"The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bullington Jesse)

VII. A Cautionary Yarn, Spun for Fathers and Daughters Alike

The old woman’s shadow appeared distended and ghoulish to Nicolette, but the crone herself possessed a bit of those qualities to begin with. Turnips, the girl thought, looking at the woman’s knobby fingers bridged in her lap. The fire was warm and Nicolette was not, however, so she scooted closer to the hearth and its proprietor. The wind blew in through the hovel’s window without even a scrap of cheesecloth to keep it at bay. Nicolette shivered, but the old woman leaned back in her chair, savoring the draft.

The hut was small but the door had a slat latching it shut and the window rested just below the ceiling, allowing Nicolette to feel far securer than she had but minutes before. Few people enjoy being lost in the wood at night, and those who do one had best avoid. Being out of the dark forest had calmed her heart, although her host unnerved her.

Who would want to spend their days and nights so achingly far from other people? Overwhelmed with joy at spying a dim light through the trees, the girl had considered the question only in passing. For an instant she had even let herself believe it was her home despite the older, larger trees and other differences in the nightscape.

The sun had rested squarely over her father’s cabin when their sole pig had jerked forward, pulling the tether from her hands and rushing off into the forest. The first hour she spent chiding herself for not minding her charge better, the second for not minding her path better as she attempted to find a familiar marker. Her growing anxiety was given brief respite when she spotted the errant swine across a patch of frozen bog, but after her quarry again escaped into the underbrush Nicolette became distraught. Fear overrode her embarrassment, and she began calling out as dusk slunk through the branches.

When the sun fully departed and the forest came alive with noises she valiantly held in her tears. Her father had told her if she was old enough to wed she was too old to cry, and while no suitors had tramped along the muddy path to their cabin in pursuit of her hand, she maintained caring for a husband could be no more difficult or desirable than tending a pig or a father. Nevertheless, the girl sniffled as she groped her way among the cold bark pillars looming around her.

Then the glow in the distance, and Nicolette ran as fast as she could given the abundance of roots and trunks rearing out of the dark at her calloused feet. Approaching the crooked hut she slowed, relief becoming tinged with her earlier fear of the dark wood. Her father had cautioned her about charcoal burners-their filthy lifestyles, deceptive charms, and rapacious hunger for pretty young girls. She paused at the door, uncertainty seizing up her arms and legs, when she felt the sudden and powerful sensation of being watched. She turned slowly, and saw nothing but night in an unfamiliar part of the vast forest.

A twig snapped in the blackness, and Nicolette was crying and banging on the door with both hands. The old woman let her in, slipped the board back into place, and brought the girl to her meager firepit. Minutes later the lass had calmed down, gotten the numbness out of her feet, and taken in both surroundings and savior.

She felt she should explain her predicament, but her host seemed disinterested. Glancing around the cramped interior, she saw a small table and a few ledges cluttered with drying plants and earthen pots. A large stack of firewood filled one corner beside the hearth and a bitter-smelling heap of rags occupied the other. A pinestraw mat and the chair were the only other furnishings. Drawing her arms around her legs, Nicolette sighed in a bid to draw the old woman’s attention away from the smoldering logs.

In response the woman began to sing quietly, rubbing her chin with her tuberish fingers. Nicolette peered up at her, teeth on lip. Considering the shadows of the flames, the run-down state of the shack and its owner, and now her rasping unfamiliar words in a strange melody, the old woman appeared positively witchy.

Something landed on the roof, dust snowing down on them. Nicolette yelped, staring up as the boughs of the ceiling sank down ominously over the door, then sprang back up as others sank down closer to the small hole where the smoke escaped. The wood squeaked, the depression moving over their heads. Nicolette remembered to breathe but could not move, entranced by the shifting ceiling. She shook with such violence her vision blurred, but her eyes snapped back into focus as the old woman leaped at her. With surprising alacrity the crone snatched a clump of Nicolette’s hair and plucked out a half dozen cinnamon strands.

The old woman grinned at the wincing girl, showing her few remaining blackened teeth. She rose and shuffled to the window, holding Nicolette’s hair before her like a charm. Raising her hand to the hole into the wilds, the old woman offered up the hair. With all the slowness of dawn’s arrival on a winter morn, something between a hand and a paw reached down out of the night and carefully extracted the long wisps, then disappeared back up out of the window.

