Witch of the Shadow Wood

Chapter I.1

Chapter One

Fifteen Years Before the Wedding

Even during the early afternoon, the forest was as dark and forbidding as Greta had always imagined it to be.

She tried to wiggle her fingers about in her father’s hand, but his grip on her was too tight.

It should have been comforting the way he held onto her—strong and sturdy, protective—but all she felt was winded as her short legs struggled to keep up with his long ones.

Well, that, and afraid—although she should not have been afraid because her papa was holding her left hand and Hans was on her other side.

Hans couldn’t match their father’s height or strength yet, but Papa always said to just wait, that he was getting there.

Occasionally, Papa praised the way Hans could swing an ax and chop wood, unlike her, who couldn’t even lift the ax.

“If your mother or grandmother were still alive, they’d probably find a use for you,” he would say, “but all you do is eat our food and grow out of your shoes too quickly.”

There was never any praise for Greta.

Remembering this made Greta wiggle her fingers harder, but that merely caused her father to grip her more tightly, and now her fingers were feeling as pinched as her toes.

Maybe he thought she would run away, but where would she run?

They’d entered the Shadow Wood, and Greta knew better than to do that alone.

Even with her father and Hans, the Shadow Wood was terrifying. They were the witch’s woods.

Be a good girl, be a good boy.

Do your chores just as you should.

Be a good girl, be a good boy.

Naughty children are prey

For the witch in the wood.

The rhyme rang through Greta’s head, discordant against the constant thud-thud of three pairs of boots along the dirt path.

She’d played the witch game with the children down the street just yesterday.

You passed the leather ball (or a stick or a stone if no one could find a ball) around in a circle, and whoever was left holding it when the chanting stopped had to drop the object and run for the safety wall while the person playing the witch chased you.

If you didn’t make it to the wall before they caught you, you became the new witch.

The game was fun enough, though Greta hated being the witch because she was slow.

But everyone knew the Shadow Wood’s witch was not a game. The witch was real.

She’ll feast on your bones.

She’ll drink all your blood.

She’s coming for you—

The horrible, terrible

The witch in the wood!

Things everyone in Swiftdok knew: The witch could fly. The witch had horns and cavorted with evil spirts. The witch used her large nose to sniff out bad children, and she stole their blood for her magic. You could only find the witch in the woods if she let you.

Things Greta did not know: Why her father would want to find the witch. It seemed like a bad idea, but if her papa thought it was a good one, then maybe some of the other things Greta knew were wrong. Maybe she shouldn’t be afraid.

The overhead canopy was lush and heavy, the summer foliage competing for the sun with the pines and firs that kept it green year-round.

Greta knew the names of the trees because her father cut them for people, but she didn’t know how to identify one tree from another.

When he was in a good mood, her papa taught Hans a little.

But his good moods had grown less frequent over the last winter, and unlike the leaves on the trees, they hadn’t returned with the lengthening days.

Still, Hans got to learn something. Greta didn’t think she’d be so useless if someone taught her things, too.

Pressed between her father and her brother, she buried this ungrateful thought deep in her gut.

If the witch didn’t steal the good children’s blood, she needed to be good and grateful.

And typically she was. She fetched water even when she was so tired she could barely walk, and she let Hans scrape the bottom of the porridge pot without complaint even when her stomach whined for more.

Well, that was to say, she didn’t spill much water when it was her turn to fetch it, and she didn’t complain much about being hungry.

There was that incident two nights ago when Papa had yelled at her because she’d reached for another slice of bread, and he said Hans needed it because he was a growing boy, and Hans had broken it in two and given her half when Papa’s back was turned. Did that count as being naughty?

Greta didn’t like that question, so she concentrated on her feet.

The path was soft with fragrant pine needles crushed beneath the thin soles of her shoes (already too small again).

She listened to the leaves rustling overhead and the skitter of unseen feet in the brush.

She watched the path become narrower and narrower the deeper they trod.

