The Girl Gingerbread in the Woods of Winter White

The girl called Gingerbread knew two things: there was always a wood and there was always a witch. As she looked down from the last of the dwindling foothills rolling off the mountain, she knew she had just found them both.

So, Dearie, she thought as the wind dragged back her cream-colored hair with frigid fingers, this is where you ran off to hide.

"Ah!" Gingerbread drew an inch of her sword's steel before she recognized the bass timbre of the voice at her shoulder. "The Woods of Winter White! They are far more beautiful than their stories sound them out."

She cast her eyes over her shoulder at the bear of a man standing next to her, but Nikolas didn't flinch away from her stare as the other tinkers did. "Only because she can't reach us yet." Her voice rasped beneath the wind skipping down the mountain. People were always surprised by her voice. They took one look at her buttercream hair and golden brown skin and assumed she had one of those sweet-as-sugar voices. Of course, then they saw her eyes and the conversation died before it started.

Gingerbread turned those eyes back to the wood below, the heat of her stare making her cheeks prickle in the watered-down sunlight. "We won't have anything to fear until we're deep inside those trees with no idea which way is out."

She felt Nikolas's twinkling eyes on the side of her head and knew she'd made some kind of mistake, but she couldn't think what until the big man asked, "She?"

Gingerbread's head sunk into the ruff of her short cape's collar, the white fur tickling her nose.

Nikolas boomed out his usual laugh, shaking snowflakes from the sky. "Ha! You fool me again, Girl Gingerbread! You stare so serious at the world that I keep forgetting you're from parts of Albia that actually believe those old tales of the Piping Witch."

The girl's mouth twitched down at one corner as she slid him a glare. "And you are so amused by it that I keep forgetting you're from parts that don't. The witch is very real, tinker." Her eyes returned to the wood, drawn like a lodestone to North. "I met her myself."

Nikolas did not laugh this time, but his eyes stayed fixed on her, waiting for the story. The man was a collection of stories, tucked into his belt and stuffed in his green pockets, and every night he pulled one out and let it loose around the fire to thrill the other tinkers in his wagon train.

Gingerbread did not want hers added to his collection. "Which is why we should avoid the Winter Whites. Since we cannot cross the mountains to Tannen Town-"

"The mountain spoke the final word on that front. Even high summer will not clear that avalanche."

Gingerbread spun in one crisp turn, her capelet and dress swirling out behind her as she faced Nikolas's chest. The cold of the world on her legs or in her fingers never bothered her, but she wore woolen leggings and leather gloves anyway. It kept folk staring.

She jerked her chin up to face the tinker. "Then we follow the river and cross into the lowlands at Frostlight Bridge. It will take more time-"

"Pa-ha!" Nikolas scoffed, his whole head jerking back with force.

"But I'd rather waste time than tempt the witch."

Nikolas rolled his eyes to the top of the sky. "By cutting over pleasant foothills and crossing your fabled babbling brooks and lush fields? No, Tannen Town is just through the Winter Whites, and I am ready to experience some of the dangers your land of Albia is renowned for. The spooks and goblins and imps."

He curled his fingers into unconvincing claws and took a kitten's swipe at Gingerbread's cape. Nikolas chuckled when she swatted his hand away, his overgrown black beard catching most of the sound. "Spooks have no hold over me and goblins are afraid of fire. Those I could protect you from, Nikolas, but the Piping Witch is a different story. She earned herself a name for a reason, and you and yours will draw her attention."

A burst of children's laughter rang through the air behind them, and Nikolas paused. He looked over Gingerbread's head at the gaggle of tinker kinder, no doubt running around at perilous speeds within the safety of the wagon train. Had she scared him? Good.

But Nikolas shrugged. "You give these stories too much credence, Girl Gingerbread. Stories are highly prized among we tinkers. They teach by adventure, and explain truths we cannot define." He winked a warm eye at her. "But that does not mean I believe they all happened exactly as they claim."

"Well you had best believe in these stories before we enter those woods," Gingerbread told him as she turned once more to the Woods of Winter White. "It will lessen the shock when one of your fireside tales tries to kill you in the night."

"Kill me? Ha!" Nikolas threw his head back and barked laughter once again.

Gingerbread's eyes flashed and sparks popped against her skin. "It only takes a day to die."

The tinker rumbled laughter. "So fatalistic for one so young, Girl Gingerbread."

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to cut some sort of fear into the man. "You hired me to lead you safely to Tannen Town-" She took a half step forward ignoring the comic difference in their sizes as she scowled up at Nikolas, bringing the unnatural force of her eyes to bear on him.

Nikolas only smiled. "You have. You will!" He put his hands on her shoulders. "Without you, we would have lost the Abels to that avalanche, maybe the old nag as well. You have done a fine job, Girl Gingerbread!"

