Gretel Pushes Back Page 8

  Hansel plunked back down at his desk. Well, too bad. He’d rather annoy his friends with warnings than have them get hurt and then later regret that he hadn’t cautioned them against trouble.

  He’d told Jack the truth about wanting to get a head start on preparing for the history test. But he also hoped that studying would distract him from worrying about Gretel. And all the terrifying things in Neverwood Forest that might try to get her.

  On top of his desk he found his Grimm Academy Handbook. He reached out with an index finger and pushed the oval GA logo on the front of it. “Grimm History of Barbarians and Dastardlies,” he told the Handbook. You had to make clear what subject you wanted to read about before opening the Handbook, because it would change its text to reflect whatever class you were in.

  Flipping to the chapters that the test would be covering, he began to review them. Unfortunately, the material included stuff about the many terrifying creatures that lurked just outside of Neverwood Forest in the Dark Nothingterror, including gigantic Dastardlies, which had but a single eye in the middle of their huge foreheads. His tension built as he memorized their names and descriptions.

  This kind of studying was not helping him to worry less. Exactly the opposite! Every twenty minutes or so, concern about Gretel pricked him like the tip of a sword. Each time it happened, he’d jump up and go to the window between his and Jack’s beds to look outside, hoping to spot her returning to the Academy. Nope. Finally, when it was time for lunch, he tossed his book aside and made his way downstairs.

  As he entered the Great Hall, he quickly scanned every face. No Gretel. And no sign of the vile sisters she’d gone off with, either. He’d just sat at a table when Jack plopped down his tray, too, and slid onto the bench beside him. “The skating was grimmtastic! You missed out,” he announced.

  Hansel shot him a wicked grin. “So? How many times?”

  Jack chuckled, knowing what he was asking. “Four. I only fell four times. No harm done, though. The hard part is getting back up on that slippery stuff.”

  The boys were soon joined by some of their other friends, including Prince Awesome, Prince Prince, Prince Knightly, and Prince Dragonbreath. There were a lot of princes at Grimm Academy. And princesses, too!

  Talk at the table quickly turned to some of the guys’ favorite subjects: jousting, catapulting, and masketball. The latter was a game played by two teams, in which players wore masks and shot balls through hoops. Hansel joined in the talk, though as sports went, he preferred hiking to every other kind of exercise.

  Lunch was almost at an end when Jack gave him a nudge with his elbow. “Look who just walked in,” he said, gesturing with his fork toward the Pink Castle end of the Great Hall.

  Hansel looked up in time to see Malorette and Odette making their way to the lunch line. Gretel wasn’t with them. He jumped up from the table, muttering, “Be right back.”

  Jack leaped up, too. “Not so fast, buddy. If you’re going over there, I’m coming, too.”

  The boys marched right over to the girls. “Where’s Gretel?” Hansel demanded as Malorette and Odette got their trays.

  A worried look flashed between the sisters, but then Malorette curled her lip snarkily. “How would we know? She’s your sister. Can’t you keep track of her?” She and Odette moved to the lunch counter and held out their trays to Mistress Hagscorch.

  The boys followed them. “We saw Gretel go off with you. Saw you heading toward Neverwood Forest,” accused Hansel.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Odette smirked. “Maybe your eyes were playing a trick on you.”

  “We both saw her, though,” Jack emphasized.

  From the corner of his eye, Hansel noticed that Mistress Hagscorch had paused, plates of food in hand, to listen in on their conversation.

  Suddenly, and without warning, Jack swooped toward Odette and grabbed something that was dangling from the pocket of her gown. A red ribbon. As he pulled on its end, it tumbled out, bringing a whole ball of other ribbons in various colors with it.

  “Aha!” said Jack, holding them up in his fist. “I recognize these! They’re Gretel’s hair ribbons! She doesn’t just wear them in her hair, either. She uses them to mark trails, too!”

  Odette laughed nervously, then tried to bluff it out. “Okay. So the ribbons are hers.” She glanced from him to Hansel, adding, “We wanted a trail guide and you told us Gretel was good at following maps, remember?”

