again or if her story was true. “It caused her a horrible toothache. Sometimes, the pain was so unbearable she screamed like a mad woman in the middle of the night. My foster father brought her chewing sticks from Dame Gothel which were said to cast the demon away by chewing them on a full moon.”
What can I say? It was a time when toothpaste worming its way out of a tube could have been thought of as an evil snake.
“Did it work,” Hansel had his hand on his cheek, having an ache for a pain that wasn’t even there.
“Nah,” Wendy said. “It caused some of her other teeth to break.”
Gretel laughed, “Of course. Who chews sticks? Your adopted mother is…” she stopped, realizing that it wasn’t a good idea offending Wendy, although she doubted Wendy cared the least about her foster parents.
“A nutcracker. She is a nutcracker, real one,” Wendy laughed. “I hate my foster parents.”
Gretel laughed, too. Oh boy, she had that cute thing about her again. She was one of the few girls that made me want to have kids that’d look like her when I grew up. I’d love to have a weird, bookish, cute wanna-be witch kid like her—but I knew I was never going to get married. Fall in love, yes, but not married, and I had my reasons.
“If she was such a loony nutcracker, she should have cracked that demon worm already,” Hansel said.
None of the girls commented on his dimwit, misunderstanding of the concept of humor.
“What happened then?” Gretel asked.
“They hosted a Séance in the house to cast that demon worm away,” Wendy rolled her eyes. “The plan was to commune with an even greater demon to fight it back.”
“I don’t want to have to do a Séance,” Hansel commented, already imagining he had a demon worm.
“Did it work?” Gretel asked. It was as if Hansel didn’t exist anymore. Whatever he said was like a bird chirping nearby. Let it sing.
“Of course, not,” Wendy said. “The Séance conjured a bigger demon, though. It was called the Boogeyman.”
Gretel shrieked. I assumed she must have read about Boogeymen, and they scared the pigtails out of her.
“They managed to trap it in the closet and burn it eventually,” Wendy said.
“And the demon worm?” Hansel scratched his head.
“The demon worm was stronger. It was still there, eating my foster mother alive,” Wendy said happily. “Sadly, she managed to take it out later.”
“What did she do?”
“First, a physician advised her to use magic sticks,” Wendy said. “Unlike chewing sticks, you stick them in your mouth and probe the fillers between the teeth until you get the demon out and poke it to death”
“I would love to poke the demon worm to death with a short and small stick,” Gretel said. “Looks really fun.”
“The problem was that it hurt like hell, so my foster father had to ask around for a better solution.”
“Rip your foster mother’s jaw out?” Gretel said, and I had a feeling that she wasn’t joking. Although she was nice, wanting to be a witch seemed to have messed with her head a bit.
“I wish,” Wendy said. It was the first moment the two seemed to get along. “One day my foster father came home with an expensive looking box with weird engravings on it. I don’t know how he got it, but he said that what was in the box existed only in the Queen’s personal chamber, a special gift from other-wordly places.”
“And how did he get his hands on it?” Hansel wondered. “Your foster father isn’t a thief, or?”
This part was the most interesting to me, because I was curious about if her foster father was a thief. I knew I hadn’t stolen such an instrument—I was young and hadn’t learned about stealing from the Queen’s castle. Actually, I should credit this incident for suggesting the idea.
“How should I know?” Wendy answered annoyingly. “I hope they both burn in the wicked witch’s oven for all I care. The point is that the thing inside the box was something I had
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