Here is the final fairytale in my little series (there may always be more later). This one, a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, walks out into the Appalachian woods for its magic - and its terror. It has taken me several years to hear how the tale wanted to be told. It’s a long read, so settle in and let me tell you a story …
The little sister slept in the earth like a stone. Her stillness was that of a stone, deep and knowing, or the stillness of the grey hours before big snow. Brother sat beside her sleeping place and raked meditatively at the carpet of blue flowers there with the tips of his claws. She had called him here, to her loamy bower where he had not visited for long seasons, but now there was only the stillness. His ears flickered, hoping to catch some whisper of their forgotten language in the spring breeze.
He remembered she had once possessed a thing called a name. In the rusty murk of memory, he could see its shape bending the gloom, scratched on old boards in shaky charcoal. He had done that, long ago, with a charred and pointed stick from a fire. He no longer made fire bloom. He no longer scratched out the ciphers of the forgotten language, nor could he read them. He shook his shaggy head to disperse the bewildering bees of these thoughts, but the idea of the little sister’s name would not go. He had once had a name, too. What had it been? Growling, he stood and paced away into the thick brush. Names were of no use here.
He shambled along the thread of a deer trail. Drizzle filled the air, cold but pleasurable, and he snuffled it in with the good scent of hard green buds and rich earth. The ground was snowmelt-soft underfoot, pine needle and leaf rot, sodden fern fronds of the previous year splayed like bronze lace. All around him, water beaded along awakening branches and hung in crystalline drops, each one a window into endless forest.
His mind calmed, settled into the low, contented hum of simple being. Ahead, he could see in the clearing the mossy roof of Old Woman’s cabin, and in the hillside behind it the low opening to his place in the root cellar. This was safe and the lamp glow in the cabin’s foggy windows soothed him further. Later, he would sit quietly at the rough door, and Old Woman would give him a honey sweet. She would croon the forgotten names, precious and deep as psalms. She would know why the little sister had broken her silence.
At the edge of the forest, pinched between its dark pillars and the grassy lanes of a small orchard, a stout cottage huddled in a tangled nest of garden and vine. A woman swathed in a man’s rain slicker stretched and bent in slow rhythm, inspecting the vines and berry bushes. The patter of the rain on the slicker made a percussive counterpoint to the fierce chanting of the woman’s thoughts.
This is mine, this orchard, this garden, this good warm cottage. My place. I done paid for it in blood …
Yes, her own blood and that of others. Her thoughts cramped and shied from dark memories. What was done, was done. It was all for the best. On the steps of the porch, her little daughter sat watching her with solemn expression, a crust of new-baked bread clutched in her chubby fist. Neither smiled, nor showed any interest in the old pickup truck grinding and toiling up the dirt track to their door.
“Morning, Marta.” The driver leaned his head from his window, nodding the frayed bill of his ballcap into the misty rain. “Cold day for gardening, ain’t it?”
Marta slipped her hands into the pockets of the rain slicker and went to stand at the garden gate.
“Got to be done. Good weather coming, and it won’t be long till planting time. Vines are already waking up.” She looked up at the grey clouds in the distance, her eyes as empty as that smoky wash, before turning toward the house. “Best come in and get some hot coffee,” she said over her shoulder.
The man, neither young nor old, strong and lanky in the way of the hill-folk thereabout, brought boxes of groceries in with him: the staples of flour and milk, eggs, butter, a nice venison roast from his own hunt, clementines for the little girl. Shyly, he slipped a small box of chocolate drops filled with cream atop the rest.
“Thought you’d like a taste of sweet,” he said, shrugging. “Or maybe Alice, if she’s a good girl.”
He tipped a wink at the little girl, who ducked her head and gave him a ghostly sidelong smile.
Marta, pouring the strong black coffee from the enamelware pot, paused and grew still. She spoke without turning.
“I thank you, Roy. It will be a nice treat.”
For an eternal second, the air in the cottage crackled with an uneasy electricity, and then Marta turned to the laden table with two mugs of steaming brew. She sat one before Roy and the other in front of a chair at the far end of the table.
“Sit. I baked this morning. There’s bread and jam.”
She busied herself slicing a loaf and setting out plates.