She shoved one of his hands off. "Don't placate me like one of your stagehands, tinker. Safe is safe and that means we head to Frostlight Bridge."

A hint of steel shone in Nikolas's dark brown eyes. "You may head to the bridge if you like, my girl, but I am going through the woods and the other wagons will follow me." He shrugged a shoulder and offered, "We will wait for you at the bridge if you like."

Gingerbread scowled up at him. Stubborn, pig-headed man. Wait, how was that a secret? "You're a stubborn fool, Nikolas, and I don't follow stubborn fools. Especially where witch's woods are concerned."

Nikolas smiled at her threats. "Ah." He waggled a meaty finger at her, his whiskers bunching up against his apple cheeks. "Yes, you will. I know that you will."

He said it as sly as Aesop's fox. Gingerbread narrowed her eyes at him, unable not to ask, "And how, oh wise one, do you know that?"

Nikolas laughed, the sound deep and round, and Gingerbread's gaze flicked to the mountains to make certain the avalanche didn't follow them down.

"Because you always finish a thing!" he crowed. "Your chores, your little patrols around our camp each night, your plate. Never have I seen you stop before you finished what you began. You remind me of my boyhood terrier that way, Girl Gingerbread."

Gingerbread made a face. Better than a cookie, I guess.

Nikolas sighed and shook his shaggy head, his beard only hiding a scant half of his smile. "Unlike my distractible boy, who reminds me of a frog, forever hopping from one lily pad to the next only to jump back again. So!" He clapped his hands. "Tell me I'm wrong and that will be the end of it."

The girl snorted and rolled her eyes, letting her head tilt to one side of her neck. "No bet. Clatch couldn't focus on a single task to save his life. I learned that much of him these last weeks."

Nikolas did not answer. He raised his bushy black eyebrows at her and waited.

Gingerbread held out until her feet itched in her boots. "Ach, fine," she caved into his insanity, if only to end this absurd conversation. "You paid me to lead you and I will, even through that cursed place, but you-" She jabbed a short finger into Nikolas's barrel chest so hard he exhaled a small oof. "You will do exactly what I say, precisely when I say it while we are in there. You and the rest of the tinkers, but especially you." She narrowed her eyes still further. "Or I really will leave Nikolas. Tannen Town or no Tannen Town."

She waited now, never releasing Nikolas from her eyes. Watching him so closely she saw the thought creep past his thick skull. This place may kill me . . .

He closed his eyes and shook the thought away, flapping a hand at it like he would a fly. "Aye, yes, if you insist on being paranoid."

Gingerbread checked both his hands to make sure he hadn't crossed any of his fingers before scowling up at him again. "I do."

She turned to head back to the caravan and Nikolas came with her, swallowing frosty ground in a single step that took her shorter legs three to cover. Gingerbread pressed her lips tight together as she stared down at the snow-crusted toes of her leather boots. They were useful. Practical. Horribly ugly. She had thought the same at thirteen when she bartered for them but had consoled herself that she would outgrow them before the end of the year. Now, at fifteen, she was facing down the irritating revelation she was destined to remain petite.

The polite term for permanent munchkin, Gingerbread thought as Nikolas outpaced her, reaching the edge of the caravan first.

She followed him into the ring of green and yellow wagons and the wind lessened into a huff. The other tinkers worked like bees around a honeycomb as they broke camp, packing their tools and instruments into their bright homes. They were strange folk, distracted by gears and cogs and strange bits of metal that Gingerbread could fathom no practical use for. But it was like watching magic, the way they could then twist them around into moving puzzles that could them move themselves as toys or trinkets or other useful bobs that they sold in town after entertaining the townsfolk with their stories and songs.

Definitely metal magicians, Gingerbread thought again as she passed the central fire, the mamas and papas sitting around it on their hand-carved benches with tools and trinkets and sewing spread across their laps. Pity they can't stand the title. They have no patience with the reality of magic, or its creatures or practitioners or outright abusers. Gingerbread shook her head. Strange folk.

"Morgen Ginge."

Gingerbread turned toward the male voice only to find a damp, whiskery muzzle waiting just behind her. She pulled away, then leaned around the reindeer's broad head to scowl at the young man standing on the animal's other side, halter held easily by one hand. Tall and lanky, with ginger hair and eyes the color of shadow on snow, Clatch stood as out of place among the dark-haired tinkers as the reindeer would among a flock of sheep. His true name, like hers, had been written over since his birth, and she only knew him as Clatch. But, also like hers, the name suited him in a way Gingerbread couldn't quite define. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she felt easier around the older boy, but the other was that he was one of the few people still alive that would meet her eyes.

He met them now, holding them with the clear blue of his own. Gingerbread tried not to feel uncomfortable.

She ducked her chin into her fur collar and grunted.

Clatch's thick eyebrows rose. "What has you in such a fine mood this morning? Did Stephan call you Ginger again?"