The song trailed off, the old woman laboriously returning to the fire. Resuming her seat, she looked directly at Nicolette for the first time. The girl now looked years younger, her face the milky yellow of fresh cream. A small puddle pooled around her, seeping between the flat hearthstones. She opened and closed her mouth three times as tears mixed with her other fluids on the floor before she squinted her eyes shut and squeaked, “What is it?”

Had Nicolette opened her eyes she would not have cared one bit for the scowl on the crone’s withered face.

“What it’s become only the wolves and night-birds know,” the old woman croaked, shifting closer in her seat to the petrified girl, “but it used to be my husband.”

Nicolette nodded in the way she might politely accept a stale bit of cheese she did not actually want, and then was sick all over herself. She next became conscious of the old woman soothing her blubbering, stubby digits caressing her cheeks and hair. She recoiled, suddenly aware of her nakedness. The old woman stood and turned, fetching a bowl and a knife from the table. Taking Nicolette’s soiled woolen dress from beside her chair, she cut into it with disturbing passion. The girl crawled away toward the corner, but the groaning of the roof stopped her.

“Here now,” the old woman cooed, stooping over her with a dripping scrap of dress. Nicolette gaped upward as the crone wiped her clean, and while her heart still pounded with such intensity it hurt, she calmed enough to realize the old woman lingered over her delicate parts. The seemingly decrepit host licked her lips while she dipped the rag back into the bowl, squeezing Nicolette’s budding chest as she wiped away the bits of mushroom the girl had found in the forest.

Nicolette wanted to spit but dared not move, instead shuddering passively under the old woman’s strokes. The girl’s upper half clean, the rag dipped below her navel, the aged eyes reflecting firelight. Strange and terrible as the night had grown, Nicolette refused to consent to its becoming any worse. Having reached her limit, the young woman crossed her legs and backed away.

The old woman’s yellowish eyes flickered, and with that same disarming quickness she upended the bowl, dousing the girl’s lap. Water sizzled on the stones and the two women stared at each other, the elder bemused, the younger defiant. The utter bizarreness of the day and night had sapped Nicolette of her usual resilience and strength, but no longer. Then the old woman leaned in, again singing that foreign song, and a faint scratching came from above. The girl slumped forward, drawing her knees up to her chest; the old woman once more clutched Nicolette’s tresses and used the knife to clip a small lock.

Again she went to the window, and again held up her tribute. Again Nicolette stared entranced at the bestial appendage and again she felt her stomach cramp and her eyes water. Again the crone resumed her seat, trailing off as the thing on the roof shifted about.

The old woman grinned at Nicolette, motioning her closer. The girl shifted, more to draw nearer the fire than the crone. She hated the old woman, she hated the miserable, cold shack, she hated the moonless wood outside, she hated her nakedness and fear, and she especially hated whatever had crept out of her nightmares and onto the roof. She hated her cleverness, which forbade her from pretending everything was an awful dream from which she would soon awake, thus ending the pain in her stomach and chest. And she hated that blasted pig.

“He eats children,” the crone hissed, instantly regaining Nicolette’s attention. “Every little shred. Toenails and teeth, bones and fat, lips and assholes. Gobbles them all up. Does it slow, so they scream while he eats and maybe does other things to them. In here you can hear them wailing some nights, out there in the dark.”

Drinking in the girl’s bulging eyes and shallow breaths, the old woman adopted a matronly tone. “Don’t you worry, child, I know his corrupt ways well. The hair’s his favorite, he eats it last, often leaving naught but the scalp for his next night’s breakfast. He keeps them in the trees but I see them swaying, and when the moon is bright I watch from the window, yes I do, see him sucking and chewing on them like they was dipped in honey.”

Despite the gentler tone of voice Nicolette’s stomach contracted and she gagged at what the woman described, instantly knowing it to be true.

“But,” the old woman hurried, whispering, “there are ways to keep him up there instead of in here until morning. Always flees at cockcrow, slinking back to his lair until shut-in. If we occupy his attentions until dawn, you can steal home before next gloaming.”