Roy fidgeted in his chair, biting his lip to keep back the words they both knew were on his tongue. Finally, he slapped both knees with his calloused hands and set the words free.
“Marta, it’s been near on three years since . . . well, you been alone here a long time. I got a good farm, a good living. I’m asking you to marry me.”
It was not the first time he had uttered the words, and most likely would not be the last. He was not a man easily given to strong feelings. Where his heart led, be the ground ever so stony, he followed with unswerving constancy. His was the calm tenacity of the root that breaks the granite, oblivious to any pain or toil he might suffer in the breaking. He stared ahead of him at nothing as the woman’s busy hands faltered. He knew already what answer she would give.
“Roy,” she said, stern and practical, “I’m not for marrying. I thank you for the honor, but I got to wait right here if it takes the rest of my days. In case they come home.”
She touched the back of one wrist to her cheek, as if to catch a sudden tear.
On the braided rug by the woodstove, little Alice laid down her doll and bowed her head. Roy felt a strong, momentary desire to fold the girl in his arms; to carry her away from the loneliness to which her mama consigned them. What was best for Alice was an old argument between him and Marta, the only one that had ever brought anger with it.
He swallowed hurt and frustration. Then he lifted his coffee mug, and the comforting steam thawed the joy that ran as natural as blood in his veins, and he smiled.
“Don’t cry, dear. I’ll have a bite of that bread and jam if you don’t mind, then I’ll get to fixin’ that henhouse for you. Save me lugging them eggs up here every week.”
Marta cast him a dry-eyed, unreadable glance. “You do that. Got chickens coming any day now.” She set the sliced loaf and the jam pot laden with blackberry preserves before him. “And after, you stop back in here for some soup to warm you.”
******
Later, as Roy drove down the rutted road in the cold dusk, he thought again of marrying. It was past time in his life for a wife and family. He’d not found any woman quiet and still enough to suit him until he met Marta. He remembered the day her husband had gone and taken the boy and elder girl with him. Marta, seven months pregnant and looking like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, had walked to Roy’s farm, six miles through the August dark.
“Mr. Ballard, could I use your telephone?” she’d asked, blotting the perspiration from her forehead. “I got to call Elam’s sister down in Appleton.”
Even now, Roy felt an angry heat creep up his neck when he thought of it. He’d got Marta some water and led her to his mama’s old gossip seat where the telephone squatted. He hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help hearing part of the conversation.
“… took the children … thought he might go there … no, I reckon not … sorry to fuss you …”
Well, the children had been Elam Cupps’s from his previous marriage, so Roy supposed he had a right to them, but he could not imagine what had possessed the man to run off and leave his pregnant young wife. Marta, with what Roy thought of as child-like innocence, had been sure the old bastard would return. When her time came, and no Elam about, Roy had trekked the old logging road through the forest to Granny Barndollar’s shack and brought the old woman back to help with Alice’s birth. It had taken a heap of begging, but the old woman had finally relented.
“Ain’t no question who that baby’s daddy is,” Granny had said when mother and babe were resting. “Got them blue eyes all the Cupps’s has.”
She’d pursed her wrinkled lips and stared at Roy sitting at the kitchen table, near worn through with listening to Marta wailing with birthing pains. What are you getting at, you old witch, Roy had thought, stung by what he’d taken as a dirty accusation. Granny had stepped over to the sink and washed her hands, blotting them dry on her apron.
“Blue like forget-me-nots,” she said. “You ever notice how blue Elam’s eyes was? You ever see those forget-me-not eyes his children had? I only come for the sake of the babe. I ain’t stayin’ in this house.”
She had untied her apron strings, slung the damp, blood-stained thing into the sink and spit after it, and gone out the door. Roy had seen her stalking into the forest, toward home, stiff with some unknown rage. If he’d been offended, the feeling had fallen from him in the face of Granny’s fury. Instead, he’d shivered as a chill walked his spine.
Now, his headlights picked out the white shape of his house, a phantom in the rising mist, but cheery with lit windows. A rocking chair bobbed on the porch as though just vacated. He had not locked his door when he’d left, saw no need. His hand tightened on the gear shift, and he rolled slowly down the hill and eased the truck into the driveway. As he drifted around toward the back of the house, he saw the blanketed burro grazing on his lawn and knew with a sinking heart who had come to visit.
