Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest (19 page)

Grentul pulled his horse back just in time. He waited under the shade and saw Vjpp become a skeleton, his skull and rib cage clattering together as they hit the ground.

He looked around, desperate. Where was the nearest caloosh hole? If he stayed aboveground any longer, even in shade, he would die. Light was filtering through the canopy of leaves, lending the forest its terrifying daytime colors.

He felt the light pressing down on him, like a drowning man feeling the full weight of the ocean.

Then he saw it. A familiar circle of earth that he knew was a caloosh trap. He dismounted and ran toward it, out of the safe darkness, and felt the light burn his gray blood, ready to dissolve his body.

He reached the circle just in time and down he fell, onto feathers. He called for help. Help came.

Other huldres wanted to know what happened. Their questions tore at his head like angry wolves. He didn't answer. He just kept running through underground tunnels, heading always in the same direction.

North.

Eventually the tunnels became smaller, less well presented. These tunnels he was now entering were hardly ever used. They provided a connecting route to the Changemaker that could only be used during the greatest of emergencies. Normally the Changemaker wanted them to travel to him aboveground, under the cover of night, so they could police the forest along the route.

But if ever there was an emergency, then this was it. Huldre guards had died. Prisoners had just escaped. Two humans were loose in the forest.

He kept running through the unlit, unpopulated tunnels until he was finally there, right under the Still Tree. He felt for the ladder, and climbed up. After about twenty steps, he rose up through the latch door and into the darkest chamber of the tree palace.

He rang a bell, and waited. A few moments later Professor Tanglewood entered the windowless room. He was in a bad mood, because it was the day before his birthday, and he knew no one cared.

“Shadow Witch!” he called, having seen the huldre in the candlelight.

“I am here, master.” The witch emerged from her chamber. Dark vapors left her mouth, then drew back inside.

“Enna klemp oder flimp tee, Jangoborff,”
said Grentul nervously.

The Shadow Witch closed her eyes and mumbled her usual translation spell. The huldre spoke again but was this time understood.

“I have brought some news for you, Changemaker. About the prisoner.”

“Is it bad news that you bring?”

“Yes, Changemaker. It is.”

“Tell me.”

“There was a snowstorm. The wagon got stuck…in the snow.”

The Shadow Witch looked worried. “A snowstorm?”

“Silence,” Professor Tanglewood commanded her. And then, to Grentul: “Go on.”

“The wagon…got stuck…and…”

Like a wheel in the snow, the huldre was finding it hard to continue.

“Go on,” said the Professor.

“It got stuck and…and…we noticed the Snow Witch was mumbling something, over and over. A prayer. A curse. At first we didn't know what. So we…opened the cage door. And we went inside to try and stop the Snow Witch…to stop her magic…and that is when they escaped and attacked us, killing five of the guards.”

The Shadow Witch looked confused. “My sister? Why was she there?”

“Quiet!” barked the Professor.

“I don't understand,” said the Shadow Witch. “Those that are brought here are killed. You said my sister could be spared.”

“Silence!” boomed the Professor.

“You were going to have me kill my own sister,” said the Shadow Witch quietly as the realization took hold.

The Professor flapped her words away. “Silence, you witch. Silence!”

He turned back to the huldre. “Who? Who escaped?” asked the Professor. His voice was calm.

Too calm.

“The prisoners…A Tomtegubb, a two-headed troll and the human girl.”

“The human girl? What human girl?”

The huldre grimaced, as though in pain. But why was he so worried? His master would reward his honesty. Surely he would now understand the strength of Grentul's devotion.

“The girl who fell down the hole. Yesterday.”

“Yesterday? Are there any other humans?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes…a boy.”

“A boy?” The Professor turned to the Shadow Witch, with a look in his eyes that seemed to require a response. The Shadow Witch said nothing. Her mind was somewhere else, lost in a snowstorm.

“Yes,” said Grentul.

“Was he in the cage? Did he escape?”

“No…no, Changemaker. We passed him. By the side of the path. We went after him but he got away.”

“Away? Two humans. Running free in the forest. This is the news you come to tell me?”

“Yes, master.” Grentul allowed himself a slight, nervous smile. Surely now the Professor was about to reward him for carrying this news so far underground.

