Broken Wish Read online

  Elva’s footsteps quickened as she passed the town hall, where people liked to gather outside and catch up on gossip. But aside from a few who called out greetings, no one stopped her or asked questions. Thankfully, there were even fewer people when she crossed over the bridge toward the North Woods. Her family never went to this side of Hanau, and on the rare occasions when Mama talked about their old life, she had mentioned that Papa had bad memories of it.

  “Your father doesn’t like thinking about that old cottage,” she had confessed. “It reminds him of leaving Mannheim, and your uncle Otto inheriting everything from your grandfather.”

  The story made sense, but now Elva suspected it wasn’t the only reason Papa avoided the cottage. She was certain he had played a part in the demise of Mama’s friendship. I have gone elsewhere, Mathilda had written in her final note. And if she was indeed the witch of the North Woods, then she hadn’t gone far and there might be a clue to her whereabouts at her old cottage.

  The well-traveled path led Elva deep into the forest. Fifteen years ago, Mama and Papa had walked this very route to their new life on the other side of the river. Retracing their steps felt to Elva like walking into memory and time. The trees formed a dense canopy overhead, covering the woods in cool green shade. She breathed in the smell of soil and moss, admiring the wildflowers along the path, and almost wished they had never moved away from the woods. There was something mystical in the way light danced here, as though it were made up of fairies.

  “Did you know there’s a lot of magic in the forest?” Cay had said once. He had held up yet another heavy book, A Complete History of Hanau. “Apparently a lot of people who were accused of being witches went in there to hide. No one’s ever mapped it in its entirety because the trees move around and the path changes all the time. Folks say there are tunnels to other worlds and fairy rings and elves who might trick you and replace you with a changeling that looked just like you, so your family would never be able to tell.”

  Elva had laughed at him, but now, deep in the North Woods with its lilting birdsong and dappled shadows, it wasn’t hard to imagine passages out of time and forgotten pockets of magic. She could see why children were attracted to this place, with its wandering paths and graceful trees. Attracted, she thought uneasily, and then lost, never to be found again.

  Goose bumps rose on her arms, and she was grateful when a family of small, slender people with sun-bronzed skin and jet-black hair passed her on the path. Their tense faces relaxed when she gave them a friendly nod and a smile, and one of the children waved at her. Over the past few years, many people had migrated to Hanau from lands in the Far East to seek work or to escape war in their countries. Elva thought these were perfectly sensible reasons, but Papa had explained that not everyone in town welcomed them, and some were even downright hostile.

  “That’s how people are,” he had told her. “Mama and I teach you to respect everyone, but there will always be folks who think we ought to keep to our own countries.”

  Dismayed, Elva had thought of her mother’s volumes of stories from around the world. “But then we would never get to read tales from other places. Or learn other languages or eat those dumplings you love,” she had added, recalling Papa’s love of the round, flavorful pockets of pork and vegetables that some of their new neighbors brought to sell at market.

  Papa had taught her kindness and understanding for others, yet he, too, had once shunned Mathilda for something she couldn’t help. Even Willem’s mind had gone straight to the woman in the woods when they had seen the notice for the missing child. There was so much suspicion and prejudice, and Elva’s stomach hurt at the thought of Hanau ever turning against her.

  After walking for a half hour, she stopped to rest beneath a beautiful old willow that reminded her of the tree by the river where she and Willem had first met. The sun was high in the sky when she emerged from the North Woods into a hamlet of shabby cottages. Mama had said that their old home had a rickety wooden gate, into which Papa had carved a daffodil, her favorite flower.

  Elva passed gate after gate, looking for it, and finally found it in front of a cottage of mushroom-colored wood, rotted in several places, at the end of the lane. Smoke rose from the crooked chimney, indicating that the owner was at home, so Elva didn’t dare linger long. She only ran her fingers over the daffodil before going up the hill to where Mathilda had once lived.

  Despite knowing that the woman was long gone, Elva still felt a prickle of apprehension. If the rumors about Mathilda were false, then it was cruel and unfair. But if they were true, then Elva might be walking into danger. I’ve come too far to go back now, she thought.

  Swallowing hard, Elva approached an overgrown hedge fifteen feet high. A rusted metal gate hung crookedly off its hinges, and here and there were signs of trespassing: scraps of rotten food, the remains of firecrackers, and holes in the hedge, as though mischievous children had tunneled through it. She sighed at the sad state of the property, for once it must have been lovely.

  Inside the hedge stood two majestic willow trees surrounded by a tangle of weeds. Elva’s breath snagged when she saw the cottage at the center of this wilderness. It was overrun with flowering vines, making it resemble a giant sleeping under a blanket of greenery. The windows had once held glass in their panes, but most of it had been broken. Shards shimmered at Elva from the grass, reflecting the blue of the sky.

  “Hello?” Elva called out. “Is anyone home?”

  Glass crunched underfoot as she went up the steps. The door stood ajar, and as Elva came closer, the unmistakable sound of movement emerged from within. She froze, petrified, as a pair of gleaming dark eyes watched her from the room beyond.