Nicolette forgot her embarrassment and threw herself at the old woman’s plump legs, chest heaving with dry, soundless sobs. The crone smiled and began her song, gently taking her knife to a thin plait of hair. And this is the story every child knows, wherein the old woman slowly snips the girl’s hair and slips it to the beast, keeping it sated until the morn. Then the girl picks her way home through the wood, bald as a babe but none the worse for her ordeal. Her relieved father draws a warm bath and no longer works her so hard, and perhaps she even finds the errant shoat along the way. The following afternoon a handsome hunter arrives, having just slain a terrible monster in the forest, and before her hair has grown to her shoulders she is a happy wife and expectant mother.

Only the most ignorant or optimistic child could believe this is how the tale ends. As to what truly transpired that night in the wood so heartbreakingly far from home, a reexamination is in order. If Nicolette is to arrive home intact, the old woman must be true of word and purpose, and even the aforementioned ignorant child may wonder why any good-hearted person would dwell in the black belly of a monster-ridden forest, listening at night to children being killed and eaten. While the duller young listeners might be satisfied to hear that the crone had grown too old to make the journey back to civilization, those shrewd of wit will hasten to counter with examples of the old woman’s unnatural vigor. The truth, which should have been painfully obvious from the beginning, is that the old woman was an abominable witch who savored the flesh of children and ate them every chance she got.

Ah, the quick-witted will say, then perhaps the beast is actually kind and innocent but stays on the roof, afraid of the witch. He has fallen in love with Nicolette, and sniffs her hair longingly, slowly gathering the courage to confront the crone and rescue the maiden. After he defeats the evil hag Nicolette will love him despite his appearance, so he will be restored to human shape and everything will be daisies and buttercups for the happy couple.

Such preposterous rot demonstrates that the only thing more foolish than a too-stupid child is a too-smart one. A sharp child might invent such fallacious fantasies, questioning the motives of a deadly menace, whereas the dullard sees a beast with jagged maw agape and acknowledges it for the obvious danger it is. The fiend upon the roof surpassed even the witch in its malevolent hunger for human meat, as the slower children will have known from the start.

Together the two had eaten many children, but more often fed on hunters, charcoal burners, and anyone else unlucky enough to wander into that accursed part of the wood. Both preferred their meat fresh, although the wife favored her supper cooked a little bit more than the dripping stuff her husband craved. Nicolette had stumbled into a grimmer predicament than she could have imagined in her most loathsome fever dream, and worse still, she did not even know it.

Desperation often overrules intellect, which is why Nicolette believed the hag. The old woman sang every so often, passing up more and more of the lady-child’s locks, until all that remained in the bowl was a small pile of hairs the witch had shaved. Utterly bald, Nicolette shivered all the more, several rivulets of blood trickling behind her ears from where the blade had pressed too firmly. Unlike in the children’s tale, hours still stretched before daybreak, the old woman having passed up the hair far too quickly.

“Now,” the witch said, “let’s do the rest.” The docile young woman allowed the crone to shave what few hairs grew on her arms and under them, then blushed as the blade worked its way up her legs. Nicks bled onto the stones, Nicolette silently crying until only the small thatch between her hips remained. The song was sung and the offering offered.

Nicolette watched the hirsute claw raise the bowl, then return it to the waiting witch. The lass’s anxiety had transformed to suspicion during the preceding hour, a careful consideration of how fast her hair disappeared contradicting the old woman’s proposal. The crone grew cheerier the less hair remained, not a comforting sign. The girl’s father often scolded her for being too clever, and while he was correct, this too-cleverness alerted Nicolette to her mounting peril. Furthermore, she marked that every time the witch sang the beast came to the window, and while the words still made no sense at all, she repeated them over and over in her mind until she knew them by heart.

The old woman returned, her song finished, and squatted before the musing girl. “Spread those pretty legs,” she leered, “and lets have that last little bit.”

Nicolette knew that with all her hair gone she would have nothing to ward off the crone’s husband, so the crafty girl shuddered and motioned to the fire.

“I’m so cold,” she said, chattering her teeth. “May I put on more wood first?”

