“Whatever you say, Cerené,” Shew mumbled.
“Stop,” Cerené waved her hand. “We’ve arrived.”
Shew stopped, looking over Cerené’s shoulder. There was a house made of candy in the distance. It varied in colors from purple, yellow, orange, and red. It glittered with pumpkin lanterns with zigzagged smiley mouths and swayed slightly in the nighttime breeze.
“You said we had a long walk ahead of us,” Shew licked her lips, tempted to taste the house.
“That’s strange,” Cerené said. “It should have been. I guess the house changed places just as the Schloss does. I told you it’s haunted. I even heard there was a doorway inside that transports you straight to the Schloss.”
“Let’s go,” she dashed in front of Cerené toward the candy.
“Wait! It’s messing with your head,” Cerené ran after Shew, slapping her hands before reaching for the house. “Did you hear me?” she shook Shew harder. “The house is messing with your head. Once you eat from the house, you will faint. I just told you that.”
Shew felt as if waking up from a dream within a dream. She blinked twice to make sure she was herself again. The house surely had and effect on her.
“What does she need all those children for?” Shew asked.
“Like I said, she eats them, mostly the boys,” Cerené pulled Shew away from the doorstep. She crouched so they wouldn’t be exposed if someone opened the door. “As for the girls, you should be able to guess what she does with the young, ripe and beautiful ones.”
Shew took a moment to think about it. She gasped as the answer hit her.
“Yes,” Cerené nodded. “She sends them to the Queen, your mother, to feed on them so she can stay beautiful forever,” she made a silly face when saying ‘beautiful.’ “That’s horrid,” Shew gazed at the door over Cerené’s shoulder.
“What’s not horrid in your family?” Cerené shrugged her shoulders. “No wonder you’re called the Sorrows.”
“Again, I’m not insulted in any way,” it was Shew’s turn to shrug her shoulders.
“News has been exchanged in Sorrow recently about a number of peasant girls disappearing in the Schloss,” Cerené elaborated. “So the Queen came up with the plan to use Baba Yaga’s hunger for young people to supply her with plenty of them. Once the Queen drinks and bathes in their blood, she sends the bodies back to Baba Yaga to stew them and eat them. Baba Yaga likes the flesh but spits out the bones.”
“Baba Yaga? What an unusual name,” Shew remarked.
“Of course she has to have an unusual name,” Cerené said. “She eats children!”
The two girls started laughing.
What’s there not to laugh about, Shew thought. This whole dream with Cerené was made of mountains of silly upon mountains of sillier, mixed with a great deal of blood and scary stuff. It was just like life in the Waking World, a set of unfortunate incomprehensible happenings that made no sense. The best way to come back at life is to laugh at it.
“I heard her name resembled the voices she makes when chewing,” Cerené elaborated. “Baba is the sound she makes when she gulps: babababa! And yaga is the sound she makes with her mouth when she tries to chew the bones: yayayaga!”
She also noticed Cerené’s laugh was more infectious and bigger than anyone she had ever met. She laughed as if it was her last day on earth. Her mouth stretched, and her eyes became bigger, her two cute dimples showed from underneath the sticky ashes—and of course, her freckles popped out.
Looking down the hill, Shew noticed a small village in the distance, “do the people in the village down there know about this house?” Shew wondered.
“I don’t think so,” Cerené said. “They are nice people. The village is called Furry Tell. There is a funny story behind the name—“
Suddenly, the door of Candy House sprang open.
13
A Sack Full of Dead Children
A nose appeared from behind the door.
It was a crooked nose, bigger than the biggest carrot they’d ever seen, and slightly dented in the middle. Baba Yaga’s deformed face came after, creeping out under the thin beam from the pumpkin lantern above her. Her face reminded Shew of crumple pies, covered with bumps and sticky juice. Baba Yaga’s face looked like a face someone had nibbled on many times.
“It’s her,” Cerené whispered, shivering and holding Shew’s hand. “The shawl she wears is made of cracked children’s bones.
“Don’t worry,” Shew said.
Shew watched as Baba Yaga began to step out of the house. She walked as fast as a dead turtle. Her body was round, like a cauldron with a head. Her feet protruded from under her feathery cloak. Shew gasped as she noticed Baba Yaga had chicken legs and chicken feet! She thought they must have been the creepiest feet in the world.
“Why is she taking so long to come out of the house?” Shew whispered, noticing that Baba Yaga, with her crooked nose and chicken legs, looked like a giant evil bird.
“It’s the sack that’s slowing her down,” Cerené whispered back. “The sack on her back is full of sedated girls. She’s on her way to the Queen.”
Shew saw Baba Yaga bend her already-arched back lower and pull a sack twice her size through the door. She walked down three wooden steps on the porch, flapping her eerie chicken legs as the children’s heads thudded against the floor.
Baba Yaga seemed more comfortable with pulling the sack behind her when she got to the grass. As she walked, she smoked a cigar.
“You want to know what the cigar’s tobacco is made of?” Cerené said. “It’s Rapunzel ashes!”
Shew shook her head and listened to Baba Yaga sing as she pulled the sack down the hilclass="underline"
Hush little children, don't say a word.
Baba’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird won't sing.
Baba's gonna cut and slice its wings.
The birds in the trees fluttered away immediately. Her voice made the squirrels run; abandoning their precious nuts, and it made snakes come crawling out of the trees. The witch took another drag from the cigar and sang again:
Hush little girls, don't you cry.
Baba’s just sacked you and you don’t know why.
Hush little girls, now say goodbye
Baba’s gonna eat ya, ’n tonight you’ll die.
“Sometimes when she needs more money, she sends some of the boys to Georgie Porgie, the Boogeyman,” Cerené added. “He likes to make children cry, and he pays well for the children’s tears.”
They watched as Baba Yaga disappear in the dark, then Cerené and Shew dashed into Candy House and closed the door behind them.
“You’re sure she’s not coming back now?” Shew said.
“No, it’ll take her some time to reach the castle,” Cerené said, hiking the stairs down to the basement.
Wherever Cerené went, Shew followed, even if it was into Hell itself.
Cerené, still holding her glass urn against her chest and her broom in one hand, ushered Shew through a maze of candle lit corridors in the cellar, which looked like a small dungeon. They passed through rooms that had bars like jails where Baba Yaga kept the children. The prison-like rooms were empty now that she had the children in her sack outside.
“Come on, hurry,” Cerené demanded. “Don’t act like a princess walking on eggshells. It doesn’t suit you.”
“This place looks like Hell,” Shew commented.