They say that a witch lives in these woods. Some say that she only eats sweets and lives in a hut made of gingerbread. Others say that it is propped on rotating chicken legs. But all agree she can make any child’s wish come true. All they need to do is find her. But of course, as with any wish, there is a catch. The children that find the old woman never leave the woods. But then, why would they?”
The Old Woman of the Wood: A Folk Tale
::
I
Of a Mother and a Father's Love
The wheel of the cart creaked as the donkey pulled it over rocks and holes. The girl stared down at her clasped hands. The boy fidgeted nervously. Their father would react only with a glare when they spoke to one another, and so the children fell into an uneasy silence, and the only sounds were those creaking wheels and the warbling of forest birds.
The boy stared at the slowly passing forest and expected to see a werewolf around every bend, or a ghoul between every tree. The stories he had been told in better times told that the forests were dark and haunted places, filled with monsters and evil. The girl knew better. In recent years their family had taken to these woods, collecting mushrooms and roots, and hunting game whenever they could. This was poaching, and therefore against the King’s law, but their father explained that when one’s family is threatened by starvation, need drives even the most honorable of men to crime.
She did not fear the woods.
She would learn to.
The twins knew their father loved them, but lately he had been angry. He’d never raised a hand to them, and yet two days previously the boy had let a slick pewter mug slip from his hands and spilled the milk that was inside. Their father had beaten him for it, and afterwards left the house for a long time. He returned late at night. Their parents thought that the girl was asleep, but she watched them from the crack in the wall. Her father looked pale and terrified. He and their mother had talked for a long time after, and although she did not hear much of what they said, but she knew they spoke of winter and of a price to be paid.
Their father did not speak to them the next day, and then as the children awoke on this morning, their mother told them that they were to have an adventure. They would be taken to the old woman in the woods to live out their days. There would be warm beds and plenty to eat, and they would be happy there. The girl did not understand. She was happy at home with her mother, father, and brother. But their mother said that they were too young to understand why they must go to the old woman.
And so off they went into the woods with their father.
Off to an adventure.
::
In the middle of the path they came upon a small table made of old wood and festooned with antlers and thorny vines. Beyond it the trees gave way to a clearing, and in the center, bathed in a cheery pillar of yellow sunlight, was a house. It was not propped on turning chicken legs or made of gingerbread like the stories would have them believe, but rather of simple wooden planks, with a thatched roof and crooked chimney, gently puffing smoke. Their father drove the cart to the table and stopped. He stepped down from his seat, and advanced towards the table, clenching and unclenching his fists. Staring at the house.
The world became silent all at once, so silent the air seemed to vibrate. Then a strange wind blew through the trees, causing the grass to roll in waves and the flowers to dance. Branches clacked together, and the dried, dead leaves littering the ground blew in small whirlwinds that made the sound of rain. Birds gibbered excitedly, and when the boy looked up he noticed that all manner of finches, sparrows, robins, croaking crows, and even a shrieking hawk had appeared in the trees above. More than seemed natural. A cloud passed over the sun, casting the field and house in shadow and suddenly all was still and silent once more.
And then the house's door silently opened.
Even at a distance, the children could see the outline of a thin, white form filling the opening, from the top of the door frame to the wooden floor. They could not make the figure out very well, but even that small glimpse sent shivers up the boy’s back. Unease seemed to creep into their father as well, for though he was a large, well-built man, even he hesitated before approaching the table.
He reached into his jacket and produced a small pouch and knife from within. He opened the pouch and pulled from it two coins that glinted dully in the sunlight. He placed each coin deliberately on the rough wooden surface, one at a time, then reluctantly picked up the knife. He curled one hand around the blade, then pulled on the handle with the other, parting the flesh on his palm and sending thick droplets of startlingly red blood pattering onto the coins. The children gasped at this, and the girl even made to step from the cart, but their father turned on them. His look and demeanor lent no room for insolence, and they stayed right where they were. He turned back, and held his bloody palm towards the house. The three of them were still, and the children’s fear and apprehension grew with each moment.
Finally, the figure disappeared from the door, but left it open wide, revealing only darkness inside. The clouds passed and the gentle warbling of the forest’s birds returned. The boy looked up into the trees to find their branches were bare once more. Their father staggered back a few steps, then quickly turned and made for the cart. He hastily picked the boy up under his arms, smearing his shirt with blood, and roughly placed him on the ground, then did the same for the girl. She noticed tears streaming down his face as he did so. Their father then turned and climbed back into his seat, flicked the reins and the old donkey began to walk.
He turned the cart around and set back off into the woods, without a backwards glance.
The children watched him roll off until he disappeared from sight. The girl wrapped her arm around the boy, and looked over her shoulder towards the house. The door was still open, though despite the sunshine she could not see passed the shadows to what was inside. She thought of her father, and him roughly removing her from the cart. She thought about how she knew she would never see him again. But most of all she thought about his tears. It was the most natural thing in the world for a father to feel sorrow for abandoning his children in the woods, the girl knew, and yet those tears were not of sadness.
They were tears of relief.
::
II
Of Supper and Shoes
The sun shined down on the field, the sky taking on the deep blue of midday that only intensified the green of the grass and the yellows of the sunflowers. Fat bumblebees hovered about, gently kissing the warm pedals, and a pair of beautiful white birds raced through the sky doing circles around one another, again and again. The clearing looked to all the world like a picture from a story book, but the unease the twins felt as they approached the house made them wonder what sort of a story they were in.
