His father was home by the time he made it to shore, but later that afternoon he was able to come up with an excuse to go into the village, where he found Hans and Liesel walking down the path from the Klein’s farm, where they sometimes went to be alone. Liesel split off and hurried through the field before Fritz reached them.
He told Hans about the berries. Hans said, “Okay, go run and pick some, and then we’ll know for sure.”
Fritz had thought Hans might go with him, but he didn’t; he probably had more important things to do than run down the road checking on out-of-season berry bushes. But Fritz also couldn’t be gone from home that long or his father would notice. So he waited until that night, when his father went to bed—always early these days, asleep with the sun—before he ventured down the west road. He didn’t take a light with him, because the blue-flame lanterns along the road were always lit, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He jogged the whole way to the bridge; the forest made his hair stand onend. When he reached his destination, he didn’t have to search long: right off the road was a loaded redberry bush, as fresh and green as if it was high summer. He pocketed a handful, his fingers shaking in his gloves, and took off back for the village, all exhaustion forgotten. The fish could grant wishes.
He went straight to Hans—no one else would believe him, even if they saw the berries, he was sure. He wasn’t sure how he was going to wake Hans without also waking Jürgen, but when he arrived at the butcher’s shop, there was a lantern flickering out back, and he found Hans at the large wooden tray he used for bleaching bones. Hans was bent over the tray, arranging bones of all sizes. The sunlight over Greymist Fair was rarely very strong, but Hans was patient.
Fritz approached him cautiously, and Hans glanced up as if he’d known Fritz would appear at that moment. Fritz said nothing, just held out the berries. Hans stared at them. Plucked one from Fritz’s hand. Ate it.
Then he looked at Fritz, eyes dark in the lantern light, and said, “Let’s make another wish.”
Three
The second wish had been much more public. Hans had wanted elk to stampede through the village. Several would be killed, giving his father more meat to butcher and sell and giving Hans more bones to pick through. Fritz, entranced by this magic, had mostly worried about how to form the wish to ensure no one was injured in the stampede, but the flounder had bigger problems.
“You promised you’d use this one to turn me human again,” the fish said, wriggling in agitation. “You’ll be going against your word, boy.”
“No, I won’t,” Fritz said. “I promised I would use a wish to turn you human again; I didn’t promise I would use mynextwish to turn you human again. And I will! I will use a wish to turn you human again, but if I turn you human now, you’ll probably run off.”
“I’m not granting you any more wishes until you turn me human.”
“Okay, well...” Fritz thought for a moment. “Then I guess you’ll stay in this inlet, and I’ll cover the entrance with even more branches to hide it so no one ever comes back here again, and you can stay a flounder forever.”
This prompted the flounder’s most intense bout of flailing, along with a string of very human curses that had Fritz’s ears turning pink. When the flounder at last seemed to tire, it stared up at him with its beady little eyes and said,“Fine.”
And so there had been a stampede of elk, and Fritz hadn’t even been there to see it, but he saw the results. With the recent death of Tomas, and Heike’s journey into the woods, not to mention the strange and worsening weather they’d experienced, much of the village was in a haze of excitement and suspicion. Fritz realized too late that the stampede of elk was, to many of the villagers, another sign that Death had killed the witch and now reigned over the woods, as Heike had said. So close to Yule, with snow already dusting the ground and more promised by the darkening clouds, everyone should have been preparing for twelve days of feasting, gift giving, and celebration. Instead, they were more frightened of the woods than ever and looking for someone to blame.
Hans had been placated by the elk for a while. But then his father had died and been outed as the murderer of children,and he was alone, and he’d come and found Fritz and asked to be made king of Greymist Fair. No one in town liked Hans all that much, but Fritz wasn’t sure they likedhim, either, and so he didn’t know whose word they would take if Hans decided to tell his lies. Hans as king probably wouldn’t be all that bad. He would get bored with it quickly, Fritz was sure. Absolutely sure.
So, Fritz rowed to the inlet the fourth time, netted the flounder, and pulled it up into his little boat. “What does he wantnow?” the flounder had asked, and Fritz could not tell it. He was sure if he said it, the flounder wouldn’t give him the riddle.
“It’s freezing up here, pock face,” said the flounder irritably. “Let’s get this over with.Some call him ugly, some call him annoying, all call him friendless. He doesn’t even realize. Who is he?”
“He’s you,” Fritz said, surprised to find he was annoyed that the riddle wasn’t harder. If it had been difficult enough so that he couldn’t solve it, then Hans wouldn’t get to be king.
You could wish for something else, Fritz thought.You don’t have to do what Hans wants.
But then who would talk to Fritz?
The flounder looked surprised, as much as it was possible for a flounder to look surprised. “I—well—I suppose that—it’s nottechnicallyincorrect—the way I look now and—do you think I’m annoying?”
“Was that not the answer?”
“No! The answer was—ugh—the answer wasyou, yes, butyouyou, notmeyou! But even so—I didn’t always look like this, you know! I look much better when I’m not a fish!”
Confused, Fritz stared at the flounder. “I’m sure you’re very... handsome? As a human. But you’re saying I answered correctly?”
“Isuppose—although I’m not—Evren would still be my friend, wherever he is. Evren’s not still in the town, is he?”
“I don’t know who Evren is.”
“Of course you don’t. He left. Probably thought I ran off without him. Oh, fine! Make your wish and leave me alone!”
Fritz made the wish. The flounder went still for a very long time, and then seemed to deflate on the bottom of the boat.
“Oh, what have you done, pock face?” the flounder asked tiredly. “What have you done for this boy you think is your friend?”
Four