******
“Brought you a venison stew. Sit down and eat. Biscuits in that basket there.” The old woman turned back to the bubbling pot on the stovetop as if Roy were the visitor in her home.
Roy stood in the doorway for a moment, then shrugged out of his plaid coat. He sat down, his gaze following Granny’s movements as she dished up the fragrant stew. He peeked beneath the white towel covering the basket on the table. Biscuits just as fine as gold pieces, hot and buttery. He looked up as Granny slid a steaming bowl in front of him.
“Take your hat off, Roy-boy. Where’s your manners?”
He plucked the ball-cap from his head. Granny settled in the chair across from him, her lips set in a stern line, her eyes soft. Roy tasted a spoonful of stew, then dug in, a biscuit in his other hand.
“Where’d you get venison, Gran?” he asked, looking up at her from beneath his brows. He knew she owned no gun.
Granny sat back in her chair, her arms crossed on her scrawny chest.
“The forest provides,” she said. “I come to talk to you about that Cupps woman you been courtin’. Best you leave off that nonsense now, Roy. There’s trouble heading that way, soon enough.”
Roy set down his spoon. “What trouble?”
“An accountin’, is what. I been waiting for it three long years, and I seen the signs. The forget-me-nots is blooming in a place I know, just as blue as the face of death. That Marta Cupps set something awful going, and it’ll come back to her before them blooms is done.”
Roy drew in a long, slow breath. He did not believe everything he heard about Granny, but he’d known her since he was a small boy. The uncanny had brushed her, that was a certainty, and he’d not cross her if he could help it.
“Granny,” he began, then paused, hunting for the words. He tried again. “Marta’s had a hard time, Granny. What with Elam up and leaving her to raise little Alice all alone. Taking the other children with him. Her heart’s been broke. I can take care of her and Alice.”
Granny nodded. She was silent for a long time, and when she spoke, her voice had the ring of prophecy.
“I knew that girl when she was wild on the hills, tucked up in the hollers with kin worse’n animals. A pretty face got her out of that squalor, put her in Elam Cupps’s bed. She’s a well-off widow now, ain’t she? No husband to make demands, her own chick in the nest, and a besotted fool to do the man’s work. She saw to all that. But I’m telling you, Roy Ballard, bones is calling out now for an accountin’.”
“I’m not listening to this craziness,” Roy said. He stood, his chair scraping the floor, and took his bowl to the sink. “You got something stuck in your craw about Marta. She’s a good woman and a good mother to that little girl. I’d marry her if she’d have me. She could have all this.” He waved an arm to encompass his big house and rich acres. “She turned me down. Does that sound like a woman on the make?”
Granny shook her head and stood to wrap her shawl around herself. “You been living too far down the mountain for too long, Roy. You done forgot about wild creatures. That girl is wild at her heart, and wicked with it. Wild creatures don’t want no master, and they’ll kill for what they do want.” She paused, turning dark thoughts over in her mind. “I’ll tell you what’s stuck in my craw, as you see it. Elam Cupps never left that place, and the forest took his children. It weren’t without help.”
Roy stared at Granny in disbelief.
“Woman, you’re clean out of your mind. If you really thought that you’d go to the sheriff.”
Granny laid her hand on the door latch. She’d said her piece.
“No need for that lazy old cuss,” she said. “Time’s come, and bones is calling. You mind the forget-me-nots.”
******
Marta sat at the kitchen table, turning Roy’s little box of candies over in her hands. With slow precision, she unwrapped it from its bright cellophane and slipped the lid off. She stared down at the six perfect globes of chocolate. She’d had no candy in the house since Elam’s children had departed. She thought of how they would have clamored for the chocolates, greedy for sugar - the tiny girl blonde as her dead mama and the sturdy boy with Elam’s sandy curls, both as azure-eyed as devils.