The rich aroma of stew soon wafted through the air, spurring them on. They had not eaten a hot meal in more than a fortnight, and in that moment the threat of mortal danger seemed a paltry concern compared to filling their bellies. They were running by the time they arrived at the entrance, and when they did the girl’s stomach dropped. The door was wreathed in animal bones, along with several dried squirrels and birds. There were also strange totems made from carved sticks and fastened together with what looked like human hair. Above the threshold hung a stag’s skull, wreathed in magnificent antlers. The girl could not place why these objects filled her with such dread, for the woods were full of such things. In truth, it was not they that caused her disquiet. It was something she remembered about the figure that stood watching them from the house. It filled the door frame, and yet now, up close, she could see it was nearly eight feet tall.
The boy did not notice, and instead peaked furtively through the open door. The house was longer than it was wide, with two closed doors at the far end, a wooden table with three chairs, and a stone hearth over a large black oven, with a kettle on top that steamed with the intoxicating aroma of cooking stew.
Crouching before the large black iron door of the oven stoking the flames, was an old woman.
She wore a long shawl over her hunched back and pulled over her head like a hood, and a dress that was tattered near the feet. She stood, patting the dust from the front of her dress, then stooped over the kettle stirring its contents with a long wooden spoon clutched in gloved, gnarled fingers. She pulled the spoon from the stew and tasted it with a long slurp, and then retrieved a powder from the top of the hearth and sprinkled a bit inside. Then she turned to face the children. The old woman was not the plump, matronly grandmother that would turn pumpkins into carriages and mice into pure white steeds, but nor was she the monstrous crone that would poison princesses with red apples.
She was just an old woman; her face was thin yet fleshy towards the neck, with jowls that hung down from her jaw. She had a blunt nose that did have a rather witch-like mole on it, and wiry grey and white hair poked out from under her hood. She looked at the children appraisingly with a pair of glassy, protruding grey eyes. Nothing untoward about her at all. What the girl saw in the door must have been a trick of the light, she thought.
“So, it is twins this time, heh?” the old woman said, looking from child to child. “In better times you would be a blessing, I think, heh heh. Alas, these are not better times, and you two are more trouble than you’re worth.” She turned back to her stew. “Or at least that is what your father thinks. Oh don’t give me that look! Be grateful they didn’t set you off on the Trail of Treats or other such nonsense to starve in the woods. Or worse things yet! I would hazard that there’s at least one or two noble men that would pay a handsome price for two fetching children such as yourselves.” She turned to face them again. “Well don’t just stand there with your mouths hanging open, come in and shut the door. Flies are getting in.” The children did as they were told.
“You look hungry.” The old woman continued. “You’re all bones! Well, we can’t have that. Wouldn’t do at all.” She ladled three large measures each into two wooden bowls, then placed them on the table in front of the children. They attacked the food, not even bothering to sit down, while the old woman looked on, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. The scalding stew burned their mouths, but they ate on. The boy finished first, licking the bowl clean, and the old woman could not help but laugh. “My, my,” she said, “you are hungry!”
He belched, a reddish broth dribbling from his chin, and then looked at the old woman sheepishly. “Is there any more?”
She laughed again. “You’ll do fine, boy.” She nodded, refilled his bowl, and watched him gorge. “Yes, I think you’ll do just fine.”
“Madame.” The girl asked, once her bowl was empty. “Thank you for the food, it is very good, but I must ask: my mother told me that you only eat sweets, yet this soup is made of meat and leeks. Has she lied to us?”
The old woman cackled and moved back to the pot. “Feh! Peasants and their prattle. It seems they hear only what they wish to.” She stirred the pot, then inclined her head thoughtfully. “Although… it is possible that she did lie. I know not your mother’s heart, but it seems to me that any mother that would give her children up is no fit mother at all.” The old woman sipped from the spoon, smacked her lips, then opened a closet and retrieved a jar of spice from within. “At any rate, your mother was only half right. It is not sweets that I eat.” Before she closed the door, the girl noticed dozens of small shoes littering the inside. “It is sweetbreads.” The old woman barked like a crow, as if at a joke the girl did not understand.
The boy chewed noisily.
::
After dinner it was getting dark, and the children were exhausted from their journey. The old woman directed the boy to a pile of hay in the corner. He had scarcely laid down before he was asleep. The girl made to join him, but the old woman stopped her.
“You will stay with me and warm my bed, girl.” She said, but the girl was scared. There was something about the old woman that made her nervous. “This way.”
The old woman ushered the girl into a windowless room. In it was a bed with an overstuffed mattress, a closed chest, and a wooden table. On the table was an assortment of curious objects. There were strange jewels and baubles, a white handled knife, and a chalice, as well as more animal bones and strange symbols written in chalk. The old woman lit a candle, painting the room in contrasting black and red. She placed it on the table, and shut the door, then gestured to the bed.
The girl laid down and watched the single candle paint monstrous shadows on the wall. Back at home, their father had often told them stories while making shadow puppets on the wall with his hands. He wasn’t very good at it, but was able to make a wolf easily enough. The wolf stories were always the scariest, and the children loved the scary ones. The shadows now were a different kind of scary. They licked and writhed like things living, even though the room was windowless and the air was still and stale.
The old woman stood facing the wall, removing her clothing one piece at a time. The girl knew she shouldn’t watch, but the dancing shadows she cast on the wall in the red light of the candle were mesmerizing. The gloves were taken off first and tossed onto the wooden table. Next the hood was pulled down, and the girl saw the candle light reflect off of the old woman’s bald pate wreathed in grey-white hairs. Then the rest of the shawl and her dress were removed, revealing boney shoulders, knobby spine, and exposed ribs on her naked back, pocked with liver spots. And then the old woman straightened up and grew taller.
