ACT 1: SCENE 2
The Boy sighed as he approached the cottage, as Nettlewart's growing ranting drove him out of his daydream. The beautiful ragged girl he had been running free through the forest with disappeared from his imagination for the time being.
"Until tonight" he told her silently.
He picked a couple of cupcakes from the pathway and went inside.
"Got the firewood" he ventured, throwing the bundle of sticks next to the stove.
Nettlewart didn't hear, or at least didn't listen. She just carried on complaining.
"I'm starving, Boy!" she snapped, "I'm so hungry I could eat a... a tarantula!"
"You eat tarantulas all the time," replied The Boy patiently, "you like them. They're your favourite spider. Nice and juicy, apparently."
Nettlewart stopped pacing and glared at her sidekick. "It was a figure of speech, Boy. I just wanted to explain to you how hungry I am." She sank down in her armchair sadly and put a hand against her brow, pouting. "Not that you care."
The Boy blinked. He hated it when she tried that Femme Fatale act on with him. It wasn't that she was unattractive. She wasn't bony or warty or old, but had a curvaceous figure and vibrant green eyes that suited the Witch's vampy black dress down to the ground. She was going into middle age with considerable style, her only real sign of ageing being a single white streak running through her jet black hair. Admittedly the only other women the Boy had ever seen had been in books and dreams but Nettlewart appeared to be fairly good looking. But she had raised him for pity's sake. She had brought him up from infancy and she was, well, evil. The Boy sometimes worried that since he had grown into a young man she might have feelings for him, after all she must get lonely just like he did. But he never worried for very long. She would follow any acts of kindness or fondness with ones of such cruelty that it was obvious that she didn't care for him. No, she didn't love the Boy. She just wanted to control him.
"Nettie", said the Boy, "need I remind you that not only do you have the power to turn any stone or rock into bread and cakes, but that the outside of your entire house is made out of gingerbread and candy."
He offered Nettlewart one of the cupcakes he'd picked up. As usual, Nettie stared at it for a couple of seconds, frowning, unsure, her lips moving silently, before angrily slapping it on the floor. The cake exploded into crumbs on the stone floor. The Witch ground her teeth.
"I hate it!" she cried, her eyes blackening with fury, "I hate cakes and sweets and candy! I hate that look of happiness and satisfaction when people eat them."
The Boy chewed quietly on his cupcake. It was moist and rich and chocolatey. he'd long ago stopped trying to seem as if he didn't enjoy them, just to placate Nettie. After all, Ms Snapdragon did make exceedingly good cakes... He completely failed to surpress an "Mmmm".
Nettlewart's face contorted as though he'd just scraped his fingernails down a blackboard.
"Stop doing that! Stop enjoying that cake!"
The Boy hid the remains of the cupcake behind his back and smiled a sheepish, fudgey smile.
"Ironic, isn't it" he ventured after a moment's silence.
"What is?"
"Well," continued the Boy, gently putting his cake aside for later and brushing crumbs from the corners of his mouth, "here you are, the famous Witch of the Western Woods, the last in a long line of Snapdragons, the only Wicked Witch in a Kingdom that's falling apart. You should have dominion here in Pantoland. But it just so happened that your natural magic powers were for turning stone into sweetmeats, for turning famines into feasts and making people happy." More often than not reminding Nettlewart of her shortcomings ended badly for the Boy, but it was usually worth it, to see the growing glimmer of self doubt on her face. And maybe some day that doubt would stay with her for long enough for him to get away. He looked deeply into her hard green eyes now. "And what kind of powers are they for a Wicked Witch to have? What kind of Witch does that make you?"
The Boy thought he could see Nettie's eyes brighten with tears a little as she gazed straight through him.
Just for a moment, she saw the interior of the cottage darken even more, saw strange meats hanging from the beams and the fire become cold and tinged with green. And next to the fire she saw a woman all in black, skinny and sharp, with her staff. Nettie ran her fingers over the staff impulsively, feeling the magic crackle on the palms of her hands. The floor was covered with sponges and scones, chocolates and sweets, and next to the woman was a huge mound of pebbles on one side and a familiar, dark haired little girl on the other. The woman and the girl were both crying. The woman reached over and handed the girl a pebble. There was a brief burst of natural magic and a sticky bun dropped out of the girl's hands. It rolled over the dusty floor and joined the carpet of sugary treats as the woman slapped the girl, hard, in the face and reached over and gave her another pebble. Another burst of magic, another cake, another slap. Nettie's hands moved faster over her staff as the scene played itself over and over to her, like a stuck record in her mind.
The Boy, eyes still on her, took a step backwards towards the door.