  She took a bowl of go fish soup from Mistress Hagscorch. It was a weird sort of soup that had either tasty or strange surprises inside it. You never knew what they would be until you dipped your spoon in.

  Hansel nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, but —”

  “So we asked Gretel to help us,” interrupted Malorette. “Then, to see if she was really as good as you and Jack said she was, we decided to play a little trick on her.”

  Odette snickered. “Yeah, we sneaked off. And we took down those ribbons as we walked back to the Academy to see if she could find her way back without them.”

  Jack’s jaw dropped. “You did what?”

  “She still has the map, though, right?” Hansel asked quickly. With the map she’d be able to find her way back. In fact, she might show up here any minute.

  “Well … the thing is, we sort of … um … lost the map,” said Malorette. The sly look she exchanged with her sister convinced Hansel she was lying. But before he could say anything more, Mistress Hagscorch, who had been quiet until now, practically exploded.

  Wham! She banged the bowls of soup she was holding down onto the serving counter so hard that the soup sloshed. “You left that girl alone in the middle of Neverwood Forest?” she cried out, glaring at the two sisters. Other students reached out around them in line and took the bowls of soup, then fled from the trouble they sensed brewing and went out into the dining area.

  “Something fishy is going on here. And I don’t just mean my go fish soup,” the cook declared, wagging her big soup ladle at the sisters. “I suspect what you did is somehow linked to what my sister, Emelda, told me when we spoke by crystal ball last night.” At the mention of Hagscorch’s sister, Malorette and Odette turned a little pale.

  Hansel hadn’t even known Mistress Hagscorch had a sister. But why would he? Students didn’t usually know that kind of stuff about school staff. “What did your sister say?” he asked the cook, more worried than ever now.

  “That she was in cahoots with these two on some plan that — if it worked — would alter the course of Grimmlandia history and advance her status in E.V.I.L.” After a pause, she added, “Emelda is given to exaggeration. She’s always scheming about one thing or another and nothing ever comes of it, so I didn’t give it much mind. Maybe I should have!”

  Jack stepped closer to Malorette and Odette and gave them the stink eye. “Tell us what the plan was!”

  The sisters exchanged another look. “Plan? We don’t know anything about a plan,” said Malorette.

  “And we’ve never met anyone named Emelda, either,” insisted Odette.

  Bam! Mistress Hagscorch set more bowls of go fish soup on trays, and students continued quietly taking them. Stepping around the unfolding drama, they rushed off as fast as they could.

  The cook’s yellow eyes narrowed as she stared at the two girls. “Is that right, dearies? If you don’t have any more information to offer, then you’re not very useful to us, are you?” She reached over the counter with both clawed hands and pinched their cheeks. “But there’s another way you could help. You see, I’m thinking of trying out a new recipe called sister stew,” she told them, her eyes glinting with mischief. “And what I could really use is two tasty ingredients about your size.”

  Instant panic filled the sisters’ faces. “Okay, wait, I just remembered. We do know Emelda,” Malorette blurted all in a rush. “We talked to her by crystal ball yesterday, too. But the only thing we know about that plan of hers is that it has something to do with freeing Ms. Wicked from the Dark N
othingterror.”

  “Our job was to bring Gretel to the center of the forest,” Odette hurried to explain. “Emelda had cooked up some scheme for getting her the rest of the way to her cottage. I bet Gretel’s there now all safe and cozy!” Keeping a worried eye on Hagscorch, she pulled a map from her boot and held it out to Hansel.

  “Oh, hey, look what Odette found. I thought we’d lost it,” Malorette said weakly. She was obviously fibbing again to cover up her lie about having lost this very map.

  Meanwhile, Mistress Hagscorch began dishing up soup as fast as she could, since the students in line behind the sisters and the two boys had begun getting impatient. She glanced over the counter at the map, then nodded at the boys. “Looks right,” she told them.

  While Hansel was studying it, Malorette and Odette silently fled the Hall. “There’s no time to lose,” he exclaimed a moment later. “I’m going after Gretel!”

