Gretel Pushes Back Read online

  Gretel took a few steps away from the sour sisters, who were continuing to give her the evil eye. If they suspected her of spying on them, that could mean only one thing. That they were up to something that was worth spying on. But what?

  It was common knowledge at Grimm Academy that the sisters were members of a group called the E.V.I.L. Society, or they had been till the Society disbanded recently. The letters stood for Exceptional Villains in Literature, which was how the members liked to think of themselves.

  “Heard anything from Ms. Wicked lately?” Gretel asked the girls, mostly to see what they’d say back.

  Ms. Wicked, a teacher at GA and close associate of the sisters, had been a leader of the Society. For some reason it had always been plotting to take over GA and break down the barriers between Grimmlandia and the Nothingterror. But when E.V.I.L.’s efforts were thwarted, Ms. Wicked had escaped to an unknown location through one of her many magic mirrors. Upon her disappearance, everyone at the Academy had begun to hope the Society had become totally extinct.

  Or had it? Hmm. Gretel smelled a mystery. Or maybe that was just one of the pies the baker was baking? Either way, something smelled interesting.

  “That’s none of your beeswax,” huffed Malorette, flipping her hair.

  “Yeah,” agreed Odette, copying the hair flip.

  As the candlestick-maker came up to the counter and handed Gretel the candles he’d cut down and bundled together for her, Malorette glared in turn at him, the butcher, and the baker. “Anyway, all we came down here to say is that you can’t tell us you didn’t know what you were getting into,” she told the men in her high-pitched voice.

  “Okay, you’ve told us. So why don’t you two take your noses and your beeswax out of here now that our business is done,” said the candlestick-maker.

  “Humph! Don’t mind if we do,” Odette sniffed scornfully. “Just remember you were well paid for your work. And for your silence!” With that, the two girls turned on their slippered heels and flounced out the door.

  Gretel watched them leave and then asked the men lightly, “What was that about?”

  “A stew over nothing,” the butcher assured her as he and the other two men traded meaningful glances.

  “Those two just enjoy fanning the flames of conflict,” said the candlestick-maker.

  “And stirring up trouble,” added the baker.

  Gretel stood there for a moment, looking from one stout man to another and feeling puzzled. Something was definitely going on, but it seemed plain these guys weren’t going to tell her what it was! They must’ve wanted to discuss things privately among themselves, though, because all of a sudden they ushered her to the door.

  “Sorry you have to cut out so soon,” said the butcher, holding it open for her.

  “But you really don’t want to be loafing around here,” said the baker.

  “Do tell the Lady with the Alligator Purse we hope those candles will light up her life … or at least the infirmary!” the candlestick-maker said. Then he gave Gretel a little push out into the hall.

  Bam! The ship’s door shut behind her.

  “Well, that was interesting!” Gretel murmured, a little stunned at how fast they’d kicked her out.

  Returning to the infirmary, she dropped the candles off and gave the Lady with the Alligator Purse the candlestick-maker’s good wishes. Then she started back to her room again, crossing over the river on the fourth floor this time instead of making her way through the Great Hall.

  After passing by offices and the auditorium on four, she took the twisty stairs back up to the sixth floor. When she entered the outdoor stone walkway again, she noticed something grimmawesome. The rain had finally stopped. Hooray!

  There was still some daylight left. She could grab her hiking boots and head off down a trail. Not just any trail, either. It was time to try a new one. At last, she could finally get started on writing that supplement to her favorite guidebook! In a hurry now, she dashed to her dorm room.

  Gretel was pulling on her boots when a bluebird pecked at her bedroom window. Noticing it had a note in its beak, she opened the window to let it in. The bird dropped the note in her hand and then flitted off. “Thank you,” she called after it. It dipped a wing as if to say, You’re welcome!

  The note was from Hansel. It read, Meet 4:15 in the Bouquet Garden if you want to go for a short hike.

  Hmm. Though she couldn’t have said exactly why, she hadn’t yet discussed with her brother her plan to map more trails and write a guidebook supplement. Maybe because she was afraid he’d tell her it was a dumb idea. Or that he might try to take over the project himself.

