“I got her!” came Anna’s delighted cry. It was met with an eruption of cheers and laughter as the children emerged from their hiding places, five small figures padded in layers of wool and fur. They popped out from behind tree trunks and wagon wheels and an overgrown shrub weighed down with icicles.
“What took you so long?” said Fricz, a snowball ready in his mittened hand, while at his side, Anna busily started scraping together another one. “We’ve been waiting to ambush you near an hour. Nickel’s started complaining of frostbite!”
“It’s unmerciful cold out here,” said Nickel, Fricz’s twin, hopping from foot to foot.
“Oh, shut your whistler. Even the baby’s not complaining, you old cogwheel.”
Gerdrut, the youngest at five years old, turned to Fricz with an annoyed scowl. “I’m not a baby!” she shouted, hurling a snowball at him. And though her aim was good, it still landed with a sad kerfluff at his feet.
“Aw, I was just making a point,” said Fricz, which was as close as he ever got to an apology. “I know you’re about to be a big sister and all.”
This easily assuaged Gerdrut’s anger and she stuck up her nose with a proud huff. It wasn’t just being the youngest that made the others think of her as the baby of their group. She was particularly small for her age, and particularly precious, with a sprinkling of freckles across her round cheeks and strawberry ringlets that never seemed to tangle, no matter how much she tried to keep up with Anna’s acrobatics.
“The point is,” snapped Hans, “we’re all shivering. There’s no need to act the dying swan.” At eleven, Hans was the oldest of their group. As such, he liked to overplay his role of leader and protector around the schoolhouse, a role the others had seemed content to let him claim.
“Speak for yourself,” said Anna, winding up her arm before throwing her new snowball at the abandoned wagon wheel off the side of the road. It hit the center dead-on. “I’m not cold.”
“Only because you’ve been doing cartwheels for the past hour,” muttered Nickel.
Anna grinned, her smile gapped with a number of missing teeth, and launched herself into a somersault. Gerdrut squealed delightedly—somersaults were so far the only trick she’d mastered—and hurried to join her, both of them leaving trails in the snow.
“And just why were you all waiting to ambush me?” asked Serilda. “Don’t any of you have a nice warm fire waiting for you at home?”
Gerdrut stopped, legs splayed in front of her and snow clinging to her hair. “We were waiting for you to finish the story.” She liked the scary stories more than any of them, though she couldn’t listen without burying her nose into Hans’s shoulder. “About the wild hunt and the god of lies and—”
“Nope.” Serilda shook her head. “Nope, nope, nope. I’ve been scolded by Madam Sauer for the last time. I’m done telling tales. Starting today, you’ll get nothing but boring news and the most trivial of facts. For example, did you know that playing three particular notes on the hackbrett will summon a demon?”
“You are definitely making that up,” said Nickel.
“Am not. It’s true. Ask anyone. Oh! Also, the only way to kill off a nachzehrer is by putting a stone into its mouth. That will keep it from gnawing on its own flesh while you cut off the head.”
“Now, that’s the sort of education that might come in handy someday,” said Fricz with an impish grin. Though he and his brother were identical on the outside—same blue eyes and fluffy blond hair and dimpled chins—it was never difficult to tell them apart. Fricz was always the one looking for trouble, and Nickel was always the one looking embarrassed that they were related.
Serilda gave a sage nod. “My job is to prepare you for adulthood.”
“Ugh,” said Hans. “You’re playing at teacher, aren’t you?”
“I am your teacher.”
“No, you’re not. You’re barely Madam Sauer’s assistant. She only lets you around because you can get the littles to quiet down when she can’t.”
“You mean us?” asked Nickel, gesturing around to himself and the others. “Are we the littles?”
“We’re almost as old as you!” added Fricz.
Hans snorted. “You’re nine. That’s two whole years. It’s an eternity.”
“It’s not two years,” said Nickel, starting to count off on his thumb. “Our birthday is in August and yours—”
“All right, all right,” interrupted Serilda, who had heard this argument too many times. “You’re all littles to me, and it’s time for me to start taking your education more seriously. To stop filling your heads with nonsense. I’m afraid that story time has ended.”
This proclamation was met with a chorus of melodramatic groans, whining, pleas. Fricz even fell face-first into the snow and kicked his feet in a tantrum that may or may not have been in mimicry of one of Gerdrut’s bad days.
“I mean it this time,” she said, scowling.
“Sure you do,” said Anna with a robust laugh. She had stopped doing flips and was now testing the strength of a young linden tree by hanging from one of the lower branches, her legs kicking back and forth. “Just like the last time. And the time before that.”
“But now I’m serious.”
They stared at her, unconvinced.
Which she supposed was fair. How many times had she told them that she was done telling stories? She was going to become a model teacher. A fine, honest lady once and for all.
It never lasted.
Just one more lie, as Madam Sauer had said.
“But, Serilda,” said Fricz, shuffling toward her on his knees and peering up at her with wide, charmed eyes, “winter in M?rchenfeld is so awfully boring. Without your stories, what will we have to look forward to?”
“A life of hard labor,” muttered Hans. “Mending fences and plowing fields.”
“And spinning,” said Anna with a distraught sigh, before she curled her legs up and draped her knees over the branch, letting her hands and braids dangle. The tree groaned threateningly, but she ignored it. “So much spinning.”
Of all the children, Serilda thought that Anna looked the most like her, especially since Anna had started wearing her long brown hair in twin braids, as Serilda had worn hers for most of her life. But Anna’s tan skin was a few shades darker than Serilda’s, and her hair wasn’t quite as long yet. Plus, there were all the missing milk teeth … only some of which had fallen out naturally.
They also shared a mutual hatred for the laborious work of spinning wool. At eight years old, Anna had recently been taught the fine art on her family’s wheel. Serilda had looked upon her with appropriate sympathy when she heard the news, referring to the work as tedium incarnate. The description had been repeated among the children all the following week, amusing Serilda and infuriating the witch, who had spent an entire hour lecturing on the importance of honest work.
“Please, Serilda,” continued Gerdrut. “Your stories, I think they’re sort of like spinning, too. Because it’s like you’re making something beautiful out of nothing.”