stone walls, there was no escape. What the adults didn’t know was that the witch lived by eating the hearts of the children. Even though she’d eaten lots of hearts, she was still as thin and black as a licorice stick, and her hunger was never satisfied. In the dungeon where she’d locked them away, there was no sunlight except what could make its way through a little crack high up between the stones. For a while every day, the smallest ray of sunshine would enter the dungeon and the children would put out their hands and feel how warm it was. Which was good, except for one thing. It gave them hope, and hope made their hearts grow big, which was exactly what the witch wanted. Hearts fat with hope that would feed her gigantic appetite.
The forest woman told the Vagabonds that they were meant to destroy the witch. So they set off together to seek her out and, although they didn’t know it, to fulfill their hearts’ desires. Before they left, she gave the imp a vial filled with a magical mist and told the imp that when everything looked darkest, he should open the vial and release its contents into the air.
Because of her black magic, the witch knew the Vagabonds were coming, and she sent an army of snakes to attack them. Some of the snakes were poisonous, rattlesnakes and cobras and such, whose bites could kill, and some were boa constrictors and pythons, who wrapped their bodies around their prey and squeezed them until their eyes popped out.
Long before they reached the castle, the Vagabonds spied the witch’s army. The giant, who traveled with a club as big as an oak tree, went first, swinging his mighty club and killing snakes right and left. The wizard cast a spell so the snakes’ poison couldn’t hurt the Vagabonds. The fairy princess used her wings to fly above them and sprinkle the snakes with fairy dust that turned many of them to harmless worms. But the snakes kept coming, so many that they threatened to overwhelm the Vagabonds, and things looked pretty bad.
That’s when the imp remembered the vial the forest woman had given him, and he pulled out the stopper and released the mist into the air. The little cloud grew huge and gray and blinding to the snakes, and they couldn’t see the four Vagabonds, who slipped away and left them far behind. Blind and confused, the snakes began fighting among themselves, killing one another until the whole army had destroyed itself.
“And that’s the end of that adventure,” I said.
“But what about the Black Witch, Odie?” Emmy said. “Do they ever kill her?”
I tapped the end of her nose with my finger and said, “Their odyssey isn’t over, and that’s another story.”
It had grown late. The fire was dying and the sliver of a new moon had risen over the island. Emmy lay wrapped in her blanket, safe between Mose and me. Albert, still weak from his ordeal, lay at my other side, his eyes already closed. After a while, I heard deep, sonorous breathing from them all. I was still plagued with the insomnia that had beset me after I killed Jack, and after a while, I stood quietly and walked across the sand, a soft stretch of pale gray under the stars and the slender moon. The river was broad and still and black in its sweep around the island. In the distance beyond the trees that edged the riverbank, a gathering of lights marked a small village. I imagined the people in the houses there, safe in their slumbering, happy in the comfort of the love they shared as families, as friends. I’d envied them once, but no longer. Like one of the Vagabonds, I had no idea where I was headed, but it didn’t matter. Because I knew exactly where my heart was.
- PART FOUR -
THE ODYSSEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
WE STAYED ON that island in the middle of the Minnesota River for two full days while Albert continued to recover his strength. The wall of jumbled driftwood, much of which was whole tree trunks that had been carried on the raging river’s back during floods, offered us both shelter and a blind behind which to hide from prying eyes, although in the time we were there, I saw not a single soul along the riverbanks. I made Emmy another sock puppet to replace Puff, which Jack had taken from her. For this one,