“Very well,” said the witch, running pale tongue over shriveled lips. She had grown ravenous while shaving the girl, the way a fat farmer will when plucking a chicken. Retrieving a log from the stack, Nicolette noted the worn ax resting against it. As she tossed the wood into the hearth she saw something that made her heart plummet into her bowels. She could not be sure, so she grabbed another log, slyly poking the blaze before the wood slipped from her fingers.

Nicolette had never seen a human skull before but recognized it at once, despite its being blackened, cracked, and coated in ash. She also noticed how small it looked, and knew instantly the old woman had tricked her, and was likely a witch as well as a murderous cannibal. She yelped when she felt a poke to her side, and tried to mask her rekindled terror.

“Come now,” the witch cooed, “that little patch should hold him until dawn.”

“But,” Nicolette began, her fear turning her cleverness as sharp as the traps her father used to catch rabbits, “my father has said nobody may ever touch me there save myself or my husband, when I get one.”

The hag cackled at that, and made to pounce on her quarry when Nicolette quickly added, “I can do it myself, if you’ll kindly lend me the knife and bowl.”

The old woman scowled at the girl, but the child’s eyes reflected the fire and she could not read them. Her husband loved that hair the most and she felt confident the child was stupid, not guileful. Nicolette forced herself to smile, her cheeks flushing with shame as she spread her legs and reached for the knife.

Taking it with trembling fingers, Nicolette peered at the blade. “What’s that?” she asked, her voice cracking. She pointed to the tip of the weapon, but when the witch leaned in for a look the girl pressed the knife to her throat.

“Don’t you move,” Nicolette hissed. “Don’t you speak, and don’t you sing or I’ll cut you dead.”

The witch glared balefully but she did not move, and she did not speak, and she did not sing.

“You tell me what to do,” Nicolette whispered, the handle clutched in both hands. “Tell me how to get away or I’ll kill you.”

The witch grinned but said nothing. The loose beams overhead creaked and Nicolette jumped, the honed blade nicking the witch’s turkey-wattle neck. A little blood oozed out and the crone looked worriedly at the girl. Nicolette picked up on her distress and smiled triumphantly.

“If I die it will be after I bleed you out like a rooster,” she spit at the hag. “Now tell me quick before I get rid of your foulness and deal with it myself.”

“He’s already impatient,” the witch shot back, raising her voice. “He’s et all your hair, and so he’ll smell you a mile off. He runs faster through the trees than a stag on the ground, and before the sun next touches this place he’ll be eating you alive. Your only hope is to hand over that knife, so I can protect you.”

“I don’t believe you,” the young woman whispered, her eyes welling up anew.

“Then I’ll make it fast for you,” the stink of spoiled milk hot in Nicolette’s face, “better than what he’ll surely do.”

Nicolette stiffened, breathed deeply, and tried unsuccessfully to stop shaking.

“What do you do?” the girl croaked, cheeks shimmering. “Why? Why do you-”

“Pleasure,” the witch snapped. “For me, and of course the taste. For him it’s that as well, but also comfort. All that pretty hair he’s et will twist in his belly and grow out of it, keeping his pelt thick and warm. Now that you’re fit to be cleaned and divvied, he’ll burst through that door and take such delight from your misery as suits his appetite.”

Nicolette shuddered for only an instant before pressing the blade into the old woman’s throat. The hag’s arm slapped her head but the girl lunged forward, driving the witch to the ground. The blood spurting into Nicolette’s face blinded her, burning her eyes and nose, running into her mouth and down her throat. She choked but pressed harder, the crone bucking and scratching, a wheezing, gurgling fart of a noise escaping her shriveled lips.

Eyes locked shut, Nicolette leaned on the handle until the point burst through the other side. The thrashing gave way to shivering, the crone’s legs rattling on the floor. The young woman remained hunched over the witch, the hot liquid warming her hands and face more than any fire could. The roof creaked and the girl leaped to her feet in a twinkling, trying to wipe the blood from her face.

The beams groaned again and Nicolette pawed frantically around the shack until she found the small bucket. Dunking her face in the frigid water she gasped, taking her first breath since attacking the witch. She only brought herself to look at her felled nemesis by imagining the hag regaining her feet behind her. Snapping back to the fire, she took in what she had wrought.