  Oh, he wouldn’t mean to take it over, but he’d have his own ideas about the “right way” to go about doing things. And somehow pretty soon the project would become more his than hers. That kind of thing had happened before with other projects she’d been part of. She definitely did not want it to happen this time.

  Well, she supposed she could coax him into trying a new trail without telling him about her big idea to add to the guidebook, right? If he wasn’t up for it, she’d put off her plans for new explorations till tomorrow. Because hiking with her brother was always more fun than going alone. In spite of his bossiness, he was her favorite hiking partner. Plus, maybe he would have some news to share about Jack!

  Speaking of sharing, she decided she’d share Red’s cookies with Hansel since Jack wasn’t around. She grabbed her schoolbag again and clomped downstairs as fast as she could. Just then, the Hickory Dickory Dock clock over in the Great Hall bonged four thirty. The sound was piped throughout the Academy to keep everything going like clockwork.

  “Oh, crumb cakes,” thought Gretel, walking faster.

  Once outside, she dashed around the side of Pink Castle to the Bouquet Garden, where the bushes actually bloomed with many kinds of flowers bunched together in ready-made bouquets. She arrived too late, though. Hansel wasn’t there. Crouching among the bushes, she looked for signs of his boot prints in the wet grass. Because if she could figure out which way he’d gone hiking, maybe she could still catch up to him on the trail.

  While she was crouched over, she suddenly heard footsteps on the Pink Castle drawbridge. Soon the familiar voices of the two sour sisters reached her. They were coming her way. Her ears perked up when she heard Odette say, “So do you really think Gretel was spying on us?”

  Jumpin’ gingersnaps! she thought. If those two caught sight of her hiding like this, it would only seem to confirm their suspicions about spying. Even if her happening to be here now was just a coincidence. Quickly, she dove behind a thick hedge at the back of the garden as the sisters rounded the corner and drew closer.

  “Not sure,” Malorette said to Odette after a pause. “But we’d better go tell You-Know-Who that we suspect her, just in case.”

  Huh? Who was You-Know-Who? Gretel wondered. She really wished Malorette had been more specific!

  “Yeah,” Odette agreed. “You-Know-Who will want to know. And now that the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker have finished building the portal, it won’t be long till —” She hushed suddenly when shouts came from other students hanging out somewhere outside beyond the garden.

  Portal? Had Gretel heard right? Outside the door of The Tub, she’d thought she’d heard a porthole mentioned. Were they the same thing? Or which one did the girls mean? And it wouldn’t be long till what happened? She wondered.

  She held her breath as the two sisters passed out of the garden. Too bad those shouts in the distance had interrupted Odette. Gretel would’ve liked to hear the rest of what she’d been intending to say! Peeking through the hedge, she watched the two girls disappear in the direction of Neverwood Forest.

  Then a horrible thought struck her. What if the You-Know-Who they’d referred to was Ms. Wicked? Or Ludwig, the evil brother of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm? What if they weren’t in the Dark Nothingterror after all, as some people suspected? Maybe one or both of them was hiding out i
n the forest instead! Could the E.V.I.L. Society be starting up again? Or had it never really stopped existing? She needed to find out!

  Gretel started out of the garden, intending to follow Malorette and Odette into the forest and eavesdrop some more. But then she stopped, fearing they’d catch her at it. Besides, the thought of going into Neverwood Forest gave her the creeps. As did the thought of possibly coming face-to-face with Ms. Wicked or Ludwig Grimm — if that was who the stepsisters were actually planning to meet.

  Was she being a coward? she asked herself. Or just using commonsense caution? Sometimes it was hard to know the difference. At the very least, she decided, she should share this information with the Grimm Organization of Defense.

  Formed not long ago, G.O.O.D. was a student organization that aimed to defend Grimmlandia from all kinds of threats, whether they came from E.V.I.L., the Dark Nothingterror, or wherever!

  Gretel did a quick about-face and was heading back to the Pink Castle drawbridge when she heard a shout from behind her.

  “Hey!”

  She whirled back around. “Hansel!” she called out. She waved happily to him.

