Far Far Away (44 page)

Whatever Sheriff Pittswort’s speculations may have been before reaching the baker’s house, they changed upon seeing Ginger, Jeremy, and Frank Bailey being carried from the home. He assumed quick control. He commandeered three patrol cars, put one patient along with an adult in the backseat of each, and sent them off, lights flashing, to the nearest hospital, some twelve miles away. Deputy McRaven drove the car with Ginger lying in the backseat, eyes closed, her head in Conk’s lap.

The sheriff used his radio to advise the hospital that three youths were en route, near death, suffering from starvation and possible poisoning. Then he turned to Maddy and Marjory and asked them to show him the way to the dungeon.

As they proceeded down the stairwell and toward the third room, Maddy explained how Jenny Applegarth had led the way and how, when they got to the third room, she told them to look for the keypad and then figured out the combination of numbers that opened the wall.

The sheriff stopped short. “Figured out
how
?”

“I think the voice told her,” Maddy said.

“Right,” the sheriff said. “The voice.”

Once they reached the dungeon itself, the sheriff drew himself up as if to absorb what he was seeing. He stared at the cells, the beds, the windowless walls. Then he approached the rocking chair and picked up the small green shirt.

He held it for a time, taking in what its presence in this dungeon must mean. Then something hardened in his face. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve seen enough.”

Outside, he thanked Marjory and Maddy and sent them home. He stood alone then for a moment, leaning against his patrol car, holding the green shirt. The last time he’d seen it, there had been a little boy wearing it, and he was sitting in a patrol car like this one, not saying a word and smiling out the window as if at a world he’d never before seen. A strange but good little boy, and then one day the town baker had gotten hold of him. Perhaps these were the kinds of things Sheriff Pittswort was thinking, and now he lifted his gaze from the shirt to the sky. The smoke still rose from the chimney of the bakery, visibly green as it drifted into the moonlight. The sheriff expelled a deep draft of air. Then, still holding the shirt, he slid into his patrol car.

I believed I knew where he was going next—it was where I, too, was going.

The sheriff had not yet reached the bakery when I arrived.

To my surprise, the door was ajar. The front area of the shop was dark, but lights shone from the kitchen. I found the baker there, wearing his white apron, applying frosted rosettes to the top of one Prince Cake after another. He was intent on his work,
yet there was something different in his composure. From time to time he glanced through the kitchen door to the front of the shop, as if he was expecting someone.

And what of the fire that leapt and danced behind the open door to the giant oven? This was not how one baked—was it?—with unbridled fire.

On the counter to the side of the tray was a small note that said:

There was something more self-pitying than apologetic in this note. Really, if not his fault, then whose? If he could not control his desires, could he not control his mastery over them?

But there he stood, setting rosettes on his pastries, the smallest smile forming when he had set one just so. The heat must have been intense. Repeatedly, he raised his apron to wipe his pink glistening brow.

He worked without haste, shaping perfect frosted roses for one domed cake after another. Where was the sheriff? I wondered. Why had he not arrived?

The baker went to the furnace to feed in more crystals and several lengths of wood—so furious was the fire that the logs
instantly burst into orange ignition. He leaned back from the intensity of the heat, but he did not close the oven door. It was at this moment that the bells jangled above the shop’s front door.

The baker stayed where he was, staring into the furnace.

The sheriff said nothing as he entered the kitchen. Behind him stood two of the men who, only an hour before, had been playing cards with him and laughing at Jenny Applegarth. Now they were tense and somber. Each wore a metal badge. Each carried a gun. The sheriff held only the small green shirt, draped in one hand, but he carried it as if it was the only weapon he needed. Yes, in the tales, justice is often merciless and horrific, but nothing had prepared me for this sheriff at this moment. His face was stone. He held the small green shirt in his hands and he was beyond pity or mercy.

But the baker was immune. His gaze moved from the green shirt to the sheriff’s hard eyes. “Your little Possy”—he gave a broad, taunting wink—“who disappeared right from under your nose.”

Something dreadful was going to happen, I could feel it.

I was right—and not right.

The baker unfastened the apron he was wearing and let it slip to the ground.

In a soft voice he said,
“Sa börjar det igen.”

So another moment has come.

Then, in the half instant before the sheriff could lay his hands on him, Sten Blix, the town baker, the Finder of Occasions, with a look of utter calmness on his face, stepped into the raging flames.

Sheriff Pittswort and his two men stared into the orange fiery space and watched the baker’s brightening, writhing silhouette.

I hastened to the roof. At the chimney’s edge, I let the smoke flow through me. I felt no heat, but I smelled burned flesh, and leaned away in revulsion.

But here—and this was what I had come for—the spectral Sten Blix rose to me and regarded me without surprise.