The crone’s blood coated the floor from one wall to the other, her head almost severed. Nicolette shook with such passion the knife slipped out of her fingers, and then the fire popped, causing her heart to freeze and her feet to hop, eyes shooting to the ceiling. The silence of the night settled on her, and for the first time she noticed no birds or insects disturbed the stillness in this part of the wood. She swallowed, tasting the bitter old witch in her mouth, and spit on her corpse.

Her heart raced so quickly only her mind could outpace it. The crime that was no crime had spurred her thoughts into action, and she rushed to institute her plan. She held her breath and grabbed the witch by the ears, planting her foot on a gory shoulder and tugging. The head did not budge but an ear came partially free. She yelped, dropping the ear and covering her mouth in a belated effort to quiet herself.

The roof shifted ominously, the girl leaping over the wide pool that shimmered black in the firelight. Snatching the rusty ax, she returned to the witch and, pretending the mess at her feet was an especially stubborn log, raised the ax overhead like a seasoned woodsman. The spattering on her legs bothered her far less than the creaking roof. Snatching the head, she tossed it into the fire, where it sizzled and hissed, the flames dying low.

In the dimness she set down the ax and retrieved the knife, kneeling and frantically cutting the hag’s bloody clothes from her body. The witch stank, and her skin had patches of mold and what were surely extra nipples poking from oily creases of skin. She gagged but kept at it, piling the rags beside the sputtering fire.

The husband must be pacing, dust swirling down heavily as she righted the chair before the fire, the decapitated corpse between her and the hearth. Inspired anew, she smeared the cooling blood over her arms and legs and face but could not bring herself to wipe it on her stomach or chest. Donning the filthy, odorous cloth, she forced herself over to the door and with gritted teeth slid the slat from its catch, letting it swing inward.

Leaves swirled around the doorway and all was silent on the roof and in the wood. She backed away, and fighting a sudden dizziness, buried the knife in the crone and slumped down in the chair, the ax again in her sticky hands. Filling her chest with the chill wind blowing against her back, she screamed, but stopped short just as her voice reached its peak. Biting her lip, she waited one, two, three seconds before hoarsely trying to imitate the crone’s song. Doubt consumed her but she knew any hesitation would undo her careful ruse, so on she sang, strange syllables sticking in her craw.

Then she heard the tick-ticking of an animal’s claws on the stone floor behind her. Rather than charging in and past her to descend upon the corpse as she had prayed, her unseen end slunk slowly toward the hearth. Nicolette sang louder, wishing she could pray to the Virgin instead. The beast sniffed the air, fetid breath stirring the rags on her shoulders. It let out a throaty growl, and it was fortunate she had no water left to expel, although her bottom twitched on the chair and her song cut off as she gasped.

The thing rubbed itself against her side, and she realized the low growl was it purring like the cats her father would not let her keep but drowned in the pond to spite the Devil. She silently pleaded with her eyes to remain fixed on the fire but they gazed down at the brute as it moved to the corpse. It resembled a huge felid, larger than the hungry dogs turned loose into the village streets after curfew. Its mottled pelt dully shone red, black, blond, and brown, with other patches of pink, warty skin where no fur grew. A lanky tail whipped the air lazily, and from distended paw to upturned ass it looked scrawny and ill. She succeeded in keeping her eyes from its head lest she scream.

Directly above the wretched corpse, it sniffed again, its whole body wracked with slight spasms. Nicolette rose with the ax, the chair creaking loudly. It spun around just as she swung, the head of the ax catching it squarely between the shoulders. Its claws tore into her thigh, sending her sprawling across the floor.

She latched her eyelids tight and prayed to her father and the Holy Mother, the creature bawling out a whining scream that deafened her. Her leg must be torn free, so ferociously did it hurt, and she cupped her hands over her ears to shut out the horrible noise. Then the noise stopped. Nicolette remained still for a very long time, and then opened one eye. The shadowy wall before her provided no clue to the state of the beast. With aching slowness she turned her head, the exertion sending pain blasting up from her leg into the rest of her body.

With puffy, bloodshot eyes she took in the sprawled monstrosity heaped atop the witch, the ax handle jutting out of its back. It raised its front shoulders but its hindquarters would not move, foul-smelling ordure leaking from under its tail. Nicolette scrambled to her feet and immediately toppled over, her leg giving out. It tried again, now getting its back legs to jerk. Nicolette stripped off the stinking cloth that stuck to her bloody skin and rose more carefully, taking care not to look at the felled demon.

