Broken Wish Read online

  “What is it about that place?” Willem asked, shaking his head. “So many children vanish there. Why are they going in to begin with?”

  “Because it’s big and beautiful and perfect for hide-and-seek,” Elva said. “Mama and Papa took us on a picnic there long ago and Cay keeps begging to go back, but they’re afraid he’ll go missing, too. Remember poor Ben Schmidt?”

  Willem shook his head.

  “It must have been before you came to Hanau. He was an old man who wandered out of the woods one day, claiming that he had been missing for over sixty years. Apparently, he had gone in to pick mushrooms for his mother and never found his way back out until now.”

  “It sounds like one of the Grimms’ tales.” Willem glanced at the piece of paper again. “For a moment, I thought that was another notice about the witch. They’re nailed up everywhere and Herr Bauer hates them. He’s been making us remove them from his trees and fences.”

  “Mama hates them, too.” Elva thought of the day she and her mother had passed a fence covered with dire warnings—“Stay Away!” and “Avoid the North Woods or Perish!”—and drawings of a crone with soulless black eyes. Elva had never seen her gentle mother so furious. Neighbors whispered for weeks afterward about sweet-tempered Agnes Heinrich ripping the notices to shreds. It’s vicious, the gossip people dream up about those who are different, she had seethed to Elva. Promise me you’ll never be so unkind.

  “Maybe it’s true, what the notices say,” Willem suggested. “The witch does live in the North Woods. She could be the one taking all of these missing children.”

  “What on earth makes you say that?” Elva asked, taken aback.

  “I don’t know. I guess a lonely hag would be the most likely culprit, wouldn’t she?”

  Stunned, she freed herself from his arms. “You can’t say things like that without proof. You can’t just accuse a woman of kidnapping simply because there’s been awful talk about her.”

  He stared at her in astonishment. “Elva, everyone says she’s evil, and the North Woods are on that side of Hanau. I was just putting two and two together.”

  The breeze no longer felt soothing, but chilling with the lingering touch of winter, and Elva wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “Mama says gossip is the work of the devil,” she said. “It’s beneath you, Willem. I thought you knew better.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I was only repeating what the other farmhands say.”

  Elva turned away, thinking again of the tears in Mama’s eyes and the torn-up notices in her hands. “I wish you wouldn’t. It’s cruel,” she said, and found that she couldn’t look at Willem. She walked to the edge of the river and looked at the moon’s reflection, wondering if she had ruined everything between them. But something about the way he had so freely shared the gossip irked her.

  “Elva, I’m sorry,” Willem said again, and his remorse sounded genuine. “It was horrible of me to make such an accusation, even as a joke. I’m a fool.”

  Elva caught sight of his reflection in the water, wringing his hands, and it made her smile. She opened her mouth to say that she would forgive him if he never showed such unkindness again, when something impossible caught her eye in the dark river: ripples of colors and a face she knew well. Everything around her—the star-dappled sky, the willows swaying in the wind, Willem begging for her forgiveness—blurred as the vision in the water came into focus. Oh no, she thought, panicking. For ten years, she had tried her hardest to avoid looking into even a glass of water and had pushed away any images that had danced around the periphery of her vision. But this scene was so bright, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it.

  She saw a sunny day, and a young man with reddish-brown hair sitting in a rowboat on the Main with his fishing line trailing lazily in its wake. “Willem,” she breathed, watching as he adjusted the hat on his head. And then he gave a sudden start and sat bolt upright in the boat, frantically reeling in his line. Elva saw the tip of an enormous fish’s head break the surface of the water. A wild grin spread over Willem’s face, and Elva clasped her hands together excitedly.

  The line grew shorter and shorter in his white-knuckled hands, and then the fish burst out of the river, landing in the rowboat with incredible force and soaking Willem’s shirt. But he didn’t seem to notice—he was staring, slack-jawed, at what he had just caught. It was a fish half as long as the boat, with violet fins and scales of a whole palette of colors: the cornflower blue of the sky, the deep plum of violets, and the lush green of underwater plants.

