The Grimm Conclusion (6 page)

I don't know about you, but if I were Jorinda, I would do the sensible thing and run away screaming right about now.

That night, when the last light of the sun disappeared from the window frame, Jorinda saw no flaming eyes in the corners. And she looked for them. Believe me.

So she sat sewing by the fire. Again, strange sounds came from the house around her. There was creaking and scraping, dragging and shuffling, and again it all seemed to come from above and below and to the left and to the right. Jorinda's skin was crawling.

And then she heard the words, “Help me!”

She sat straight up. The words were quiet. But desperate.

“Help me!”

They seemed to be coming from the chimney.

“Help me!”

Jorinda stood, went to the fireplace, and peered up the chimney. She could see nothing but darkness.

“Help me!”

Whoever or whatever it was, it was certainly up there. So Jorinda grabbed the flue handle, which opens and closes the chimney, and gave it a hard turn to the left. Then she gave it a hard turn to the right. Then she gave it a hard turn to the left again.

With a loud crash, the fire exploded, spewing ash and dust everywhere.

Jorinda staggered backward, covering her face and choking. Finally, the cinders settled, and she was able to wipe the soot from her face and look.

Crawling away from the fire was half a man.

It was the top half. He had no hair at all, no clothes, bulging eyes, and vaguely green skin. He was pulling himself forward by his fingernails, out of the fire, into the room. And he was moaning, “Help me! Help me! Help me!”

Jorinda backed away.

“Help me!” he moaned. He dragged himself toward her. “Help me!”

“How can I help you?” she asked. She could not stop staring at the torn and tattered flesh just below his belly button—where his body ended.

“Help me!” He dragged himself slowly after her. She moved to the left, to get out of his way.

He followed her.

She moved to the right.

He followed her.

“Help me!” he cried. “Help me!”

“How?” asked Jorinda. “How? Tell me how!”

And then the fireplace exploded with dust and ash again, and when it had cleared and the girl had wiped the soot from her face again, she saw a pair of legs, kicking and dancing in the flames.

“Are those yours?” she asked.

“Help me!”

Clearly they were. They, too, were hairless and naked save for a loincloth, and they too had a sickly green tint. They kicked frantically out of the fire and into the middle of the room.

“Help me!”

“Okay, okay!” she said. “I'll help you.” So she walked over to the legs, grabbed them by a foot, and dragged them toward the top half of the man. They kicked and danced as she pulled them, as if they were fighting her. When she got them as near the man's top half as she could, she sat on them. “Come here,” she said.

The half man pulled himself toward her, moaning, “Help me!”

Jorinda grabbed him by the arm and flipped him onto his back. Then she yanked his body toward his legs, which she was still sitting on. Finally, she took out her sewing kit.

“Help me!”

“What do you think I'm doing?”

She took out a needle and some very thick thread, and she began to sew the top half of the man to the bottom half. The legs stopped kicking, the arms stopped grasping, but the man kept moaning, “Help me! Help me!”

At last, Jorinda connected the first stitch to the last stitch and tied the thread off with a sturdy knot.

“There,” she said. “All done.”

The pale green man with no hair and wide eyes stared at her. And then he said, “Thank you.”

She smiled at him.

And then he said, “Now I am going to kill you.”

“What?” she cried.

The man's green, hairless arms snapped closed around Jorinda's body, and his muscular hands grabbed her by the throat. They were like iron. He squeezed her and squeezed her. She began to choke. She could not breathe. She grabbed his hands and pulled and yanked and pried and kicked. But still she was choking, gagging, suffocating. Her eyes bulged. Her face convulsed. Veins burst in her forehead. Her vision failed.

Her hands dropped to her sides. Still the man strangled her with his iron grip. She was dying. He lifted her into the air and strangled her.

And then, with her very last strength, the fingers on Jorinda's left hand reached into the pocket of her frock, shakingly opened the little sewing kit, and managed to remove a pair of silver scissors. The scissors traveled slowly, tremblingly, out of her pocket and to the man's midsection. There, they found the thick thread that held the two halves of him together, and they cut it.

The scissors fell to the floor. The man continued to crush her windpipe, as if nothing had happened. She was dying. Dying. But, with trembling, convulsing fingers, she took hold of the thick thread, and she pulled. Her legs dangled, she saw nothing but darkness, but she pulled and pulled and pulled.

The man's grip went lax.