And taller.
And taller.
The girl knew that this must be another illusion of the light, or the shadows playing tricks on her. The old woman held out a very long and very thin arm, and the girl remembered the form she saw in the doorway earlier that day. Two slender fingers that seemed to have too many joints pinched out the candle, plunging the room into complete darkness.
Sound seemed to leave the world completely.
The girl strained her eyes and ears for any indication of the old woman’s approach, but she could not. She could only lay there in the utter darkness, in the utter silence, unable to move from fear. There was something nauseating in that stillness, something alien. She felt as if her thoughts were no longer confined within her own head, and would seep out of her body, which felt as if it too was dissolving, mixing with the darkness, like blood dropped into a pool of black, black water.
Just when she began to think that she could not take more of the nothingness, a presence answered, and she realized that things could be worse. Something long and cold stretch across her chest and pull her into an embrace. It did so slowly, but there was strength in it that was not to be resisted. She felt the sagging breasts through the sleeve of her shirt, the bloated belly against her thigh, the wet lips press against her ear. Steady, foul breath drew in and out, like wind blowing from an old cave.
She was held like that and listened to that sound until morning.
::
The girl did not think she slept, and yet in that blackness she dreamed.
She stood on the precipice of a great chasm. Her toes dangled over an edge of sheer white rock that extended ever downward into complete blackness. She looked up and saw that at her side was a hooded figure carrying a long shepherd’s crook. From its cowl grew a rack of antlers. It stared as well, and after a few moments lifted its head. She could not see eyes, and it gestured with the crook into the darkness.
And when she looked she saw fires wink into being and the things that danced around them.
They were naked, far too tall and far too thin, and moved from fire to fire with hands raised skyward and bodies writhing ritual undulations. The sounds of piping flutes, cymbals clashing, and beating pagan drums filled the air, the sheer walls of the cliff face modulating the sound with echoes. From her vantage point she could see more and more fires wink into existence. A galaxy of small lights unfolded before her, like stars in a clear night’s sky. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that others had begun to join the fray, and as they did the revelers threw themselves to the ground in subjugation. With dream logic, she recognized these creatures – chimeras of men and stags and goats and stranger things. They were old. They were so very old, and now she noticed that the music had ceased, and in its place there was a vibrating silence.
She had been noticed.
The revelers now looked up to her, their faces etched into pantomimes of abject emotion, like the masks a theater troupe that passed through her village had worn in happier times. Some wore too wide smiles, their mouths showing too many teeth, their eyes crescent moons of amusement. Others were parodies of sadness, mouths twisted into deep grotesque frowns. And then others screamed. Their mouths opened far passed what should have been possible, eyes bulging in a way that no thinking creature’s could.
Slowly they pointed to her, with long arms and fingers that extended further than what was possible in a rational world, and that was when she felt the quick shove from behind, and she was in the air, falling towards their waiting arms.
::
And then the spell was broken and she sat up in bed.
Her brother was screaming.
III
Of Blood and Gold
The girl did not know when the old woman – or whatever the old woman had become – left the room, but she found that she was alone. She darted out of bed and threw open the door, the sickly amber light of day blinding her. The boy remained in the corner of the room on the pile of hay, though now there was a cage around him. It was too small for him to stand or stretch his legs, and so he crouched, screaming and pulling frantically at the thick metal bars.
The girl rushed across the room and wrapped her hands around the bars, and then screamed and yanked them away. The bars felt as if they had been laying in a fire overnight. The boy was somehow unaffected by this, and he struggled in vain to free himself. He stopped suddenly, and looked over the girl’s shoulder, his face changing from panic to cold terror. Slowly, the girl turned to see the old woman, once again plain and unassuming, standing in the middle of the room, an open, toothless smile on her face and something like joy in her protruding eyes.
The girl scrambled to her feet and backed against the cage, then yelped as the back of her legs brushed against the bars.
The old woman cackled.
“I would steer clear of that, girl.” She said, shaking a finger at her, like a grandmother warning a child away from fresh cookies. “Not until you’ve completed your chores.” The girl stared at the old woman, trying to make sense of what was happening. “Don’t stare at me gawping like a fish you little bitch.” The old woman’s faux civility evaporated instantly, her face twisting into a rancorous knot, her eyes bulging even further. The girl flinched. The change in the old woman’s tone came so suddenly that she almost cowered against the cage, but stopped herself just in time. That toothless grin returned on the old woman’s face. “I’m going to put you to work.” She promised. Her tone had softened, but retained an edge of malice, and the girl knew at once that whatever these chores were would have a catch. Doing them correctly would save her and her brother. Doing them incorrectly… she preferred not to think about that.
“What would you have me do?” She asked, her voice sounding so small and weak in her ear.
“Speak up.” The old woman said the two words so fast they sounded like one. She advanced on the girl with surprising agility and pinched her hard on the back of the arm. The girl yelped and instinctively pulled away. The old woman grabbed her by the hair and with startling strength, forced her face down towards the bars of the cage. She stopped when the girl’s eye was an inch away from the bars. The boy stared into his sister’s face, so close, and yet he could do nothing to help her. “When you speak to me,” the old woman said from outside the cage, “you will do so loudly and clearly. Do you understand?” The girl nodded vigorously. “ANSWER ME.” Her voice was altered. Inhuman. It was a ululating drone that felt as if a wasp flew into the boy's ear.
“Yes, madam!” The girl shouted, and her voice did not waver.
