Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird (9 page)

Isabella walked to the end of the front walk. "Gretel!" she called. "Hansel! Come home
NOW!
"

The edge of the sky faded from orange to pink to gray to black, and still the children did not come.

Siegfried took a lantern out into the woods. Isabella could see the light bobbing between the trees as he walked down to the stream; she could hear him calling and calling. He didn't come back until his voice was practically gone. "No sign of them at the stream," he whispered hoarsely; no sign of them anywhere.

They left the shutters open, with candles in the windows to guide the children home, and they left the fire in the hearth to warm the children when they came home.

But the children didn't come home.

Isabella wept loudly, telling Siegfried how she had slighted Hansel and Gretel at breakfast. Now she thought of them out alone in the woods, cold and frightened and hungry, not knowing—very obviously not knowing—which berries were good to eat and which were not.

"There, there," Siegfried said, patting her back awkwardly. "There, there."

When the sixth morning after Isabella's arrival dawned, Hansel and Gretel still had not returned.

"One of us needs to be here," Isabella told Siegfried, still hoping the children might find their own way back. "But I would like to go out to search."

The first place Isabella went was to the stream behind the house. But even in the daylight there was no sign that the children had gone swimming there: no discarded shoes, no footprints in the muddy bank. Isabella went farther and farther into the woods, calling and calling, praying that no hungry animal nor desperate highwayman had come upon the helpless children.

She found nothing that even hinted the children might have passed by that way.

Once again at night they left the lights burning in hearth and windows, and once again the children did not come home.

At dawn of the seventh day after Isabella's arrival, Isabella started out once again. This time she headed in the opposite direction, toward the village. Surely in this direction there was not enough of the woods for the children to get lost in before they came upon the outlying houses, and from there they certainly would have been able to find their way back home. Still, Isabella thought she could enlist the help of the villagers in searching for the poor lost dears.

But before she got to the village, she got to the house of their neighbor, the baker's widow who had come to call about the stones in her garden. Smoke was pouring merrily from the chimney in the kitchen and also from the large, stone baker's oven in the front yard, and Isabella knocked at the door to inquire if the old woman had seen the children.

The door opened, and it was Gretel who stood there, with Hansel behind her, neither saying a word, both looking at her with large staring eyes.

"Gretel!" Isabella cried, throwing herself to her knees and flinging her arms around the young girl. "Hansel!" She tried to bring him into the hug, but he evaded her embrace, and Gretel squirmed away, too.

Isabella sat back on her heels. "We were so worried," she said. "You must have been so frightened, being lost."

They didn't look frightened. And they didn't say anything.

"You must have just found your way back here this morning," Isabella said.

"No," Hansel said.

"We've been here all the while," Gretel said.

Isabella couldn't see why the baker's widow would have let the children stay in her house for two long nights without letting anybody know. She tried to see over the heads of the children into the house. There were half-eaten ginger cakes and pastry treats all over the table, crumbs tracked on the floor, tiny jelly handprints on the walls.

The old woman couldn't be home, Isabella thought. She must have gone to the village three days ago, and the children just let themselves in. But surely the old woman wouldn't have left the oven going like that. "Where is our neighbor?" Isabella asked, feeling suddenly very small and frightened.

"Right behind you," Gretel said.

"In the front yard," Hansel said.

Isabella turned around, but there was no one there, nothing there, only the oven smoking away.

And the old woman's cane, lying on the ground before it.

Isabella scrambled to her feet, telling herself that surely there was a different explanation, surely she misunderstood everything.

The children looked at her with calm, unblinking eyes.

"What have you done?" Isabella whispered.

"She didn't like us," Hansel said.

"We didn't like her," Gretel said.

"
What have you done?
" Isabella cried.

"Don't yell at us," Gretel said. "She was a witch."

"She was definitely a witch," Hansel agreed. "We don't like being yelled at."

"She was just a poor old woman," Isabella shouted, "half blind and half lame."

Gretel turned in the doorway to look at Hansel. Hansel nodded. They both looked at Isabella.

Isabella took a step back.

"We don't like being yelled at," Gretel said.

Isabella took another step back. Her voice shaking, she asked, "How did your mother die?"

Once again Gretel looked over her shoulder at Hansel.

Hansel said, "We don't like you."

Isabella kept on backing up until she reached the end of the walkway, then she turned and ran. Her heart pounding wildly, she ran and ran till she spotted their own cottage in the woods. She considered stopping for Siegfried but then she ran on.

After all, he was the one who had gotten her into this.

If the coach turned back into a pumpkin
and the coachman into a rat
and the footmen into mice,
one can only wonder
why the glass slippers alone remained
untouched by magic's ebbing tide.

Obviously a set-up.
But by whom?
The fairy godmother's ability
didn't extend beyond midnight.
And where would a cinder girl
have ever gotten shoes like that?
Could they possibly have been a secret gift
from the stepmother,
eager to get her out of the house,
tired of her unrelenting goodness,
and beauty,
and cheerfulness
(not to mention all that singing)?

