Far Far Away (38 page)

Had the human died? Fallen asleep? Had the recording merely ended? Who could know? Who but the baker could know?

“Fifteen,” Ginger said when the lights gradually brightened and she had set another pea in the line above her sink. The baker had not appeared since the eleventh day. The prisoners would spend
this day as they had the day before: lying on their cots listening to the old tales Jeremy told them, talking about their hunger, and sipping foul water from their flower vases and hoping that it would not sicken them. When Ginger covered her eyes to say one of her silent prayers, Jeremy said, “Make it a good one.”

She gave a pale smile and, hands still over her eyes, replied, “I’m
trying
, you idiot.”

Time passed with agonizing slowness. I added more and more scenes to the tales, and fashioned happier endings. “That was a good one,” Frank Bailey said after one such tale. Then, before Jeremy could summon the strength to begin another, Frank Bailey said, “I wish you guys were big like me.”

Jeremy looked at him with dull eyes. “Why’s that?”

“You’d have more for your bodies to feed on to keep you from … you know, starving.”

Ginger managed a soft laugh. “You’re a ray of sunshine, Frank,” she said, and they all fell into benumbed silence until I said,
Jeremy! Jeremy! Another tale!
And he took a deep breath and began again.

The prior two nights had been mercifully quiet, but on this night, after the lights slowly dimmed to darkest darkness, the prisoners were met with a more vivid form of terror, for the moans that they heard were those of a young boy. The cries went on and on, growing weaker and more desperate. “Help me, please,” he whimpered. “Please help me. Please, please, please.” And then at last the voice was quiet.

None of the prisoners said anything.

The next day, the baker did not come, nor the day after. If the prisoners moved, their movements were slow. Their naps, if
they came, were disrupted by ghastly dreams. Frank Bailey, as if it were the riddle that stood between them and freedom, said again and again that he could not believe that Mr. Blix was doing this to them. Ginger covered her eyes and said her silent prayers. And, though his voice was nearly too weak to be heard, Jeremy told the tales, on and on.

Once, when she could hear Frank Bailey snoring softly as he napped, Ginger faced Jeremy on her cot and waited until the story he was telling had come to its happy end: “And so the little tailor was and always would be king.”

She smiled softly. “Remember my grandfather saying that the bad thing about going far, far away is that you always wind up finding that you brought yourself along? Well, I just want to say how glad I am that you brought your nerdy little fairy tale–telling self along.” She gave him a tender look. “I think it’s made all the difference.”

For a moment, the weariness lifted from his eyes. “I’d say the exact same thing about you.”

“Know one good thing?” she whispered. “The enchantment can’t be undone.”

Jeremy seemed not to understand.

“The enchantment of the first bite,” she said. “It can only be undone by the touch of a salted tear on the parted lips of the spellbound.” She tried to smile. “Meaning me—the spellboundee.”

“So?”

“So that can’t possibly happen to me in here. I’m beyond reach of your tear, salted or unsalted.” She laughed a small, raspy laugh. “The thing is, I think you’re stuck with me, Jeremy. And you might be stuck with me in the sweet hereafter.”

“That’s fine by me,” Jeremy said. “Being stuck with you, I mean. But I’d like to put off the sweet-hereafter part.”

He seemed to be considering something, then took a deep breath and began recounting “The Singing Soaring Lark,” a solicitous choice, I thought, for the tale features a brave and resourceful heroine, much like our own.

That night in the darkness, instead of whimpering voices, they heard symphonic music, the same music the baker had listened to when he drove Jeremy and Ginger into the woods.

The next morning, when the chamber began to lighten, Ginger and Jeremy were again holding hands through the bars that separated their cells. They withdrew their arms slowly, as if reluctant to let go of the solace the other provided.

There were nineteen peas—all shriveled and faded—lining the shelf the day the prisoners again heard the moaning wall and the squealing cart.

“Hallå, Hallå!”
the baker said as he entered. “Is it not a great day to be alive?”

None of the captives rose from their cots, and none of them spoke.

The baker pulled the white cloth from the cart to reveal a single plate piled with scraps of stale pastries and bread of the
type that would normally be set out for stray dogs, and each of the prisoners looked upon the scraps as a starving dog might.

The baker talked as he divided the bits of food among three plates. “A little news,” he said. “Frankie’s mother and Ginger’s grandfather have received their letters, and everyone feels reassured now, knowing that Frankie is making his way as a chef on a private yacht and that Jeremy and Ginger have found a hospitable home in some unknown remote location.”

He began distributing the plates—the prisoners rose slowly to position themselves at the edges of their cots. “And now, my dear children,” the baker said, “you will each begin to become a memory less and less frequently visited.”

Jeremy, Ginger, and Frank Bailey all raised themselves with difficulty and moved closer to their small feeding doors.

“Yes, yes, it is not always flattering, but it is the human design. For a while, we miss the departed”—he gently shook his head—“and then we forget them.”

With a push of a button, the small doors opened and the prisoners—they could not help themselves—reached through and grabbed the scraps. They ate greedily, which brought a laugh rumbling up from the baker’s great belly.

Ginger swallowed, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and said in a tight, rasping voice, “What is wrong with you?”

The baker produced a smirking smile. “That you, looking as you at this moment do, can ask such a question of me is rich with irony.”

