ACT 1: SCENE 9
Once alone in her study, Nettlewart sagged heavily against the glowing staff. She knew she wouldn't need to create a proper circle again, but chalked a rough round outline on the floor. She stood up and looked at it for a moment, then found a book of matches in one of her pockets and lit a few black candles just in case. She sat in her armchair outside it and held her staff upright in front of her. She relaxed a little and let her mind's eye be drawn up into the cosmos again.
Where she finds me.
Back in their world, trapped within the chalk, I assume my human form and turn to face her.
"Hello again."
Hello.
"Well, you've done a wonderful job."
Thankyou.
"I particularly like the doomed romance."
Yes.
There is a pause.
So why, since I've been doing so well, have you brought me back here?
The Witch sighs.
"You know why. You can see."
I can indeed. Her magic binds me, the Boy and Gretel, as well as wrapping itself around most of the Western Woods. As powerful as it is, it has become stretched too thinly. The smallest upset or lapse in concentration now could punch a hole in it. And then it would begin to tear, to disappear into itself. Even the staff, usually humming with blood and bile and hatred, looks exhausted.
"The girl was more powerful than I'd thought. She was the last straw. One of you will have to go."
Me?
"As little as I want to see you out of my service, yes. The woods are my main defence, you know why I can't get rid of the Boy and as for Gretel... the wand likes her. It sees potential in her, given the right tutorage."
You won't let me get back to my business.
"Not if I want to be hacked up or burnt by an angry mob I don't. You'd always fail to mention that in your Happily Ever Afters, wouldn't you.
I make sure that Villains are forgiven.
"Oh yes, the baddy says they're sorry and everybody forgives them and they all sing a song about it. While you're around. But Witches and Goblins and Ogres don't change. Can't change. And neither do people. And as soon as the Panto's over either the villain finds a way to carry on or the people find a way to make sure they don't. Raven was clever enough to escape execution but there were plenty who weren't.
You would be spared. I promise.
"But I wouldn't win."
No. So you will kill me.
"You know full well that I can't. That would kill us all."
So what will you do?
"I can make a new rule."
The witch stands, goes to a stack of shelves and picks up a small glass jar. It is uncoloured, unmarked, unlabelled, just like a hundred other jars in the study alone. It is innocuous. Too innocuous.
"I can take Pantomime away from you."
Oh no you can't.
"Don't you try to be cute with me. I know how to do it. How to keep everything in a little glass jar. Forever. All the singing, all the heroics, all the rules. All the meddling. You pretend that it's this big ancient thing, that it's bigger than all of us down here, that the King and Queen dying was just a blip and you can bring it back with a new generation. But I know what my mother did. She pulled at a thread and the whole thing started to unravel and now there's so little left that I can keep the pitiful remains of it in a jam jar."
Oh no you can't.
"She was powerful enough to stick the knife into your little pet and now I'm powerful enough to finish it off."
Oh no you can't.
"Look into his eyes and then say that again. Just look at your future of Pantomime. He doesn't believe in it. Doesn't believe in his own destiny."
He is only half of the future. The girl still believes.
"Not for long. I'll have her as dead inside as he is within seven days. And you'll have to just watch. Just watch and report as the dream disappears and not be able to do a blind thing about it.
She opens the jar. The pain begins, like a slow explosion in my heart, pushing the power out towards my skin. Despite myself, I scream.
"Oh yes, you feel it now, don't you? The impotence, the helplessness. You know what that feels like now."
She is laughing. I've heard that laugh before, many times. The Pantomime comes streaming, like a hot white light, through my eyeballs and ears and throat.
"I hope you understand that I'm only letting you live because this will be the last Pantomime. There'll be nothing more. No more fantasy, no more control. So why don't you just take a back seat and watch your little world cave in."
My eyes and mouth gape. I am on my knees. The Pantomime rips through me. A million voices laugh and scream and sing as the stinging whiteness pours itself into the jar, and are silenced as she closes the lid with a single twist of her wrist. She smiles a strange, sad smile.
"There is no fate." She puts the jar on the shelf, and it becomes instantly anonymous in a sea of cloudy glass. "They'll make their own damn destiny."
I look up at her through a mist of angry, stinging tears.
Then why can't you?
There is another long pause. The staff fizzes dangerously. But there's nothing I can do. Nothing!
"You're dismissed." She turns her back on me. "Do enjoy the show."