  In the next moment, whatever was watching her moved, and Elva saw the sleek, reddish-brown body of a small fox. It backed away from her and leaped out of one of the broken windows. She let out a sigh of relief and peered in to see that the place had otherwise been long abandoned. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, marred only by the tracks of other animals that had come foraging for food. She guessed that the second, smaller room in the back was once a bedroom.

  A musty but not unpleasant smell lingered in the air. Birdsong drifted in and dust motes floated around her like stars. It looked like it had been a sunny, comfortable home, judging from the pretty window glass that had been shattered by unkind hands. She could easily picture a table with a red-checked cloth, cozy stuffed chairs, and soup warming over the hearth.

  The image didn’t fit at all with what she might associate with a witch.

  Elva ran her fingers over the beautiful woodwork on the walls, admiring the willow trees that had been carved from ceiling to floor. It was the kind of craftsmanship Papa admired but could not copy himself. Her eyes followed the carvings down to a floorboard in front of the fireplace, where a large, elaborate willow tree had been etched into the wood.

  She bent to wipe the dust from it, wondering why it looked familiar. And then she realized that this carving was what she had seen in the water basin, flashing between visions of her family. It had to mean something that it was here, and that she had been the one to find it.

  She ran her hands eagerly over the board, noticing how wide the gaps were around it. Slipping her fingernails in, she gently wiggled the board loose to reveal a hiding space beneath.

  “More glass?” Elva muttered, as something glimmered up at her from beneath a piece of deep-purple velvet. She lifted away the fabric to reveal a mirror, about as tall as her arm from elbow to fingertips and a little more than half as wide, with an ornate frame that looked like real gold. Mirrors were so expensive that Elva knew no one in Hanau who had one bigger than a man’s palm.

  Carefully, she picked it up to find that it was lighter than she thought. She had never seen herself so clearly: Every freckle, stray hair, and eyelash was magnified in the reflection. Her gaze held both wonder and fear, and only when colors began to ripple up from the mirror’s depths did she remember that she shouldn�
��t have looked so long into a reflective surface.

  A vision appeared of a pretty woman standing by the gate of an old cottage, holding up a pink baby’s dress. A tall man with bright gold hair gave a shout of joy and twirled her around, and Elva’s heart leaped when she realized she was looking at Mama and Papa, many years ago.

  “Can it be true?” Mama asked. “Katharina wouldn’t lie about this.”

  “I take back everything I said about those nosy Brauns.” Papa’s face wore the ear-to-ear grin Elva knew and loved. “We’re going to have a child!”

  “Mathilda knew this would happen,” Mama said softly. “That’s why she made this for me. Oh, Oskar, I wish I had been a better friend to her. She made this child possible for us, and all she got in return was my betrayal. My broken promise.”

  Elva’s eyebrows shot up. Mama had always taught them to keep their word. “Promises have power,” she liked to say. So this, then, was why Mathilda had ended the friendship?

  “You chose to live in peace and be respected in Hanau. She can’t blame you for that,” Papa said, wrapping an arm around Mama. “She would have done the same in your place.”

  Mama hugged the baby’s dress close to her heart. “I don’t know about that. Mathilda knows all too well the price of betrayal where magic is involved. I wonder what will happen to us.”

  “Don’t think of that,” Papa urged her. “She’s gone now, and good riddance. Don’t be sad when we have so much to celebrate!” And he spun her around again, making her laugh.

  The mirror flooded with light, and Elva saw again the symbol of the willow tree.

  A new vision appeared of a woman sobbing her heart out in the forest. Her pale, heart-shaped face twisted with grief as she sat with her belongings all around her: woven baskets, blankets, mismatched chairs, and a ginger cat, which put a gentle paw on her shoulder. A thick book, perhaps a diary, lay open beside her, its rough-edged pages filled with writing. Elva knew this had to be Mathilda. A knot tightened in her chest at the revelation that the friendship had ended because Mama had feared what the town might think. “She made this child possible for us,” her mother had said. But what did Mathilda have to do with her parents having Elva?

  Elva shook her head, confused, and then the tree symbol appeared again before a new image of Mathilda materialized. She sat petting her cat in a cottage similar to the one Elva was in right now. “You’ll be all I need, won’t you?” she crooned to the purring animal. “And I’ll never do another kind deed only to be repaid with lies.”

  The mirror flashed once more.

  Mama and Papa were running through the North Woods, their faces stricken with terror. They looked older, more like their present-day selves, and Elva’s stomach clenched at the fear on her mother’s face. The scene melted into a vision Elva recognized because she had seen it last night in her water basin: It was of herself, kneeling on the ground by an old stone well. But this time, she could clearly see herself weeping and bending over a crumpled, motionless body.

  “The price of breaking a promise,” Mama’s voice murmured from the mirror, dreamlike. “The price of breaking a promise…the price…the price…”

  Elva pressed her lips tightly together as the mirror showed once more the wreckage of her parents’ farm after the storm: crops uprooted, animals lying dead, the house and barn shattered. Mama sobbing, Papa surveying the damage with tears in his eyes, Rayner clenching his fists.

  Flash after flash, image after image.

