(Is it really OK to talk to one’s juniors like that? Looking back on it all, the this or thatness of Druhástrana aside, both Harriet’s parents are a bit . . .
Perdita and the dolls unanimously concur: “Yeah, say no more.”)
Goodbye to unconditional obedience; Harriet looked around for somewhere to sit as she savored the dawn of a new era. She fished her flashlight out of her bag and doubled back on her steps, all the way to the yawning mouth of Gretel’s Well. Waxed paper rustled as she sat down, placed the packet of gingerbread on her lap, and pulled at the ribbon. Then:
Harriet! Harriet Lee!
Voices bawled her name from all four sectors. Torchlight and tractor beams danced across the fields, eager to expose a girl who’d hoped to rebel against her mother. She raised a hand against them, shielding her eyes, and with her other hand she dropped the gingerbread into the well.
A few things happened after that, and one of them was that the well murmured with delight. Not the well—Harriet almost fell in after the gingerbread—not the well itself. Someone within the well. The readjustment was no better than the initial impression.
The person inside the well said: What?! I LOVE gingerbread. How did you know?
Atif Cook and Jiaolong Parker were coming for Harriet. She heard them stomping and whooping. Dottie Cooper was only quiet because she was filling her lungs for another yell. And the person inside the well raised her head. It seemed there were footholds, or she was standing on something. The girl brandished the packet of gingerbread as if it was a newly won trophy.
This is super. I was just getting hungry. Hi, I’m Gretel. And you are . . . ?
Harriet didn’t say a word.
The girl laughed uneasily. Some sort of fairy godmother in training? Don’t understand Druhástranian?
Harriet still couldn’t speak.
Oh, said the girl. Right. I just popped out of this well and . . . right.
She asked if Harriet was going to get into a flap. Harriet quickly turned her torch on and off. She saw that the girl was no more than three years older than her, if that. She saw that the girl was of similar build and skin color to her, but she didn’t wear her hair in the dreadlocks typical to black peasants in Druhástrana. This girl’s hair was gathered up into a bun of modest size. No freshly baked bun could look softer or be more of an impeccable sphere. Must be a city girl: Margot Lee had worn her hair like this until farmstead life had forced her to give up. Harriet flicked the flashlight on and off again to check a couple of more details: she coveted the girl’s ever so slightly turned-up nose. And the girl had two pupils in each eye; that’s why her eyes looked like bottomless lakes in the torchlight.
I’m not going to get into a flap, Harriet said. This fell under the remit of eventualities she had to deal with by herself if she went against Margot. She had expected to be able to taste the gingerbread first, so she did have to ask herself whether this wasn’t a bit unjust . . .
HARRIET LEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Harriet snatched the packet of gingerbread back from the girl’s hand and stuffed it into the bottom of her bag.
The girl grabbed her wrist. Better give that back! What kind of person . . .
Yes, let’s talk about different kinds of people. Why don’t we start with the kind of person who lives in a well, Harriet hissed.
Gretel said she liked a good riddle but would rather have her gingerbread back. You want me to pay something, don’t you? But I haven’t got any money on me at the moment.
Shhhh!
I’ll pay later. I honestly, honestly will. You have my word.
There were echoes in the well backing up everything the girl said, but Harriet meant to have her gingerbread even if she had to battle demons for it. Gretel made one last attempt to snatch Harriet’s bag, then disappeared from direct view just as Nat Cooper, Jiaolong’s father, appeared.
Harriet Lee, you’ve a visitor at home and your mother wants you.
Is that all? Who is it?
Some Mrs. Moneybags. Funny thing, though . . . she’s got all these sweaty men in suits combing the fields. Asked if I could help them with anything and got told, “No you can’t.” That where you’ve been all afternoon? Digging up buried treasure?
6
Dottie Cooper and Jiaolong Parker ran ahead shouting, Found her, found her, and Atif Cook held her hand as they walked home. Handsome, ironical Atif, who only ever looked at Harriet when he received extrasensory notification of her being about to fall over or spurt milk from her nose.
Atif, Harriet said. Why are you holding my hand?
He didn’t really answer her question. He said she smelled really good. Maybe he thought that was an answer. He seemed to be in a receptive mood, so she tried to place a “hypothetical” Gretel’s Well scenario before him. What characteristics could one anticipate in a being that lived in a well?
Atif wasn’t interested. There’s no story about Gretel’s Well. Now if this was about the Giant’s Clog, or Mr. Jack-in-the-Box, or even about Marco, Chris, and Francisca Drake—you know, Maggie Parker’s pigeons . . . we think those birds are still alive somewhere. It was such a simple route, and they were so carefully trained that there are really only two things that could’ve stopped them coming home to roost years ago.
Having put in some time searching for Maggie’s pigeons among the farmstead’s plant-vertebrate combinations, Harriet gave in: Two options . . . are we including Maggie’s envious kidnap theory?
No, we’re not—nobody buys that. The first possibility is that they got captured by the military and have been turned into war pigeons.
Oh, come on.
It has been known to happen. The second possibility is extraterrestrial interference . . . you smell really, really good. Did I already say that?
Atif lifted her hand and gnashed his teeth, playacting that he was eating her up. Harriet shook him off and ran indoors.
* * *
—
CLIO KERCHEVAL DIDN’T LOOK like a Mrs. Moneybags to Harriet, but she was sitting barefoot on the sitting-room floor when Harriet came in, so perhaps it had been her shoes that gave her away. She drew Harriet into her arms and said, How beautiful, how beautiful, she does you both proud. Both Margot and Simon looked immensely relieved that Clio thought so. What if she hadn’t approved; would they have kicked Harriet out?
Clio repeatedly declared admiration for Simon, who had been starved of it so long he hadn’t the faintest idea how to cope with this surfeit and began a detailed discourse on co-farmers of his who were much better than him. Nat Cooper could work for longer without a break; Vasily Parker never took a day off; Paul Cook’s mustache was indisputably superior. Margot offered Clio more gingerbread. Clio was pleased to accept, and then it was Margot’s turn to be told how wonderful she was. Was Margot absolutely sure the wheat wasn’t food-grade . . . it tasted so very like . . . Clio talked breathlessly and fast, so that nobody could interrupt her even if they wanted to. You could only receive her sentiments, all of which were warm and cozy. Clio was the same kind of perky-pretty as Harriet’s mother, her hair in a bob that flipped out around her dangly earrings, and all this was incongruous with the fact that she was the owner of the farmstead. She was the theoretical person who limited at least four families’ ability to thrive. Harriet spent most of the evening waiting for Simon and Margot to gang up on Clio or to pursue the appeals they and their co-farmers had made in their many letters to her, beseeching letters many pages long. They could also have asked Clio how many farms she owned. Simon or Margot didn’t do any of those things. They told Clio she could sleep in Harriet’s room, no bother, it was so late, and she was a cousin, after all. Clio and Margot talked about people Margot used to know. Everybody was doing well.
Harriet, aren’t you having any of this?