  It was beautiful, like a rainbow.

  “Elva! What’s beautiful like a rainbow?” a worried voice demanded in her ear. Someone’s hand shook her shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

  Elva blinked, and the vision was gone. The river reflected only the night sky, and beside her stood Willem himself, looking at her with huge, concerned eyes.

  “Did you see something in the river?” he said slowly, studying her.

  Her stomach dropped. All these years, she had been so careful not to give anyone an inkling about her strange ability, and now she had lapsed in front of the one person she wanted, more than anything, to like and respect her. “No, of course not,” she fibbed. “I just remembered a dream I’d had about you last night. You were on the river, and being here made me think of it.”

  A twinkle came into Willem’s eye. “You’re having dreams about me?” he teased. “What were we doing in it?”

  “I wasn’t in it,” Elva said, blushing. “Just you. You were in a boat on a sunny day, and you caught an enormous fish.” She described its massive size and lovely colorful scales to him.

  “You’re talking about the Blue Mermaid of the Main,” Willem said in amazement.

  “The Blue Mermaid?”

  “It’s a fish of local legend,” he said, his eyes darting to the calm surface of the river and then back to her. “They say it’s nearly as long as a grown man and only appears on a warm day after a crescent moon. Herr Bauer jokes that any farmhand who catches the Blue Mermaid will receive a pay raise, because it’s supposed to bring good luck. You dreamed about me catching it?”

  “I must have heard Papa talking about it,” Elva said faintly, leaning against the willow tree. She had come dangerously close to revealing her secret. If Willem ever found out, it would be the end of them, forever. He would never bring her flowers or dance with her again.

  His arms enveloped her. “Please don’t be angry with me anymore. I’m sorry for saying that about the woman in the North Woods. I won’t listen to the farmhands’ gossip ever again.”

  He looked so earnest and apologetic that Elva couldn’t help smiling. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him fiercely, her heart full of him. But though she tried to lose herself again in the feel of his lips and his warm arms, her mind was still on the vision of the Blue Mermaid. She didn’t know how she would explain it if her “dream” happened to come true. Maybe it won’t this time, she thought desperately. Maybe it will be my first wrong prediction.

  She could only hope.

  “I hate to say this, but that’s not how fish work.” Rayner crossed his arms in an uncanny imitation of their father as he looked down at his siblings. Elva and Cay were sitting at the big oak table in the parlor, stitching one of Elva’s skirts. “What on earth would they do with wings?”

  “Fly, of course,” Cay said, as though it were utterly obvious.

  “Fish swim.” Rayner leveled a look at him that would have made Papa proud. Even when he wasn’t trying to emulate him, Rayner was a perfect fourteen-year-old copy of Oskar Heinrich, right down to the blue eyes and the beginnings of a beard. “Birds fly. That’s how nature works.”

  “Well, we’re not trying to show how nature works. We’re imagining, like Mama says,” Cay said, as he went on embroidering his fish’s elaborate wings. They were jagged at the ends, like a bat’s, and Elva smiled, knowing he had been inspired by the natural history book he had just devoured. If there was any
thing eleven-year-old Cay liked better than trying new things, it was reading all of the volumes in Mama’s library.

  “Imagining,” Rayner muttered. Neither he nor Papa had ever understood Cay, who took up any hobby from sewing to baking to riding with equal alacrity, and had once caught a terrible cold sleeping outdoors to study field mice. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be sewing. That’s for g—”

  “Shouldn’t you be helping Papa?” Elva snapped, looking up from the fish she herself was embroidering with violet thread. “If Cay wants to help me sew my skirt, that’s his business.” Cay grinned at her. Rayner shrugged helplessly at the pair of them but left without further argument.

  Elva smoothed out the folds of the skirt. “This is turning out nicely! I think I might wear it to Freida’s birthday supper next week.” Along with Elva and Mama, Freida Bauer was one of the few people who supported Cay’s interest in embroidery. The last time she had come to their house, she had helped him stitch a fantastical purple horse with duck feet instead of hooves.