Not daring to breathe, she moved behind the creature so its eyes could not stare malevolently at her. She found the largest log in the wood pile, and tiptoeing toward it, hurled the missile at its head. The blow slumped the creature again, but through her delirium she saw the fresh gash on its scalp close as soon as it opened, and the blood matting its coat flowed back around the ax blade. The ax handle rocked as flesh knit itself together, and the thing stirred in its forced slumber.

Temples pounding and knees buckling, she leaned against the wall to stay erect. It seemed dreadfully unfair that after all her wiles the beast still lived, and recovered so unnaturally fast that it would soon be upon her again. Suddenly furious, she snatched the ax free and brought it back down where the fur gave way to pale skin below the ears. The body thrashed for only an instant, and she saw with delight that the gaping cut healed much more slowly than the vanished wound in its back, only a raised scar denoting where she had previously injured it.

She hacked again and again until the ropes fixing head to neck gave out in a mess of red, black, and yellow fluids, bones jutting up amidst the pulp. The head rolled into a corner and settled facing her, blood leaking from mouth, ears, and nose, and it blinked its pale eyes. Nicolette began to scream and did not stop until she passed out.

She awoke with a start, the fire dead and the haze of morning filtering into the room. The two monsters lay stacked like cordwood, and to her delight both remained motionless and mangled. The ax she still clutched to her chest, its cold, damp head stuck to her cheek. She cast it away and clambered to her feet. Whimpering, she stumbled out the door into the wood. She walked slowly, wary of her bleeding leg, and eventually came across a stream.

Despite the chill morning air she braced herself against the mossy stones and plunged herself face-first into the shallow water. Gasping and shivering, she righted herself and set to washing off the caked blood, heedless of how viciously the water burned her skin and wounds. She rolled in the leaves beside the bank, steam pouring off her as she laughed, then sobbed, then laughed again. Eventually she calmed enough to recognize how dead and hard her skin felt, and she inspected her leg.

As she lightly prodded the swollen pinkness bordering the four gashes a branch snapped behind her. She knew without turning that it was the creature she had taken for dead, that animal with an old man’s face. When she had seen the gnarled but distinctly human head staring at her from the corner after chopping it free of its beastly body only fainting had kept her sane. She knew if she ever saw it again the sight would kill her with fear, and now she knew it could not be killed.

She tried to pray but only a soft groan came out. So instead she began screaming wordlessly to her father and the Virgin and the witch and the trees and the stream. Too weak to run or even move, her courage and spirit spent, she wailed until again the effort knocked her into slumber, her mind shutting in from the strain.

Rolling closer to the fire in her sleep, she wrapped the blanket tight around her. She slowly crept back toward consciousness, fighting nobly to remain asleep. The popping logs brought a smile to her dozing face, and through half-lidded eyes she resolved to rouse herself and tell her father of the ordeal she had dreamed. Surely in the next few weeks they would make the trek into town so she could pray at the church.

Even before she fully awoke the stinging in her leg alerted her that all was for naught. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she opened her eyes, the dark trees towering at the edge of the firelight. The charcoal burner who had stumbled across her by the stream sat watching, his curiosity mounting. He had of course heard tales of wild people in the woods who ran on all fours and behaved as beasts, but a woodsman hears countless such stories, stories that are thankfully never proven true.

Unquestionably, her oddest feature was her lack of hair, save for the small bit that made him blush when he glimpsed it between her legs. Somewhere between a girl and a woman, he thought her beautiful regardless of her baldness yet feared her to be possessed, or worse still, a witch or spirit. He watched her as she slept with a mixture of awe and fear, wondering if he should have left her where he found her.

Magnus, for that was the charcoal burner’s name, rarely saw other people in the wood, and women never. Those he only saw when he dragged his load into town every few weeks, and he had not met the lass who would give a charcoal burner so much as a kind word. Having inherited the trade from his father, at only twenty years of age he had the same blackened nostrils and fingers as those who had been in his business their whole lives.

