Far Far Away (39 page)

Then, unhurriedly, he went to the painting on the wall and turned it over.

And there, on the reverse side, was a far different work of art, as ghoulish as the other was benign. In this woodprint, a haggard mother, who had been cooking a scant meal at her fire, looks on in anguish as a skeleton pulls her small child from their tumbledown hut. The terrified child reaches back through the smoke for its mother even as the skeletal form pulls it inexorably away.

“God,” Ginger said in a faltering voice. “What
is
that?”

The baker’s eyes gleamed with pride. “It is one of many prints collectively called
The Dance of Death
. Each is designed to remind us how Death is always with us, waiting to lead us away.” The baker leaned toward the print. “The woodcutting is superb, and yet for a long time the identity of its creator was not known.” He turned a smile to Jeremy. “Perhaps your ghost knows his name?”

I told Jeremy, and he said, “Hans Holbein.”

The baker made a show of not being surprised. “The Elder or the Younger?”

I again supplied the answer. “The Younger,” Jeremy said.

“Very good,” the baker said in his most pleasant voice. “Your ghost is good at the esoteric question, and yet”—a rich laugh tumbled from his lips—“when it comes to the Disney version of
Snow White
 …”

He did not finish the sentence. With stately calm, he pushed his cart from the dungeon, the wall moaning closed behind him.

For several moments, the chamber was deeply quiet.

Then Ginger said, “That was pretty freaking fabulous, Jeremy. I think you actually had him going there for a second or two.”

“More than a second or two,” Frank Bailey offered from across the room.

Jeremy waved a hand dismissively. “Didn’t scare him enough, though, did it?” he said. “We’re still here, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Ginger said, “but that rocking-chair poltergeist thing was amazing.” Her eyes were fixed on him. “So how’d you do that? And where’d you come up with that personal-ghost stuff?”

Jeremy sat on the edge of his cot and said nothing.

“Jeremy?”

He breathed heavily in and out. “Promise you won’t laugh or anything?”

“Promise.”

“Okay,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t make it up. It’s true.”

From their stares it was clear that they did not believe him.

“Really,” Jeremy said, looking earnestly at Ginger. “True.”

Frank Bailey was searching all around. “And he’s, like, in here with us?”

Jeremy nodded. “Unless he slipped out with the baker, which I doubt, because he promised me he would stay with us.”

Ginger’s eyes darted here and there in the chamber. “How do you find out?”

Jeremy touched his temple and whispered, “You here, Jacob?”

Yes
.

“He’s here,” Jeremy said.

Ginger was having a difficult time grasping what she was hearing. “So he’s here, and you can hear him, and you call him
Yaw-kub
?”

Jeremy nodded. “That’s his name. He lived in Germany about two hundred years ago. His last name’s Grimm. He and his brother are the ones who collected the household tales.”

They were all silent for a moment or two, then Ginger said,
“So do you think we’re in some kind of weird fairy tale, and that’s why he’s here?”

Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t know. And I don’t think my ghost does, either.”

“But it
is
like we’re in some kind of fairy tale,” Frank Bailey said. “It’s got enchantments and dungeons and potions and forbidden rooms”—his face fell; he seemed suddenly to remember something—“except this time it’s all real.”

Another silence stretched out. Then Ginger said, “And this ghost—he sees and hears everything we do and say?”

Jeremy nodded.

“That’s kind of creepy,” she said.

“Actually, he’s pretty good about respecting people’s privacy.”

Something had occurred to Ginger. She put a finger to her lips, and then she leaned forward and whispered, “Are you just saying this so Sten will hear it and believe it?”

“No,” Jeremy said in his usual voice. “I don’t care whether Sten believes it or not. But I do know my ghost won’t let him rest if he does anything bad to us.”

She stared at Jeremy. “Yeah,” she whispered, “but why didn’t he do something to keep us from being abducted to begin with?”

Well, there it was: a sharp knife in the sheath of a short question.

It is true, Jeremy. I was not vigilant
. Then I steeled myself and said something I had been needing to say.
And I think that the terrible mistake I made has led me to make another
.

He was waiting for me to go on, but Ginger spoke up first. “So what does your ghost think we should do now?”

I told him, and from his expression, I could see that it made him anxious. Still, he was cautious, lowering his voice to a
whisper to say, “My ghost says that he needs to slip out with Sten.” Then he added even more softly, “If Sten ever comes back.”

“Maybe your ghost is the answer to our prayers,” Ginger said, and managed a dry laugh. “You should tell him to bring back the cavalry—and some Oreos.”

“That’s the thing. He can’t bring anything back. He can’t even tell anybody anything. But at least he can find out what’s going on out there. Right, Jacob?”

Yes. I can do at least that much
. I had other ideas, too, but I did not mention them.

“It’s okay,” Jeremy said in a low voice. “We’ll be okay.”

For the first time, I detected something fatalistic in his tone, and what he meant by being okay, I did not want to guess.