The Shadow Witch dared break her order of silence. “My sister. The Snow Witch. Did she escape as well?”

“No,” said Grentul proudly. “She's dead.”

The word paralyzed the old witch for a moment. Then black tears clouded her eyes and fell down her cheeks. The tears went unnoticed by the Professor, who still had more questions.

“Where did you last see the humans?”

“The girl rode off with the Tomtegubb. We lost her on the plain.”

“And the boy?”

“He ran toward Trollhelm.”

“Well told,” said the Professor.

The huldre looked relieved. “Thank you, Changemaker.”

Professor Tanglewood looked at his reflection in a mirror. He turned, his face flickering in the candlelight.

“Almost well told enough to let you live.”

“Master? I thought—”

The Professor turned to the Shadow Witch, and told her: “Finish him. Do it. It is my order.”

The Shadow Witch hesitated, but then obeyed. She was still thinking of her sister as she blew the dark vapors toward Grentul. They surrounded him like a cloud, and he began to choke.

The Professor smiled, and took a closer look. “That really is quite a cough you've got there…Not enough air, that's the problem. All those years living under the ground, walking through those tunnels. Never seeing sunlight…But you can remember it, can't you? You can remember the golden days, chanting your hymns to the sun. The warm light on your face. The happy times when you could look down and see your own shadow, stretched across the grass. When the sun was something you worshipped, not something you feared.”

It felt to Grentul like he was choking as much on words as shadows. As the words kept digging deeper, Grentul remembered the last tender moments before the Shadow Witch had arrived in the village. His mother making dinner at the log stove, laying four places at the table, then going outside to see the two ravens that had landed outside the house.

“Do you remember, Shadow Witch? Do you remember?” asked the Changemaker. “The shadows fled to you like lost children.”

He was closer to the huldre now. Standing over him as the sun-fearing creature cowered at his feet, choking inside the shade that hung like a mist around him.

“If you get to live your life again, huldre, which I doubt very much, I give you one piece of advice. Save a witch's life. If you save a witch from the clutches of death, you own her life much like I own yours. Anything you wish for, she can make reality.”

The Professor laughed, and turned around to see the Shadow Witch. He noticed her black tears.

“Why are you crying?”

“It is for nothing, master,” said the Shadow Witch.

“If it is for your sister, then you are right, for death is nothing. Nothing at all.” He laughed again as the huldre choked below him. “Your tears are too late, Shadow Witch. I have tested the love you held for your sister, and it was no match for your servitude…Keep going! More shadows! He's still alive.”

The huldre held on to his own neck, struggling for air as more black vapors swirled around him.

Professor Tanglewood stopped laughing and tried to look serious. “Don't think this is any easier for me, huldre, than it is for that witch. Today I can taste the full burden of my role. I am not evil. Understand that. I am the Protector of the Forest. If you could read my new book, you would understand. If I hadn't made changes, the forest would be a safe place for humans. And what do you think would happen then? It would be swamped with tourists. Day-trippers. Or they'd have taken you all away and locked you in a zoo. Or a science laboratory. And before long, they'd chop the forest to the ground.”

More shadows blew over the huldre.

“Please…”—choke—“…please…”

“There have to be sacrifices for the greater good. Yours is an honorable death. You die for the forest. Take pride in that. Take pride…”

Grentul could see nothing but blackness. As a suffocating pain filled his body, he held on to one last remembrance. Sitting outdoors with his mother as she made one of her sun carvings, watching the wood peel back and drop onto the grass. Her soft gentle face, lost in concentration.

“Mother,” he said, or tried to, as the last remnants of life were sucked from him.

The Shadow Witch inhaled the shadows back inside her as she stood watching the dead huldre heaped on the ground. His blank, blinkless eyes. The motionless tail, curled in a kind of question mark.

Her sad thoughts broke off with another order from her master.

“Shadow Witch,” he said. “The two humans are still in the forest. If they are still alive, take their shadows. Change them, in accord with my policy. Together, Shadow Witch, you and me, we must protect the forest from the Outer World. Now go! Find them!”

Professor Tanglewood watched the Shadow Witch fly away, becoming a dot, then disappearing completely into the sky. He closed his eyes, and smiled sadly, as he thought of how different it had been, in the beginning, when he first met the Shadow Witch.