Jorinda fell to the ground in a heap.

She lay there and choked and coughed and heaved the sweet air into her lungs. Her throat ached. Her eyes burned. Her nose ran. But she could breathe. She could breathe.

At last, she looked up. The top half of the man was crawling around moaning, “Help me! Help me! Help me!” And his legs kicked and danced in the middle of the floor.

Jorinda got up and stoked the fire. Then she grabbed the man's legs by a heel, and the top of him by a wrist. She dragged them across the room. And then, one after the other, she threw each half of the man into the fire.

“Help me!” he moaned. “Help me!” Jorinda watched the green skin turn black. “Help me! Help me!” His bones crackled in the flames.

By morning, there was nothing left of him.

When the sun was streaming into the room in all of its yellow glory, the king threw the door open and peered inside.

“Well?” he called. “Are you dead yet?”

Jorinda was sitting by the fire. Not sewing. She was done with sewing.

“No!” she called back. “Still alive! Thanks for asking!”

The king came into the house with his guards.

“Did Malchizedek come?”

“No, but his friend did. I helped him with some sewing, and we talked for a while. Then he had to go.”

“Oh,” said the king, gaping and nodding at the little girl. “Okay.”

“I'll wait for him one more night,” she informed the king. “But if he doesn't come tonight, I say he doesn't live here anymore, and you can take this place for your summer palace.”

“Ah!” smiled the king wanly. “Yes! Good idea!” He backed out of the house, nodding and smiling at Jorinda like he was afraid of her.

Jorinda sat in the big dark room with the cobwebs and the sheeted furniture all day. She drummed her fingers on the floor. She stared out the window at the great stone cliffs circling the huge crevasse. She wondered what the night would bring.

At last, the light failed, and, for the third evening in a row, Jorinda got the fire going in the grate. The house made its strange noises—creaks and whines and clanks and the sound of things being dragged around upstairs and downstairs and all around.

And then, the sounds seemed to come together. They seemed to concentrate themselves on the room just next to the one Jorinda was sitting in. They grew louder, and louder, and louder. And then—

BAM!
The door to the room slammed open, and standing in it was an enormous, hideous form. Its huge body terminated at the top of its huge, hunching shoulders—which towered over a long scrawny neck, craning out from the body like a vulture's. A bald head with a great white beard, tiny black teeth, and round, red-rimmed eyes was perched at the end of the neck.

It was an ogre.

At least, Jorinda figured it was. She had never seen an ogre before—but when you see one, you just kinda know it.

“Who is in Malchizedek's house?” the ogre boomed.

Jorinda stood up. “Me,” she said. And she curtsied.

The ogre strode forward until he was standing directly in front of her. She stood no taller than his waist. He bent his great ugly head to see the little girl.

“Why do you violate my home?” His voice was like war drums.

“I'm very sorry, Mr. Malchizedek, sir,” Jorinda stammered, curtsying again. “I'd just like to talk to you for a minute.”

“What of?” His breath smelled like rotting fish. His black teeth seemed ready to fall out of his gums. His red-rimmed eyes stared.

Slowly, Jorinda said, “I think you have been wronged.”

Malchizedek furrowed his brow. “By whom?”

“The king,” she replied.

Malchizedek frowned. Then he said, “Go on.”

“He claims you owe him taxes,” the small girl continued, peering up at the ogre's enormous, crooked form. “But my guess is you don't.”

“Indeed I do not!” boomed Malchizedek.

“He's confiscated your land, I gather?” she continued. “Eminent domain or something?”

“Yes!” bellowed Malchizedek. “Indeed he did!”

And then Jorinda said, “Tell me about it.”

So Malchizedek took the white sheets off two of the chairs, pulled them up to the fire, and told her all about it.

“Once, this house stood on a beautiful meadow. It was all grass and trees and sheep grazing peacefully. But then this king, when he was quite young, decided that the Castle Grimm needed to be larger.” The ogre rolled his eyes. Jorinda did, too. The ogre smiled approvingly. “He announced that the stone would be quarried from the meadow, for it is well known that the stone in these mountains is the best in all of Grimm.” Jorinda nodded as if it was indeed well known. “I protested greatly, for this was my meadow, and it was beautiful. But the king claimed eminent domain, and my beautiful meadow was destroyed.”

“Terrible,” Jorinda murmured. And she wasn't lying. It did sound terrible.