“That’s more like it.” The old woman said approvingly, once again calm. She let the girl fall to the floor, and was already walking to the house door to go outside. “You will clean the oven, scrub the floors, wash the dishes, and prepare the vegetables for supper. If you should find any treasures, you will put them in the chest inside the bedroom. If you do not complete these tasks you will pay, do you understand?”
“Yes madam!” The girl shouted.
The old woman beamed toothlessly. “Well then!” her eyes hardened and the smile dropped a fraction. “What are you waiting for?”
::
The girl began by cleaning the oven. She opened the metal grate at the bottom, and had to squeeze her entire upper half inside. It was filled with soot, and half burnt wood. What treasures could the old woman expect to find in such a place? She swept out the inside on her belly, making herself filthy in the process, until she had a large pile of refuse to dispose of. She sifted through the pile, looking for anything that could be considered a prize, until a glint of something caught her eye. She plucked it out with her fingers, then spat into her hand to wash the piece. The glint of gold finally showed through the grime, and the girl wondered what it was doing inside the ash trap of an oven. Then she almost dropped it back when she realized what she held.
It was a gold tooth.
She looked at it, and then towards the bedroom. The door was ajar. She loathed to enter that room again, but at least this time the old woman was no longer occupying it. Still, she stepped lightly towards it, afraid that a thin pale hand with fingers that moved like a spider’s legs would reach out and drag her inside and slam the door shut.
This did not happen.
Inside the room, the girl was surprised to find that the chest was not locked, and more surprised still when she saw what was inside. It nearly overflowed treasure. Gold coins and precious gems, white and black pearls, and even furs, feathers, and jars of rare spices. The bounty reflected warmly in the dim light, in the way that only something valuable can. The tooth she held in her hand hardly seemed to belong with the fortune, but she was determined to follow the old woman’s instructions to the letter. Her mind raced constantly with images of what unspeakable punishment awaited her and her brother if she did not. The girl placed the tooth in the chest, and before she closed the lid, noticed that a few of the coins on top were stained with blood.
Next she got down on her hands and knees with a bucket filled with lye and scrubbed with a brush. The lye burned her hands and the suds turned pink as she worked. She noticed this, and then saw that the coarse bristles of the brush had pried something from the floorboards. The girl picked it up and inspected it. Then she noticed the shallow scratches that covered the floorboards, irregular and crisscrossing, but all seemed to follow a general path: from the cage where her brother was imprisoned, to the oven. It was then that she noticed the grain of the wood was infused with blood. She looked back at what she held and this time she did throw the object when she realized what it was. The human finger nail, still red around the bed, clattered across the floor.
She started frantically scrubbing again, as tears began to burn her eyes, almost as much as the lye on her hands.
The day continued from there, each task painstakingly completed. Things were cleaned, and then cleaned again to avoid even the most minute speck of dirt. And all the time the boy hunched in his cage, wanting to cry out to his sister but knowing that if he did so she would be punished for not completing her tasks.
He did not know what happened in that room she disappeared into the night before, but he saw strange lights from under the door and through the cracks, and stranger noises that would jar him awake throughout the night despite his exhaustion. And when the trickle of sunlight fell upon him through the window, he opened his eyes and found himself imprisoned.
He felt ashamed, not only because he was unable to help his sister, but because of the relief he felt, that it was she the old woman visited her attacks upon and not him. It was his sister, not him, that was made to share her bed in that horrible room. He could almost weep tears of relief.
Not him.
The girl’s hands were sodden and pruned, her fingernails weakened from being submerged in hot water for so long, but she had nearly finished the dishes, and that would complete the old woman’s list of chores. She did not know what would come next. She dried the last tea cup and hung it with the others on the one remaining hook, and no sooner had she done so did a voice behind her call out.
“Sweet child.” The girl flinched so badly she nearly toppled over, but she recovered herself quickly and stood straight to face the old woman. The girl had not noticed her return. Neither had the boy. The room was empty, save for his sister one moment, and then the next the horrible old woman appeared as if from thin air. She had that same expectant, toothless smile on her face that she wore that morning, only this time she held in her hands a pair of long sheers. The girl tried to keep her eyes on the old woman, but they involuntarily flicked to the cruel looking metal. “Get the pillows from the bedroom.” The girl did as she was told, and when she returned the old woman smiled. “Open them.”
The sacks they had used as pillows the night before were filled with human hair. Clumps of reds and yellows and browns were matted together with a gummy black grime, and the girl knew that they were very old. A beetle crawled from the depths of one pile. It emitted a loathsome clicking as its antennae twitched.
The old woman sat the girl down on a stool, then pulled one up for herself and sat behind her. She pulled fistfuls of the girl’s hair painfully and hacked pieces off, yellow strands fluttering to the ground. “Waste not, want not, eh, girl?” the woman said, cackling as the shears clamped shut dangerously close to her ear. “You look like you have something to say?”
The girl didn’t face the old woman, and so her face gave nothing away, but she did in fact have something to say. “Our father paid you to take care of us, didn’t he?”