Yes
, he said,
I thought the boy might really have such a companion. In Sweden I had heard of it many times. And were you in time? Were any of them still alive?

All of them
. I spoke with a kind of vindication.
All of them are alive
.

He smiled and shook his head.
No
, he said.
Not all of them. Only these three. You have saved those you could save. I have taken those I could take. So do not think that you have prevailed
. He cast his dead eyes over the dark village.
You think that you have won, but I did not lose. I grew indifferent to winning
. He gave a weary shrug and then, less to me than to himself, he said,
There was too much of them
.

I did not understand.
Too much of whom?

He gazed back into the smoke that rose from the bakery built above a dungeon.
Them
, he said, and contempt crept into his
voice.
The girl with her prayers. The boy with his ghosts. And poor wretched Frankie, with his belief in my goodness
.

I was afraid he would leave. I asked what I had come to ask:
What happened to you that you could do such things as you have done?

He did not answer. He leaned far over the chimney and, breathing deeply of the smoke, rose with it and slowly disappeared.

I tried to follow and called after him
—What was it you wanted? How were such desires formed?
—but the baker had gone wherever such souls go.

In the pale green hospital room, Jeremy Johnson Johnson was sleeping. So, in their chairs nearby, were his father and Jenny Applegarth. Nourishment dripped through a transparent tube leading from a machine to a bandaged area of Jeremy’s wrist. The prisoner had become a patient, and though he looked waxy and frail, the physicians had pronounced that he would slowly recover to full strength, that all the prisoners would.

A few minutes before, when a doctor quietly visited, she opened a folder to read notes and add some of her own. I observed a strange array of words and phrases—“chronic poisoning,” “warfarin,” “vitamin K,” “enhanced excretion,” “whole
bowel irrigation”—which, together, presumably indicated what had been done to Jeremy by the baker and what the doctors had done to reverse the effects.

I hovered there, watching Jeremy breathe in and breathe out, for I felt his breathing almost as if it were my own. Something had occurred to me. I felt disencumbered. For the first time since that day in September when the elm tree in the garden extinguished, I felt release. From what, I was not sure, yet I felt no urgency to know. I was enjoying too much the image of Jeremy, alive and breathing.

At last, I moved close.
Listen, if you will
, I whispered.
Listen, if you will
.

He eyes fluttered open. He made a faint but actual smile. “Oh, hi,” he said.

At once, Mr. Johnson and Jenny Applegarth jerked awake.

“Hey, buddy,” his father said. He reached out to touch Jeremy’s hand.

Jenny Applegarth gave Jeremy’s other hand a squeeze, then stepped away. “Think I’ll give you two a minute alone,” she said.

I, too, respected their privacy and followed Jenny Applegarth to a room near the end of the shiny corridor. Inside, Mrs. Bailey sat on the edge of her son’s bed, gently massaging his arm. The boy slept. He, too, had a tube running to his wrist. Mrs. Bailey and Jenny Applegarth exchanged nods.

“Doing okay?” Jenny Applegarth said.

“He is,” Mrs. Bailey said. “They say he is, anyhow. Though he doesna’ look so good.”

“How about you?”

“Well, you know.…” She gazed at her son. “At least now I can see him and hold his hand and fuss over him.” Her eyes moved to Jenny Applegarth’s. “He’s a good boy,” she said. “He couldna’ be better, if people just knew.”

“I know,” Jenny Applegarth said.

“The Crinklaw boy told me what you did. How you went right in and held my boy and rode with him when they brought him here.”

Jenny Applegarth looked down. “It wasn’t hard.”

They were both quiet, then Mrs. Bailey said, “Conk said you heard a voice, a voice that sang.” She paused. “It made me think of an angel.”

“That’s right. I did hear a voice.” Jenny Applegarth smiled. “But I’d hate to think an angel couldn’t sing a little better than that.”

The women both laughed at this, which I found irritating.

“Do you still hear it, then? The singing voice?” Mrs. Bailey asked.

“I don’t, no.”

This was true. I
could
sing, in my tuneless way, but there was no longer the need.

“You know, I can never repay you,” Mrs. Bailey said as Jenny began to take her leave, and Jenny replied, “I don’t know why you’d try.”

A kind woman, even if she did not appreciate my singing.

From Frank Bailey’s room, she walked to Ginger’s. In the passing instant that the door was swinging open, Conk could be seen leaping from the edge of the bed into a chair. His fearful expression turned to relief, however, when he saw that it was Jenny.

“Hoo-boy,” he said. “I thought it was McRaven or her grandfather. I was just sitting on the bed, holding her hand. But her grandfather … I don’t know. He’s like Attila the Hun or something. And McRaven keeps coming in and just staring at her like she’s a goddess or something, which is kind of creepy since she looks half-dead.”