Far Far Away (37 page)

“Poignant,” the baker said when he was finished. “Touching, even.” In his Saint Nicholas–like smile, I thought I detected a
knowingness that I did not understand. “If something does happen to you—God forbid, of course—this will provide some solace to your father.”

He set the bundle of letters on the lower shelf of his rolling cart.

“And now your reward,” he said, and slid his long carving knife from its case to begin slicing the beef, which fell smoothly in thin, neat slices.

As he worked, he talked. “All is well in the outside world,” he reported. “There were several more legal notices posted on the door of your bookstore, Jeremy, but”—a brief flourish of the knife—“life goes on. Your father has arranged to rent a room in Mrs. Bathgate’s boardinghouse”—the baker cast a wink toward Jeremy—“conveniently located just across the street from the home of Jenny Applegarth.”

The captives said nothing, yet I could not help but notice how Jeremy eyed the fork and knife in the baker’s hands as he began adding the sliced beef to the plates of potatoes, beets, and hot rolls. Then, as the baker set the meals onto the ledges outside each cell, Jeremy said in a low voice, “That food is poisoned.”

The baker looked at him with surprise, and then began to laugh. “This food is untainted, my dear boy. You have my word.”

“Why don’t you have a bite, then?”

The baker paused only the barest moment. “Of course!” he said. “Why not?” With fork and carving knife in hand, he approached the platter on the ledge of Ginger’s cell. “What would you like me to try, dear girl?”

Ginger chose the beets, and watched him cut away a piece and take it into his mouth without hesitation.

He crossed to Frank Bailey’s chamber. “And you, Frankie?”

Frank Bailey shook his head. “Nothing, Mr. Blix. I know you wouldn’t poison it.”

He moved then to Jeremy’s cell. “And you, my dear boy?”

Jeremy stood to look more closely at the food. “The beef, I guess.”

The baker set his fork into the beef and began to cut away a small piece. At that very moment, Jeremy shot his arm through the bars and grabbed at the knife!

I was completely surprised by his action—but the baker was not.

He snatched the knife back, and Jeremy’s hand closed … not around the handle but around the blade. His scream pierced the quiet, and when he released the knife and held his hand open before him, a long, clean incision brimmed with bright blood, which spread in red profusion.

“Jeremy!” Ginger said, and at once tried to tear a strip of gray cloth from her bedding, but the baker was already offering a cloth napkin. “There,” he said in a strangely consoling voice, “tie it tight and the bleeding will stop.”

It was true. For a time, the blood wicked into the napkin, but then it ceased, and the baker said, “Well, well, Jeremy. Quite gallant, really.” His smile narrowed. “But, really, my dear boy, what would you have done with the knife if you had gotten it?”

Jeremy sat on the edge of his cot staring at the ground and holding his bloodied hand in his lap. “Whatever I could,” he said in a low voice.

“Of course,” the baker said. “Whatever you could. But, really, what would that have been? A few more days without food and
water for you and your dear friends, and you would have had to push the knife meekly through the bars so you could all go on living.”

His luminous blue eyes fell on Jeremy. “But I believe you knew that.”

Jeremy said nothing.

“Oh, yes,” the baker said evenly. “This was your little diversion.”

Ginger issued a harsh, derisive laugh. “Diversion from what?”

The baker’s cold blue eyes turned to her. Then, very slowly, he reached down to the cart and retrieved Jeremy’s note to his father. “From this, my dear girl.”

He unfolded the note and, with a pencil, drew a long loop that encircled the first letter of each line. He then held the note up for Ginger to see.

Everything was quiet until Frank Bailey said, “You aren’t going to take away the plates now, are you, Mr. Blix?”

The baker turned a cruel look on Frank Bailey. “I am afraid I must. Even yours, Frankie.” His eyes locked on the poor, hapless boy. “You are part of the cabal, Frankie, with your plots and your jokes about Rangu spaghetti sauce.”

Oh, how chilling the implications of these words were! The captives all grasped it, but Ginger was the first to speak.

“You
listen
to us?”

The baker’s laugh was almost a sneer, and yet I sensed there was pride, too, in the comprehensive nature of his powers. “Yes. I listen.” His lips formed a false smile. “Though most of what I hear is awfully tedious.” He turned to Jeremy. “Those tales you tell, for example. I notice you leave out all the good ones.”

Jeremy said nothing, but Frank Bailey asked what the baker meant.

Sten Blix did not even glance at Frank Bailey. He kept his eyes fixed on Jeremy. “He only tells you the ones with happy endings.” His voice was cold—Ginger hugged her arms to her chest for warmth. “But there are other tales, too. Tales with dark endings even for heroes who”—he let his gaze move from prisoner to prisoner—
“resisted, adapted, never gave up.”

He set the plates on the cart and pushed it forward a step or two, and then, as if remembering something, drew himself up. “Yes,” he said, “it is true that there are people in the village who may miss you—the dwarfish deputy and Jeremy’s father and Frankie’s mother, and … well, I am sure there must be others. But then, when Frankie’s and Ginger’s new letters are received and passed around, their minds will be put at ease.”

As the baker watched them absorb this news, it fell deeply quiet until, at last, Ginger whispered, “What did we do to deserve this?”

The baker smiled and looked away. “The pretty girl has to ask? The pretty girl who devised a plan to enter my house for the sole purpose of playing me for her fool?”

In a soft voice, Frank Bailey said, “What about me, Mr. Blix? What did I ever do?”