The crackling magic of the staff brought Nettie out of her brief trance suddenly. The macabre broken record pulled away from her and her eyes focused on the Boy's. The staff itched in her hands. Without even thinking she brought it down swiftly and very very hard in the Boy's stomach. The Boy gasped in breathless pain as he concertina'd to the floor. The staff itched again and quivered towards the Boy's head. Nettlewart stood over the prone Boy, the staff raised. At moments like this she could kill him. She really could. The staff was powerful enough. Just one blow and... and she'd be alone again. Nettie threw the staff down and pulled the Boy up by his collar. She slapped him, once, across the cheek.
"And that's from me" she thought.
"What kind of power indeed," she said finally, "but I'll show them, see? I'll show them. All these sweets and treats will be the end of every greedy, sticky faced child in Pantoland."
The Boy was still gasping for breath and fighting back tears. He'd really riled her this time. He'd never seen her so angry before. Never seen her mean her threats so much before either. She might actually go through with The Plan this time. And if she did, whispered a little voice that he wasn't sure was completely his, it would be his fault.
"I think it's time," continued Nettlewart, "that we put The Plan into action. Then we'll see who's a real Wicked Witch."
The Boy sighed. "You're going to try to kill their children."
"No, Boy. I'm not going to try. I'm going to succeed. I'll bring them here and kill them and then I'll put them in the pot and I'll finally have something decent to eat. Not just children either. Any human under 30's tender enough to eat if you prepare them well." She took a dusty book off a shelf, opened it at a bookmarked page and showed it to the Boy. "Look".
The Boy peered at the spindly writing showing the recipe for "Humann Stewe". Indeed, the first paragraph was devoted to dispelling the myth that only children were fit to eat and there was a table near the end showing different cooking times for people of different ages and builds. His eye was involuntarily drawn to "Male, 20-23 yeer, of stuntede stature and skinnie bild" and was surprisingly interested that he'd only take two hours to boil but would need "muche seasoning". Nettlewart looked at the table herself. "Only two hours for you, eh? And I'd only need my medium sized pot."
The Boy was never sure whether to take Nettlewart's threats to kill him seriously. She'd always had a warped sense of humour and she seemed to need him around. But then he remembered that blackness in her eyes when she stood over him, that staff poised over his skull, just waiting to smash him to pieces.
"Last time I looked, there were hedgehogs hibernating in your medium sized pot."
"Oh I'm sure you can clean it out before you fill it" replied the witch, glad to have unnerved the Boy enough to think up reasons why she shouldn't eat him. "Now let's see. Will need much seasoning. Stew with carrots, celery, shallots..."
"We don't have any shallots" interrupted the Boy.
"Hmm," pondered Nettie, enjoying herself thoroughly, "do we have onions?"
"Well, yes..."
"They'll have to do then" smiled Nettie, taking the book over to her middle sized cauldron and peering inside. There weren't any hedgehogs in there at all. "You see," she continued, "this way we won't have to bother the nice people of Pantoland at all."
"But you can't kill me."
"Why not?"
"You'll be lonely."
"Ha. You call yourself good company? With your whining and your trying to escape and your sarcastic remarks?"
The Boy thought for a moment. "If you kill me," he said eventually, "who'll wash up afterwards?"
Nettlewart was silent.
"You need me," continued the Boy, "it'll be much better if you..." the Boy's voice gave out. He couldn't believe how the sentence he'd just started was going to end. Nettie finished it for him.
"If I kill somebody else instead?"
The Boy sagged and tried to pretend to himself that that wasn't what he'd meant. That he hadn't started to think like, well, like a Wicked Witch's henchman. He raised his eyes to look at Nettie. You're just like her, sang the voice, In fact, you're worse.
"But there's good in me", he thought, "so much potential to be good."
And still you let her shape you. That's what makes you worse.
"So you understand" said Nettlewart.
"What?" exclaimed the Boy, snapping out of it, "no! What is there to understand?"
"That this is what real Wicked Witches do," replied Nettlewart, "they eat children and they steal babies from their cradles. They don't spend their lives making cakes and looking after foundlings." She picked up her staff again and her expression set in determination. "Those days are over, Boy. Nettlewart Snapdragon's time has come."
The Boy sighed in defeat and thought about The Plan. About what she was going to make him do. The first other people he'll have ever met, and she was going to have him kill and cook them...
The first other people he'll have ever met. Because nobody ever goes into the Western Woods. Because there's a witch in the Western Woods. A slow smile began to spread over him.
"How are you going to do it?"
"What?"
"How are you going to lure people to your cottage when you never go into town and nobody ever goes into the Western Woods?"
Nettlewart's face fell. The staff grew dull. She hadn't thought of that.