The old woman laughed like she had never heard anything funnier in the world. “Now, this is good. Wait until you hear this. For years these pig farmers and shit rakers have been sending their children to me. Truth be told, I’m not sure I even recall why. They always fill the children’s heads with nonsense about all of the sweets and candies that await them here. To fool them into shutting up, I’d wager. But here’s the funny part: your father actually paid me to take you.” She threw her head back and laughed, slapping her knee. “Your father, who was such a failure he couldn’t support you two brats paid me four coins. And cut his hand! He cut his hand! I never told him he had to do that! Oh, I could barely keep a straight face! What these peasants come up with...” She wiped a tear from her eye. “So now here’s something for you to think about: either your father was such a fool that he paid me thinking I would take care of you, or he hated you so much that he needed me to take you, and would pay his last thin penny to make sure you two wound up here. With me. How does that make you feel?” The girl felt numb, but she didn’t know what to say. She had to answer or be subjected to some unspeakable punishment. The question was rhetorical, however, as the old woman continued. “It may be small comfort, but that cut on his hand is going to go bad, poison his blood, and kill him. That’s what happens when you dip an open wound into pig shit all day. Hah, the fool! Then your mother will hold out until she’s forced to return to the town and whore herself out. It will take a while, she's a strong woman, but not strong enough! A few winters from now she’ll freeze to death anyway.” The girl’s head snapped around and looked at the old woman, who just smiled and nodded. “I know these things."
“Why are you doing this?” The girl asked weakly.
The old woman’s face went slack, and then positively quivered with rage. She stood up so quickly the stool she was sitting in flew across the room and bounced off the wall. She stormed over to the cage the boy was kept in, reached through the bars and in one quick motion grabbed his index finger and snipped it off at the knuckle with the shears. It happened so quickly that neither the girl nor the boy knew to scream.
The boy started first.
He held his hand to his chest and screamed. The blood that leaked down his pale arm looked black in the dimming light. The girl gaped at him, then looked to the old woman. She held the severed finger over her open mouth and drank the blood that dribbled from the stump. The girl realized with fresh horror that the old woman’s mouth, once gummy and toothless, was now filled with rows and rows a razor-sharp fangs. That was when she started screaming. The old woman shook the boy’s finger and the last few drops fell, then she tossed the whole thing into her mouth, crunching it twice before swallowing. The old woman, with a thin trickle of blood leaking out of one corner of her mouth, looked at the girl with her protruding eyes and her mouth full of teeth and nodded gravely.
“You will remember to speak up next time.” She said over the boy’s screams.
::
IV
Of The Oven and The Crook
The days blended together. Every morning the girl was made to perform grueling chores with nerve-wracking and confounding addendums, but she dare not question or shirk them. Her brother cradled his mutilated hand and wept quietly most days. The only time he stopped was when the old woman would force him to eat bowls of lard and acorns. The girl was given scraps.
They both dreaded nightfall, when the girl would once again share the old woman’s bed and experience fantastical and terrifying visions in the pitch blackness, while the boy would cower back as much as his cage would allow, trying not to listen to the gibbering, unnatural voices that came from behind the closed door. There seemed to be more and more voices every night.
While the girl wasted away, the boy became plump, and both knew that whatever grim purpose was intend for them would soon come to pass. The girl thought often of the scratch marks she found carved into the craggy wooden floor, the horrible implications weighed on her mind everyday as she knelt to her aching knees and dipped her sore, red hands into the lye to scrub the boards. She did not tell her brother of them.
Then their fears were realized.
One sunny afternoon, the girl was drawn to the main room by the sound of rhythmic scraping. She emerged from the bedroom to find the old woman seated at the table. She held in her hand a long butcher’s knife, that she licked in a practiced motion with a whet stone three times per side, before placing it on the table, next to a row of many more knives of many different sizes. The old woman noticed the girl, and glided the whet stone with flourish over the new knife she had picked up.
“This is one chore I won’t have you do.” She said with that toothless smile of hers. “This part is for me. For my pleasure.” She punctuated the last word by nodding her head and raising her eyebrows. “I will have you start the oven, however. I want it to be positively screaming hot.” She cackled very much like the witch that she was at that.
The girl’s mind raced. She looked at her brother, whose eyes were wide as he stared at the gleaming metal that was meant for him. But she did not betray her emotions. She simply walked across the room and bent to her task, thinking all the time. She noticed that while the ash trap she had been made to crawl through for so many days was very small, the oven itself was quite large. She began to load wood onto the grate, carefully stacking it so that it would catch quickly and burn evenly. Her whole body easily fit inside. She lit a small bundle of tinder with the flint, then blew gently on the flames. Soon the dry wood caught, and a sustained fire burned. Then she waited, and thought, adding more wood from time to time.
The old woman continued to sharpen her knives, and as she did she said, “I’m going to eat you both tonight.” The boy began to weep. “I’m going to carve your fat brother into pieces and roast him with carrots and onions. But first,” she placed her knife on the table, stood from her seat, and walked across the room towards the boy’s cage, “first to whet my appetite I’m going to eat your sister whole. Right here in front of you. I want you to see it before the heat of that over turns your eyes to jelly and blackens your skin. Before that skin sloughs off your bones. I’ll make sure you can feel it. I’ll make sure-“
“Madam.” The girl said steadily. “The fire is lit but I cannot tell if the heat is to your liking.” The old woman turned slowly on her with a look of complete bafflement on her withered face, as if she could not believe the girl would interrupt her in her long awaited moment. The girl then spoke quickly, explaining herself with her hand held pacifyingly in front of her. “You told me to get the fire very hot, and I did not wish to disappoint you. I can see that this feast means a lot to you.” Her voice trembled, and the girl’s stomach went cold, but the old woman’s expression softened. The girl supposed the tremor in her voice might have been taken as simply an eagerness to please.
“Well,” the old woman acquiesced, “Miracle of miracles, you’re not wrong on that score, girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve mucked the whole thing up.” She walked across the room and bent over, opening the black iron door which groaned in protest. The old woman was reaching her hand towards the now roaring fire when the girl sprang.
