Falling In (15 page)

And what did he see there, on the porch? Wasn’t that Hen’s blue apron fluttering from the banister like a flag? Jacob squeezed his hands into fists.

Hen was here. He would save her.

Now, a less disciplined boy than Jacob would have run in right away brandishing a stick and yelling like a banshee for the old witch to give him back his sister. But Jacob was more cunning than that. He waited at the edge of the woods, passing the time by braiding vines into rope, and thirty minutes past the time the last light in the witch’s house was dimmed, he crept in as silently as a slithering snake.

It was nothing to tie the witch to her bed, twisting and turning the vines, knotting them here and there. Oh, it helped that she’d been asleep when he started, true enough, but she’d awakened after two passes of the rope and put up a struggle, for sure. Too bad for the witch that she was old and he was young,
and besides, Jacob was sitting on top of her the whole time. Like a rock, his da had said about him, and Jacob reckoned that was so. So what could the old hag do except ask—when it was all done and she was tied tight to her bed—what in the blue blazes did he think he was up to?

“Tying you to your bed, ya old hag,” he’d happily informed her as he tugged at a final knot. “Ya tell me the whereabouts of my sister, I’ll consider letting you go, but I’ll only be considering it, mind you.”

The old witch had squirmed, testing the strength of the rope, and finding she was no match against Jacob’s superior knot tying, sighed. “Hen isn’t here. She’s gone to the Greenan camp with Isabelle.”

Jacob staggered back a few steps. “Did I say her name was Hen or are you reading my thoughts?”

“You’re the very picture of her, even in the dark,” the witch insisted. “I’d know you were Hen’s brother if I met you on the streets of the moon.”

Jacob glanced around the room for a mirror but found none. Was it true he looked just like Hen? He thought Hen rather pleasant-looking, and he
wouldn’t mind resembling her a bit in a boylike way, he supposed, not that he cared a whit what he looked like.

“Where is she?” he asked again, remembering his mission. “You best be telling me, or I’ll make you more the miserable for holding your tongue.”

The witch sighed even more loudly. “I’ve told you where she is. Now cut this rope, and I’ll get you something to eat, even if it is the middle of the night.”

At the mention of eating, Jacob’s stomach growled. He’d not eaten since the morning, and now the thought of food overwhelmed him. What could it hurt to untie the witch? he wondered. He’d keep close guard, let her fix him something to eat, and then back to the ropes it was, unless she led him directly to Hen.

“You best not be planning any witchy tricks,” Jacob told the witch as he began pulling at the first knots. “You’ve not met up with the likes of me before. I’ll have your hide if you try anything.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” the witch agreed, though
Jacob wasn’t convinced she meant it. No matter, she’d learn soon enough if she tried any backhanded business, just as soon as he untied the knots. . . .

The job proved undoable. When Jacob tried cutting through the knots with a knife, he found the vines were too green to slice or pinch or pull apart. He didn’t know whether to be impressed with himself or out of sorts. Out of sorts, he decided two days later, as he was fixing another bowl of soup for the witch, which he’d have to feed her himself. He couldn’t let her die now, could he, or he’d never know Hen’s whereabouts.

“Just tell me if you’ve killed her,” he’d demanded on the morning of the fourth day, even though he knew he wouldn’t get an honest answer. If the witch admitted to any witchery, he’d stop feeding her, and then where would she be? A dried-out, dead witch starved to death in her own bed, that’s where. No, it would be nothing but lies from this one, but he couldn’t keep himself from asking anyway.

“Why would I kill Hen?” the witch replied. “I’ve taught her everything I know. She’s like a daughter
to me. Now go pull a book from the shelf and read it aloud. I’m bored to bits lying abed all the day long.”

It hadn’t been the first time she’d made the request. “What—and cast a spell on my very own self?” Jacob replied, just as he had before. “I don’t think I will, thank you very much.”

But this morning, instead of letting the subject drop, as she had every other time, the witch looked at Jacob long and hard. “You can’t read, can you?”

