One Witch at a Time (7 page)

He gasped.

Susanna Louisa peered out too, and her mouth dropped open. “The magic, Rudi. It's happening!”

And so it was. Out of the ground had erupted a tangled green net of sturdy shoots, unfurling leaves, and twirling tendrils. Rudi watched, stunned, as tiny white flowers blossomed on the vines, and then faded and dropped, giving way to—

“Bean pods,” Rudi breathed.

The vines quivered and swayed. They reached long fingers up the signpost, twisting and winding around the weathered wood until they crept across the sign itself, obliterating the word
BRIXEN
and all indication of home. Finally, the sheer weight of the vines cracked the post at its base. With a creaky sigh, the signpost fell to the ground.

And still the vines grew
skyward, a dense green network of tendrils that grasped nothing but air. Soon the bean plant was wider than Rudi could spread his arms, and twice his height . . . three times his height . . . Though Rudi and Susanna stood on the very peak of the Berg, the vine grew higher, and higher still.

Rudi craned his neck and shaded his eyes, but he could not see the top of the vine.

“Look, Rudi!” said Susanna, pointing toward the broken signpost. Only the gashed word
PETZ
remained uncovered, and its arrow now pointed toward the sky.

Rudi and Susanna blinked at each other, and then said the word together.

“Shortcut.”

They stood together
in the stillness, heads back, mouths open, and eyes wide.

“Is it safe, Rudi?”

Rudi wondered the same thing. But before he could answer, there came a fluttering sound. Susanna ducked and covered her head, apparently expecting another upheaval of the earth. But Rudi pointed at the ice. “Look! It's only a bird.”

And so it was. A snow finch, one of the tiny, fragile creatures that somehow managed to survive on the upper reaches of the mountain. With a flurry of its black-and-buff wings, it swooped up from the ice field and alighted on the vine, picking at a tender green pod.

“He's hungry, poor thing,” observed Susanna as the
finch flitted among the vines. It plucked another pod and fluttered with it to the ice.

Susanna tugged at a braid. “Do you see that, Rudi? Even the birds of Petz don't dare to cross the enchanted border.”

“I can't imagine a second-rate witch would concern himself with a bird,” answered Rudi absently, for he had noticed something else. “Look. The vine has an opening.” He stepped closer to the beanstalk. “It's really a whole network of vines, woven together into a kind of tunnel. A tunnel that goes up.”

“I see it,” said Susanna in wonderment. “This really is the shortcut, then? Petz is in the sky?”

Rudi reached out and tried to shake the beanstalk. It was as solid as an oak tree. “I suppose we'll find out soon enough.”

And yet he could not quite bring himself to start climbing. He wished he could leave the bean pouch on the ice and return home now.

Do it proper
, the Brixen Witch had told him. Rudi and Susanna would have to find the Giant's dwelling place and deliver the beans there. It would be the only way to know the magic was safely back where it belonged.

And they had to do it without the Giant's knowledge.

Rudi's thoughts were interrupted by a choked scream.

It was Susanna Louisa. She pointed at the ground, horrified. “The bird!”

With a vague sense of dread, Rudi let his gaze follow the direction of Susanna's pointing finger.

There was the snow finch, perched on the bare ground near their feet. But now it had lost all its color, and stood as still as the stones beneath it. Even the bean pod in its beak had gone white.

Rudi blinked, and blinked again. The bird did not move.

“What's happened to it?” asked Susanna in a small voice. “It looks . . . frozen.”

Then the little bird, no bigger than Susanna's fist, cracked and crumbled. It shattered into a thousand bits of ice and was blown away on a gust of wind.

Rudi and Susanna stood for a long moment, unable to move or speak.

Finally, Rudi found his voice. “The border. It crossed the enchanted border into Brixen.”

“I'm not going near that beanstalk,” Susanna Louisa announced, taking a step backward. “I don't want to turn into a pile of ice!”

Rudi could hardly blame her. But he had made a promise to the Brixen Witch.

And the Brixen Witch had made them a promise too. Hadn't she?

“Susanna,” he told her, “you don't want this stolen
magic causing trouble at home, do you? You heard the Brixen Witch. It must be done.
We
are the ones who must do it. You want her to be proud of you, don't you?”

“I won't know she's proud of me if I'm frozen!” Susanna folded her arms across her chest and took another step backward.

He tried again. “The snow finch hopped directly from the ice of Petz onto the bare ground of Brixen. As long as we cross the border by way of the vine, we'll be safe. The enchantment is broken in that place only. Just as the Brixen Witch told us. We can trust our witch, can't we? Of course we can.”

Susanna pursed her lips, stomped her foot, and shook her head.

Rudi rubbed his hands on his trousers and considered their situation. There was only one thing to do.

He took a deep breath and approached the bean vine. Trying not to look at the spot where the snow finch had been, he lowered his head and stepped into the vine's doorway.

Nothing happened.

There Rudi stood, one foot on the bare ground of Brixen and one foot on the ice of Petz. All around him the vines were gloriously green and fragrant. He inhaled deeply, but he realized that his heart was pounding.

“Rudi?” came Susanna's wavering voice. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.”
Rudi stepped out of the tunnel of vines to stand, once again, on Brixen soil. And once again—to his great relief—nothing happened.

“You're not frozen!” declared Susanna.

With a surge of relief, Rudi let out a laugh. “We only need to keep inside the vine and we'll be safe,” he said. “Ready?”

“Yes, Rudi,” answered Susanna Louisa. “Now I'm ready.”

And so they climbed. For this had to be what the Brixen Witch meant for them to do, as surely as if she were standing before them, pointing the way up.