Once upon a time, in a land where even parents had magic, a mother got so upset with her son's bad temper, sloppy clothes, messy room, and disgusting table manners that she said: "II you're going to act like a beast, you might as well look like one, too."

The next thing the poor boy knew, he had hair all over his body, his knuckles reached the floor, his teeth curved into tusks, and his nostrils were so big that anyone he stood near could see halfway up his nose.

Despite his promises never to yell again and to wash his socks at least once a week and to take out the garbage and to keep his elbows off the table, his mother would not relent. And his father
never
contradicted his mother.

"You may live alone," she said, "so that you may live however you choose."

"But Mother," Beast said—speaking quietly now, since shouting hadn't helped—"but Mother, I love you."

She continued to shoo him out the back door so the neighbors wouldn't see him. "That's nice," she said. "And you will remain a beast until you get a good and beautiful woman to agree to many you. I love you, too," she added, and closed the door.

Now this wasn't as heartless as it sounds, for Beast's mother wasn't sending him out to beg for his food or to sleep on the hard, cold ground. The family had not one but
two
castles, the second one being deep in the woods without neighbors. It was also a magical place that would provide whatever Beast asked for, except human companionship.

Although the magic castle would have happily picked up Beast's dirty laundry and washed his dirty dishes and fixed the holes he kicked or punched into walls whenever he was angry at something, Beast very quickly mended his ways, hoping that this would please his mother and that she would allow him to return home. Besides, living out in the woods, with no friends to visit and nothing much to do beyond tending the garden, Beast had plenty of time on his hands to try to make everything perfect. Every time his parents would drop in—birthdays and holidays and the occasional unannounced surprise visit just to keep him on his toes—he would invite them to come into the house to see how clean it was. But his mother would always say, "No, no. Sitting with you in the garden is fine with me."

Then he would say, "At least let's have dinner out here so that you can see how good my table manners have become."

But she would always answer, "No, no. We ate just before we came; I couldn't possibly eat a bite more." Then she would turn to her husband and ask, "You, dear?"

And he always patted his stomach and echoed, "Not a bite more."

Then Beast would say, "Do you at least notice how neat my clothes are and how calmly I'm talking?"

"Yes, dear."

"So may I please come home?"

"Not quite yet, dear."

At which point he'd growl or kick over a lawn chair or, just to spite his mother, tear off a sleeve of his shirt.

The visit always ended with Beast pleading with his father to talk his mother into lifting the spell, and his father saying, "I'll try, but you know how your mother is."

This had gone on long enough that when, one day, Beast heard someone in his castle's courtyard, he assumed it was his parents, even though it was a freezing, rainy day. But when he went outside, he saw that it was a stranger in a dead faint on the stones. The man had obviously traveled long and hard, for he had just barely made it through Beast's gate before collapsing.

Beast carried the poor man inside, but as he was ashamed of his appearance—which he knew was somewhat alarming—he set the man down on the bed in one of the guest bedrooms, and he told the room, "Take care of the man. Provide a fire to warm him and candles so that he can see where he is when he wakes. Cover him with warm, diy blankets while he sleeps and lay out rich clothes for him to wear when he gets up."

Then Beast walked down the hallway to the dining room, calling up lights all the way. "Dining room," Beast said, "fresh tablecloth, best dishes, flowers for the center."

In the kitchen he said, "Warm and savory food on the dining-room table thirty seconds before the man gets there."

Later that evening Beast heard the man coming down the hall, calling, "Hello? Is anybody here?"

Desperate for company but afraid to be seen, Beast hid behind a half-closed door on the upper landing as the man came into the dining room.

"I say," the man said, "this is very nice." He raised his voice. "Hello. Where is everybody?"

Beast didn't answer, and of course the castle didn't answer. One of the chairs pulled away from the table invitingly, so after a while the man realized that the feast was set out for him.

Hesitantly the man sat down on the chair, which immediately pulled itself closer to the table. A fork jumped into his hand.

"Well," the man said, "thank you, whoever you are. Wherever you are."

After dinner the castle—following Beast's instructions—led the man to the library, where the man had shelves and shelves of books to choose from; and a harpsichord, should he be musically inclined; and a chess set, which played the black pieces when the man moved one of the white pawns. Beast hid behind a tapestry and watched. After two games of chess (the castle let the man win both times), several books, and a midnight snack (apparently the man was
not
musically inclined), the man yawned and stretched.

The candles in the hall lit the way back to his room, where the bed was freshly made and a silk nightshirt lay under the pillow.

Beast returned to the kitchen, where he had his own dinner, happier than he'd been in a long time. Even though he hadn't dared show himself or speak to the man, it had been good to see somebody—anybody—he wasn't related to.

The following morning Beast arranged for breakfast to be on a tray on the man's nightstand thirty seconds before he awoke.