By the time he arrived in Norway, it can be safely said that Professor Horatio Tanglewood was already thoroughly evil. He enjoyed being nasty in the way other people enjoy a game of tennis or a nice peanut-butter sandwich.

However, he still had a very tiny piece of goodness left inside him, which was evident on his first day in the country when he was cycling back from Flåm. When he reached his driveway a very important event happened, although Professor Tanglewood didn't realize its importance at the time.

He saw a cat dangling from the roof. It was a black cat, clinging desperately on to the gutter. Another cat—a white cat—was meowing up from the grass as if to say, “Hold on! Hold on! A man with a bicycle is coming to save you!”

A memory came to him, from the foggy reaches of his mind. He remembered seeing the two cats before, a long time ago, when he had holidayed here with his mother.

“Such beautiful darlings, aren't they, Horatio?” his mother had said as she had tickled the white cat's neck.

“Yes, Mummy,” he had told her. “Yes, Mummy; yes, they are.”

He mouthed the words again as he halted his bicycle. Suddenly he felt like he was someone else—not Professor Tanglewood the evil murderer, but seven-year-old Horatio, the boy who still loved the world and the creatures it contained.

Within no time at all, he was off his bicycle and galloping inside the house. He climbed the stairs three at a time and opened his bedroom window.

“Here, kitty; here, kitty; it's all right,” he said as he stretched his arms as far as they would reach and grabbed hold of the cat's neck.

Horatio looked at the collar. He saw the protective Hek bracelet that had given the Shadow Witch enough strength to hold on to the roof for over an hour.

“Hek,” he read aloud. “Who would name a cat after a witch? Unless, of course…you
are
a witch.”

The black cat ran downstairs and out the open door, where it joined the white cat in running toward the trees.

The mystery wasn't solved until Professor Tanglewood explored the forest the following day and found the pixies and other creatures he and his mother had once seen all those years ago.

He suddenly realized that he no longer needed the Outer World.

How does that world compare to this?
he wondered.

He suddenly realized he could start a new life in this wonderful forest.

He met friendly huldres, learned the art of spickle dancing, ate gorgeous Truth Pixie soup, and enjoyed comfy naps lying on the belly of a large furry creature called a Slemp. But what Professor Tanglewood enjoyed most was that there were no humans whatsoever. All he had was a world of wonderful food, beautiful music, and peaceful sleep. He enjoyed the most perfect air, the clearest drinking water and the kind of scenery that only belongs in happy dreams.

In short, the Professor had discovered paradise, and his happiness was about to intensify. One night, while he sat talking about sun worship with an old huldre, he came across two beautiful women.

They were almost identical, except one was dark and one was fair.

“Hello,” he said. “I'm Professor Horatio Tanglewood. You may have heard of me. I'm quite important.”

“Hello,” said the fair woman, who breathed a cloud of frosty breath. “I'm the Snow Witch. This is my sister, the Shadow Witch.”

“Hello,” said the other, whose words rose out of shadows. “You saved my life.”

The Professor was entranced. “Did I?”

“I was the cat who nearly fell to her death.”

“Oh,” said the Professor. “Oh yes. Of course. I remember.”

The Shadow Witch nodded. She lifted up her wrist to reveal a black bracelet, with a pewter disc hanging from it. He noticed a similar one, but white, on the wrist of the Snow Witch.

“You saved my sister's life,” said the Snow Witch, her pale face melting into a smile. “You are a kind and wonderful man. Not like some humans we hear about. The ones who chop down forests and attack nature. That is why we were there, you see. That is why my sister was on the roof. We keep a lookout, to make sure the forest stays safe.”

Professor Tanglewood was, by this point, most intrigued. He turned to the Shadow Witch, who was, if anything, the more beautiful of the two. “So,” he said. “I am a hero. I saved your life. What
exactly
does that mean?”

“There is a code of honor for forest witches that we have always followed,” said the Shadow Witch. “The Hek Code. One part of that code says that if someone saves a witch's life, they can ask the witch to cast spells on their behalf.”

Professor Tanglewood nodded, as if this was the most normal thing he had ever heard in his life.