All right, then
, I said.
I will slip out the next time I can
.

Twenty-five peas, and the baker had not visited, then twenty-six and twenty-seven.

“That’s all,” Jeremy said in a soft voice.

His face had grown haggard and seemed composed of uncolored candle wax. All of their faces did. I must say it: the prisoners looked like the drawings one sometimes sees of ghosts.

“Twenty-seven days,” Ginger said.

“Which means fifty-even for me,” Frank Bailey said. “It seems
like fifty years.” His eyes were unlighted lanterns. “I still can’t believe Mr. Blix is doing this.”

“I think it’s time to believe it,” Jeremy said, but Frank Bailey, instead of nodding in agreement, merely lowered his eyes.

Ginger brought out all the peas from the ledge above her sink and laid them on her cot. “Twenty-seven’s divisible by three,” she said. “Nine each.”

She began lobbing peas across the dungeon to Frank Bailey. Seven rolled into his cell; two fell short. She tossed two more. Frank Bailey collected them from the floor, eating them as he did. She then gave nine to Jeremy, who returned one so that the two of them would have eight each. They looked down at the peas, gathered in their cupped hands.

“Down the hatch?” she asked.

He shrugged. They opened their mouths, threw in the peas, then sucked them as one might candy, until at last they were gone.

“Nothing quite like a shriveled pea,” Jeremy said.

She gave a weak laugh. “Fabulous appetizer. Now, where’s the entrée?”

At night, the dreadful sounds of suffering still came through the walls, but now the prisoners stuffed their ears with small bits of cloth torn from their bedding.

One night, however, the whimpering and pleading ceased, and a short while later a new series of sounds came from another source—Jeremy himself.

“Please,” he murmured. “Please.” His pleading grew more fretful. “Please! Please!”

Jeremy!
I said, and then I shouted,
Jeremy! Wake up! Wake up!

He did not wake up, but his cries awakened Ginger, who pulled the wadding from her ears. “Jeremy!” she shouted, grabbing his arm through the bars.

He came slowly back from wherever he had been.

“What?” he said in a thick voice.

“You,” Ginger said. “You were yelling in your sleep. You said, ‘Please! Please!’ again and again.” She paused. “Please what?”

“I was asking …” He hesitated, as if trying to piece it together. “It was like I was hearing several voices, but it was different … I was seeing people, too.”

Ginger gave a small laugh. “Most of us call that a dream.”

“No. I mean, it was
like
a dream except … it was more real than a dream.”

“So why were you saying
Please
? Please what?”

“It was a party for a little boy, a long, long time ago, and I was there, except somehow
I
was the ghost and nobody could see or hear me. Everyone was speaking German and laughing and singing except a man standing in the doorway half in and half out, with longish gray hair and wearing, like, an old smoking jacket or something, and kind of half smiling in a way that made me know he wasn’t happy.” Jeremy lowered his voice apologetically. “That’s how I knew it was Jacob.”

I listened, perfectly still. How had he done it? I did not remember telling Jeremy of this episode, but even if I had, how could he know where I was standing, what I was wearing, the length and color of my hair? How had he slipped into the rooms of my own memory?

“Then the little boy—Jacob’s nephew, I think—asked him to sing, and he didn’t want to, but I knew he should, that it might make him happy, so I tried to ask him, too.” He waited. “That’s probably why I was saying
Please
again and again. He wasn’t hearing me.”

I said nothing. This memory, as ever, did nothing but sadden me. Perhaps Jeremy sensed this, for he said, “It wasn’t Jacob’s fault he couldn’t sing.”

“You mean he couldn’t carry a tune or couldn’t bring himself to try?”

Both
, I said.
And for the former I could not be blamed. Still, for the latter I must
.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, as if to Ginger, though I knew he meant it for me, too. “You can try to be different, but in the end we always are who we are.”

They were quiet for a few moments. Then Ginger whispered, “No tape recordings tonight. I wonder what that means.”

Jeremy did not answer, but I could tell from his breathing that he still lay awake. After a time, Ginger said softly, “Remember the story you told about Faithful John—the part about leaves and tongues when the prince sees the painting of the princess? Could you repeat that part?”

Jeremy needed only the slightest prompt from me. “When the king’s son sees the portrait of the princess, his love for her is so great that if all the leaves on all the trees were tongues, they could not declare it.” He paused. “That part?”

It was pitch-black in the dungeon and the circumstances could not have been more wretched, and yet her voice was tender. “Yeah,” she said. “That part.”

When at last the wall again moaned open, followed by the squealing wheels of the baker’s serving cart, the prisoners did not move on their cots. They merely raised their eyes.

“Hallå! Hallå!”
the baker said, but he did not ask if it was not a great day to be alive. He seemed, in fact, a bit weary himself—though weary of what, I had no idea. Still, he regarded the prisoners and pretended concern.

“Oh, my. You don’t look at all well, my dear children. There is now hot water—or were you too lazy to notice?”