She had become little more than skin and bones since she’d arrived at the house, but at a running start her weight was enough to send the bent old woman tumbling headlong into the fire. A shrill scream filled the room, as embers and acrid smoke bellowed from the open gate. The girl quickly reached for the old woman’s flailing legs and shoved them all the way into the oven as well, and no sooner had they passed the threshold did she slam the door shut with a clang and fasten the latch.
The screams ululating from within became modulated and echoed, and the girl silently congratulated herself on a job well done. The old woman had said screaming hot, after all. The burners on top of the oven exploded into coronas of blue flame, which licked at the house’s ceiling and caused it to blacken and smolder.
The girl knew that she had to act fast. She ran to the key that hung from above her brother’s cage and removed it, then stood before the bars. Tentatively, she reached a hand towards them, remembering the searing pain touching them caused her, before she stole her nerve and wrapped her hand around one. It was cool to the touch. Whatever spell the old woman had cast on the cage seemed to have gone away as the old woman herself was burned.
With the key, the girl threw open the cage and her brother staggered out, just as the ceiling burst into open flames. She could hear his joints and bones popping as he stood straight up for the first time in days. He embraced her, and then turned immediately to make for the door. The girl stopped him.
“There’s something we need to do.” She said, and guided her reluctant brother towards the bedroom. Inside they found the treasure chest, still unlocked. Together, they struggled to haul its weight out of the bedroom, through the house, and out the door. The fire had become an inferno, and burning furs and bundled stick sculptures fell from the ceiling.
The heat was incredible.
With a final burst of strength, the two hurled themselves and the chest through the front door and into the burnt light of late afternoon. Though it was not yet autumn and the heat of summer was still upon them, the air felt positively chilly after what they had endured inside the house. They picked the chest and each other up off the ground and ran into the field, carrying with them their bounty. When they were far enough away that they could not feel the flames, they stopped and turned back to look at the house, now burning freely.
They had escaped.
Tears flowed freely as the two embraced each other, more passionately now that the danger was over. The boy looked down at the chest, and wondered at its contents. The girl saw this and smiled, and then crouched to open it. She laughed as the boy’s jaw dropped.
“With this,” she said, the gold coins and jewels reflecting off of her face, “we can return home. We can prevent what the old witch said would happen to mother and father.”
“But she said-” but the girl cut him off.
“She said what she knew would hurt us. There’s no way mother and father could have known. They didn’t know!” Her tone was sharp with disbelief, and then it softened. “But it doesn’t matter. With this we can do anything, go anywhere. We’re free.”
The boy thought about this, and then smiled. They were free, and with the treasure they could make any wish come true.
Just like the story had said.
A cataclysmic sound filled their heads and the boy was brought to his knees. He felt his pants grow wet. It ended as suddenly as it had begun, and the boy saw the door of the burning house swing open. The girl’s back was turned, and she did not.
Something walked outside.
It was pale, and far too tall and far too thin. That same noise blared through their minds, and then whatever it was that stepped out of the door took off running towards them, carrying something in its hands. It crossed the distance the children had put between themselves and the house with unimaginable swiftness, reaching them in a matter of seconds. Now up close the boy could see what it held: it was the shepherd’s crook.
The girl did not see it as it came down around her neck.
As quickly as the thing advanced on them it retreated, this time dragging the girl behind. The boy heard a wet, sickening pop, and saw the girl’s body fly into the air like a ragdoll, trailing startlingly red droplets.
The thing that had stepped out stopped nearer to the house, and the boy heard a voice blaring in his head. “Kill me with fire?” It said, shrill and mocking. “I AM FIRE.” The creature extended its arms, and resembled a hellish mockery of the crucifix the boy's father hung above their front door. As if by demonstration, the fire grew and intensified. “You may take the gold you stole in exchange for your sister.” It droned impossibly loud, and the boy’s molars rattled as he clapped his hands to his head and breathed spittle through his teeth. “Take it knowing that we will be waiting here for you. You may dine with kings or wallow in the gutters, it does not matter. One night you will wake and you will feel me pressed next to you and you will know then that you have always been mine.” The boy’s head exploded into a lunatic’s hysterical laughter. The thing reached down and grabbed the girl by the leg, dragging her into the house like a broken marionette.
As it passed the threshold of the door, the flames burned higher and brighter than ever.
::
They found the boy later, gibbering and insane, raving about the thing out there in the woods. They searched, but never found the house or any old woman. The boy was taken to town and never spoke again, but the horrors he witnessed were etched plainly on his young face. A face that had aged by decades.
They took the treasure he paid so dearly for, and the boy spent the rest of his days a vagrant, the town idiot, suffering humiliation after humiliation at the hands of the villagers for their amusement. But what they never knew was why his eyes were so haunted, or that waking nightmares plagued his every moment. That sometimes he would see his sister’s headless body, shambling towards him as if in accusation.
They never knew where he went when one night many years later he disappeared, never to be seen again.
But to answer that final question, they needed only heed the words of the story their parents or grandparents likely told them before tucking them in at night:
The children that find the old woman never leave the woods.
No matter where they go.
The Old Woman of the Wood: A Folk Tale
::
I
Of a Mother and a Father's Love
The wheel of the cart creaked as the donkey pulled it over rocks and holes. The girl stared down at her clasped hands. The boy fidgeted nervously. Their father would react only with a glare when they spoke to one another, and so the children fell into an uneasy silence, and the only sounds were those creaking wheels and the warbling of forest birds.