Jacob frowned. Of course he could read, he just chose not to unless it was absolutely necessary. He had to squint to read, or else the letters were fuzzy, and squinting gave him a headache. And was it his fault that sometimes words got twisted around, T-R-E-E written on the board looking like T-E-R-R to him, and all the others laughing at his mistake? Well, he wasn’t going to be a schoolteacher, like that pig-nosed Mr. Wearall, so what did it matter anyway?

“Fine,” the witch said when she saw she’d get no
response from him. “Then go pull some potatoes out of the root cellar and roast them. You look like you need something other than bread and soup to eat.”

Really, Jacob was turning into quite a cook. The witch would yell instructions to him from her room, and he’d put together a nice meal of green tea soup and soda bread for the both of them. He was rather pleased with himself, he who had never cooked at home, cooking being a girl’s job. But he’d always liked to watch Mam cook, and as it turned out, he’d picked up a trick or two.

“I wouldn’t mind some pie, would you?” the witch called when Jacob returned from the cellar with an armful of potatoes. “There are dried apples in the cupboard and a bit of cinnamon I’ve been saving. It’s a rare thing, here, to have cinnamon. It comes from far away. Do you know what it looks like? You’ll find it on the top shelf.”

If words get fuzzy and twist around in front of your eyes, it’s a difficult thing to stand on a step stool and differentiate between this jar and that, the various labels blurring before your eyes. Now, Jacob
had seen cinnamon before and knew it to be a reddish brown, but his mam never had used it (his father had carried it in his peddler’s pack now and again, which is how Jacob knew about it). Still and all, there was a jar of brownish red leaves, a little minty smelling to be sure, but Jacob felt sure that was it. He didn’t find the apples where the witch had said they were, but instead two cupboards over. Leave it to a witch, he thought, to mislead him even when he was doing her the favor of making a pie.

The witch gave him careful instructions for simmering the apples over a low flame and forking lard into a bowl of flour to make the crust. In an hour’s time the pie was ready. Jacob smelled its apple-y smell and approved. He would have some after a dinner of roasted potatoes and dandelion greens from the garden, seasoned with a touch of spring onion.

The witch, however, wanted hers the very minute Jacob pulled it from the oven. “Don’t you want it to cool?” he’d asked. “I know how to set a pie on the windowsill. Seen it done a thousand times.”

“What? And let the birds have it? No, boy, bring me a piece right now. I take my pleasures as they make their presence known.”

It was the very first bite that sickened her. “Bring me the jar of cinnamon,” the witch demanded, her eyes widening when Jacob handed it to her. “This is pennyroyal, not cinnamon, boy. You’ve gone and poisoned me.” She sounded more amazed than angry. She looked Jacob straight in the eye and asked, “Did you mean to?”

Jacob felt as though he’d been hit in the stomach. No, of course he hadn’t meant to. Yes, yes, she was a witch, but she was an awfully nice witch, and he even believed her when she said she hadn’t killed Hen.

“Quit blubbering, boy, and try to help,” the witch commanded, her skin growing paler by the second. “Outside, in the thicket near the front gate, look for a shrub with white flowers and purple berries. Dark purple, almost black. Bring the berries to me right away.”

Jacob stumbled out the front door and down the
steps, his eyes blinded with tears. Where was it? Where was the shrub? He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and looked and looked, but he couldn’t find it. From inside the house the witch moaned.

White flowers, purple berries, it had to be here somewhere. She wouldn’t lie to him about that, would she, not when she was poisoned and needed help. Jacob began pulling up plants willy-nilly, as though he might find the bush he was looking for by getting rid of all the bushes he wasn’t looking for. Thorns scraped at his skin and vines tripped him up. Where was that stupid shrub?

“I’m sorry!” Jacob cried out. He fell to the ground and buried his head in his hands. Oh what, oh what had he done? “I’m sorry!” he cried again.

But there was no reply.

Isabelle and Samuel raced into Grete’s yard, panting and holding their sides. Slowing, steadying themselves with their hands on their knees, taking in gulping, gasping breaths, it took a few seconds before they noticed the boy by the front gate.

