Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker(6)

“Now set me down,” growled the gnome to the boy, “and our transaction is completed.”

The boy put the knife between his teeth as he picked up the severed limb of the maiden tree.

“Not my concern,” cried the queen to the gnome. “That’s what comes of trusting the innocent. They’re as malign as everyone else. Save yourself, if you can.”

She raised her hands, and a chorus of birdsong rose all around them. A maelstrom in the air, of summergreen leaves and pine needles and bits of bark and twig. With both his hands on the newly trimmed staff, the boy closed his one capable eye. It felt as if the forest were retreating, and the Queen of the Thrushes with it. The gnome on the head of the blade swore fiercely, but the boy didn’t open his jaws.





7.


The sound of speaking voices brought the boy around. The surprise wasn’t so much that he was alive again but that the voice wasn’t the old man’s voice. The old woman was talking to a visitor—the first they’d ever had.

Dirk tried and failed to raise himself on his elbows. He wasn’t in his loft but laid out upon the bearskin in the nook that the old woman sometimes called her changing room. The cloth that hung in the doorway blocked Dirk’s view of the main room.

He was so surprised at the novelty of a guest to the waldhütte that he lay his head back down and just listened.

“You are very good at telling these tales,” said the visitor. He had a kindly tone, the sort that seemed to welcome further comment. “They come out of you so naturally. Do you have children or grandchildren to tell stories to?”

“Not a one,” said the old woman. “It’s just me and the old man here, and always was. I wouldn’t have a child about here. I couldn’t stand the bother.”

“Your command of the old folk tale is impressive, given you’ve no youngster to sit agog at your feet.” (Dirk held his breath.) “Tell me another.”

“Come back tomorrow,” replied the old woman. “I have mending to do, and hog fat to render, and I can’t sit in the sunny hours amusing you with tales of the forest. Are you able to find your way here again?”

“Stories have their own pull,” said the guest. Dirk now thought of the visitor as a young man, or younger anyway than the old man. Dirk sorely wanted to see a stranger. Something in the old woman’s tone of voice, however, made him hold his tongue.

“Until the next time, Frau . . . Fr?ulein . . . ?”

She didn’t supply a name. The door clicked open and clacked shut.

Dirk felt the fur of the bear irritate the back of his neck. He wanted to roll around and collect the bearskin all about him and hide in it. Become a bear, and lumber away. He couldn’t yet move, though. He might be able to speak if he tried, but he didn’t try.

“So he’s gone,” said the old man, coming in. “I hid out in the lee of the shed until I saw him leave. What did he want?”

“Not what you think,” said the old woman.

“Did he ask about Dirk?”

“He wanted stories. He wrote down what I said and then read it back to me. I told him one of the hoary old tales. He couldn’t wait to go back to the village and tell his brother. He’ll be back tomorrow.” She began to cry.

Usually at a moment like this, Dirk would have felt a rise of warmth toward her, but this time he could not.

“Why did you bring the boy back?” she managed at last to say.

“I thought it would be better to sling him in the hog pen than to leave his body in the wood where hunting dogs might find it. The hog has to eat, too.”

Dirk thought perhaps he wasn’t actually alive, but only halfway, somehow.

“And you with that wound in your leg!”

“As near as I could make out, the boy had cut a useful crutch for me before the tree fell. Once I woke to see his prone form by the fallen tree, well, what was I to do? Better to butcher him here than to have someone stumble across his corpse and start asking questions. We have the only waldhütte in this district. We would be the first to suspect.”

“You can’t do a blessed thing right.” The old woman began to berate the old man with a tongue more foul than the boy had ever heard her use.

As much to silence her as for any other reason, Dirk cried out, “Where have I been?”

The silence in the room was like a heavy ghost pressing all the air down to the rude floorboards.

“And now the saints have deserted us,” hissed the old woman. She meant it as a whisper but Dirk’s ears were alert with panic. “The boy is alive. You ought to have buried him there when he was too far gone to suffer. And so it all starts again. How shall we manage now?”

“He made me a crutch,” said the old man. “What else was I to do?”

“Where have I been, and where have I come back to?” called Dirk.

The cloth in the doorway whipped aside. “Hush you and your mouth,” said the old woman. “You’ll wake the dead.”

“He woke himself,” said the old man, at least a little kindly. “How are you feeling?” He peered over the old woman’s angled elbows. He was leaning on a crutch.

“Why would you lie to that man about me?” asked Dirk.

“You’ve had a bad spell, you’re making up stories in your bruised head,” the old woman said. “You don’t understand.”