Broken Wish Page 17

  Elva shook her head slowly, unable to speak.

  “Elva, your gift is a blessing,” Willem told her. “Imagine all of the people you’ll help!”

  “By telling them what they’ll eat the next day?”

  He was silent for a long moment. “I came to you with good intentions. A plan to protect you and ensure that you have a happy life. And all you’ve done is put down my ideas.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “I want you to leave, please,” Elva said firmly.

  “I am not finished,” he repeated. “You have well-off parents. You’ve never known a day of hunger in your life, but I have. I know what it’s like to be dirt poor and to watch my own mother suffer without the medication she needed. Do you think I would miss a chance to avoid that fate? To become rich beyond my wildest dreams and see my wife and children happy and well-fed? We can have all of that together, Elva.”

  “I’m sorry for your suffering,” Elva told him. “I truly am. But I won’t have any part in these plans. I won’t be used. And you had no right to tell anyone about my ability. You can run along and find another dancing monkey to make you rich.”

  He gaped at her. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that you’re not who I thought you were.” Elva wished she could cry and rage at him and unleash this unbearable anger like a great storm tearing through her mind. But all she felt was numb and sick. “I was wrong about you. I don’t want to be your wife anymore.”

  Willem took a step back, and then another. His face had completely drained of color. “You really mean it,” he whispered.

  “I do.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer, then ran a hand over his eyes and laughed. “You’re jilting me. You agreed to marry me, and now you’re taking it back, just like that. You’ve played me for a fool.” The color returned to his cheeks, a dark, furious red. “What will Herr Bauer say? What will I tell the other farmhands? What will everyone in Hanau think? This is going to make me look ridiculous. Don’t you care what a huge embarrassment this will be for me?”

  “No, I don’t,” Elva said in disbelief. “I made the right decision if the only thing that concerns you is what others will think.”

  Willem clenched his jaw. “I think you should start caring about what others think, too. What’s going to happen when I tell more people about you, Elva?” he asked, his eyes cold on her. “I know your deepest, darkest secret now. Shall I tell all of Hanau about your little visions? Shall I tell them how I barely escaped marrying a witch?”

  Elva’s stomach lurched. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “Who else is going to marry you after this? Do you think anyone would be as caring and understanding as I am? Would anyone else think of ways to keep you safe and make us money at the same time?” He shook his head. “I don’t think you meant what you said about ending our betrothal. I think you’re still going to be my wife, and you’re going to agree to my plan, and in a week, you will be riding with Klaus and me in the wagon to Berlin. And if not?”

  She watched him, scarcely daring to breathe.

  Willem came close again and touched her cheek gently. The feel of his warm fingers against her skin made her want to empty her stomach. “And if not,” he said again, very low, “I’m going to see that the council gives you a trial, too.”

  “Elva, are you all right?” her mother asked.

  Elva looked up from her untouched breakfast. “Yes, Mama. Why?”

  “You haven’t been eating much all week.” Mama tucked a strand of hair behind Elva’s ear. “And it looks like you haven’t been sleeping enough, either. I know you’re worried about Mathilda, but whatever happens at the trial today will happen. And between you and me, I don’t think she’ll let them lay a finger on her. How strange,” she added, with a faraway look in her eyes, “that I’ll be seeing her again today after all this time.”

  “I don’t think Mathilda will let them touch her, either.”

  “Is there something else, then?” Her mother hesitated. “I haven’t seen much of Willem around here lately. Did the two of you quarrel?”

  Elva bit back her frustration, wishing Mama would stop hovering and fretting over her. “Let’s just get through today, and I’ll be back to normal,” she said with a forced smile, grateful when Rayner came clumping down the stairs and gave her mother someone else to fuss over.

  “Is Papa already outside?” her brother asked.

  Mama handed him a heaping plate of eggs and sausage, which he began shoveling into his mouth. “He’s with the farmhands, going over the plans for today. He wanted to let you sleep in, since you’ll be overseer today when he’s at the trial. You’ve done good work this week.”