  Jack bounded after him as he ran off. “Wait for me!”

  “I can’t believe you recognized those ribbons as my sister’s,” Hansel called over his shoulder as he and Jack raced through the Great Hall to the Pink Castle side of the Academy. “What guy notices hair ribbons?”

  Jack’s face turned as red as the ribbon he’d first spied dangling from Odette’s pocket. “I don’t know. I notice lots of things.”

  Hmm, thought Hansel. It seemed to him that Jack noticed stuff about Gretel that no one else did. Well, he guessed it would be okay if Jack like-liked his sister. He wondered if she liked Jack back, though. As more than just a friend.

  After clattering down a short flight of stairs, they pushed through the doors to the outside. They had just started across the drawbridge when Jack stumbled over his own feet. “Ow!” he yelped. “My ankle! I think I sprained it.”

  Hansel hesitated, looking back at him.

  “Go!” Jack told him, waving him on. “I’ll be okay. It’s Gretel you need to rescue!”

  Hansel nodded. Then he took off for Neverwood Forest.

  Hansel entered the forest alone. This place was so grimmcreepy it instantly gave him goosebumps. Was following the map he held a good idea? He wished he knew if Gretel really was at Hagscorch’s sister’s place or lost somewhere among these trees. Still, what choice did he have? Whether his sister knew it or not, she was in danger. He needed to find her, and this map was the sole clue he had to her whereabouts.

  He was only about a hundred yards into the forest when he came across a bright-blue backpack. It was Gretel’s! His heart began pumping harder. He unzipped its pockets to look inside and even turned the backpack upside down and shook it.

  “Empty,” he muttered in frustration. None of the usual snacks and supplies Gretel carried were in it. Speaking of supplies, he hadn’t brought any himself. No water. No food. No nothing. It was a rookie hiking mistake. But he couldn’t take time to go back.

  “Guess I’ll have to hope I find a freshwater spring or some fruit. Or that I get to that cottage before I get hungry or thirsty. Fingers crossed,” he said. Then he rolled his eyes, realizing that he was talking to himself like a crazy person. It was the forest’s fault, he decided. Talking out loud was the only way to keep himself calm in here. Well, calmer, anyway.

  Remembering the hair ribbons that had been stuffed in Odette’s pocket, he guessed that she and Malorette had somehow convinced Gretel to let them have the backpack. Before they’d tricked her and run off with it, that is. Then, when they’d realized that he and Gretel’s friends would recognize the pack as hers, the beastly sisters had ditched it here just before they reached the Academy.

  Hansel slid the straps of the backpack over his shoulders and hiked on. He’d been in Neverwood Forest a few times before. Though he usually avoided coming here, his friend Wolfgang, who could shape-shift into a wolf, liked this forest. Sometimes, Hansel and the other guys at GA went hiking here with him, though it wasn’t their favorite area by far.

  Neverwood was full of sounds — the wind in the trees, the crunch underfoot of fallen pinecones and twigs, birdsong, the scurrying of small animals. Those were pleasant sounds. But there were also spooky sounds that Hansel couldn’t identify so readily — howls and weird creaking noises, for example. He did his best to ignore those. And when creeping vines and grabby branches reached out to tug at his arms and legs, he fought them off.

  From time to time, he checked the map to make sure he was heading in the right direction. After a couple of hours had passed, he realized he still had a long way to go. So he picked up his pace until he was almost jogging. Even so, the sun was setting when he finally reached the edge of the forest and caught a glimpse of the Wall and the cottage at the top of the hill beside it. Finally!

  He trudged up the hill wearily. And hungrily. His jaw dropped in surprise when he saw that the cottage was made of gingerbread and resembled the gingerbread house cookies that were one of Mistress Hagscorch’s specialties. He wanted to gobble the entire house right away, but there was something more important he had to do. Find Gretel!

  Boldly, he knocked at the door. “Hey! Anybody home?”

  He heard the thump of a cane and then the door opened. Whoa! He stepped back in surprise. Because framed in the doorway was a woman who was almost a dead ringer for Mistress Hagscorch, except that she had just one yellow eye. Her other eye was green.

