In truth, Hansel was never drugged. In truth, Hansel is a witch with incredibly potent powers that he can barely control when he gets too upset, and he found the battle for Nearby very upsetting indeed. In truth, the churning ground and grasping shadows in the village square that proved the last straw for many of the occupying huntsmen, and which had been attributed to either Gretel or a Darkwood resident, had actually been a manifestation of Hansel’s distress. Releasing that much magical power in one go had overwhelmed his body, and sent him into thirty-five straight hours of unconsciousness to recover. Nobody in the village has been told that it was, in truth, Hansel who saved them all.
Hansel is OK with this. He is less OK with missing his twin sister’s one visit to the village since she was drummed out by a huntsman, on suspicion of witchcraft.
‘Are you all right?’ asks his friend Daisy Wicker for the umpteenth time since the huntsmen left.
‘Yep, of course,’ he replies, and tries not to let his expression betray that he is still very much not all right.
They are on their way to the new trading post that was built at the border with the forest out of bits of wood from the old fence. The new friendship, possibly even an alliance, with the Darkwood has had certain knock-on advantages. Trade is now possible with the forest, with villagers swapping medicines, books and various home comforts in return for rare fungi, fruits and herbs picked by the Darkwood’s inhabitants. Today, Hansel and Daisy are taking winter woollens of various different sizes, including a couple of old horse blankets with holes cut in them, in the hope that the Ogres might be able to use them as sort of ponchos. When they get to the post, they find that somebody from the forest has left a large quantity of ginger root, blackberries and aloe there, along with a few small particles of river gold.
‘Gold, again,’ mutters Daisy, swapping over the goods and packing the fresh produce into a basket. ‘That’ll be the Dwarves, apparently they love finding it. Gets them all excited. They nearly had my mum’s ring off, at the… oh. Sorry.’
‘No, it’s all right,’ Hansel tells her. ‘You can talk to me about the party. It’s fine, honestly.’
‘It feels mean, after you missed Gretel.’ She pauses, and Hansel knows what’s coming next. ‘You know, it should be safe for us in the woods. The beasties and witches are our friends now. They wouldn’t attack us. I was thinking, maybe we could be the ones to go and visit Gretel, this time?’
‘I don’t know, Daisy.’
‘But we’d be fine!’
‘Maybe we would, but… I don’t know. If we went into the Darkwood, that would mean leaving the village undefended.’
‘The whole village worked together to fend off the huntsmen last time,’ Daisy argues. ‘They’ll be all right without us for a day. The huntsmen probably aren’t even coming back, anyway. Gretel saw to that.’
‘Hmm,’ is Hansel’s only reply. He doesn’t tell her the real reason why he’s too anxious to leave the village undefended.
He’s been getting these dreams. Even as he’d lain unconscious after the battle, a terrible feeling had seeped into his sleeping mind that something really bad is approaching, something even worse than before. Since then, the dreams and the sense of dread have only become worse.
‘Will you think about it?’ Daisy asks, setting the jumpers and blankets out in a neat order of size. ‘I think it would do you the world of good to get away for a bit. See Gretel. She’s doing fine, you know. She told me she lives in a house that’s mostly biscuits, so that’s something interesting.’
‘I already am thinking about it,’ Hansel tells her gently. ‘And mostly what I’m thinking is that it would still be a bad id— oh!’
‘“A bad idoh”?’ repeats Daisy. She turns, and sees that he has collapsed to his knees, clutching his head in clawed hands. ‘Oh!’ she cries. ‘Hansel! What’s wrong?’
What’s wrong is that he has suddenly, from nowhere, been hit with a waking vision so strong and so terrible that it momentarily consumes him. He can neither stand, nor speak, nor think; he can barely even breathe. Thankfully, it stops moments later, before his magic has had the chance to slip from his control and burst out into the air and ground. Gasping, still grasping at his head, he blinks as his friend’s concerned face flows back into his sight.
‘Hansel, what happened?’
‘I… er…’ How can he tell her what he’s just seen? How can he possibly explain it?
‘Is it that Mirror again?’
‘What?’
Daisy takes Hansel’s elbow tenderly. ‘When you were left in that cell with the magic Mirror, it talked to you. It showed you things.’
‘Yes. But…’
‘I know that the Mirror can form attachments to people – if it gets close to someone, it can create a magical link with them, even if they’re at the other end of Myrsina.’ Daisy pauses for a moment, proudly. ‘Princess Snow told me that. She’s really lovely, by the way. Very regal.’
‘Yes, people keep telling me.’ Hansel winces in the sunlight and tries to sit up properly. His sight is back to normal again now, but the magical vision has left him with a terrible headache. He wishes he could tell Daisy the truth. After all, he thinks to himself, Gretel always knew about his powers. She’d helped him to hide them, she’d been the one person he could talk to about it… and then, he reminds himself, she had taken the blame for the magical disturbances in the village and ended up hounded from the village by a huntsman.
No. He can’t tell Daisy.
‘So, is that what it was?’ Daisy gazes at him earnestly.
‘Mm?’
‘The Mirror. Did it link with you, in the cell? Is it sending you warning visions, even though it’s in the Darkwood?’
Hansel still squints at Daisy. She’s really thought this one through already, hasn’t she? He could explain away all of his magical premonitions by blaming them on the Mirror. Daisy couldn’t have come up with a more convenient get-out clause for him if she’d tried.
‘Um,’ he says after a moment, ‘um, yeah, maybe? I think it could be?’
Daisy’s eyes light up. ‘I knew it! I knew Gretel would find a way to make sure we could get messages from the Mirror! What did it show you?’
‘It’s not good…’
‘The village?’ asks Daisy. ‘Are the huntsmen going to attack us again?’
Hansel shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t the village. It was the Citadel.’
‘We were attacking the Citadel?’
‘Not us. A monster, though.’
‘So, the Darkwood was taking down the Citadel.’ Daisy rubs his arms. ‘Hansel, that’s good! It showed us winning!’
Hansel shakes his head again, recalling the horrible vision. A huge beast, a Hydra, storming through the Citadel’s streets. Ordinary civilians running and hiding. People trampled under its huge feet, snatched up in its many jaws. Blood and screams and pain and grief… It doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like a catastrophe, something that must be stopped. He can still feel echoes of that crushing terror from all those people in the vision. So many people.