  “Everything looks very nice and secure,” Elva agreed, glancing out of the window. The farm looked as sturdy and strong as she could want. “How long do you think it will take to finish everything? I mean to build the underground shelters and gather and seed the crops?”

  “Just another few days,” Rayner said, his mouth full of food.

  “Good. Even if the storm I saw came tonight, we’d be more ready than we were before,” Elva said, and he quickly lowered his eyes, gobbling down his eggs without answering. Rayner was worse than Papa when it came to things he couldn’t understand or see with his own eyes. “Where’s Cay? Did you see him upstairs?”

  Mama frowned. “Yes, where is that boy? His food is getting cold.”

  “His door was still closed when I came down,” Rayner said.

  “It’s not like him to sleep in. Should I go wake him?” Elva asked.

  “No, I’ll go,” Mama said. “You eat. I have to bring down the washing, anyway.” It was a long while before she came back down, and when she did, her eyes were round with worry and she had forgotten the basket of laundry. “Cay isn’t in his room, and his bed hasn’t been slept in.”

  Elva dropped her fork. “What? Where is he?”

  “He went to bed around the same time we did, didn’t he?” Rayner asked.

  Mama shook her head. “No, he wasn’t home last night. He begged to be excused from supper, remember? He had research to do and wanted me to pack him a basket of food.”

  At that moment, Papa joined them inside and they told him about Cay. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said cheerily. “He must have come home after we had all gone to bed and left again at sunrise. He’s a perfect farmer in that regard, always up before the sun. Too bad he isn’t more interested in the actual farming.”

  But Mama shook her head again, her face pale. “I left a shirt I had mended for him on his pillow and it’s still there. He would have moved it if he had gone to sleep. No, Oskar, I’m sure he never came home.” She turned to Elva. “Did he tell you anything? He always confides in you.”

  “No, Mama, he said nothing,” Elva said, trying to quell her rising panic, but it was no good. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the well in the forest, and the body lying beside it.

  “I’ll run out and ask if any of the workers have seen him,” Papa offered, his face sobering at their alarm. “Rayner, you’d better come, too. We can split up.”

  Rayner was already on his feet. “I’ll run over to Herr Bauer’s. His farmhands are always out and about and they may have seen Cay walking around.”

  “Oh, Elva,” Mama said, turning to her, “you don’t think he’s gone to the North Woods?”

  Elva blinked away the image of the crumpled body. “If he has, we’ll find him,” she said stoutly, steering her mother toward the door. “He probably just lost track of time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he came home in a minute and found us looking for him.”

  “No. Something’s wrong,” Mama murmured. “Or something will go wrong. I may not have your ability, Elva, but I can feel it in my bones. He’s hurt.”

  “Don’t think like that,” Elva urged her, though the words sent a chill down her spine. She thought of what Willem had once said about i
ntuition and its similarity to magic, and felt Mama’s anxiety catching like illness, spreading slowly through her body.

  Outside, Papa left the barn, his face grim. “The workers saw Cay walking toward the river yesterday, but no one knows where he went after that. Let’s wait for Rayner and see.”

  It didn’t take long for Rayner to run back. “They saw Cay yesterday at suppertime,” he said breathlessly. “He was crossing the bridge toward the forest with a basket in his hand.”

  Elva and Mama exchanged glances, and in her mother’s eyes was the same fear growing in Elva’s heart. Her hand was ice-cold in Elva’s as they began hurrying toward the river, followed by Papa, Rayner, and the farmhands they had rallied to help them search.

  “Run back to Bauer’s and ask for a few men to come with us,” Papa instructed Rayner, then put a reassuring arm around Mama. “We’ll spread out and Cay will certainly hear one of us calling. I’m sure he’s fine, Agnes, but I don’t want to take any chances. Not with so many…”

  He trailed off, but Elva knew his mind was on the children who had gone missing in the woods, never to return. All of them were thinking it. They marched toward the river, coming across many neighbors who asked what was going on. Most of them ended up joining the group and offering whatever services they could, whether it was helping them search, running home to get a horse, or bringing food for Cay in case he was hungry, since he hadn’t had his breakfast.

