward names? Names are not his strong point), is caught by the soldiers, and escapes with his life. But he sprains his ankle and hears them closing in on him in the fog-shrouded darkness…

I was about to write that there was no magic here. But there is, a little: we see for the first time some of the effectiveness of Clutchfast, the White Lady’s magical falconer’s glove. When Yellow Socks dons the glove and takes hold of Corbluncz by the collar, the Sooty Prince is made helpless, and seems to be in great pain. Yellow Socks boasts that the glove gives him, or indeed any wearer of the magical talisman, utter control over Corbluncz.

A remark here about the logic of magic. I read a great deal on fantasy-writers’ blogs about the need for a ‘logic’ or ‘rules’ of the magic in fantasy books. These rules seem to call in general for limits on the magic, as well as disadvantages in magic to counterbalance some of its advantages. Rather like the great powers of Superman must be diminished by the Achilles’ Heel of Kryptonite in its various colored forms.

It is a theory that I dislike. Its aims are surely good ones, and yet what makes magic, magic is that it does not follow rules the way science must. A flying carpet obeys your command to fly, and there is no need to expostulate on the correct weaving to be made of such a carpet, nor of any weakening of the person flying the carpet to limit its range.

Of course, here in the shadow of the Schwarzwald, Bardelys is playing games in the yard of the Brothers Grimm, and may thus escape some of the rigors that writers of High Fantasy fall prey to. Bardelys may simply invoke the fairy tale of childhood, and be judged by a different standard.

And yet it seems to me that when talesmen argue for limits and rules on magic, they betray a basic ignorance of fantasy itself. They seem to be so bound in the modern, scientific world, that they can’t escape Reason and Natural Law. And thus their work must dwindle into a sort of science-fiction lite, even as the grand traditions of science-fantasy have been shrunk to fit the small confines of ‘hard sf.’ Magic is dream-work, whether simply daydreaming, psychology (or pathology), or symbolism. To constrict it is to kill it.

And if you kill the magic you end with simple adventure, as we seem to have in this chapter.

The question then rises, How much magic need be present in any one chapter or portion or scene of a magical tale? And how deep and extensive should that magic be?

Your answer to these questions (as they pertain to Chapter Seven here) will depend on whether the action and adventure of Hans’s struggles against the ugly squat soldiers suffice for your entertainment.

(Composed on keyboard Friday 7 November 2008)

Chapter 7: In the Wicken-Camp

Hans twisted beneath the tent’s canvas wall. He squirmed a little to the side, to where the chair wouldn’t block his sight. He wanted to see the boy’s face.

‘I take orders from Ulvax and the King,’ said the squat ugly man on the chair. His voice grew louder and more fretful. ‘Don’t you forget who I am either, little caught-in-the-bush! I’m Corbluncz Fire-Tongue! I’m Prince of the Charcoal Burners, and a General, to boot!’

Yellow Socks stepped forward. Now Hans could see his face. The face was cold and haughty. ‘And I,’ he said, gathering himself up to his full height, ‘I am the White Lady’s only child, and she has given to me the mastery over you and all your foul-smelling folk, you unwashed ash-peddler!’

The strange boy looked even odder in the light of the charcoal fire. His face looked pinched and thin, and as pale as ice on a January dawn when the light cracks the sky after a storm and all the world lies still. His eyes were black pits in the bony hollows sunk between his cheeks and brow. Deep in those pits a cold white light shone like a dagger at the ugly little man on the throne.

‘Why – you – you,’ spluttered the Prince of the Charcoal Burners.

‘Will you argue with me?’ said the boy. ‘Will you talk back to your betters? Grumble at orders from the White Lady?’

‘I – I do nothing of the sort! The Loom King knows I’m loyal to the high ones! But that’s not you, boy! Make good on those proud words. Go on! Show me your pedigree, your lineage, back up those words with something solid! Why, you’re not even as old as my son Blunczhelm, and what’s more he’s a Captain, and that’s a good deal better than you’re ever likely to become!’

‘So so, is that your tune?’ asked Yellow Socks. His voice was colder than his face. His thin lips stretched across his white, sharp teeth in a grimace of fury. ‘I’ll show you. By God in Heaven, I will show you!’