The boy stared at the slowly passing forest and expected to see a werewolf around every bend, or a ghoul between every tree. The stories he had been told in better times told that the forests were dark and haunted places, filled with monsters and evil. The girl knew better. In recent years their family had taken to these woods, collecting mushrooms and roots, and hunting game whenever they could. This was poaching, and therefore against the King’s law, but their father explained that when one’s family is threatened by starvation, need drives even the most honorable of men to crime.
She did not fear the woods.
She would learn to.
The twins knew their father loved them, but lately he had been angry. He’d never raised a hand to them, and yet two days previously the boy had let a slick pewter mug slip from his hands and spilled the milk that was inside. Their father had beaten him for it, and afterwards left the house for a long time. He returned late at night. Their parents thought that the girl was asleep, but she watched them from the crack in the wall. Her father looked pale and terrified. He and their mother had talked for a long time after, and although she did not hear much of what they said, but she knew they spoke of winter and of a price to be paid.
Their father did not speak to them the next day, and then as the children awoke on this morning, their mother told them that they were to have an adventure. They would be taken to the old woman in the woods to live out their days. There would be warm beds and plenty to eat, and they would be happy there. The girl did not understand. She was happy at home with her mother, father, and brother. But their mother said that they were too young to understand why they must go to the old woman.
And so off they went into the woods with their father.
Off to an adventure.
::
In the middle of the path they came upon a small table made of old wood and festooned with antlers and thorny vines. Beyond it the trees gave way to a clearing, and in the center, bathed in a cheery pillar of yellow sunlight, was a house. It was not propped on turning chicken legs or made of gingerbread like the stories would have them believe, but rather of simple wooden planks, with a thatched roof and crooked chimney, gently puffing smoke. Their father drove the cart to the table and stopped. He stepped down from his seat, and advanced towards the table, clenching and unclenching his fists. Staring at the house.
The world became silent all at once, so silent the air seemed to vibrate. Then a strange wind blew through the trees, causing the grass to roll in waves and the flowers to dance. Branches clacked together, and the dried, dead leaves littering the ground blew in small whirlwinds that made the sound of rain. Birds gibbered excitedly, and when the boy looked up he noticed that all manner of finches, sparrows, robins, croaking crows, and even a shrieking hawk had appeared in the trees above. More than seemed natural. A cloud passed over the sun, casting the field and house in shadow and suddenly all was still and silent once more.
And then the house's door silently opened.
Even at a distance, the children could see the outline of a thin, white form filling the opening, from the top of the door frame to the wooden floor. They could not make the figure out very well, but even that small glimpse sent shivers up the boy’s back. Unease seemed to creep into their father as well, for though he was a large, well-built man, even he hesitated before approaching the table.
He reached into his jacket and produced a small pouch and knife from within. He opened the pouch and pulled from it two coins that glinted dully in the sunlight. He placed each coin deliberately on the rough wooden surface, one at a time, then reluctantly picked up the knife. He curled one hand around the blade, then pulled on the handle with the other, parting the flesh on his palm and sending thick droplets of startlingly red blood pattering onto the coins. The children gasped at this, and the girl even made to step from the cart, but their father turned on them. His look and demeanor lent no room for insolence, and they stayed right where they were. He turned back, and held his bloody palm towards the house. The three of them were still, and the children’s fear and apprehension grew with each moment.
Finally, the figure disappeared from the door, but left it open wide, revealing only darkness inside. The clouds passed and the gentle warbling of the forest’s birds returned. The boy looked up into the trees to find their branches were bare once more. Their father staggered back a few steps, then quickly turned and made for the cart. He hastily picked the boy up under his arms, smearing his shirt with blood, and roughly placed him on the ground, then did the same for the girl. She noticed tears streaming down his face as he did so. Their father then turned and climbed back into his seat, flicked the reins and the old donkey began to walk.
He turned the cart around and set back off into the woods, without a backwards glance.
The children watched him roll off until he disappeared from sight. The girl wrapped her arm around the boy, and looked over her shoulder towards the house. The door was still open, though despite the sunshine she could not see passed the shadows to what was inside. She thought of her father, and him roughly removing her from the cart. She thought about how she knew she would never see him again. But most of all she thought about his tears. It was the most natural thing in the world for a father to feel sorrow for abandoning his children in the woods, the girl knew, and yet those tears were not of sadness.
They were tears of relief.
::
II
Of Supper and Shoes
The sun shined down on the field, the sky taking on the deep blue of midday that only intensified the green of the grass and the yellows of the sunflowers. Fat bumblebees hovered about, gently kissing the warm pedals, and a pair of beautiful white birds raced through the sky doing circles around one another, again and again. The clearing looked to all the world like a picture from a story book, but the unease the twins felt as they approached the house made them wonder what sort of a story they were in.
The rich aroma of stew soon wafted through the air, spurring them on. They had not eaten a hot meal in more than a fortnight, and in that moment the threat of mortal danger seemed a paltry concern compared to filling their bellies. They were running by the time they arrived at the entrance, and when they did the girl’s stomach dropped. The door was wreathed in animal bones, along with several dried squirrels and birds. There were also strange totems made from carved sticks and fastened together with what looked like human hair. Above the threshold hung a stag’s skull, wreathed in magnificent antlers. The girl could not place why these objects filled her with such dread, for the woods were full of such things. In truth, it was not they that caused her disquiet. It was something she remembered about the figure that stood watching them from the house. It filled the door frame, and yet now, up close, she could see it was nearly eight feet tall.
The boy did not notice, and instead peaked furtively through the open door. The house was longer than it was wide, with two closed doors at the far end, a wooden table with three chairs, and a stone hearth over a large black oven, with a kettle on top that steamed with the intoxicating aroma of cooking stew.
