Stranded

5

CHAPTER FIVE

❝ Hansel and Gretel have absolutely nothing on Connor and me.

And neither does the sweets house on the snowed wooden cabin.

Or the witch on Crazy Stelle. ❞

Elle's journal: The Europe Trip, day 10, entry nº3

Crazy Stelle's house was small, and like everything else in that place, made of wood. It sat up there, by itself, surrounded by nothing but tall dark trees. Elle was sure the situation could only go two ways if Crazy Stelle let them stay. Either the cabin was like Hansel and Gretel's house of sweets, nice on the outside but with terrifying secrets inside or it really was just a nice little fort with the fireplace on and maybe even with lots of blankets and sweet hot chocolate.

"Don't tell me you are getting cold feet, tough girl."

"Shut up and knock on the door, Connor."

Connor did as told and they waited for a while until an old woman with long white hair and a blue dress pulled it open. To Elle's standards, Crazy Stelle didn't look so crazy at all. Yes, she was wearing a blue kimono when she clearly wasn't Japanese. But besides that, she looked relatively normal. And she was smiling kindly at them. For a second, the thought that Stelle would fatten them with candy and then cook them crossed Elle's mind, but the truth was that the woman looked way too thin to have enough space in her stomach for both. Maybe she would just have Connor.

"I have been waiting for you two," Crazy Stelle said with a bright smile. Then, leaving both of them standing startled behind the doorframe, she walked back inside.

"What did she just say?" Elle whispered, neither of them taking a step inside the warm hut.

"Oh, come in you two! There might not be rain, but it is still cold outside," the woman shouted from somewhere on the inside.

"Well that wasn't crazy at all," Connor whispered back at Elle and stepped in.

"Here goes to being boiled on a caldron," Elle sighed and stepped in behind Connor.

 ❄

Describing as surprise what Elle felt as she looked around the little cabin would have been the understatement of the year. Every single wall, table, and shelf of Crazy Stelle's house was covered on souvenirs from different countries. There was a large Egyptian statue taller than Elle herself, a Mexican hat with a signature across it, a miniature of a Japanese temple that was the size of the table it sat in, a Chinese golden dragon the size of a large dog, many pictures of the Coliseum lining up a whole wall, and so many other things that Elle and Connor could have never imagined seeing on the same place at the same time, not even in a museum.

"Tea?" Crazy Stelle asked as she waved towards a couple of chairs and a little table in her small, open kitchen. Three tiny cups of tea and a large teapot –all of them apparently made of Chinese porcelain– were already placed on top of the table.

"Hmm... sure," Elle said, exchanging a look of bewilderment with Connor as she left her suitcase near a sofa shaped like the Taj Mahal.

"You too, young man," Stelle said, smiling at Connor, who was still standing by the doorway. It took him a few more seconds, but he eventually closed the door and took a seat between Elle and Crazy Stelle.

The silence between the three of them, as Crazy Stelle prepared the tea, was unbearable, so Elle asked the first thing that came to her mind. "How did you know we were coming?"

Crazy Stelle smiled. "I saw you," she answered and Elle and Connor exchanged anxious looks again.

"How?" Connor asked.