“So now I refuse to pay the king taxes. Is that so wrong?” The ogre tipped his great, ugly face down to Jorinda's, as if he really wanted to know what she thought.

“No,” she said. “It isn't wrong at all.”

Malchizedek got a faraway look on his face, and for a long time, no one said anything. And then, quite suddenly, he brought his red-rimmed eyes right up to Jorinda's. “Wait, why are you here?”

Jorinda took a deep breath. Then she explained the whole story. That she was supposed to marry the king's son, that the king didn't like her very much, and that he'd brought her here to be killed.

“That's not what he told me, of course,” she added. “He told me to ask you to pay your taxes. But what are the chances that
I
could get
you
to pay your taxes?”

“None.”

“He expected you to kill me,” Jorinda explained.

“I still might,” said Malchizedek.

“Oh”—Jorinda nodded—“I know.” And then she added, “But wouldn't you rather have a friend for life living in the castle? First as the princess and then as the queen?”

Malchizedek thought about that for a moment. A sly look crept into his features. “Only,” he answered, “if that queen would give me a new house, with a great big meadow. As a gift, of course.”

She nodded. “I think the queen might be willing to do that. But first she'd have to get to be queen.”

“Of course.”

“Which would mean you'd have to pay your taxes until then.”

“I see.”

“Plus whatever you owe from years past.”

The ogre looked at her. For a while he was silent. And then he said, “You're quite an impressive little girl.”

“Thank you.” She smiled.

And they shook hands.

The king could not believe the size of the sack that Jorinda handed him the next day. It weighed at least twenty pounds. And it was filled entirely with gold coins.

“This should do,” she said. “Just leave him alone, and he'll pay every year, right on time.”

“How did you do it?” the king demanded. He was gaping at the little girl.

“I just talked to him.” She smiled. “That's all.”

The king was not happy.

But he was impressed.

And more than a little bit frightened.

O
nce upon a time, some years before the tale of Jorinda and Joringel began, a queen gave birth to a baby girl. She was named Briar Rose, and to celebrate her birth, the king and queen held a great feast, and they invited all the great and powerful people of their land. In particular, they invited twelve Wise Women. There were actually thirteen Wise Women in the kingdom, but the king only had twelve golden plates for them to eat from. So one of them had to stay home.

I know. That sounds like a stupid reason not to invite the thirteenth Wise Woman. But that's how the story goes.

Also, sometimes these women are called Fairies, and sometimes they are called Witches. No one really seems to know what they were.

You call them whatever you want. Call them Zombies in Tutus, if you want. I'm calling them Wise Women.

Well, the feast went splendidly. All the guests gave the infant princess the finest gifts they could think of. At last, it was the Wise Women's turn to bestow their gifts. The first Wise Woman gave the little girl beauty, the second gave her intelligence, the third gave her an impeccable sense of direction, and so on and so forth. The eleventh Wise Woman gave her a blessed childhood, full of happiness and sunshine. The twelfth wise woman had just opened her mouth to bestow her gift, when suddenly the thirteenth Wise Woman swept into the room. She was furious at not having been invited—especially for such a ridiculous reason as a shortage of golden plates; she could have brought her own stupid plate!—so she bellowed, “When this girl has lived for thirteen years, her blessed childhood will end, and she will suddenly sicken, sadden, and mourn. She will feel as if every injury in the world was being done to her and her alone. She will suffer every day of her life!” Then she swept from the hall, muttering, “And get yourself some more stupid plates. . . .”

The guests stared, horror-stricken. But then the twelfth Wise Woman, who had not yet bestowed her gift, stepped forward. “I cannot undo the curse,” she said, “but I can soften it. The girl will not suffer every day of her life. Only once a month, for a span of a few days. And then the pain will leave her, and she will be as she ever was.”

Well, this was some consolation to the king and queen.

They raised their daughter with all the love in their hearts, until the day of her thirteenth birthday. On that day, the princess sat up in bed and began to weep.

“What's wrong?” her mother asked her.

The little girl tried to explain. There was so much suffering in the world. So much injustice. Every day, beetles were dying and lambs were stillborn and people starved because of a bad rainfall. It wasn't fair. The world was a terrible place. Nothing the queen said made her daughter feel any better. The girl just buried her head in her hands and wept.