"They know about you!" continued the Boy, "They're scared of you. They'll be on their guard..."
The Boy was right. Nettlewart's mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she invented and discarded comebacks, and then set in a tight, puckered knot. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she turned on her heels and stormed out of the room to her study.
"Put those things away, Boy" she shouted behind her as she went, "and sweep the floor. There's crumbs everywhere."
She stopped just behind the study door, however, listening to the deliberate clatter of the cooking pots being taken back to their usual corner. He had to know that she couldn't in fact hear him from anywhere, at any time, otherwise he wouldn't try this trick so often. So she had to keep up the illusion. The clattering stopped, and she knew that he was tiptoeing towards the door. Nettie cleared her throat.
"Are you trying to escape, Boy?"
There was a thicker silence than before, as the almost inaudible sound of the Boy's footsteps stopped abruptly.
"No" came the unconvincing reply.
"Oh yes you are. You always do when you go quiet like that."
"Oh no I'm not." His reply had a strange, sing-song quality to it.
"Oh yes you are" she replied automatically in the same strange tones. Her staff started to hum with magic.
"Oh no I'm not."
"Oh yes you are." The staff crackled.
"Oh no I'm not."
"Oh yes you are!" She couldn't help herself now, was caught up in its rhythm. The magic building up in the staff was shooting up her arm, screaming to her. Listen to yourself! Listen to what you're saying! She felt herself being physically shaken out of some sort of trance. "You are and I wouldn't advise it."
"What would you do?" called the Boy in his normal voice again, "Turn me into a gingerbread man?"
"What just happened?" thought the witch, "I should remember but... what does this mean?"
"You don't know that I can't do that" she called back, "but I needn't bother." Nettlewart gripped the staff and concentrated for a moment. "The wolves would get you first."
A pack of wolves howled close by, right on cue. Nettlewart heard the Boy move away from the door, sigh and pick up the broom. She relaxed, and went to go to her books. But something made her stay.
"Listen," something said to her, "listen and you'll know what's starting to happen."
The howling died down, leaving the Boy sweeping in a defeated silence. Except that he could sort of hear something. Music. Sad music that pulsed in rhythm with the slow strokes of the broom against the stone floor. It was his sad song. And suddenly he was singing it. He sang about how he was trapped in the cottage, trapped in a life of evil, how Nettlewart had raised him, how she was cruel to him, how he didn't want to become like her and how worthless he was, not even worthy of a name. The parents that abandoned him had thought so, and Nettlewart had agreed.
Nettie stood by the door, her mouth agape. The Boy was singing! Singing his story, singing his back plot for Heaven's sake. He was making rhymes, plays on words, making it all scan and fit with this sad tune as though he'd practised it a million times over and he didn't seem to know he was even doing it. And the music - his music was all around him, coming from nowhere.
"Oh yes it is..." she murmured.
It was beginning again. The story was starting up again. Somehow, Pantomime was coming back to life. Nettlewart squeezed her staff and gazed up, listening to the magical music. Concentrating, she began to see through her ceiling and up into the twilight. Following the rhyme and reason, she began to see a brightness in the ether.
A brightness in the ether!
Following the rhyme and reason!
She's seen me. She knows what I'm doing. And so soon.
Where has she learnt this? Why didn't I see? She's a Pantomime witch, full of inner conflict. She is supposed to be defeatable, able to learn the error of her ways and repent. She's not supposed to find me out.
But what can she do? Everybody in Pantoland has to live by its conventions. Everything has to end well. What can she do?
Magic poured from the staff into her hands and up her arms. Her eyes darkened.
"So," she whispered into the brightness, "trying to make everything end Happily Ever After are you?"
The Boy had reached a bridge of sorts. The music had become more lyrical and the song had become very personal indeed. He was singing about the dream girl while hugging the broom and swaying.
"There's a face so brave and gentle that it haunts me every night, " he sang, wistfully,
"In a world so dark and cold it fills my vision with its light,
She seems just like an angel that could help me in my..."
Nettlewart flew back into the room confidently, carrying her well thumbed Black Book. Singing about your girlfriend, Boy? How pathetic.
The Boy looked at the broom. The soft curves had disappeared and the hair had coarsened into straw. It was a broom again.
"What are you doing?" he asked as Nettlewart, studying the book, took various candles, crystals and undesirable things in jars from her shelves.
"Conjuring", she replied, pulling a couple of larger eyeballs from a pot. "The usual." Studying the book again, she began placing the things in a circle, before crushing the eyes and carefully placing the resulting goo in the middle.
"That's lovely," said the Boy. "I've just swept that floor."
"Shut up Boy."