It had been easy to lure the little gluttons into the forest with promises of sweets. They’d gone often enough to that old woman’s shack and been given hard tack candy to suck, returning with tongues stained cinnamon-red, lemon-yellow. They had no fear of the dark beneath the trees. Marta remembered the green smell of crushed fern, the rain-fattened smell of rich soil churned up by the girl’s flailing heels, the crackle of the child’s delicate neck bones, like dry twigs in Marta’s strong hands. The boy had fled wailing, calling out for the old witch woman, but she had brought him to earth with a hard-flung stone. She had watched him topple and roll away into deep thicket, watched the red of his cracked skull paint the moss, sinking to the thirsty roots. Leaving them to the beasts, she had gone home to where she had a dead man yet to butcher, Alice turning and kicking in her belly.
“Mama, may I have one?” Alice, at her knee, gazed owl-eyed at the foreign treat.
Her girl, flesh of her flesh, with Marta’s dark hair hanging about her round-cheeked face in ringlets. But the girl’s eyes were devil blue like her daddy’s. Like her siblings’ eyes that Marta had closed forever. She smiled and held the box out to her daughter, allowing Alice to choose her first taste of chocolate. The girl plucked one from its nest and ran with it to the screen door, slapping through it to eat her sweet on the porch.
“Mama,” cried Alice, the candy half-bitten. “Come see the pretty flowers.”
Marta rose and, carrying the chocolates, made her way out onto the porch. She followed Alice’s pointing finger and caught her breath. The garden was alight with patches of blue blooms, forget-me-nots stretched like scattered carpets. She marked their positions with narrowed eyes and downturned lips, remembering the feel of the shovel’s rough handle against her palms, the heft of the turned earth. This is my place now, you dirty old man, she thought. A shudder passed over her as though she could still feel Elam’s rough grasping and pawing. In defiance, she lifted a chocolate to her mouth and bit into its creamy heart.
Brother returned, night after night, to the little sister’s resting place. He remembered how Old Woman had scooped aside the soil and stones so Sister could stretch beneath them, and how he had known there would soon be a cold bed in the earth for him beside her. He had been small and feeble, the sodden bandage wrapping his head, and his frame wracked with sickness. Old Woman had sung to him, soothed him to sleep with a voice like the distant muttering of thunder.
“You ain’t a-goin just yet, sonny,” she’d said. “Granny will see to that.”
When he had awoken, he was strong - a rolling mountain of muscle and heavy bone, a product of some mountain magic he’d always half believed in, even when he’d been old enough to scoff. But the old language had been lost. His new tongue could not form it. His new mind held only a vague comprehension of it. Old Woman helped him remember, but the words were slippery things to grasp. Each season, more of them slithered away. More of him, too.
Now, from his place above the spangled moss and flower, he could smell the little sister’s bones. This no longer troubled him. He sat in the ferns beside her hidden form, and it was as though he could see her plainly. He knew her as she was now, a thing of bone and tatters, but also as a fading source of wind talk and root murmur. Soon, he knew, he would no longer be able to hear the little sister’s voice. A shiver walked over his pelt, fear and yearning combined. He looked up at the bits of summer stars visible through the boughs of the trees. Long ago, he had known some of their names. Though it was hard for him to think about them, he searched their glimmering for the once familiar shapes.
Out of the meaninglessness of their scattering, he suddenly discerned the formation of the Sickle, its name coming to him in a burst of alien clarity. It blazed above him as though hung just for his eyes, a cosmic reaping-hook, and he knew it for the long-awaited sign. A breeze stirred the leaves above him. A voice breathed something in the old forgotten language, tickling his sensitive ears. Home.
Goaded by the sharp touch of the word, he swung his great head to the south and followed the bright points of the Sickle. Miles melted beneath his loping gait, taking him to the edge of morning and an orchard meadow hung with a worrisome ghost of wood smoke that was both hateful and familiar. The meadow sloped gently down to a human dwelling. Alarmed, he made to retreat into the forest, but something caught his eye and turned him to stone.
A little girl (sister), this one with dark hair in a neat braid, a basket swinging from her wrist, twirled along a stone path that led to a second, smaller structure. Birds fluttered and scratched inside a wire pen, their muttering soft and querulous (chickens). The word burst into his brain on a ray of light. The strange little sister stopped on the garden path and looked up through the orchard as though she could see him there, a smile on her face. He clacked his teeth in agitation, his heart hammering, and then he rushed forward in delight.
******
“Never saw a bear come so close before.”