He pulled the White Lady’s gauntlet from his belt and drew it on. With it he reached out and took hold of Prince Corbluncz’s collar. He twisted the little man halfway off his throne.

In the grip of Clutchfast, the Charcoal Prince curled up as small as a cat held by the back of its neck, helpless. He twisted about, not even struggling. Hans could see his face now, dirty with soot sunk so deep into his pores that it had become part of his skin.

‘She gave this to me, the White Lady herself,’ said Yellow Socks. ‘Look at it, you wretched thing! See how she favors me! Will you quarrel with this? Will you talk back to the one whose hand wields it?’

Corbluncz choked and sputtered, half choking. Under the soot his face was purpling.

‘By this I hold mastery over you, ash-peddler. If mousling in the fields wore this gauntlet, even she could make you quiver and quake, like this!’ he gave the collar a sharp twist and the Charcoal Prince squeaked. ‘By this you know me, and the one from whom I come, whose words speak through my lips, whose dread will is made known through me. And you will do what I say, and you’ll not talk back to me nor grumble one bit. Don’t forget that only I can get the King his Needle back. Without me, all your plans are worthless, and the war is doomed to fail. Do you hear me, cinder-mouth?’

The squat ugly man seemed to pained even to answer him. The strange boy bent nearer over him, and gave the collar another half a turn.

Prince Corbluncz groaned and whimpered like a dog. His boots scratched at the chair seat, as though he would claw his way through it to get away.

‘And now,’ said Yellow Socks – but that was the last Hans witnessed of that struggle. All at once something gripped his left ankle and he was dragged backwards under the canvas.

Back outside in the Night, Hans was swung up in the air and dangled head over heels.

‘Oho! Gather round my boys, and take a look! I think I caught me a rabbit!’

Hans could make out very little in the darkness, all blurs and upside-down. A belt studded with spikes swung before his face, or he before it. Knives were stuck in the belt across the fat hairy belly of the soldier who held him.

‘That’s no rabbit,’ said another gruff voice. ‘It’s a spy, I call it.’

And ‘A spy, a spy!’ was shouted all about the back of the great tent.

The tatters of his nightshirt fell over his head. All the blood rushed into his face. He was swung back and forth and all around. Through the nightshirt folds he saw the legs of the man holding him. Hans clawed at the legs and with his free foot kicked the man’s face as hard as he could.

‘Ow!’ the man said, and dropped him.

Hans hit the ground head first and rolled aside.

‘He kicked me! Little beast kicked me!’

The soldier roared and hopped about with one hand on his face. The other soldiers pointed at him and laughed. For a moment they had forgotten Hans while they mocked the misery of their comrade.

Hans crawled to the side of the great tent and worked his way around it, slipping into every pool of shadow that came.

‘Hey now! Where’s the little spy got to?’

Other shouts sounded. By then Hans had got part way around the tent. Few soldiers were in sight. He took a chance and ran straight from the tent toward the outpost-fires.

Soldiers came rushing up to grab him but he ducked under their arms and got past. At the last fire a knot of them rushed at him but Hans had played Bump-the-man long enough to know the game. He ran headlong into the midmost soldier, turning his shoulder into the man’s chest and knocking him headlong. Then he was through.

Shouts and clinking armor sounded on his heels. Hans never ran so fast in all his life. He flew up the ridge away from the camp.

He ran and ran. The Charcoal Burners were short men, no taller than Hans, and their legs were stubby and bowed. They made for slow runners but Hans feared they would be tireless. He could outrace them in a sprint but in time they would gain on him and overtake him.

A gabble of shouts echoed across the hayfields behind him. They grew fainter and more scattered as Hans ran on. He flew straight up the dale, then swerved to the left, then the right. He still held his speed but breath was beginning to fail him.

How could he keep free of all the soldiers? Where could he hide in the open fields?

He looked into the sky. Was it brighter to the East? If only he could keep out of their clutches until day broke, he would be safe. They would have less power under the Sun.

If he could only find a farmstead! They were few and far between in the valley bottom. He knew the dozen or so farmers hereabouts by name. But where was he? He had gone so far, and taken so crazy a path, that he hardly knew. But he thought he had come higher up the valley, and farther to the West. Somehow he had to make his way back East and find the Road. The soldiers were likely thicker along the Road, but the main farms lay along it also and Hans knew them for he had gone up the Road all the way to Mutterbad town with Father twice in the past two years, trading faggots for town-goods.

