Sabrina's eyes welled with tears, but she refused to cry. She bit her lip hard and squeezed her fists tight. The last thing she would do was show the old woman that her words had stung.
Dinnertime was a quiet affair. No one talked, no one made eye contact, and no one smiled. Even Puck, who could usually be counted on to fart during dinner, was oddly quiet. When everyone had eaten, Granny quietly washed the dishes while Puck, Sabrina, and Daphne stared at one another from across the table. Elvis eyed Sabrina from time to time, but didn't seem to want to go near her after she had been inside his nose.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Granny Relda stopped washing the dishes and rushed to open it. Snow White was standing outside in the cold. The old woman quickly invited her inside.
"Thank you so much for coming, Snow," she said as she took off her apron and folded it.
"I'm happy to help! Any chance to spend some time with my favorite student," the teacher said.
"That's me!" Daphne cried as she rushed to the door.
"Mr. Canis will be coming with me, and the sheriff is on his way now," Granny said. "The children have eaten, but feel free to raid the refrigerator. Hopefully, we won't be gone too long."
Just then, a car-horn blast came from outside.
"That's Hamstead," Mr. Canis said as he opened the closet and took out his and Granny Relda's coats.
"What's going on?" Sabrina asked.
"We're going to go and put a stop to what's going on under the school," Granny Relda replied. "While we're gone, Ms. White will be looking after you."
"You got us a baby-sitter?" Sabrina cried indignantly. "I'm too old for a baby-sitter."
"You're too old?" Puck said to her. "I'm over four thousand years old. This is an outrage!"
"I might have thought the same thing this morning," Granny replied as she put on her coat.
"We should go," Sabrina steamed. "We've seen the tunnels. We know how to get down into them."
There was another knock at the door. When Mr. Canis opened it, Wendell Hamelin stepped inside.
"Oh, we've got a guide," Granny replied.
"The sheriff says we better get going," the boy said, wiping his runny nose on his handkerchief. He looked more sad than excited about this latest detective assignment.
"Honey, you don't have to do this," Granny said. "This is your father we're going to arrest."
"Maybe I can convince him to stop before anyone else gets hurt," Wendell said. "He's my dad. I have to try."
Granny Relda, Mr. Canis, and Wendell, looking apologetically at the other three children, said their good-byes and were soon gone, leaving Sabrina standing by the door with a stunned expression.
"Well now," Snow White said uncomfortably, reaching into her handbag and pulling out a board game. "Who wants to play Candy Land?"
Snow White did her best to keep the kids busy. She set up the board game, but Puck had no patience for it. When he landed on Molasses Swamp and lost a turn, he flew into a rage, flinging the board out the front door and into the yard. Later, after he had calmed down, Ms. White suggested they play charades. Once again, Puck was the spoiler, acting out the names of tree gnomes and pixies that had lived three hundred years ago and insisting they were as famous as any astronaut or president. Eventually, even Snow White gave up and let the children do what they really wanted to do-research.
The girls searched the library for titles that might be of help. With half their family traipsing around in some dark tunnels, Sabrina and Daphne felt the least they could do was make sure that nothing had been overlooked. Sabrina eventually came across her great aunt Matilda's pamphlet entitled Rumpelstiltskin's Secret Nature. She could see it was going to be a dry read, so she fell into a chair and started on page one.
Rumpelstiltskin's story was a famous fairy tale; everyone had heard it, but Sabrina wasn't taking any chances with what she thought she knew. Dad's attitude about fairy tales had left the girls at a disadvantage, and she wanted to know the story inside and out. But even she was shocked to see how much information Matilda had collected about the little creature. It looked as if months of work had gone into the analysis of every single nuance of his personality, powers, and actions. Her ancestor even had theories on how Rumpelstiltskin spun wheat into gold, where he had come from, and why he tried to trick people out of their children.
Matilda's book also recounted at least two dozen versions of the original tale. The story Sabrina had always heard involved a woman who begged Rumpelstiltskin for his help. In exchange, she promised to give him her first-born child. When the baby finally arrived, the woman demanded a chance to keep it, so Rumpelstiltskin wagered that she would never be able to guess his real name. Of course, by the end of the story, she had figured it out and got to keep her kid, making the little man so angry he actually ripped himself in two. But Matilda said there was an alternate version of the ending that not many people knew. In the other ending, Rumpelstiltskin didn't rip himself in half-he actually blew up like a bomb, killing everyone within a mile.
One chapter, entitled "The Power of Rumpelstiltskin," contained theories on the source of the little man's powers. Matilda believed he was like a walking battery. He stored energy and converted it into destructive power. Unfortunately, the more of Matilda's theories Sabrina read, the more questions she had.
"It doesn't make any sense," Sabrina cried. "What do Rumpelstiltskin, the Pied Piper, the children of Everafters, and a bunch of tunnels under the school have in common?"
"The barrier," Puck replied.
"What?" Sabrina asked.
"The barrier runs very close to the school," Puck said. "We flew into it, don't you remember?"
"You're just telling me this now?" Sabrina cried.
"Seemed obvious to me," the Trickster replied.
"They're digging to the barrier," Snow White gasped. "Baba Yaga's spell is probably not as strong underground. But what would be the point? They'd still need a powerful magic explosion to get through it."
"I think they've got one," Sabrina said, holding up her great aunt's book. "Matilda thought Rumpelstiltskin was a walking nuclear bomb. He might be able to make a crack in it."
"Still, they have the river to worry about. The waters would drown them all," Snow White pointed out.
"Maybe not!" Daphne said, rushing to the bookshelf and snatching down one of the family's journals. She ran over to the table and put it down in front of Sabrina. It was their grandfather Basil's journal.
"Granny had this out one afternoon and forgot to put it back," the little girl said. "I was flipping through it and found some maps Grandpa Basil drew of the town." She flipped it open and searched for a page. When she found it, she pointed for her sister to read.
Today I did a little amateur mapmaking of the elementary school construction site, claiming I was just interested in the building. Charming hates when he thinks I'm snooping, but I wanted to make sure no one got any ideas about digging the holes deeper or building a tunnel over the river. The barrier is much weaker underground. Baba Yaga compensated though by extending it over the Hudson River. If anyone tried to tunnel through, they'd drown. The only chance they'd have would be to somehow dig through the bedrock under the river over to Bannerman’s Island, but without an army of miners, they'd never get close. I feel pretty confident that it’s impossible. -April, 1957