  “I like Freida. She’s nice to me. Is that the Blue Mermaid you’re sewing?” Cay asked knowingly. He was the only one Elva dared to confide in about her visions. He knew how hard it had always been for her to resist looking at them whenever she did things like bathe, drink water, or help Mama with the washing. But unlike their parents, he found her ability interesting instead of frightening.

  “Yes. I can’t stop thinking about how close Willem came to finding out about me,” Elva said, sighing. “I should have been more careful, but the vision appeared so suddenly.”

  “He didn’t find out, though,” Cay reassured her, putting the finishing touches on his fish and moving on to a unicorn. “And he believed you when you said it was a dream. Willem’s all right.” He paused, then looked up at her. “Except didn’t he tell you the woman in the North Woods was kidnapping those children?”

  “He was just repeating gossip.” Elva frowned. “It’s so easy for people to spread rumors. Just because that woman lives alone, everyone makes up stories about her. And children have gone missing in the woods for years and years; there’s always someone different to blame.”

  Two years ago, a young woman had been driven out of Hanau after a pair of missing twins turned up at her cottage. She had been accused of kidnapping, and no matter how much the twins argued in her defense, no one had believed them. She had been forced to leave forever. Before that, it had been a mother and daughter, skillful healers whom the town had turned against because they had saved too many lives, thereby sparking accusations of witchcraft.

  Elva shuddered at the thought of Hanau finding out about her visions. For more than a decade, she had lived with the shameful secret of being strange and different. She glanced up to see Cay’s keen blue eyes on her. “Now that you’ve finished reading that natural history book, what will you study next?” she asked brightly, deciding it was high time for a change of subject.

  “Fairy tales,” Cay said at once. “I want to study where they came from. The Grimms had a theory that some magical objects actually do exist, and I want to hunt for one.”

  “Which one? A spinning wheel? Seven-league boots?”

  “No. A wishing well.”

  Elva laughed at how typical it was of Cay to be fascinated by anything related to water—ironic, considering how hard she tried to avoid water herself. He had a knack for finding hidden streams and forgotten creeks; he had even discovered an old sinkhole once that the town council had marked upon the official map of Hanau. Mama called him her lucky charm and often joked that if there was ever a drought, she would simply set him loose.

  “I’m sure if a wishing well exists, you’ll be the one to find it,” Elva told him.

  Cay grinned, then looked down at his spool of red thread. “This isn’t the right shade for my unicorn’s mane. It’s too orange. Do you think Mama has anything darker, like ruby?”

  “Let’s go see.” Elva led the way to the sunny nook where their mother stored keepsakes and sewing supplies, including bolts of fabric, ribbons, yarn, and other odds and ends.

  Cay climbed the short ladder and reached for the basket on the top shelf, which contained Mama’s needles and threads. In his enthusiasm, he knocked some books onto the floor.

  “Be careful!” Elva urged him.

  “Oh, look, there was something behind those books,” he said, not listening to her at all. He pulled out a little wooden box painted with autumn leaves. When he opened the lid, they saw bundles of yellowed letters tied together with frost-blue ribbon.

  “Cay, don’t!” Elva scolded, as her brother eagerly pulled the first letter from the bundle. “What if they’re love letters or something?”

  “They’re signed Mathilda. Who’s Mathilda?” he asked, still not listening to her. Ever the voracious reader, he had already begun skimming the first paragraph. “Oh, she’s a neighbor who lived next door to Mama and Papa. Little cottage…What cottage is she talking about?”

  Elva’s curiosity was aroused at once. Mama had always been reluctant to talk about their early days in Hanau. “It’s the first home they bought before we were born,” she explained. “Across the bridge on the far side of town. They had me there but moved a year later.” Against her own judgment, she slipped the second letter out of the bundle. “Here’s something about Honey!”

  Honey was an old goat that had been with them for as long as Elva could remember. When she died a few years ago, Cay had held an elaborate funeral that he insisted the whole family attend. “What does it say about her?” he asked eagerly, taking the note Elva gave him. “Oh, I think this lady Mathilda was the one who named Honey.”