In a leisurely manner, he took out his tobacco, seated himself in his rocking chair, and tapped clean his pipe.

“I will tell you something interesting,” he said. “Whenever I
used to read one of those stories that Jeremy likes to tell, the ones where a genie or a talking fish grants somebody three wishes, I always thought I would ask for only two. And do you know what they were? One was to have a single friend who could take me as I am and upon whose loyalty I could always rely. And the other”—the baker pulled smoke from his pipe and released it slowly—
“was to do whatever I wanted.”

The baker rocked and smoked. The prisoners—this was not an easy thing to watch—began actually to lick their plates. When they were done, he said, “I think the time has come for me to tell you a certain story. This is not one of Jeremy’s feel-good fairy tales. It is even better, and do you know why?” His eyes grazed from prisoner to prisoner. “Because it is true and has a certain application to your present circumstances.”

He drew from his pipe, then let white smoke flow through his lips. “This, dear children, is the story of the Nyköping Banquet. Do you know of it?”

The prisoners stared at him. They had not heard of this notorious occasion, but I had, and a fearful tremor passed through my spectral form.

“The Nyköping Banquet,” the baker began, “was an unusual dinner party hosted in the early fourteenth century by Sweden’s King Birger. Seven years before, at the Håtuna Games, the king’s two brothers had staged a bloody coup to dethrone him, but they were rebuffed by the king’s forces. With the passage of time, the king publicly forgave his two brothers and, shortly before Christmas of 1317, he announced his intention to reconcile with them. They were invited to a magnificent banquet at his castle in Nyköping. But after royally feeding his brothers and plying
them with nectar, King Birger threw them into his dungeon.” The baker stood and drew close to Jeremy’s cell. “But before he did, do you know what he said to them?”

No one spoke, so the baker said,
“Kommer ni ihåg Håtuna spelen? Jag kommer klart ihåg dem.”
He paused. “Do you want to guess what that means?”

I gave Jeremy a basic translation, and he repeated it. “Do you remember the Hatuna Games? For I remember them clearly.”

The baker cocked his head in surprise. “What did you say?”

Jeremy repeated it.

“So you know Swedish?” the baker said.

I was unsure what to suggest Jeremy might say, but it did not matter, for a strange resolve had settled into his face. He sat straighter and said, “I don’t speak Swedish. But there is a ghost who stays near me. He’s the one who knows Swedish.”

The baker stared at him for a moment and then began to laugh. “A boy in the middle of the United States with a Swedish-speaking ghost,” he said even as he continued laughing. “That is perhaps too much to believe.”

“He speaks a lot of languages, not just Swedish,” Jeremy said. “He is the one who knows all about the fairy tales. He is the one who watched you go into Elbow’s Café when we were bound up in your delivery van. He is the one who floated nearby while you ate beef pot pie and talked about me with my father.” Jeremy fixed his eyes on the baker. “And he is the one who will haunt you until your last breath if you hurt any one of us here.”

The baker’s eyes had grown wider—for a moment, his face seemed made of stretched rubber—and it was so quiet that you could hear a mouse blink. But then his face regained its shape,
and he issued another laugh, one that was smaller and harder. “You are very clever, dear boy, but what you saw was through comatose eyes and what you say your ghost heard is untrue.”

It is completely true
, I told Jeremy, and then I told him something else.

“And you tried to plant the idea with my father that I might run away with Ginger.”

The baker shrugged. “Again, untrue. Perhaps your ghost does not hear well or”—he smiled slyly—“perhaps your ghost does not exist.”

After a moment, Jeremy pointed to the baker’s chair. “See that rocker?”

The baker regarded his rocking chair, which sat empty and still.

“Yes, my dear boy. I see it very clearly. Can your ghost make it vanish?”

“No,” Jeremy said. “But he can sit in it.”

“Yes? And is he sitting in it now?” He sniggered. “Why not make it three ghosts sitting in it, or”—another small laugh—“a whole baker’s dozen?”

“Just one,” Jeremy said. “And he will sit in it and make it rock.”

It took me a moment to understand what Jeremy was asking me to do … but then I threw myself into the task, swirling past the chair, front then back, again and again, until the rocking began, and so furious was my swirling that it gained speed and the chair was soon rocking quite madly.

When finally I stopped and the rocker gradually grew still, Ginger, Frank Bailey, and the baker were all staring at Jeremy, who said, “My ghost seems to like your rocker.”

A few moments passed in silence, and then, to the surprise of everyone, the baker began nodding and smiling as if in amusement. “So,” he said. “So.”

The prisoners, with their hollow eyes, stared as one.

“A mystery has been solved,” the baker said. “So many boys our Jeremy has been. The boy who upon seeing me burrowed into his blankets. The boy who heard voices. The boy who knew fairy tales. And now he is the boy with his own ghost.” His eyes settled on Jeremy. “I knew you were destined to visit me here in the great chamber, and I knew that it was important, but
I did not know why
. And now I do. I see why we had to meet here.” His blue eyes twinkled. “For you and for me, Jeremy, it is our great opportunity.” His face seemed to shine with luxurious anticipation. “Here, in front of our friends, we will match our …
talents
and see … how it all will end.”

The baker took in and expelled a deep breath. “You are the cleverest of boys, Jeremy Johnson Johnson. But”—he was serene now, poised and assured—“even if you had a dozen personal ghosts, they would be no match for my demons.”