Her father said nothing about this, but her brother’s brow wrinkled the longer they walked, and at one point he started to speak, but a blistering glance from Papa sealed his lips.

Rather than risk his wrath, Hans took Greta’s other hand.

His grip was lighter than their father’s and so more comforting.

Unfortunately, that comfort did nothing to ease the weariness in her legs. Greta was worried she would stumble when the path ahead vanished altogether. Only then did she notice the forest had grown quieter, too. The air was heavier, hazier, like a fog was rolling in all around them.

Her father muttered something too low to hear, and Hans squeezed her fingers.

With his free hand, Greta watched him discreetly drop another white pebble on the ground when their father’s gaze was turned away.

He’d been dropping them periodically during the walk.

They had stuffed his pockets full that morning.

“Why did you steal the chicken feed?” she’d asked Hans when she caught him sneaking out of their neighbor’s tiny coop with a purloined handful.

Hans had shushed her and dragged her away before answering, but that was how she’d learned they were going into the forest. Hans had overheard Papa talking about it to the neighbor.

“People who go into the forest don’t always come out,” Hans had told her. He hadn’t needed to say why, nor who was least likely to reemerge. Greta knew it was the witch’s doing. And it was children who disappeared. “We can use the feed to leave a path so we’ll find the way home if we get lost.”

“Papa will get us home,” Greta had countered, not because she didn’t have doubts but because she needed it to be true.

Hans had flinched and looked at his shoes. “Probably, yes. But it’s better to be safe. Just don’t tell him. He won’t like it if he knows.”

Greta didn’t question that. Their father would be angry if he thought that she and Hans didn’t trust he could protect them.

Chicken feed, however, struck her as a poor substance for marking a trail. What if chickens ate it, and it disappeared?

“Don’t be stupid. There are no chickens in the forest,” Hans had said when she mentioned this. But his face expressed doubt, so Greta had picked up one of the many white pebbles that lined the road and offered it to him instead.

“Nothing will eat these.” She’d thought for a moment her brother would argue, but he tossed the feed onto the ground and began collecting pebbles with her.

As Greta glanced over her shoulder, she took some pride in her idea. Nothing was eating the pebbles, and they stood out against the dirt brown path. Maybe she could be useful after all, even if no one taught her anything.

“Does this mean we go home?” Hans asked. He sounded hopeful, and Greta realized that although he did a better job of acting brave than she did, he must be scared as well.

A bird took flight in the silence that followed, and Greta jumped with the sudden flutter of wings. Even Hans looked shaken.

Still, their father didn’t speak. Then a single leaf drifted onto the path. The mist dissipated and the forest lightened. More path spread out ahead.

Greta swallowed and bit her lip to keep silent as her father tugged her along again.

They didn’t have far to go. Soon after, the path ended abruptly in a clearing illuminated by bright sunshine, and there, in the center of the golden light, was the most spectacular cottage Greta could imagine.

The roof was tiled with cinnamon rolls and fried breads, and scalloped in thick white frosting.

Peppermint sticks outlined the windows and doors, and the walls were covered in tarts and pastries of every fruit and flavor, donuts and snow balls, sugared almonds and jellied orange peels that all swirled together in beautiful designs like lace.

It reminded Greta of the fanciful gingerbread homes she saw displayed in bakery windows around the winter solstice, only more fantastic.

Not an inch didn’t make her mouth water.

But even as she longed to touch those treats, to see if they were real, the house swam in and out of Greta’s view, rippling like a reflection in the water.

The delectable sweets melted away. In front of her stood a normal structure made of stones and wood, neither tall nor short, nor entirely house-like at all.

Rather it was a home that had been carved straight out of the landscape, a happy coincidence of boulders and logs and plants that had sprouted a door and windows and a roof.

A tall, fat chimney sent smoke trailing into the sky.

Greta blinked, mourning the loss of the house of sweets, but the second image remained.