  And he was with Jack! Her heart skipped a beat as the boys came toward her. The lumpy bandage on her secret crush’s forehead didn’t make him look any less cute, in her opinion. Just like his twin sister, Jill, he had curly blond hair. But unlike Jill, he had deep dimples in his cheeks that Gretel found adorable.

  “Where were you?” Hansel asked once he and Jack had caught up to her. “We waited in the garden at least ten minutes, but you never showed.”

  Jack grinned. He seemed to be feeling fine, despite the newest bump on his head. “Hansel was worried about you, so I told him we should come back,” he told her.

  Frowning, Hansel ran a hand through his short-cropped brown hair, which had almost as many natural red highlights in it as Gretel’s. “Was not. I was just getting hungry, that’s all.”

  Gretel didn’t believe him. Despite being only one year older than she was, her brother had always been very protective of her. She hadn’t minded his protectiveness until recently. But more and more, she found it kind of annoying. Especially since his protectiveness often resulted in bossiness. She was twelve years old now! Plenty old enough to take care of herself. And old enough to have her own ideas for how to do things, too.

  Trying to keep the irritation out of her voice, she said to Hansel, “I didn’t get your message till too late.” Then she shifted her gaze to Jack. “Sorry about your accident. I went to the infirmary to see you, but you’d already left. Then I wound up running an errand for the Lady with the Alligator Purse.” Her eyes flicked back to Hansel. “That’s why I got your message late.”

  “What kind of errand?” Jack asked curiously as the three of them clomped in their hiking boots across the drawbridge and back into Pink Castle.

  “Well …” While they made their way toward the Great Hall for dinner, Gretel told the two boys about her trip to the Gray Castle dungeon to get candles from the candlestick-maker. “I didn’t even know The Tub existed,” she told them. Then she frowned. “Malorette and Odette were there when I went in.”

  Before she could go on, Jack made a face. “Let me guess. Did they say something nasty to you or try to trip you or something? Those girls are more hazardous than tree roots on a hiking trail or …” He began to name various hazards — all things he’d actually tripped over in the past.

  When he took a breath in the middle of that long list, Gretel shook her head. “Not really, but they seemed to think I’d come to spy on them.” She was about to tell the boys exactly what the sisters had said to her inside The Tub, and what she’d overheard while hiding outside in the Bouquet Garden. However, Hansel went into bossy mode and interrupted her before she could do so.

  “I wish you hadn’t drawn those girls’ attention,” he said. “I don’t like or trust those two. You should stay far away from them.”

  Though Gretel’s impulse had been to do exactly that — she hadn’t followed them into the forest, after all — she resented Hansel telling her what to do.

  She decided to push back a bit. “Hey, I’m not a little kid!” she told him indignantly. “I know better than to trust them.” She was debating whether or not she should tell him what else the sisters had said — if she should share her suspicions about who they were going to see and how the men in The Tub had apparently built an important porthole or portal. But then Hansel added, “And I don’t trust those Rub-A-Dub-Dub guys, either.”

  “Rub-A-Dub-Dub guys?” Gretel repeated. She reached for the castle door, but Jack was there ahead of her and opened it. He smiled at her, waving her through. She smiled back, distracted from her irritation for a moment.

  “He’s talking about the old nursery rhyme they’re from,” Jack noted with a laugh, once they were all inside. “Well, one version of it anyway.” He recited it aloud. “Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub. And who do you think they be? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker. Turn them out, knaves all three.”

  “Knaves are male servants with a reputation for dishonesty and trickery,” Hansel informed her in that same bossy tone.

  Gretel bristled again. “I know that,” she said, even though she hadn’t. She just didn’t like Hansel thinking he knew more than she did, even if that was often the case when it came to the meanings of words. And no wonder. He actually read dictionaries just for fun!

  She decided then and there to put off telling him till later about her (almost) encounter with Malorette and Odette in the Bouquet Garden. She would tell her friends instead. They were all members of G.O.O.D. Working together, she felt certain they could come up with a plan for dealing with the sour sisters’ revelations.