Gingerbread narrowed her eyes into a glare. "No, because he knows that if he does I will break his freckled nose." She drew herself up again and said, "It's your fool of a father this time."

"Step-father," Clatch said without malice. The word was just a simple fact to him. "What's Niko done now?"

Something hot, like a stray spark off the fire, popped against her cheek, and Gingerbread raised a hand to her eye. Her fingers brushed over the rough pinprick left by her unnatural eyes, joining the small crowd of similar burn marks scattered across her cheeks like dark freckles.

She shook her head and exhaled with a loud groan. "He wants, insists, on going through the Winter Whites. I warn him and warn him, but every warning I give only encourages him more!" She pursed her lips.

A rare smile lifted one side of Clatch's mouth, tripping the regular beat of Gingerbread's heart. She froze as it stumbled about trying to find its regular pattern again. Perhaps it was best most others could not meet her eyes if it upset her equilibrium like this.

"I told you," Clatch said in his somber way as he ran a hand down the reindeer's neck before hooking her harness to one of the smaller of the wagons. "If you really wish to dissuade Niko, you have to scare him away with boredom and tedium."

Gingerbread's mouth felt strange now as well as her chest, and with surprise, she realized she had smiled at the boy, however thinly.

"That would be a lot easier if his imagination weren't as big as the rest of him."

Half of a chuckle escaped Clatch before he reigned it in. His face was now as bright as his hair, and he fixed his attention on the reindeer snorting peevishly between them. There were four of them all told in the camp, along with a handful of sturdy ponies, milking goats, woolly ewes, and one gray-whiskered horse that could still pull the prop wagon like a toy cart. Gingerbread eyed the sturdy creature, trying to tell it apart from the others, but wound up shaking her head.

"How can you possibly tell them apart? They all look the same as it is and you went and scrambled up the same letters to name them."

Clatch's bright blue eyes found her over the reindeer's shaggy back. "How can't you?" he returned. "Telling them apart is simple, and their names are just as different as they are."

Gingerbread rolled her eyes at Clatch. "Ah, so you do see my problem."

He ignored her as he straightened the animal's harness. "There's Klingeln, who's always shaking her head to jangle her harness bells because she likes the music, and Klirren who can never remember she has antlers now and keeps banging them into things, which irritates Klingeln. Then Klimpern, who thinks he's in charge. And Silber of course, who actually is."

He finished harnessing the reindeer in front of him and smiled proudly at her. "See? Very different."

Gingerbread eyed the beast then raised her pale eyebrows at Clatch. "And this is . . . ?"

He rolled his eyes skyward and patted the deer in commiseration before coming around her head. "This is Klirren. She's youngest."

She was also eyeing Gingerbread with a frightful light in her eye, but the girl liked to think not all that ire was meant for her. "And undoubtedly blaming her elders for naming her Klirren. Don't worry. I understand. Imagine the name I was laden with to put up with Nikolas's Girl Gingerbread." Then she murmured near the reindeer's ear, "It means they think I look like one of their cookies."

Klirren snorted a moist cloud and shook her head, setting the tarnished bells on her harness ringing, but she allowed Gingerbread to stroke the thick fur carpeting her neck.

"You merely lack appreciation for anything imaginative," Clatch said where he waited a few steps away. The bustle of the other tinkers had reached its crescendo. They would be ready to head out soon.

Gingerbread stretched her short legs to catch up with the tinker's son, and they followed the curve of the wagon train to the pen where they had enclosed the motley herd of animals the night before. Only one remained -- a king among reindeer robed in silver fur and crowned with antlers that never failed to attract attention when they made their parades through the towns. He was the only reindeer Gingerbread recognized by sight.

"Hello Silber," she greeted the lead reindeer, standing up on the middle brace of the fence to reach his eye level. The large reindeer picked his way over the snow to her and snuffed at her offered hands. He exhaled in recognition and lowered his heavy head an inch to give her a chance at reaching his ears.

"Oh sure, him you recognize," Clatch teased her as he secured Silber's halter to his head, mindful of the antlers.

"What can I say?" Gingerbread shrugged as she stepped backward off the fence so Clatch could lead Silber out to the head of the caravan. "He has an unmistakable air." That and all the other reindeer were brown-furred.

The central fire was now out completely, only a thin sigh of steam trailing from the sodden embers, and the wagons sat several inches lower on their axles as the tinkers took their places inside or atop the benches behind their animals. Nikolas's laughter boomed out ahead of them from the front of the caravan. Gingerbread looked around, half expecting to find the glass panes shaking in their window frames.

"Will we enter the woods today?" Clatch asked her.

Gingerbread swung her head to him. Tall as he was, his spindly body was almost lost in Silber's shadow.

She gave a tight nod of her head, the tightness returning to squeeze her innards. "Yes, before noon."