  “She made sweaters for Mama and Papa once,” Elva said, glancing over the other letters. “And Mama made sourdough bread for her in return. They were friends.”

  “Here’s one where she tells Mama she’d be a good mother.” Cay nodded his approval. “She was right. And it looks like she liked the goat cheese Mama gave her.”

  “I wonder why Mama never talks about her. Maybe she moved away.” Elva scanned the dates as they moved through the bundle of letters. “They started writing to each other in 1847, the year before I was born. When is the last one dated?”

  He located the letter at the bottom of the pile. “The beginning of 1848,” he said, and as he scanned the message, his face grew serious. “It looks like they stopped being friends. She writes that…that Mama wasn’t the person she thought she was.”

  “Why? What happened?” Elva asked, stunned.

  “She says something about magic in here. I think Mathilda did magic,” Cay said, looking troubled. He passed her the letter and there was no denying that he was right, after Elva read the neat script several times. “Papa didn’t like her, which explains why we’ve never heard of her. He doesn’t even like it when people talk about that woman in the North Woods.”

  Elva froze. “Their old cottage wasn’t far from the North Woods. What if that woman is Mathilda? If they were friends once, that would explain why Mama was upset about the notices.”

  Cay looked doubtful. “I don’t know if Mama would associate with a witch. You know how Papa gets…. But maybe they didn’t know about her at first.” He paused, his eyes widening. “If that woman is Mathilda, do you think she could help me with my fairy tale research?”

  “Cay,” Elva groaned.

  “What?” he asked defensively. “She lives in the North Woods, and there are all kinds of strange stories about that place. We could ask her about the family curse, too.”

  They had long found it strange that their mother was so superstitious about the number three, given how practical she was otherwise. But every time something good happened to their family, she believed it would be followed by another stroke of good luck and then something awful. And more often than not, it was. Even Papa couldn’t explain why the pattern had happened over and over through the years, and they had all taken to calling it the family curse. Last year, Mama had barely slept after Rayner found a lost pr
egnant ewe that belonged to no one, and Papa had sold his famous apples for more money than he ever had before. “Two good things. Something bad is coming next,” she had said, making them all nervous, and then she had broken her wrist slipping in the rain.

  “I’m not sure even witches can do anything about bad luck,” Elva said absentmindedly, flipping through the letters. Her mother had sounded so young, hopeful, and trusting, and Mathilda kind and caring. What had happened between the two of them to end it all, and on such bad terms, as Mathilda’s final message seemed to imply?

  They heard a door close somewhere in the house, and it suddenly struck Elva that Mama might not have wanted them to know about Mathilda. Quickly, she and Cay stuffed the letters back into the wooden box and replaced it on the shelf behind the books. No sooner had they taken their spots at the table again than Agnes Heinrich swept into the room.

  “Come outside,” their mother said merrily, her cheeks rosy. “It’s an incredible sight.”

  “What is, Mama?” Elva asked, but their mother only chuckled and led them out to the front of the house. A group of men stood talking and laughing with Papa and Rayner, and Elva spotted Herr Bauer and a few of his farmhands. Willem was standing beside a big red wheelbarrow covered with a cloth, looking as happy and excited as any of them.

  “Oh, good, everyone’s here,” Herr Bauer said, smiling at Elva and Cay. “Come and see our good fortune. Or should I say, Willem’s good fortune!”

  Elva’s stomach lurched at the sight of Willem’s shirt, which was soaked with water. She already knew what she would see as Willem swept off the cloth with a dramatic flourish: a beautiful fish so large that its head and tail dangled over either side of the wheelbarrow. Its scales glimmered cerulean and sea-foam green and lilac. All it needed to be a storybook mermaid was the face of a beautiful woman and long turquoise hair twisted with pearls. Willem’s eyes met Elva’s with joyful disbelief, but she shook her head, silently pleading with him not to say anything about the “dream” in front of everyone. To her relief, he seemed to understand.