The shouts echoed across the night, oddly twisting in the night-fogs. Hans loped along. He hardly went faster than a good brisk walking pace now. His lungs and throat ached. And then he felt a hot pinch at his foot and he was down.

He fell heavily, turning over twice before he stopped. His left foot was throbbing. It had caught in a rabbit- or badger-hole and twisted under him.

He felt it gingerly. He did not think it had broken. It was only a sprain but it was a bad sprain. Already the ankle was puffing up.

The wicken-soldiers’ shouts came nearer. Hans tried to stand. Resting on his right leg, he shifted a bit of his weight over to the left. The pain bloomed in his ankle, hot and throbbing, but he didn’t fall. He tried a few hobbling steps.

He limped away, unsure what way he had been heading, unsure if it mattered. The shouts came from all sides. He couldn’t manage more than a halting pace. ‘I might as well lie down and wait for them to find me,’ he thought.

Before him in the fog loomed a high dark shape. ‘A house at last!’ he thought, but it was only a haystack. He tumbled against its side. He leaned on it gasping and spitting. His ankle was on fire. He didn’t think he could go any farther.

He calmed his breath and listened to the Night. Would it never end? It seemed that it had been several hours ago when he had deemed the Night had only one hour left before the dawn. But the dawn had not come. It seemed the dawn would never come.

The shouts grew louder, sharper. They were closing in on him.

Critique of Chapter Six

Our Hero encounters danger, and welcomes it

Bardelys finally gives us his young hero’s reaction to losing his parents, sister, and home. It doesn’t seem adequate.

This though is a tricky subject. Too much time spent on ‘Oh dear! Oh my!’ will make our young Hans seem a weepy-eyed wimp. Too little will make us wonder at his stony-heartedness, and ask ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Bardelys has chosen to minimize the time – presumably in favor of action; now that he has (at last) begun the tale, he seems to want to carry us along with it. As I say, it seems too little to me. I don’t have a sense that Hans is too broken-hearted to lose everything he has. But on the other hand, maybe this is what Bardelys has in mind? We saw on the first two or three pages that Bardelys was critical of his hero, showing him to be lazy, arrogant, greedy, and self-centered. So maybe Bardelys merely wants us to add ‘uncaring’ to this list.

The glow of Yellow Socks’s lantern leads us to the great camp where the transformed Charcoal Burners (in greater numbers than Hans saw from his window when the nightmare began) have set up a great tent around which the common fighting-men stand or lie as wardens, burning fires to keep watch.

Hans enters the camp. It seems too easy, but the note that one of the dirty fighting-men might have called after him gives us a note of some worry. Have they followed Hans to the great tent? Are they spying on him even now?

He manages to worm his way under the flap of the tent, where he gets his first glimpse of the leader of the soldiers. I presume this is the Sooty Prince that the White Lady mentioned to Yellow Socks. And sure enough, Yellow Socks is in the tent, in the middle of some dispute with the man in the throne.

The ending of this chapter is one of those ‘bumps’ that break chapters in the middle of a scene. There is a small revelation – that it is indeed Yellow Socks. And there is the promise of more argument between the lad and the little ugly man in the throne, which just might answer some of the questions we have about this whole business – who these creatures are, what they want, why they have invaded the fields of men from the wicken-haunts of the Black Forest.

I like this chapter ending. I think I would find it very difficult to put the book down here. I am forced to (as are you) since Bardelys is only feeding me one chapter a day. But if I found it in a book, I would have to read at least the first page or two of the following chapter.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday 6 November 2008)

Chapter Six: After Yellow Socks

Bad-mad-mad, mad-bad-bad. His feet pounded the earth as Hans slogged up the Charcoal Burners Road. Far ahead the lantern bobbed in the dark like a glow worm in the cold pale fogs oozing up out of the Schwarzwald.

His ears rang with Mother’s dreadful scream. It had ended sharply, like a twig snapped off. That had been the very moment of her death. His eyes clouded up with tears.

How had it happened? Only yesterday everything had been the way it always was. And now the world had turned upside-down. His family was dead, weird things roamed the night, trees sprang up and tore houses down.