“I’ve killed her,” he called out forlornly. “I killed her, but I honestly didn’t mean to. She was a nice old witch for a witch.”

They dashed up the porch steps and through the door. Grete lay still on her bed, held to it by a hodgepodge of vines. Isabelle spun around, wanting to throttle the boy, throw something at him—how dare he tie Grete up! What could he have been thinking? Heat flashed from her fingertips to the roots of her hair.

Samuel waved his hand to get Isabelle’s attention. He nodded toward Grete. “She’s not dead yet, but listen to her breathing, all hollow-like and raspy that way. If she don’t get help, she’ll be dead soon. We need to know what happened.”

Isabelle bolted to the yard. “What did you do to her?” she demanded of the boy, her heart pounding so hard in her chest she thought it might push her over into the grass.

“Put the wrong thing in her pie,” the boy said. “Didn’t mean to. Thought I was putting in cinnamon, but instead it was pennies.”

“Pennies?” Isabelle stared at him, then asked again. “Pennies?”

“Pennies-something,” the boy said. “Royal pennies, like a king might give you.”

“Pennyroyal?”

The boy nodded excitedly. “That’s the one! Pennyroyal.” His face turned glum again. “Thought it was cinnamon. ‘Twas the color of cinnamon.”

Isabelle began to tremble, and he reached out a hand to help her sit. “Hen should have come instead
of me,” she said in a shaky voice, lowering herself to the ground. “She’d know what to do.”

The boy looked at her, eyes wide. “You know Hen?”

Isabelle stared back at him. “Of course I know Hen. Do you?”

“Why, she’s my sister!” he exclaimed. “Have you seen her?”

“Jacob!” Isabelle exclaimed. “Hen’s been worried sick about you! Oh, I wish she were here. She’d know what to do about Grete. There’s just got to be something we—”

“The shrub, she said.”

“The shrub who said?”

Jacob pointed to the house. “The witch. She said there’s a shrub out here with white flowers and purple berries. She wanted me to get her some, but I couldn’t find it.”

Isabelle leaped toward the front gate. “White flowers?” she called back over her shoulder. “Purple berries?”

“That’s right,” Jacob replied, sprinting after her
to the thicket. “I reckon it’s something to make the poison not so poisonous in her belly.”

“Or to make her throw up the pennyroyal,” Isabelle suggested, crawling through the tangle of bushes and vines, ignoring the rocks that dug into her knees. “Throwing up is exactly what Grete needs to do!”

Jacob turned a bit green at that, but he began pushing through the vines and growth, grabbing at every plant in his way. “Hen could help with this?”

“Your sister is a natural-born healer,” Isabelle informed him, pulling a thorny vine from her sleeve and tearing through a patch of flowering chamomile. “Grete taught her all sorts of things about plants and medicine.”

Samuel came out to the porch. “She’s still breathing, but she looks terrible gray,” he called. “I wish Hen were here to look at her.”

“I could go get her,” Jacob volunteered. “I run fast.”

“It’ll take hours,” Samuel pointed out. “I don’t know if this one’s got hours.”

Isabelle stood up with a shout. “I found it!” She held up a bunch of branches and waved them at Samuel and Jacob. Scrambling over the thicket, she stumbled toward the cottage, her arms and legs scratched and bleeding, twigs tangled in her hair. She plucked off a purple-black berry from one of the stems. “This is what Grete said would help her! She can take these, and then when Hen gets here we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“I should go, then?” Jacob asked eagerly, moving toward the clearing. “It might help?”

“It might,” Isabelle told him. “But hurry!”

He was already gone, his feet crashing over rocks and sticks.

Isabelle bounded up the porch steps, cradling the branches in her arms. “All Grete has to do is eat these. That’s all she has to do.”

“She’s not even awake,” Samuel pointed out. “I don’t know how we can get them down her throat without choking her.”

“We’ll find some way,” Isabelle insisted, sounding more confident than she felt. “We have to.”