  As soon as she and the boys entered the Great Hall, Rose and Snowflake called to her. They were two of the Academy’s newest students and were waving her over to join them in the serving line. With a quick bye to Hansel and Jack, Gretel peeled away and went to join her friends.

  In the serving line, she took a tray and got behind Snowflake. The pretty blue-eyed girl had a heart-shaped face framed by long black hair and bangs. When she stepped up to the counter and ordered a plate of the eye of newt stew — which tasted much better than it sounded — Mistress Hagscorch cackled. “You look like you need fattening up,” she told Snowflake. “I’ll give you an extra-large serving!”

  Gretel couldn’t help shuddering. Snowflake only laughed, however, and brushed her longish bangs out of her eyes. “Your stew is the best!” she said, flashing Mistress Hagscorch a sweet smile.

  “Why, thanks, missy.” The cook grinned big. Which only made her look scarier, in Gretel’s opinion.

  What Snowflake had said about the stew was true. There was no denying that Hagscorch was a grimmfabulous cook. Still, Gretel had long ago decided it was best not to think about the ingredients that might or might not go into her tasty dishes.

  Stepping up to the counter now, she held out her tray. “I’ll have the stew, too, please,” she said. Instantly, Scaryscorch’s wrinkled old claw of a hand shot out to drop a plate of the stew onto Gretel’s tray. “And, um, a gingerbread cookie?” Gretel added. She couldn’t resist those three-dimensional cookies. Shaped like gingerbread houses, they were just big enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand and were beautifully decorated with candies and icing.

  The cook cackled. Then her hand shot out again and she pinched Gretel’s cheek. “You like my cookies, don’t you, sugardrop?” She gave her a wink. “Would you like another Troll Toe, too?”

  “Yes, please,” Gretel squeaked. Withdrawing her hand, Mistress Cheeksqueezer then dropped the two cookies onto her lunch tray. “Thanks,” Gretel managed to say before scurrying away. Maybe she was a coward. She hoped not.

  She sat down next to Snowflake at one of the Hall’s two long tables. Soon Rose (aka Sleeping Beauty) plopped down on the bench on Gretel’s other side. Across the table from the three girls were Jill, Cinderella, and Red.

 
; Even if she was a coward, Gretel was glad to be brave enough to eat in the Great Hall nowadays. It was always fun to be around so many friends — as long as Hagscorch stayed in the kitchen. “So where did you disappear to this afternoon?” Red asked Gretel as the girls tucked into their food. “By the time I finished baking, you’d gone.” Then she added with a grin, “And that cookie plate I brought was empty, too.”

  Gretel felt herself blush. There probably weren’t any students at the Academy who weren’t aware of what a cookie monster she was, but for once she had not eaten them all by herself! It took her a moment to reply, however, because she’d just taken her first bite of the eye of newt stew. As always, the stew boiled and bubbled (at just the right temperature) inside her throat. It was a slightly ticklish but delightful feeling.

  Even after she swallowed, a few tiny bubbles that looked like real eyeballs escaped her mouth when she finally began to speak. “Actually, I put the extra cookies in my schoolbag to take to Jack, only he wasn’t in the infirmary when I got there,” she told Red. She hefted her bag onto her lap and pulled out the napkin full of cookies.

  “Too bad for my brother,” Jill said with a grin. Since she was also eating the stew, a few eyeball bubbles escaped her mouth as she spoke, too. “Hand ’em over. I promise I’ll share some with Jack later on. Or at least one of them.” Jill was almost as big a cookie monster as Gretel!

  Smiling fondly at her BFF, Gretel handed her the bundle of cookies and returned her schoolbag to the floor. After gobbling down a few more bites of the tasty stew, Gretel decided to tell the girls at her table about her visit to The Tub and what she had heard Odette and Malorette say there and in the Bouquet Garden later on.

  “I saw your Steps down in the Gray Castle dungeon a little while ago, Cinderella,” she said when there was a pause in the conversation. “They sure were acting strange.”

  “That’s because they are strange,” Cinderella said matter-of-factly. Which made all the girls crack up.

  In an attempt to add her own bit of humor, Gretel said, “They aren’t just strange. They really put the evil in E.V.I.L. In fact, they —”