“So, what spells can you cast?” he asked the Shadow Witch, raising his eyebrow in a way that he was convinced made him look exceptionally handsome.

“Any spell at all. So long as it affects the forest. I cannot work magic in the Outer World, but anything inside the forest, I can change.”

“You saved the right witch,” said the Snow Witch. “Her powers are much stronger than mine. I can conjure the snow and make a frost, and do a few other weather spells, but a Shadow Witch is really the best kind of witch. She can change anything that casts a shadow.”

“Most interesting,” said the Professor. “Most interesting indeed.”

The Professor's first wish was for a home. A wooden palace, perched in the branches of the largest tree in the forest.

His second wish was for a pen and paper, which the Shadow Witch conjured out of an old caloosh feather and a pine tree.

“Now that I am your master,” he said, “we really need to make sure those stupid villagers stay out of the forest for good.”

“But, master,” said the Shadow Witch, “my powers are only strong inside the forest.”

The Professor nodded. “I know. I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about me.”

The Professor had decided to cast a spell of his own. He would write about the place where he lived, which he now named Shadow Forest in honor of the beautiful witch he had just met.

In that book, he managed to transform all that was wonderful about the forest into something that was terrifying. The Truth Pixie's soup became poison. The comfortable, pillow-bellied Slemp became an eater of dreams. And the sun-loving huldre-folk became underground creatures who worked for an evil being called the Changemaker, whom the Professor had made up. Of course, to make it realistic, the Professor gave each creature a weakness. After all, how would he have been able to leave the forest and publish the book if there wasn't any chance of escape? The huldres, for instance, exploded in daylight. The Truth Pixie couldn't tell lies. And so on.

Then, once it was written, he headed back to the Outer World to publish his book, sell his house (to a newly married couple—a javelin thrower and a ski-jumper) and wait for the reviews to arrive. They were all bad, of course, but this time Professor Tanglewood wasn't bothered. All that mattered was that the superstitious villagers of Flåm believed every word. They did, as the book only served to confirm their own nightmares. The local bookshop ordered a thousand copies and sold out in a week.

That the Professor then returned to the forest and never came back would have only added more power to his book, and fear into those who read it. Then, a few months after, he decided to make the creatures even more convincing.

He asked for the Shadow Witch to turn him into a troll so he could go and steal goats in the Outer World.

“If the goats on the field were stolen by a troll, then they would know for sure my book was real and never dare to enter the forest,” he told the Shadow Witch.

“Yes, master, but—”

And then, as the Professor was looking at the Shadow Witch, he noticed something. “You look rather ugly today, Shadow Witch,” he said. “Are you getting wrinkles?”

The Shadow Witch looked sad. “Yes, master; yes, I am. Every time I use my magic, I get older. That is how witches age. It takes so much out of us, you see.”

“Oh well, Shadow Witch. You're going to get even older and uglier, aren't you? Now, turn me into a troll. No buts. That is my command, Shadow Witch.”

And so it was. The Professor was turned into a troll and he went and stole a goat. And the next night he stole another. And so it went on.

Every goat he stole he roasted over a fire and ate all by himself, until he made himself sick.

But his plan backfired…In fact, the goat stealing became the very reason why someone decided to enter the forest.

That's right, it was Uncle Henrik.

He left Aunt Eda and followed the three-toed footprints all the way back to the clearing. He knocked on the door of the Still Tree, expecting a troll to answer, but of course he got a human instead. And then he asked the Professor to give him his goats back.

The Professor viewed Uncle Henrik with interest. He was very stubborn, even by human standards. Rather like a foolish dog.

And then the Professor had another idea. He commanded the Shadow Witch to make sure the man could never talk about the forest to anyone in the Outer World.

“But, Professor…” said Uncle Henrik. “I won't tell anyone about the forest. I don't care about it.”

“Don't care! Don't
care
! It is paradise.”

“I already have my paradise. On the other side of the forest. I have my wife.”

The Professor was not a stupid man. He knew that a tiny goat farm was not paradise, and was determined not to let this human have the chance to tell others about the wonders of the forest.

“Shadow Witch. Do as I command.”

It was done.

And Uncle Henrik could never speak of the forest again.