The baker did not look at him. “Oh, poor Frankie. Who has been wondering this from the first day of his visit, and now, at last, he will know. Does he remember that I presented him with two choices—one to stay in the bakery and work with me, and the other to go off to a fancy cooking school in San Francisco?” The baker’s cold voice turned colder. “That was Frankie’s trial. A test of his allegiance. I had hoped he would choose to stay to work with me in the bakery of his own accord, but …”

He touched his hand to his white beard. “Here is something I have learned. Some people crave Prince Cakes. Some people crave friendship. But neither one provides anything that lasts. Friendship, too, is just butter, flour, and sugar.”

“No,” Jeremy said, his voice low and vehement. “That isn’t true.”

The baker turned and seemed to be studying him as one might a specimen in a laboratory. “Now, why Jeremy is here is a question not so easily answered.” His gaze drifted to the picture on the wall. “Even from the first days when your mother came into the bakery … I told you that you were a burrower, and that is true, but do you know that you burrowed down into your blankets only when you caught sight of me? Yes. Only then. It was
as if you could see in me what no one else would. Your mother would laugh at your burrowing, but I knew that you saw me, and I knew what it meant.” The baker’s blue eyes fell into a calmness that made my ancient spirit quiver. “It meant,” he said quietly, “that you would come visit me here in the great chamber.”

He exhaled, then walked over to the painting of the family sitting cozily before the glowing fire. He reached out as if to do something with it—take it down, perhaps—but he changed his mind and merely straightened it slightly. He returned to the serving cart and took up the plates, one after another, and scraped them so that the food fell on the stone floor just outside each cell. Then, without another glance at his prisoners, he pushed the cart away. The wall moaned closed behind him.

At once, two things happened: Frank Bailey knelt to the ground to pull scraps of food through the bars and Ginger placed her hands over her eyes and moved her lips without speaking. Jeremy watched her. When finally she took her hands from her eyes, he said, “What were you doing?”

She looked at him with wretched eyes. “Praying,” she whispered.

Frank Bailey paused in his collection of food. “You know what they say, though—the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

Well, what is true is what must be reported. Jeremy and Ginger exchanged shameful glances, and then they, too, were reaching through the bars, bringing rolls to their mouths, lemon cuts, pieces of beef, bits of potatoes, and beets. They licked the gravy from their fingers. They kept their eyes from one another so that they would not see the creatures they were, at the hand of the baker, becoming.

Soon thereafter, the dungeon fell into darkest darkness.

Schrecklich
is my native word for miserable, and, oh, what a
schrecklich
time this was! The night of the rodents, which had seemed interminable, was child’s play compared with what the prisoners endured that night. There was again the whisking of mice, but then, after a time, we heard something new and terrible: a subtler, softer sound, a kind of slithering that suggested vipers exploring the dungeon’s nooks and crannies for prey.

And then—the sound seemed to shoot forward from the wall and grab at the throat—there was a small, sudden squeal, as if a mouse had just been slain.

“Oh, jeez,” Frank Bailey said, his voice wavering.

“Sound effects,” Jeremy said. “It’s got to be sound effects.”

Yes
, I said,
it must be. I smell nothing, and vipers have a musky smell
.

“The thing is,” Frank Bailey said, “they sound pretty real to me.”

“He can hear you, Frank,” Jeremy said, trying to keep his voice even. Closer by, Ginger whispered, “They do, though, don’t they, Jeremy? They do sound real.”

The slithering seemed to come from one direction, then another.

In the darkness, Jeremy could be heard taking a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to lie down on the floor.”

“With the snakes?” Ginger said. “Are you crazy?’

“I’ve got to. It’s the only way to find out if they’re real.”

Jeremy could be heard easing himself slowly down.

“Okay,” he announced. “Feet on the floor … Rear end on the floor … Lying down on my back … Totally flat.” A few seconds passed. “And totally okay.”

“Really?” Ginger said.

“Yep. Nothing going on down here.”

But then he fell quiet just as the whisking and slithering suddenly increased, and Jeremy let out a sudden, bloodcurdling shriek, followed by,
“Oh … my … God!”

“What?”

“Nothing, actually,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I was just kind of bored. Saw a chance there to break the ice.”

“You’re a droll boy,” Ginger said, but she sounded reassured.

Jeremy could be heard standing up. He cleared his throat. “So is that it?” he shouted up at the ceiling in his loudest voice. “Is that the best you can do? Sound effects of phantom snakes and phantom mice?”

Almost at once, the whisking and slithering sounds abated.

The ensuing silence did not feel comforting.

The prisoners were waiting for whatever might happen next.

And then it came: a new sound, one so faint I could barely detect it.

“Did you hear that?” Jeremy whispered.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Me too.”

“It’s like a horrible moaning or something.”

“What is it?”

Everyone knew the answer, but no one wanted to say it. Finally, Ginger did. “It’s human,” she said.

It was true. The sound emanated from a human, one in great misery.

“Maybe it’s just a recording.”

“Yeah, but what of? It sounds like somebody dying.”

Everyone was quiet.

“It could be an actor,” Jeremy said. “Who’s playing someone dying.”

“Yeah,” Ginger said. “A really good actor. One who you’d bet anything was actually dying.”

The faint, terrible sounds of misery changed in tendency but did not cease. They moved from a sobbing wail to a hopeless whimper and back again. They went on minute after minute, hour after hour. And then, when the sounds seemed as if they had wrapped the room with agony and squeezed from it the last breath of hope and oxygen, they stopped.