Free One Witch at a Time by Stacy DeKeyser

it.”
    â€œAs well they should,” said Ludwig, with a pointed glance at his daughter. Agatha’s face remainedexpressionless, though she would not meet her father’s gaze.
    Rudi observed this tense exchange without remark, and wondered what they were really quarreling about.
    Then all at once he understood.
    Agatha had been to Klausen and back, hadn’t she? Which meant that she had crossed the enchanted border without the aid of the magic beanstalk, and yet somehow she had not met the same fate as the snow finch. And she had done it, Rudi was sure, without telling her father.
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Susanna Louisa, oblivious to the friction between father and daughter. “Our own witch helped us get here, and she will help us get home again.”
    â€œBut while we’re in Petz, we are on our own,” Rudi added. “We must venture to the witch’s lair but avoid the witch himself, if we want to go home again.”
    â€œWhich we do,” added Susanna Louisa.
    â€œOf course you do,” said Ludwig, his face softening. “But truly, I cannot advise you. You’d never catch me anywhere near the place.”
    â€œIf you keep to the shadows, you’ll manage. The Giant’s eyesight is lacking, and so is his hearing.” This was Agatha, who still would not look at her father as she spoke.
    â€œHe doesn’t sound very worrisome, for a witch,” said Susanna hopefully.
    â€œHe makes up for it in other ways,” answered Ludwig, still frowning at his daughter. “They say he can smell a drop of blood a mile away.”
    â€œPardon me,” said Rudi. “Why do you call your witch ‘the Giant’?”
    â€œHe’s a great huge man,” answered Ludwig. “As tall as three men, with legs like tree trunks. Some say he was born that way. Others say he grows year by year.”
    â€œHe’s an evil tyrant,” said Agatha, and now her eyes gleamed in anger. “Whatever he can, he takes for himself, and all the better if it makes us suffer. Every scrap of firewood thicker than my finger. Every scrawny rabbit we manage to snare. If anyone in Petz so much as sprouts a turnip seed on their windowsill, he takes it.”
    â€œSo he does,” said Ludwig sadly. “He made off with every cow and chicken and goat long ago. Some folk say he’s hoarded the summer itself, to better control all its bounty. Then he doles it out as he sees fit. Without the meager sustenance he provides, every last one of us would freeze to death, or starve. We’re forever on the brink of both at any rate. Never mind that we are prisoners in our own country.”
    Rudi considered all this. How lucky were the folk of Brixen that they could trust their witch, and that she treated them with fairness and respect? She was powerful enough that—if she wanted to—she could be as merciless as the witch of Petz.
    â€œListen to me now,” continued Ludwig. “About this errand of yours. You may think you have everything in hand, but—”
    A sudden scrape of chair legs, and Agatha stood. “I will show you the way.”

12
    They stared at her, all three of them.
    Ludwig was the first to find his voice. “You will not! I just got you back from who-knows-where. I’ll not risk losing you again!”
    Rudi’s ears perked up at this. So Ludwig knew that Agatha had been gone. But he was not sure where she had gone, and now Rudi was certain that Agatha did not want her father to know.
    â€œYou heard what he said, Papa. He cannot disobey his witch.”
    Ludwig rose from his chair, fists clenched at his sides. “But you have no such duty. You’re my daughter, and you’ll stay home, where you belong!”
    Agatha gestured toward Rudi and Susanna. “These two are strangers here. You know they willfail miserably without someone to guide them.”
    Rudi managed to feel grateful and insulted all at