As he watched the girl cry before she even awoke, his stomach knotted. To properly manufacture charcoal he had to mind the fire constantly for two days and nights, so the few hours of sleep he had snatched the night before meant little. He had the coal-fog on his eyes and limbs, and even with the necessity of warming the strange, naked foundling he had been loath to kindle another blaze. She had slept through the day and most of the night, only now opening her eyes to weep.

She cowered when he approached, but when he offered her a bit of hard bread she threw herself against him, moaning. He awkwardly lay down beside the fire, her now-warm body vibrating against his. He stroked her bald scalp and prayed for her, noticing the fresh scabs blemishing her pale skin. Soon he nodded off, holding her tightly with his dusty black hands.

Nobody in the village knew her, and while many were kind and offered her niceties, still Nicolette would not speak. Whenever it was asked where she came from her eyes filled with tears and she would point vaguely toward the wood. Despite her silence during the day and the night-horrors that roused Magnus as she whined, kicked, and sweated in her sleep, she seemed fond of him, growing distraught if he left her side even for a moment. None protested when after a week he returned to his business in the wood accompanied by the mute.

She hated the forest but bore it to remain with Magnus, and helped gather and burn and carry and cook and everything else. After a time her hair grew back and her leg healed so one hardly noticed her limp and she could no longer be mistaken for a girl instead of a pretty young woman. Still her voice refused to answer her bidding, but Magnus took to calling her Yew as a woodsman’s jest, and the local priest was happy to wed them since she bent her head appropriately during Mass. Although she was generally melancholy, Magnus often succeeded in coaxing a smile or even a small laugh from her. She would kiss him sweetly all over but if he touched her naked body with more than a fatherly hand she would recoil and burst into tears.

Yet Magnus loved her fiercely, and so when he exited the smith’s shed after making the last payment on their horse and saw the old man shaking his wife he rushed to her aid. Nicolette’s father, at seeing the daughter he had given up for dead so long ago, embraced her passionately, shocked to find her in this town so far from home. He had made the arduous journey to find cheaper hogs rumored to be sold, and at seeing her he wept and shouted with joy.

Grief had aged him far too quickly and at first Nicolette did not recognize her own father and tried to pull away. Then he said her name and she crumpled in his arms. He begged her to explain where she had gone and why, but the words still refused to come, Nicolette shaking her head and pointing to her mouth. Suddenly Magnus snatched her away, dropping his ax and berating the poor old widower. Nicolette’s father stared dumbly at the charcoal burner, at his stained face and hands, hands that gripped his child, and realized his worst fears had come true. This soot-fingered brigand had abducted his little girl and cut out her tongue, taking her far enough away that she could not find her way home.

Miraculously, Nicolette’s long-useless tongue finally began to obey her again, and she tearfully explained to the angry Magnus that the old man accosting her was actually her father. Her husband understood in an instant, and overwhelmed with happiness at both hearing her lovely voice and her reunion, turned to embrace the old man. Her father had retrieved Magnus’s ax from the road and, oblivious to his daughter’s words, drove it into the charcoal burner’s beaming face.

Everyone in the street screamed but none louder than Nicolette, her husband dropping dead, blood splashing her tear-ruddied cheeks. Men seized her father and beat him mercilessly until a gibbet was raised in that very spot, and before Magnus’s corpse grew cold the old man swung for the crows. While Nicolette could finally speak again, it was a very long time before she did anything but weep.

While it might appear this is a grim ending for poor Nicolette, rest assured the truth is even worse. If only such a tragedy had occurred! Rather than splitting his skull and painlessly putting an end to Magnus, Nicolette’s befuddled father instead buried the ax in his stomach and hefted it for another swing. Magnus collapsed gasping, only his fingers keeping his insides where they belonged instead of on the street. Her father stared, not comprehending the hardness in his daughter’s eyes as she shielded her husband from further harm. The ax flew from his hands as men descended upon him, driving him into the dust under heels and fists.

The gibbet went up and the crowd grew but Nicolette did not watch. The charcoal burner slowly bled to death, his guts trying to twist out around his fingers as Nicolette helped him onto their horse. Despite the forceful bids to help the witnesses offered, all stood back as she got behind her husband, her severe demeanor deterring even the most stubborn. The sensible blacksmith hurried to fetch the priest while Nicolette steered the horse slowly out of town, a crowd slightly smaller than that watching the noose-tree builders following after.