The second day after her thirteenth birthday, the girl raged around the castle, breaking things and shouting at people for no reason. Nothing was right. Nothing was good enough. Her father chased after her, begging her to be reasonable. She threw a chamber pot at his head. It had just been used. He left her alone after that.

The third day, she lay in bed and writhed in unbearable pain, and no medicine could ease her suffering.

On the fourth day, the girl felt fine; she passed the month happily. And then the cycle began again.

This happened every month for twelve months. And then, at the beginning of the thirteenth month, the girl wept all through the first day at the horrors of the world, raged all through the second at nothing in particular, and writhed in unbearable agony all through the third.

“Oh, I can't take it!” the girl cried. “I hate my life! I hate it! Make the pain go away! Make it go away!”

Just then, by her bedside, appeared the thirteenth Wise Woman, the one who had not been invited to the feast. “There, there, my dear,” said the old crone. “Let me help you.”

“How?” the girl begged, writhing in her sweaty sheets. “All the doctors, all the Wise Women, have tried everything! Nothing helps! The world is a terrible place, full of suffering and stupidity and pain!”

“I can make the pain go away,” the thirteenth Wise Woman said. “Would you like that?”

“Yes!” the girl cried. “Please make it go away!”

“Do you wish to feel no more sorrow? No more anger?”

“Oh, yes! Please!”

“Never again will you weep at suffering or rage at injustice—”

“That's all I want!”

“Never will the pain of living encroach on your peaceful mind.”

“JUST DO IT ALREADY!”

The Wise Woman smiled. “Here,” she said. “Take a bite of this apple.”

The girl sat up in bed. She looked at the apple—speckled with gold and flashing in the morning light. She grabbed it, took a huge bite, and swallowed without chewing.

Suddenly, she began to choke. She fell back in bed and choked and choked and choked. And then she lay still.

As soon as the girl stopped moving, a deep sleep spread over the entire castle. A banquet was being held in the great hall, and instantly the king, the queen, and all the lords and ladies fell headfirst into their bowls of soup. The horses fell asleep in the stables, the dogs in the courtyard, the pigeons on the roof, and the flies on the wall. Even the fire on the hearth stopped flaming and fell asleep, and the roast stopped crackling, and the cook, who was about to pull the kitchen boy's hair because he had broken all the eggs on the floor, let go and fell asleep. And the wind died down, and not a leaf stirred on the trees.

All around the castle, a thorny briar began to grow. Each year it grew higher until in the end it surrounded and covered the whole place, and only the tower where the princess slept loomed over the secluded, sleeping valley.

The story of Briar Rose soon spread. From time to time, a knight or a prince came to the castle and tried to pass through the thorny briar. But none succeeded, for the briar bushes clung together as though they had hands, and so young men were caught and couldn't break loose and died a pitiful death.

And so the castle stood, silent and still, in the midst of the thorny thicket, with the slumbering king and queen and lords and ladies and servants—and the princess, lying in her bed in the highest tower.

Many, many years later, the castle stood in its quiet valley, forgotten by time.

Its heavy gray tower loomed in the darkness of the early morning, framed by fading stars and the high hills that surrounded it. But below the tower, the stones of the castle were not framed by stars—but by briars; a thicket of thorns encased the castle like a coffin. Birds flitted out of the briar and away, crying that the morning approached.

Three ravens sat on an abandoned well and stared up at the strange sight.

“What happened to it?” asked the second raven.

“No one knows,” said the first.

“Well, we do,” said the third.

“Right,” said the first. “No one besides us. The story has been lost to the ages.”

Joringel stood beside them, gaping. “Do people live in there?”

“Well, in a sense. But no one feels any pain anymore.”

Joringel walked up to the thicket. The sky in the east was not so dark as it had been just a moment ago. He tried to peer through the thorny, tangled briar. It was at least half a mile thick.

“No one feels any pain?” Joringel asked. The tingling in his chest was fading, and the feelings that had tormented him at home were growing again like weeds. Images of closed doors and chests of apples and princes on horseback rose before his eyes.

“None at all,” replied the first raven. “But the price—”

Joringel cut him off. “I don't care. I want to go in.”

“That doesn't seem like a good idea,” said the second.

“I think I see a corpse in the thicket over there . . .” began the third.

But Joringel had already slid through a small gap in the thorns and into the briar.