The Boy began to back away. There was something about the look in her eyes that wasn't right. Like the look she'd had when she hit him with the staff but, but more so. There was a new confidence about her, as if all of a sudden there was a secret she knew that nobody else did.
"What are you conjuring, Nettie? Does this have anything to do with The Plan? Have you worked out how to get people to come here?"
Nettlewart risked a glance away from the circle and grinned at the Boy. "Better, Boy. Much better. You see, I've just worked something out. The Pantomime's back."
"What?"
"You won't remember it. The last time Pantomime was alive here was before you... before your time. But it's started back up again."
"Why?"
"I don't know why." Nettlewart concentrated back on the circle which was beginning to fizz.
"Do you think the Prince has come back?"
Nettlewart just laughed. Sparks flew from the bubbling circle and from her fingertips.
"But why is this good?" asked the Boy, his back pressed hard against the wall, trying not to look into the brightness in the circle. "Doesn't Pantomime have rules? Aren't the baddies supposed to lose?"
"Yes, they are," replied the witch, "but they didn't the last time. The goodies lost the last time, while Pantomime wasn't looking, and that changed things."
"So we can beat it?"
"No. We can use it."
The circle was a turmoil now, frothing and thrashing. The Boy closed his eyes and turned his face from it as stray tendrils of magic plucked at his hair and skin.
"Use it? How?"
"Because, Boy, if Pantomime is back, we have a narrator. Somebody with power and control over everything that happens here. And if I can control the narrator, then I control it all."
Plucked from nothing, out of the night, streaming through space and story. Following my own trail of rhyme and reason...
The brightness in the circle begins to take shape. A human form - an Ancient, a Muse. After all, it's what they were expect. It's easier.
The magic died down. The Boy opened his eyes. Standing in the circle was an ethereal figure, androgynous and white robed.
I look into his eyes. He is smaller than I had expected. The witch is watching me intently. There is something strained about her that I see through the coolness of her expression, as though she were being stretched thinly in some invisible way. She knows now how much power it takes to keep me here. But it is working. I cannot leave. The Boy speaks.
"So you're the narrator."
"Yes."
"And we're in a story?"
"You were."
"Were we going to lose?"
"What's your name, Boy?"
"What is this," snapped Nettlewart, "Questions and Answers?"
"I don't have one" the Boy answered the figure in the circle.
"Everybody does. What are you doing here?"
The witch, enraged, hurled herself at the figure and shook it.
"Shut up, you. I know what you're trying to do and it won't work."
"Neither will what you're trying to do. You can't keep me here forever. You can't stop the story."
"I know that. But I can win the story with a little help. Now I'm sure you've been setting up characters, plot devices, conflicts and all the rest. And I'm sure you can think of a mother or a father, not a bad parent but who can be turned into a bad parent..."
She is looking into my mind. The staff in her hand sparks and crackles.
"Somebody who's desperate. Destitute and starving... sick with love and desperately lonely. Desperate enough to send their children into the Western Woods but moral enough to be driven mad with the guilt afterwards."
Straight into my mind!
"You know somebody like that, don't you."
There was a moment's silence. The Boy stared sadly at the trapped figure.
"This is wrong." He shuffled slightly, uneasily. "This is all wrong Nettie. We're messing with things that we shouldn't be. The rules of Pantomime... they're ancient. They're magic. They're bigger and stronger than us."
Nettlewart kept gazing calmly into the eyes of the encircled figure.
"I've already told you Boy. They can be broken. They've been broken before. Pantomime's unravelling and this... this ghost of the past is too late to stop it coming apart completely. You see, it thinks that Pantomime can still be saved while those waifs in Pantoland still have the innocence and hope left over from the Golden Age. Well I'll put a stop to all of that. They won't leave their doors unlocked any more when I've done with them. They won't trust their neighbours. They won't have hope or innocence or love or fantasy any more. And the old magic will be forgotten. The only magic will be mine, something to fear. And Pantomime will have completely disappeared."
Ah, the old "Announce Your Evil Plans Right At The Start" routine. Maybe she can't resist the old rules after all.
She leans in close to me and whispers in my ear.
"Now, I know you know somebody I can use. You need to give them a reason to send their kiddies out into the Western Woods. When it's nice and dark.
"It doesn't work like that. I can't just decide that a good mother is going to send her children into certain danger and then she'll do it."
"Then persuade her. Tell her that it's in her best interests, narratively speaking. She'll trust you, you're on her side after all."
"How should I do that? I can't reveal myself to her, if everybody knows that they're in a story then..."
"A dream. A dream should do it. I mean, it's a corny old device, so it's perfect for Panto!"
Meanwhile the stars brightened in the indigo sky and a full moon swam slowly over the treetops. There wasn't a single wolf cry to be heard.