Clearly the man would not live out the day but Nicolette refused to take him to the church for his last rites. The priest caught up to her on the edge of town, the kind old man’s face twisted from sorrow and exertion. When she ignored his call, his patience fled and he snatched at the reins.

“Please, dear,” he panted, “the only succor you can give him is deliverance into Heaven. Come with me to the church at once, before the life is rattled out of him.”

Nicolette did not answer, instead spitting in his face. The priest slipped and fell, shaken to his core. He silently watched them go as a dozen hands lifted him to his feet. Wiping the phlegm from his cheek, he scowled, and called after them:

“Only the Devil is pleased with the road you take! You’re damning yourself as well as him! He needs his rites or he will suffer for all time, and you along with him!”

Nicolette did not answer the priest, instead whispering sweetly to her dying love. She urged the horse into the forest, and despite her fresh resolve and purpose her heart quickened as her husband’s slowed. She led them deep into the part of the wood where they never ventured, that ancient sylvan realm where Magnus had found her so long ago. The trees no longer struck her as so huge and forbidding, although when they reached the stream the branches entwined too thickly for them to ride and they dismounted.

The front of Magnus’s shirt glistened in the departing sunlight and he could no longer open his eyes. He mumbled to her, asking her true name, and, tears again clouding her vision, she whispered it in his ear. He smiled and opened one eye to look at her, then drifted into the slumber proceeding death.

She left him by the bank and rushed into the gloom, becoming more and more desperate as the night thickened. She thought she spied a light, but when she broke through the underbrush the dilapidated shack was as dark as the wood around it. The door had fallen off and the roof partially caved in, but her eyes had long ago become adjusted, and she saw her prize lying where she had left it.

The room stank even after all the intervening years, and she dashed to the heap of rot near the hearth. The headless corpses had grown together, putrescence blurring the boundaries between husband and wife, but resting atop them as if just set down to warm their bones lay his pelt. Even in the dark it shone brown and black and red, and she peeled it off with the ease of removing a sweaty blanket from a tired horse.

As she hurried back, those same roots and trunks that had befuddled her as a child now opened up a path, leading her at once to the stream where horse and husband waited. He did not stir when she knelt beside him and raised his head, but he still managed the occasional ragged breath, his whole body wracked with shivers. Trembling, she took knife from belt and raised him up to slice open his shirt. Armed only with intuition and her nightmares, she removed the cloth, pressed the stinking pelt against his back, and held her breath.

The result could be seen immediately. Magnus’s scream sent night-birds into flight and a nearby hare’s heart burst in terror. He heaved away from her, thrashing and convulsing, his guts bursting out onto the leaves without his hand to hold them in. Nicolette watched aghast, raising the knife numbly to her own throat lest she had killed her husband. Then, as the horse stomped and pulled at the rope leashing it to a nearby yew, the bloody coils of his insides reversed, sucking back into the wound. Nicolette smiled, then began to laugh and cry simultaneously.

She could not bear to see him suffer anymore, so while he threw himself against the dirt and barked and gibbered, she returned to the hovel to make it ready. The moon rose as she dragged the decomposing remains outside, then took their heads and cast them into the bushes. Being a charcoal burner’s wife, she soon caught the dry leaves ablaze and a fire roared in the hearth. She righted the fallen chair and removed the piles of rags, then stripped her clothes and added them to the pile of leaves she had gathered to fashion a nest beside the fire.

Waiting for her husband, she noticed fresh blood dripping down her thighs but knew at once it was only her monthly voiding. Fearing in the dark his eyes might not be as good as his nose, she smeared it over herself, using her fingers to daub her breasts and lips and cheeks. She remembered how she had waited long before, dressed in similar attire, and giggled like a little girl. She did not wait long.

After they made love for the first time in their lives, he dozed beside the fire while she stroked his coat. Although his eyes had glistened with pain and confusion his face held a new luster, only a scar on his belly hinting at what had befallen him that morning. It was her turn to speak all night while he silently listened, telling him how they would leave the wood and journey high into the mountains together. The forest would not remain unexplored forever, and she had many hopes for the two of them. In time he would learn to use his tongue again, but until then she did enough talking for the both of them.