He lowered his head and slogged on. He was to blame for it all – he knew it.

If he could only wake up again and find everything back as it had been!

He stared far ahead at the bobbing lantern-light. That boy with yellow socks knew all about this. He was part of it. Hans squeezed his fingers into fists.

‘I’ll get him,’ he thought. ‘I’ll pay him back.’

But as fast as Hans could go, Yellow Socks ran faster. Soon Hans was panting, but the lantern-glow went on dwindling.

‘How far does he mean to go? Will he run all the way to Mutterbad?’

Even as this thought formed in his mind, Hans saw the lantern bob away off the Road among the fields to the right.

Hans slowed. He wondered if he should leave the Road where the strange boy had, or cut off into the fields here? Here, he thought, and stepped onto the field. The hay stubble was sharp here. It bit and scratched his feet. Hans loped up the slope, closer to the black wall the Schwarzwald made against the stars like a cliff rising up above the rolling carpet of fog.

The Night had grown colder. Dawn was maybe an hour or two away. Now began the Wolf’s Hour, the bittermost hour when Granny said the wicken-things loved to carry off children in their sleep.

Up ahead a glow loomed over the ridge line. The bobbing lantern made for it. Hans crept up the slope until he saw what cast the light.

Before him, high across the Dimmerthal’s western flank, the fields flattened like a shelf to meet the Schwarzwald. Open fires shone in the ground fog. About the fires things that looked like men crouched and tended to their carts. Hans had seen such men before. They were the coarse dirty soldiers he had seen marching below his window. There were maybe three score of them in small groups at the fires.

At the center of the fires stood a great tent. Some of the men went in and out of the tent. It was too far away in the fog to see just what they did.

Where had Yellow Socks gone? Hans had lost the lantern-glow among the campfire lights. He crept around the ring of fires, keeping low and out of sight. Still he couldn’t see the other boy.

‘Drat and curse it!’ he swore. Yellow Socks had gone.

Just then out of the corner of his eye Hans glimpsed a small lantern-light pass within the great tent. It was gone before he knew it.

Was it the one he wanted?

‘There’s no way to know but one,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve got to go inside the camp.’

He crept closer to the ring of fires. Most of them burned bright and high and close together, but some had burned low, and those left dark patches in between. Hans found the darkest patch and crept up to it. He tried to walk boldly as though he belonged there. But he held his breath when he passed between the fires.

A call came behind him. Was it meant for him? He didn’t look round. He walked on. The fires burned all about him now. A second call came, but it was followed by laughter. Hans let out his breath.

He was inside the Charcoal Burners’ camp.

Keeping his head low, he stole a glance about him. The cruel soldiers stood in small groups by their fires. They drank from flasks, wiped their chins on their coat-sleeves, snorted and laughed. Some lay on the ground in their coats, snoring and belching.

The great tent loomed before him. Through the opening soldiers came and went. Hans could catch a glimpse of torches, gold things, and sharp steel weapons. He walked around to the back of the tent. Nobody was about. Hans tucked himself inside a fold of the tent where ropes slung down to stakes hammered into the earth. He pressed his ear against the tent-wall and listened.

From inside he could hear voices. He couldn’t make out the words. Yellow Socks might not even be in there. He might be asleep on the ground somewhere in the camp, or standing with the soldiers at one of the fires. He might have passed the camp entirely and gone up into the black trees or back down to the Road again.

Hans yawned. He was suddenly bone-sleepy. His bare feet were like two sore ice-stumps and his legs ached with weariness. But if he fell asleep here he’d be done for. He had to do something.

He felt where the tent clung to the ground. The canvas was heavy but loose enough. Hans lay on the ground and wormed under the smothering canvas until he poked his head out inside the tent.

Before his nose lay a thick carpet, smelling of soot. Everything smelled of soot there. Carpets covered the ground everywhere he looked about the tent. Here and there iron stands burned charcoal, filling the tent with a drowsy, smoky warmth. A few paces from Hans, a great chair stood on boxes. Within the chair’s arms slouched a squat and ugly man. Because the chair faced away from Hans, he could see only the back of the ugly man’s head, half bald, blackened with soot and red with sores and warts.