  “Emelda?” he guessed. “You’re Mistress Hagscorch’s sister, right?”

  She scowled at him and replied sharply, “That’s right.” She stepped outside into the dusk with him and then whacked the door behind her partway closed with the tip of her cane. “Who might you be, boy? And what brings you here?” She squinted warily beyond him to the darkening forest as if expecting he’d brought bogeymen to jump out at her at any minute.

  “Name’s Hansel. I go to Grimm Academy and I’m looking for my sister, Gretel. Is she here?” He tried to peer around her to the inside of the cottage, but she blocked his view.

  “Well, I’m afraid you’ve had a long trip for nothing,” she told him. “She’s not —”

  However, before she could finish, her cane slipped from her hand. It hit the inner edge of the door behind her, causing it to open wider. “Behave, you dratted stick,” Emelda muttered as she bent to pick it up.

  In that moment, Hansel got a good look inside the cottage. And under a table he saw a pair of hiking boots that he knew for certain were Gretel’s. He pointed to them and blurted out, “Those are my sister’s boots! She’s here!”

  “Shh! Keep your voice down,” hissed Emelda. “You’ll disturb the neighbors.”

  “What neighbors?” asked Hansel, looking around in confusion. There were no other homes in sight.

  She pointed her cane toward the Wall, which extended high in the sky. “The Barbarians and Dastardlies that live on the other side,” she told him. “When they get going, they make a terrible racket.”

  Hansel peered at the Wall. Up close it looked like it was made of glass, only it was so opaque, you couldn’t see through it. But just in case there really were Barbarians and Dastardlies within hearing range, he lowered his voice. “Let me in,” he demanded. “I know Gretel’s here.”

  “Yes, okay. You’re right. She’s here. I didn’t want to say because … well … she asked me not to. She was afraid she’d get into trouble for wandering off from the Academy, and —”

  Hansel frowned at her, unsure. He guessed this could be true. “Never mind all that,” he told her. “Just let me see her so I know she’s okay!”

  Emelda sighed. “Calm down, boy. She only went downstairs to the cellar to fetch some … uh … potatoes for me. If you want to wait a few minutes —”

  “No, I don’t want to wait,” Hansel said impatiently. “I want to see her right now!”

  “If you insist.” Shaking her head, the witchy-looking woman ushered him inside. After moving Gretel’s boots out of the way, she quickly shoved the table aside. Then she rolled back the rug under the table and pulled up a trapdoor. There was a grate under
it.

  “You shut the door on her while she was down there?” asked Hansel.

  “What? Of course not, you suspicious boy. What a worrywart.” Emelda pointed her walking stick toward the window, saying, “There’s another entrance. A door to the cellar from outside. She went in that way, but I’m sure she’ll come this way if you call her.”

  As she was opening the grate, Hansel called into the cellar. “Gretel! Are you down there?” No answer.

  “It’s a huge cellar and the potatoes are waaay at the back of it,” said Emelda. “She just can’t hear you. Step inside a ways and try again.”

  Hansel could see a ladder going down to the dark cellar. He started to back down it, but then stopped after just a few steps. What if this was another of Emelda’s lies?

  Letting go of one side of the ladder, he twisted sideways. “Gretel! Are you down here?” he yelled into the dark abyss. Suddenly, Emelda bent toward him and gave him a shove. Losing his grip on the other side of the ladder, as well as his balance, Hansel fell. And that was the last thing he remembered.

  When Gretel awoke the next morning, sun was streaming in through the little transparent-sugar window at the side of her room. It took her a few moments to remember where she was. Once she did, she jumped out of bed. She needed to get back to the Academy!

  Red would be worried that she hadn’t shown up at bedtime last night. Because even if Emelda had managed to get hold of Principal R through her crystal ball last night, Gretel doubted the principal would bother to tell Red where she was. Maybe her roomie would think she had slept overnight in Jill’s room or something. Still, when she didn’t show up for breakfast, her friends would definitely get anxious. And if they told Hansel she was missing, he’d really worry.