Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [74]
So Max went dejected back into the woods.
On the second year’s encounter, Max showed how he could make a full, prepared dinner appear out of nothing at all. He sat at an elegant table, covered with a white cloth of fine linen, and dined on a dozen gourmet courses, served on platters of pure silver.
When he was done, and the table and the silver and all of the scraps vanished into the nothing it had once been, all she said was, “You look silly, sitting naked and filthy at a fine table. Pick the twigs out of your hair. And is that supposed to be a beard trying to dress your chin?”
And so it went. Year after year he presented himself at the witch’s house, but each time she turned him away on some pretext or another. Then, when seven full years had come and gone, Max returned once more to the witch’s dwelling. He was still naked and his flesh was pale in the moonlight. His hair was long and tangled, as were his whiskers. His eyes were dark and shadowed. He held Fire in one hand and it seemed by then to be a piece of him. He appeared out of the dark of the woods, but he didn’t knock at her door, nor did he call out.
Sitting by her fireplace, in the comfortable chair of which she was most fond, reading by the fire’s homey light, an odd feeling came over the witch. She marked her place in the book and set it aside. Walking to the door she said, “Be on guard,” to the fat yellow tom, with its many scars of battle. Opening the lion-headed door, she looked out to behold Max, standing in the middle of the road, regarding her with terrifying eyes.
“I’m finished dancing to your tune,” Max said.
“Then why are you here?” the young girl said. She sensed many shadowed things at the edges of the forest. Large and deadly shades, not entirely part of this world, lurked just out of sight, hungry, restless and straining to be set loose.
“I’ve returned for my things.”
“And so you shall have them,” she answered, “for you’ve finally become all that I’d hoped. Now, at long last, you can reenter the world of men and conduct my mortal affairs.”
“Do you think so? After so long?”
“Of course. All three knights of the road are still in Hamelin, where they’ve flourished, rising to diverse positions of power and authority over the city and its outlying districts, for leagues in every direction. My many spies have kept them under close scrutiny for all these years. They’ve each married and sired children, on whom they dote. And this is where my vengeance will fall, because simply killing them long ago wouldn’t have done. They wouldn’t have suffered near enough. Instead I will now deprive them of that which they love most.”
“You misunderstand me,” Max said. “I was asking how you can still expect me to do your dirty business after so long. I’ve learned too much from Fire — perhaps more than you’d anticipated. Now I control powers and forces from far beyond the lands that we know. How do you imagine you can continue to bend me to your will? What can you possibly do to threaten me now?”
“Nothing much, I suppose,” she said. For the first time in countless years, the witch felt the alien touch of concern for her own safety. He has indeed surpassed all that I’d expected, she thought. How much power is bound up within that one small device?
“But here’s one talent I wonder if you’ve managed to master,” she continued. Her calm voice masked her unaccustomed anxiety. “In all the years you’ve played with Fire, and played upon it, have you ever tried to use it to locate Frost, and the brother who keeps it from you? And, if you’ve tried, have you ever succeeded?”
“What are you getting at, woman?”
“Only this: I know where Frost is. For all these years that you’ve been learning the ways of Fire, I’ve been doing the same with Frost, always from a discreet distance of course. It’s a wonderful and ancient thing and, for all its raw power, Fire will never be able to find it, because Frost, though less powerful, is more ancient and more cunning. Peter and his flute are forever invisible to you.”
“But