There was no room to walk. Joringel slid and crawled and pulled himself through the thicket. A thorn tore his shirt. Another dragged across his cheek, leaving a ragged red line beaded with dots of blood.

Then he stopped. There was a man ahead of him in the briar. He yanked himself through the thorns, opening a long red gash on the back of his neck. The man was wearing a mail shirt and had a sword raised above his head, as if he was trying to hack the briar to bits. Except that the man was not hacking anything. He stood perfectly still.

Joringel drew himself up beside the man. The sun was just starting to peer over the horizon, its yellow light filtering through the tangle of thorns.

Joringel looked up at the man.

The boy fell backward, trying to push himself away. But there was nowhere to go. The thicket held him and cradled him in a blanket of thorns.

The man's mouth was open, as were his eyes. But his face was locked in the frozen silence of death.

Joringel turned around and pushed on. The sun rose higher. The tingling feeling in Joringel's chest was gone. Sweat began to stand out on the back of his neck, stinging the fresh cut. The briar was becoming even thicker. Joringel had to grab branches of thorns—which punctured his palms—and rip them out of his way. He paused, trying to collect his breath. His muscles burned. Perhaps he should just stay where he was for a while. His eyelids became heavy. Yes, it would be much easier to rest right there . . .

Just then, he noticed another man ahead of him in the thicket. This man was as still as the first, but he was strangely gaunt. Joringel shook the lethargy from his eyes and forced his arms and legs to keep dragging him forward, until he was alongside the man.

Joringel's heart turned in his chest. The man's skin was pulled back so tightly you could make out his skull beneath it. His eyes were shut tight, but his mouth was open, as if he had been screaming. His teeth were blackened in his gums. Suddenly, a spider skittered out of his mouth and down over his chin.

Joringel spun away from the dead man—tearing a long, beaded line of red across his nose and face. Joringel grimaced. But he told himself, “In the castle, no one feels any pain.” And he pushed on.

He could see the wall now. The stones were heavy and gray and crusted with yellow lichen. As Joringel got closer, he slowed. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and his breathing was heavy. He came to a stop.
I'll just rest here for a moment,
he thought. His eyelids drooped.
It would be so easy just to sleep . . .

And then he noticed that someone was standing just where the thicket embraced the stone wall. Joringel shook himself.
No
, he thought.
Don't sleep yet.
And he forced his exhausted muscles to push on.

The body at the edge of the thicket was not a body. It was a skeleton. Shreds of clothes hung from its bones. A bird had made a nest in the man's rib cage.

That is disgusting.

Joringel followed the lichen-encrusted wall until he found an opening. He tore forward, the fingers of thorns gripping his clothes and skin and hair as if they would not let him go until, with a great gasp, he broke from the thicket and through the space in the wall.

Joringel found himself in a castle courtyard. It was much like a typical castle courtyard—there was a barracks festooned with shields in the eastern corner, a stream with a water wheel and laundry pots to the west, and so on—but littered around the courtyard were bodies sprawled upon the ground, as if they had been in the middle of doing whatever they normally did and then suddenly fallen down dead.

Joringel's knees knocked gently together as he made his way to the nearest body. It was dressed as a washerwoman, and sure enough, a mess of linens lay across the short green grass nearby, as if they'd been hurled to the turf when she collapsed. The washerwoman lay facedown. Joringel gingerly turned her over. He pulled back. She was a very old woman—much too old to be a washerwoman. Her mouth hung open, but her eyes were gently shut, and a line of spittle ran from her mouth to her chin. Joringel put his head by her face. He could feel the gentle pulse of breath.

“Hello? Wake up! Are you okay?” he shouted at her. But the old woman did not stir.

Joringel made his way through the yard, occasionally turning over another body to find another old person, dressed as someone much younger, and each fast asleep. Joringel was unable to wake any of them.

He pushed open the door to the kitchens. There, he saw a man—not ancient, as most of the others had been, but clearly into middle age—half naked on the ground. He wore the tatters of what appeared to be children's clothes. Spattered around him on the floor were shattered eggs, their yolks brown and rock hard. Behind the man in boy's clothing, a shriveled crone lay in a puddle of apron and frock, as if clad in the garb of a fat woman.

Joringel picked his way through the kitchens, careful not to tread on anyone. He climbed narrow stairs into a great hall. Here, a banquet had been laid out. Two dozen people seemed to have done face-plants in their soup. Joringel climbed a broad staircase away from the hall.