‘I won’t have it,’ said the ugly man. He whined and threw his arms up over his head. ‘I simply won’t have you meddling in my affairs. This part’s mine, and that’s all there is to it. Go play with your toys in the White Lady’s hall, and leave the war to us that are true folk from within the Cinder Reek.’

Something stirred beyond the great chair. Peering through the ugly man’s legs, Hans saw a pair of polished shoes with silver buckles and ankles clad in bright yellow socks. One shoe rose and stamped the carpet.

‘Ah! So you won’t obey orders?’ said the strange boy’s voice.

Critique of Chapter 5

The Enemy takes the stage

Songs Rhymes & Verse

In this chapter, the second in a row, Bardelys shows his hand at … well, ‘doggerel’ would be the best word for it. Why is it that fantasy and folk tales use rhyme so freely? I suspect it goes back a long, long way, to the beginning when such tales, handed down through generations, used the mnemonics of verse to help talesmen remember them. Many epics were remembered only in verse. We can point to the Scottish Ballads and several nursery rhymes that recorded actual events, coded in symbols to ‘scape whipping,’ as Hamlet says.

Professor Tolkien (who must be accounted the Father of the Fantasy epic in the last half-century) employed verse quite well. But not even he matched the tale of Tam Lin, which has the interpolated rhymes actually advance the plot. Nor does Bardelys do so here, but rather he takes the ‘Warner Brothers back-stage musical’ approach, by having his characters sing songs, for specific purposes: the Charcoal Burners sing a marching-song to shorten their road, and the White Lady here sings a sort of spell of allurement to snare someone; Hans, because he happens to stand within ear-shot of the song, feels the spell creep over him as well, and he is on the brink of surrendering himself to her fatal glamor, when she disappears into the ruins, and he feels free once more

The New End of the Wood

Bardelys means to show us that the Black Forest has grown out from its former boundaries, and now has swallowed up the end of the Road along with the house where Hans grew up. I fear this is not well handled, and I wonder if it makes sense to a reader who has not had it explained to him in other words.

He manages to creep under the shadow of the Black Forest, while still remaining technically outside it. Bardelys is at some pains to make this distinction, but what difference does it make? We can only hope he will tell us later on. Right now it doesn’t make a lot of sense, so the question arises, does this add to the mystery and make us want to read on to learn the Why of it, or does it merely confuse us more? The answer I will leave to all of you.

Boy & Lady

Two characters are introduced, both wicken-things: the White Lady and a boy Hans’s age who wears the Yellow Socks by which Hans names him. Hans experiences first deep grief over the loss of his family (and this might have been developed a bit more at this point; saving it for later seems an error), then hatred for the boy in Yellow Socks, and then a ‘fatal attraction’ for the mysterious, utterly beautiful Lady in white.

There seems some distinction between these two creatures: the White Lady is wicken through and through, to a greater extent than the boy. Yellow Socks calls the White Lady ‘Mother,’ but her treatment of him is hardly maternal, more the way a cruel mistress treats one of her servants or slaves.

A third creature, and a fourth, make indirect appearances here: the White Lady speaks of the ‘Sooty Prince’ and the ‘King.’ In addition there are magical objects (Bardelys tells me the tale is full of magical talismans, and this I fear may be a mistake: better to have only one Talisman, I feel, instead of a litter and a clutter of them) mentioned:

1. the silver falconer’s glove Clutchfast
2. the Needle

Up the Road Again

It’s interesting that this chapter ends where Chapter Four did, with Hans running up the Road into the valley of Dimmerthal away from where his home lay. Does this doubling annoy you? Maybe Bardelys would have done better to have Hans faint, or lie in a tangle of briers at the edge of the woods, while the Lady and Yellow Socks arrived. The thorns could have held Hans from obeying the summoning chant, and then he might have torn loose to follow Yellow Socks, if the briers on the outer edge of the woods were looser or more open than those on the inner edge; to do this all Bardelys had to tell us was that his hero was caught up in the outer margin of a wall of thorns – then to go to the White Lady Hans would’ve needed to work through the thorns, but to chase after Yellow Socks all he’d need do is tear out the edge of them

(Composed on keyboard Wednesday 5 November 2008)

Chapter Five: The White Lady

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.