  They came faster now, in wild, dizzying succession, and the visions were of people Elva had never seen: a young man in an odd short-brimmed hat, yelling in a language she couldn’t understand; candlelight flickering across the frightened face of a beautiful, olive-skinned girl; and a boy and girl with dark skin and dark hair, running in terror through what looked like frighteningly tall columns of metal and glass. All of them looked familiar somehow. Perhaps it was the shapes of their noses or the colors of their eyes….

  The mirror slipped from Elva’s fingers.

  She fell backward onto the dusty floor, breathing hard as the nausea and dizziness came back with a vengeance. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her madly beating heart.

  So many visions of fear and anger, sorrow and loss. So much unhappiness, even in the people she didn’t know. Elva couldn’t even begin to understand what it was all about.

  But one thing was crystal clear: Mama had wronged Mathilda and had regretted it for years. And her voice had echoed over and over about a price to be paid for that betrayal.

  Elva’s eyes flew open.

  When she had first seen the storm, her mind had gone to Mama’s obsession with their family curse. Now it occurred to her that if Mathilda was a witch, perhaps she had cast the curse in response to Mama’s broken promise. Perhaps the coming disaster was part of her revenge.

  Elva sat up slowly. She needed to find Mathilda and make this right—but she had no idea where the woman lived now. The vision had only shown her new home, not how to get there.

  Elva groaned and picked up the mirror reluctantly. The last thing she wanted to do was look into it again, but it might be her only chance to find the witch. In the past, she had only ever seen random images, had never asked to see a specific vision. But now she stared at her reflection, trying to will the glass into showing her the way to Mathilda.

  Nothing happened.

  “Could you please show me where she lives now?” she asked awkwardly, but the mirror still showed only her face. Maybe she was trying too hard again. She inhaled and let her eyes unfocus once more, praying that the need in her mind would materialize in the mirror.

  The glass grew warm in her hands as the tree symbol shone bright, and then she saw the forest path she had taken earlier. Fascinated, Elva watched the scene move forward. If it hadn’t been for the gold frame around the mirror, she might have imagined herself walking at that very moment and not sitting on a cottage floor at all. She recognized the willow where she had rested earlier. The vision moved past it on the right side, then swiveled back to show that it was gone.

  “What?” Elva said, confused.

  At once, the scene returned to its starting point. It moved along the forest path again until it reached the willow, then moved around the right side and turned back to show that the tree had disappeared. She stared into the mirror, intrigued and frightened. Perhaps the tree had been enchanted to disorient travelers and keep them from finding Mathilda.

  Now there was an interesting thought.

  Hanau was full of would-be adventurers who had searched for the witch of the North Woods for years, whether to take revenge for the missing children or simply to make mischief. But however hard they tried, one thing always remained the same: No one ever found her.

  Cay might be right about the forest after all, Elva thought, shivering as she recalled his fairy tales.

  In the mirror, the vision repeated itself again. But this time, it continued on past a trio of birch trees that stood in a circle, slender and tall, like conspiring fairy princesses with crowns of green leaves. The scene moved to their left, then swiveled back to show that they were gone.

  “The disappearing trees are landmarks,” Elva breathed, and at her realization, a surge of warmth from the mirror met her fingertips. She understood now what she had to do: pass each marker and then look back; if it was gone, she was on the right path to Mathilda.

  After the birches, the scene showed a second willow even larger than the first that exactly resembled the symbol on the floor. The vision flowed past it on the right, and then a small, tidy stone cottage appeared. It was the witch’s new home, and now Elva knew how to get there.

  She closed her eyes, breaking the trance, as an even stronger wave of nausea crashed through her. She waited for it to pass before getting up on shaky legs. “Thank you,” she told the mirror. She felt silly, but it had helped her, and she didn’t want to offend where magic was involved.

  Magic. She had performed real magic. Perha
ps she had been doing so all these years whenever ripples and colors appeared in reflective surfaces. The revelation was as thrilling as it was terrifying. Papa had shunned Mathilda and Mama had cut her off, all because of magic, Elva thought. And if Elva hadn’t been their daughter, they might well hate and fear her, too.

  She pushed away the painful thought as she moved to put the mirror back in its hiding place, then hesitated. It might be useful to bring it so she wouldn’t get lost; it wouldn’t be stealing if she managed to find Mathilda and return it. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she slipped the mirror into her basket and left the cottage.

  Back in the forest, Elva retraced her steps to the first willow tree. She walked around the right side of it, just as the mirror had said to do, and paused a few paces away.

  She took a deep breath. “If I turn around and the tree is still there,” she muttered, “I will go back to Mama, abandon this nonsense, and hope the storm I saw will never come.”

  Slowly, she turned on her heel.

  The tree was gone.

  Elva braced herself against a nearby elm, panting. It had worked. It had actually worked. She closed her eyes against another bout of dizziness, wondering if having so many visions in a short span of time had brought it on. When it eased, she set off again and saw the three birches within a hundred paces. This time, she went around the left side, head swimming with every step. When she turned to look back, there was only an empty space where they had been seconds ago.

  Whoever Mathilda was, there was no question that her abilities were impressive. Which means she’ll be able to help me, Elva told herself, forcing her feet onward.

  The only problem was, they seemed to be stuck in place.