The climbing was easy enough, for the vines had entwined themselves to form a ladder of sorts. The footholds were perfectly spaced, so that each rung of the ladder lay within easy reach of their next step. The vines were thick, but not so thick that their fingers couldn't grab hold. It seemed almost as if the ladder knew the size of its climbers. It grew behind them too, and on both sides, so that they were climbing in a tunnel of leaves and vines. Perhaps the Brixen Witch could not help them in Petz, but Rudi was sure that at least some of the vine's magic must be hers. She would not let them fall.

A sweet, green scent filled Rudi's nostrils as he climbed. Below him, Susanna's hair and shoulders were dusted with spent blossoms.

“See this, Rudi?”
she called to him, and she held up a pod. “If I pick one that's the same size as my pinky finger, it's sweet and tender. Not smaller, because there's nothing to it. Not bigger, because then it's too tough.” She popped the pod into her mouth and crunched.

“Clever girl,” he muttered, echoing the witch's words. Whether he felt admiration or vexation, he wasn't sure, and he decided not to dwell on it.

Was it a good idea, eating enchanted beans? But his stomach grumbled, and his mouth watered. Bean pods sprouted all around him, tempting him as he climbed.

There's only so much magic in the world,
the Brixen Witch had said.

Curious, Rudi pulled off the fattest pod he could find and split it open. With his thumb he popped out the glistening white beans and examined them.

“No keyhole markings,” he called down to Susanna. “That means only the beans in the pouch are magic, then.” Which meant one other thing. “We can eat these beans!”

He reached hungrily for the emerging bean pods. But they grew so quickly that he could scarcely grab a pod before it was too tough to eat. He finally learned to watch for withering blossoms. As the petals fell away, they left a tiny pod that grew before his eyes. By the time he reached out and plucked it from the vine, the bean pod had grown to just the proper size. After two or
three tries he was able to time his picking perfectly, and in a few minutes both he and Susanna were able to eat as they climbed, without breaking their steady pace upward. For the first time in a long while, his stomach felt blessedly full and quiet. So full, in fact, that he decided not to eat any more, or he'd be uncomfortably sorry.

They continued for what seemed like a few minutes, or perhaps it was a few hours. The vines surrounding them tinted everything green, though when Rudi peeked between the leaves to glimpse the world beyond, he noticed no change in the sunlight. He was barely tired, and Susanna had not complained about needing to rest. They must have been climbing for only minutes, then. Though, if he were being truthful, he could only guess at the time.

“Is it true what they say about Petz?” said Susanna Louisa. “That the sun never shines there, and folk walk about with icicles hanging from their noses?”

“Whatever makes you think that?”

“I heard a story like that once.”

“I think our witch would not have sent us if she thought we would come to harm,” said Rudi, trying to sound convincing. “We have to trust her.”

“If you say so, Rudi.”

And then, instead of growing upward, the vine ladder began tilting toward horizontal, until it became a
ramp of sorts, and then it was level. The tunnel of vines grew larger, so that Rudi and Susanna were able to walk side by side and upright, only brushing their heads on the nodding leaves and pods.

Now the tunnel began sloping downward. At first the slope was gradual, but then it dipped steeply, and once more Rudi and Susanna were climbing a ladder, but this time they were climbing down. Chill air pushed through the gaps in the vines, causing the leaves to curl and wilt. After a few more minutes, Rudi's breath blew out in white puffs, and his fingers grew stiff with cold.

Rudi had hoped he would be ready for whatever might come next. But now that the moment had finally come, he did not feel ready at all. The white puffs of breath came faster now, and Rudi's heart pounded in his chest.

Then, suddenly, his feet touched solid ground. Bitterly cold air blew at him with a sudden force through an opening in the vines. A doorway.

And then he was kicked in the head.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry, Rudi!” called Susanna Louisa from above. “Why did you stop?”

“Because there's no more ladder,” he said, rubbing his head. “We're at . . . the end.” Rudi dared not say more, for fear of frightening Susanna Louisa.

She dropped down beside him and pulled her coat tightly around her against the cold. “The end?” She peered through the doorway, and then her eyes grew wide. “The beginning, more like. We're here. We're in Petz!”

They stepped out
from the vines and into the teeth of an icy wind. With a gasp, Susanna shrank back to the shelter of the frostbitten beanstalk. Rudi yanked his hood over his head, and his eyes watered from the sudden blast of cold. As he blinked to clear his vision, Petz took shape before him.

It looked every bit as bleak as the stories he had heard. The first thing he noticed was the color—or rather, the lack of color. Though the thaw was well under way in Brixen, spring had not yet come to Petz. Rudi wondered if spring
ever
came to Petz. The clouds looked so thick and heavy that he could not even guess the time of day. The snow-covered ground was as gray and featureless as the sky, and the barren peak that loomed above bore an unfamiliar outline. Rudi did not know its name. He only knew it was not the Berg.

Beyond a stand of wind-battered pines, Rudi made out a jumble of blocky shapes arranged in a frozen cascade along the slope. A village, such as it was. Squat dwellings of timber and stone clung to the nameless mountain like the steps of a rickety staircase; the steeply pitched roof of one house sat nearly level with the front door of the house above it. The whole collection looked as if it might slide down the mountain at the smallest sneeze.

“Rudi?” came Susanna Louisa's voice behind him. “Now what?”

Rudi wondered the same thing. He was sharply aware that, for the first time in their lives, they were standing on truly foreign soil. Despite the shortcut along the enchanted beanstalk, this was no half-day jaunt to Klausen. Never before had Rudi stood in a place where he could not see the Berg, and he didn't like it. It made him uneasy; without the Berg to establish his bearings, the entire landscape seemed somehow
wrong
. It was an unnerving reminder that they were far from home. Beyond the protection of the Brixen Witch.