  “See how many people adore Cay?” Elva whispered to Mama. “He will be found.”

  Her mother only pressed her hand silently, her face blanched with fear.

  They headed for the North Woods on the path Elva had so often taken in Mathilda’s silent red shoes. Mathilda. Elva looked up at the sky, which was still pale with morning light, praying that the search would end happily before noon. She had vowed to be with Mathilda at the trial, and there she would be. We will find Cay, she repeated to herself over and over, and the trial will go well. The words didn’t do much to comfort her, but it was something to occupy her mind.

  Venturing through the forest had always felt to Elva like walking into a fairy tale, like she could be stopped by a princess or a lost knight at any time. But today, faced as she was with the need to find Cay safe and well, the atmosphere of the woods seemed different. She had never noticed how sharp the branches were, with jagged edges for catching a small boy’s shirt or scratching at his eyes, nor had she ever realized that the ground was so full of perilous pits and mischievous roots.

  Rayner caught up to them, followed by Herr Bauer and a dozen of his farmhands.

  “Cay!” the search party cried, like a monster with thirty heads. “Cay, where are you?”

  Their voices rang throughout the woodlands, but no cheerful voice answered and no Cay appeared with sheepish excuses about how the time had gotten away from him. And with every minute that passed, Elva felt sicker in her belief that something terrible had happened to her beloved brother. She could have choked on her guilt. All summer long, she had neglected poor Cay, too busy with her own concerns to spend time with him. She could barely look at Mama’s face, which was sunken with anxiety. Papa talked in a low voice with Herr Bauer, but his movements were abrupt and uneasy and showed that he had caught Mama’s fear, too, no matter how he tried to hide it. Everyone fanned out and swept through piles of leaves, calling Cay’s name.

  Elva shouted with them, but in her heart, she knew it was useless.

  She knew, with growing certainty, that they would not find Cay until they had found a well of rough gray stone, something she had never come across in all of her wanderings through the forest. If Cay had been with them, his uncanny knack for finding water might have alerted them to its presence at once—but then they wouldn’t need to be searching for him.

  “Cay!” they shouted. “Cay, we’re here!”

  Elva did not know how much time had passed. It seemed they might spend forever in the woods, searching in vain for Cay. She forced herself to remain calm for poor Mama and tried to take comfort in the sight of dozens and dozens of people sweeping the forest, helping them look. Surely, with so many eyes, they would not miss anything.

  “Look here!” a man shouted.

  “Oh, Elva,” Mama gasped, squeezing her hand as the search party clustered around one of the farmhands. He lifted a small brown wool cloak in the air. Mama pushed to the front of the group, looking faint. “That’s my boy’s. I made it for him. Oh, he was here!”

  “But how long ago?” Elva heard someone murmur.

  The urgency of the search intensified. Elva chewed on her bottom lip as they moved on through the forest, peering through the brush and lifting fallen logs. Several men even climbed trees to see better through the woods. The sun rose higher and higher in the sky until Elva could stand it no longer. She found her mother and spoke to her in an undertone.

  “Mama, I’m going to see if Mathilda is still home. Maybe she can help us find Cay.”

  Relief washed over her mother’s face. “Yes, go. Surely the trial can’t take place today, not with Papa and Herr Bauer and so many neighbors here. I’ll make excuses and ensure you aren’t missed,” she whispered. “Tell her I’m grateful for anything she can do.”

  Elva spotted the great willow and headed toward it. Everyone was so intent on searching that no one noticed when she slipped away to the witch’s cottage. But the place was empty, and Mathilda had evidently left for town bright and early. The cat, however, sat on the windowsill, gazing at Elva with its sea-glass eyes, and something glittered beside it: Mathilda’s mirror. In her fear and worry, Elva had not even thought to consult her own mirror, and now it seemed absurd that the idea hadn’t occurred to her right away.