Roy turned from the window with a frown. He had brought a sack of crushed corn for the new chickens, but now one bird had gone down the gullet of the beast that had charged little Alice. Her egg-gathering basket still lay on the path leading to the henhouse, and the remaining flock twittered nervously from their nest boxes. The bear had pulled their wire run apart as if it were made of string.
Marta sat rocking Alice, her face white. He felt just as shaken and soothed himself by throwing a tea towel over the puddle of coffee he had spilled when Alice shrieked. His tin cup had rolled unhurt into a corner, and he bent to retrieve it.
“Will it come back?” Marta asked.
She looked around the snug cottage as if assessing weak points in her defenses. Her gaze stopped on Elam’s dusty shotgun hung above the door.
Roy raked a hand through his hair, trying to think of something comforting to say. He did not know the ways of bears.
“I don’t think it will. I think it just saw the chickens and took a chance. It’s probably a mile from here by now.”
He did not say what they were both thinking. Alice had been the likely target, and the chicken a mere consolation prize. He shifted from foot to foot.
“I’d like for you and Alice to come down to the house with me.”
Marta’s expression grew hard.
“We ain’t leaving. We’ll be fine.” She looked down at Alice. “Don’t be afraid, baby. That bear is long gone, like Roy says. I’ll keep you safe.”
Roy had no doubt that Marta would have wrestled the creature with her bare hands to save her girl. Alice’s piercing scream had still hung on the air, his own senses shocked and dumb, when the woman had flown from the kitchen like an avenging angel. He had followed in time to see the immense shaggy haunches of the bear propelling it up through the orchard. Marta had the girl in her arms, her own scream of fear and rage speeding the bear in its flight. But it had not gone far, returning moments later to steal the luckless hen. He sighed.
“I’m going to stay here tonight. I’ve got my deer rifle in the truck.” He held up a hand to still her protest. “If you won’t leave, I got no choice.”
“You suit yourself, Roy Ballard, but there ain’t no need.”
She stared at him with a gaze both suspicious and hostile. He had an unsettling impression of seeing the true face that lay beneath the mask, and then Marta twisted the corners of her mouth upward.
Roy cleared his throat and peered through the window. “I’ll just go fix up that chicken run. Don’t look too bad, I guess.”
She nodded, a look of sulky resignation replacing the false smile. He went to his work in a fog of uncertainty, striding past the blue patches of forget-me-nots without giving them a thought.
******
The evening was mild and afire with stars, a night for dreams and phantoms. Roy slept in the generous wing chair near the garden door, his feet on a worn ottoman and his rifle near to hand. He’d meant to keep a watch in case the bear returned, but the soft breeze through the screen door was like a lullaby. He had drifted a fair piece from wakefulness when a man’s voice startled him, coming clear and sudden from the dark.
“Roy. Come on out here a minute.”
The voice, mellow and easy with authority, put him in mind of his father. For a confused space, he was sure Daddy was outside, needing him to hold a light in the barn. But no, he remembered, there was a garden outside, and Marta’s henhouse, and Daddy was long gone to his reward. And then, the screen door was slapping behind him, and he was on the garden path. The air smelled of warm rain and a thread of cigarette smoke. He could see the glowing end of the hand-rolled smoke, and then the shape of the smoker, crouched low in front of the repaired chicken run. He moved closer and saw that it was Elam Cupps, sitting on a milking stool with a shovel across his lap and looking out at Roy from beneath the brim of his feed store cap.
“Elam? What are you doing out here? Where’ve you been?”
Roy’s bitter disappointment at the sight of Cupps turned to terror as the older man dragged on his cigarette and the flare of it lit his gaunt, expressionless face. It was the face of a cadaver.
“My boy’s come home, Roy, come fixin’ to set things right. Well, you seen him.”
Roy shook his head, whether in negation of having seen the boy or in denial of the dead thing before him, he couldn’t have said. Somewhere on the ridge a coyote howled. Cupps flicked the cigarette into the sudden mass of forget-me-nots that nodded all about them. Roy could hear them growing, their roots burrowing, their stems stretching, the hiss of their leaves like hands rubbing against one another. Only their blue faces were silent, as still as Elam’s and as eloquent. Cupps stood and leaned on the shovel, the flowers rolling over his feet like surf.