  She grabbed the mirror and stared into it desperately. “Cay,” she said, closing her eyes and directing all of her thought and energy toward him. “Please, I need to find Cay.” She cleared her mind of everything but him, and when she opened her eyes, the mirror was showing her the outside of the cottage. Slowly, the scene glided to the right, going in the opposite direction of the willow tree. Mathilda had never taken Elva back there. The vision plunged forward into an empty clearing, where a well of weathered gray stone, with a little roof of granite shingles, sat alone.

  Elva didn’t wait to see any more. She put down the mirror and raced out the door, listening for the voices of the search party all around her, but she heard not a sound—clearly, Mathilda’s boundary prevented any noise from entering or escaping. She wondered if Mama and Papa were close enough to touch her but could neither see nor hear her through the invisible curtain.

  “Cay!” she shouted, her heart pounding in her ears. “Can you hear me?”

  For several minutes she ran until something tickled her face like a spiderweb, and she realized she had reached the edge of Mathilda’s boundary. She lifted the curtain as she had seen the witch do, and it rose easily over her head as she kept running, aiming for the location the mirror had shown. On and on her feet took her for an interminable distance, until finally the clearing came into view. Elva plunged toward the well. Its stones had faded with time, and a blanket of moss and cobwebs draped over its edges. On the edge of the well perched a stack of three volumes that Elva recognized as Mama’s storybooks.

  “Cay!” she screamed.

  Her little brother was sprawled on the forest floor, eyes closed and blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. His right leg was bent at an unnatural angle. A cracked wooden bucket lay near him, its rusted steel chain anchored to the roof of the well. Elva burst into tears and frantically felt his hands and face, which were as cold as death. She pressed her ear to his chest and nose and sobbed with relief when she felt his weak breath on her skin.

  “Cay, wake up,” she begged. “Please, please wake up.”

  His eyes fluttered open. “Elva?”

  She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight to her heart. “I’m here,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Cay, I was so scared. Where do you hurt?”<
br />
  “M-my leg, mostly.” He lifted his head to look at it and grimaced. “I think I broke it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I threw a pebble in the well and didn’t hear a splash, so I decided to go down in the bucket. It was plenty large enough for me,” Cay said defensively, when Elva groaned at his daring. “I knew I could lift myself back up, and I wanted to see how deep it went. But the chain got stuck and I yanked too hard on it, and my leg got trapped between the bucket and the wall.”

  “Oh, Cay, when will you learn?” Elva cried, stripping off her apron and wrapping it around his head to stanch the bleeding. Cay winced but lay still.

  “I pulled myself back up and climbed out. But I must have pulled too hard, because the bucket flew after me and caught me in the head. I don’t feel dizzy or sick, though.”

  “That’s something, at least. How long have you been here?”

  “Since supper yesterday. That was when I found the well. I wanted to come home and surprise you with the discovery. Ouch,” he grumbled, when Elva pressed a fierce kiss to his head.

  “Silly, stubborn, unlucky boy. You were just far enough away from Mathilda’s boundary that she wouldn’t have been able to sense you.”

  Cay raised his eyebrows, intrigued. “The witch lives nearby?”

  “Yes, and if you had been five minutes that way,” Elva said, pointing, “she would have come out to help you. Thank goodness I went to her cottage and used her mirror to find you.”

  “A magic mirror? Is that how you walked around without leaving any tracks?”

  Elva shook her head. “She gave me a pair of red slippers to hide my footprints.”

  “Can I see them?” Cay asked urgently. “Maybe they can help with my research—”

  “No!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “Only you could be injured and hungry and still want to do research. I’m taking you straight to Mama. Everyone’s sick with worry over you. Why did you ignore my warning?”

  “I’m sorry. I was angry that you had kept such a big secret from me,” he said quietly. “And I thought if I found a wishing well that somehow worked, I could wish our curse away. So I made a carefully worded wish, just like the books say to do. But nothing happened.”