“What happened to you?” Roy whispered.
“Come to get my boy,” Cupps said, and his voice was like the sigh of the breeze. “He’s come home.”
The flowers had climbed the man’s skeletal calves. Cupps grinned, his teeth long and hungry looking in the starlight. Roy took a step back and heard the breaking of green tendrils as the dead man’s garden pulled away from his own legs, and then he was falling toward the opened earth, and Cupps’s shovel was tearing free of the clinging forget-me-nots, ready for business.
He jolted awake with a stifled cry, kicking away the ottoman and digging his fingers into the upholstered arms of the chair. Dawn burned pale across the ridges, a candle wash of light. There would be no more sleep. Roy rose and made coffee, carrying a mug out onto the porch and settling himself against a post. He sipped and looked out at Marta’s garden.
There they were, the blue flowers, just like Granny had warned him. They weren’t the feverish tide of his nightmare, just scattered patches of blooms, but Roy stared at them with grim wonder. What lay beneath their delicate lace? He scowled at them, symbols of hellish deeds. He would have to dig, if only for his own sanity, but he did not relish the task. He thought of Marta, sleeping in the house at his back, fierce in her rejection of his every invitation. Quietly accepting his labor and his gifts from behind her unassailable wall. Maybe he was a fool, like Granny claimed. A shovel would tell the tale; he would not be stopped. He shuddered, remembering his dream.
“Roy?”
He spun at the soft sound of his name. Alice, barefoot and in her nightgown, stood at the screen door rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“What are you doing out of bed, kitten?” he asked. “Is your mama up?”
Alice shook her head, staring at him. He extended a hand and waved her forward.
“Well, come on out and sit with me. Can’t sleep, eh?”
The girl opened the door and slipped out, closing it with care so it wouldn’t snap. She tiptoed to Roy and sat down on the step beside him, leaning into his warmth. He scooped her against him, drawing breath to ask if she wanted some breakfast, but Alice put her finger to her lips and shook her head. She pointed to the back of the garden where the tall grass of the orchard meadow swayed in the dawn breeze.
Something stood there, a darker shadow in the shifting mist on the meadow. It moved, and Roy tensed, clutching Alice. The bear glided from the meadow onto the garden path. Roy heard its claws ticking on the stones as it stepped closer, bobbing its great head and snuffing the air. It gave a quiet huff as it moved past the chicken run, as though acknowledging the sleepy hens.
Roy cursed himself for leaving his rifle in the house. He glanced down at Alice, praying the girl would not scream or try to run, but to his astonishment she sat in quiet peace. She watched the bear move forward, nosing into the clumps of blue flowers. Alice smiled.
“He’s nice,” she whispered. “He’s a good bear.”
She wiggled her fingers at the creature and Roy felt ice wash through his veins as it lumbered closer.
“Don’t move,” he breathed. “Just be still and …”
It will be all right. That’s what he’d meant to say. But the sun peeked through the clouds, bathing the bear in a shaft of light, striking off its pensive gaze. He’d seen the glint of forget-me-not blue where there should have been wild, earthy brown, and all the air had gone from his lungs in a near-sob.
The bear stood, swaying from one enormous front paw to the other, ready to be doing, but patient with the man and child. Roy stood on shaking legs, lifting Alice against him.
“We’re gonna go get in my truck, kitten. I’ll show you my farm, ok?” He spoke with soft, choked fervor, willing the girl to agree.
He took a gliding step backward to the door, reached behind to open it wide enough for it to remain ajar. The bear watched him, its blue eyes burning like ghost light. In a swift minute he was through the little house and out to the old pickup, lifting Alice from his lap to the passenger side of the worn bench seat, closing the door and waking the engine. Tears ran over his cheeks. He didn’t feel them. He swung the truck toward home.
“What about mama?” Alice, always a quiet child, whispered to him from a thousand miles away.
“It’ll be all right,” he told her. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Action and consequence, eh? Sometimes it takes a while, but payment always comes due. Stay alert when you walk in the woods. Thanks for reading…
Oh what happens next! What happens next!
Liz, thanks for sharing this story. The Appalachia is the perfect setting for something like this story. Hope you're having a good week!