Crouching before the large black iron door of the oven stoking the flames, was an old woman.
She wore a long shawl over her hunched back and pulled over her head like a hood, and a dress that was tattered near the feet. She stood, patting the dust from the front of her dress, then stooped over the kettle stirring its contents with a long wooden spoon clutched in gloved, gnarled fingers. She pulled the spoon from the stew and tasted it with a long slurp, and then retrieved a powder from the top of the hearth and sprinkled a bit inside. Then she turned to face the children. The old woman was not the plump, matronly grandmother that would turn pumpkins into carriages and mice into pure white steeds, but nor was she the monstrous crone that would poison princesses with red apples.
She was just an old woman; her face was thin yet fleshy towards the neck, with jowls that hung down from her jaw. She had a blunt nose that did have a rather witch-like mole on it, and wiry grey and white hair poked out from under her hood. She looked at the children appraisingly with a pair of glassy, protruding grey eyes. Nothing untoward about her at all. What the girl saw in the door must have been a trick of the light, she thought.
“So, it is twins this time, heh?” the old woman said, looking from child to child. “In better times you would be a blessing, I think, heh heh. Alas, these are not better times, and you two are more trouble than you’re worth.” She turned back to her stew. “Or at least that is what your father thinks. Oh don’t give me that look! Be grateful they didn’t set you off on the Trail of Treats or other such nonsense to starve in the woods. Or worse things yet! I would hazard that there’s at least one or two noble men that would pay a handsome price for two fetching children such as yourselves.” She turned to face them again. “Well don’t just stand there with your mouths hanging open, come in and shut the door. Flies are getting in.” The children did as they were told.
“You look hungry.” The old woman continued. “You’re all bones! Well, we can’t have that. Wouldn’t do at all.” She ladled three large measures each into two wooden bowls, then placed them on the table in front of the children. They attacked the food, not even bothering to sit down, while the old woman looked on, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. The scalding stew burned their mouths, but they ate on. The boy finished first, licking the bowl clean, and the old woman could not help but laugh. “My, my,” she said, “you are hungry!”
He belched, a reddish broth dribbling from his chin, and then looked at the old woman sheepishly. “Is there any more?”
She laughed again. “You’ll do fine, boy.” She nodded, refilled his bowl, and watched him gorge. “Yes, I think you’ll do just fine.”
“Madame.” The girl asked, once her bowl was empty. “Thank you for the food, it is very good, but I must ask: my mother told me that you only eat sweets, yet this soup is made of meat and leeks. Has she lied to us?”
The old woman cackled and moved back to the pot. “Feh! Peasants and their prattle. It seems they hear only what they wish to.” She stirred the pot, then inclined her head thoughtfully. “Although… it is possible that she did lie. I know not your mother’s heart, but it seems to me that any mother that would give her children up is no fit mother at all.” The old woman sipped from the spoon, smacked her lips, then opened a closet and retrieved a jar of spice from within. “At any rate, your mother was only half right. It is not sweets that I eat.” Before she closed the door, the girl noticed dozens of small shoes littering the inside. “It is sweetbreads.” The old woman barked like a crow, as if at a joke the girl did not understand.
The boy chewed noisily.
::
After dinner it was getting dark, and the children were exhausted from their journey. The old woman directed the boy to a pile of hay in the corner. He had scarcely laid down before he was asleep. The girl made to join him, but the old woman stopped her.
“You will stay with me and warm my bed, girl.” She said, but the girl was scared. There was something about the old woman that made her nervous. “This way.”
The old woman ushered the girl into a windowless room. In it was a bed with an overstuffed mattress, a closed chest, and a wooden table. On the table was an assortment of curious objects. There were strange jewels and baubles, a white handled knife, and a chalice, as well as more animal bones and strange symbols written in chalk. The old woman lit a candle, painting the room in contrasting black and red. She placed it on the table, and shut the door, then gestured to the bed.
The girl laid down and watched the single candle paint monstrous shadows on the wall. Back at home, their father had often told them stories while making shadow puppets on the wall with his hands. He wasn’t very good at it, but was able to make a wolf easily enough. The wolf stories were always the scariest, and the children loved the scary ones. The shadows now were a different kind of scary. They licked and writhed like things living, even though the room was windowless and the air was still and stale.
The old woman stood facing the wall, removing her clothing one piece at a time. The girl knew she shouldn’t watch, but the dancing shadows she cast on the wall in the red light of the candle were mesmerizing. The gloves were taken off first and tossed onto the wooden table. Next the hood was pulled down, and the girl saw the candle light reflect off of the old woman’s bald pate wreathed in grey-white hairs. Then the rest of the shawl and her dress were removed, revealing boney shoulders, knobby spine, and exposed ribs on her naked back, pocked with liver spots. And then the old woman straightened up and grew taller.
And taller.
And taller.
The girl knew that this must be another illusion of the light, or the shadows playing tricks on her. The old woman held out a very long and very thin arm, and the girl remembered the form she saw in the doorway earlier that day. Two slender fingers that seemed to have too many joints pinched out the candle, plunging the room into complete darkness.
Sound seemed to leave the world completely.
The girl strained her eyes and ears for any indication of the old woman’s approach, but she could not. She could only lay there in the utter darkness, in the utter silence, unable to move from fear. There was something nauseating in that stillness, something alien. She felt as if her thoughts were no longer confined within her own head, and would seep out of her body, which felt as if it too was dissolving, mixing with the darkness, like blood dropped into a pool of black, black water.
Just when she began to think that she could not take more of the nothingness, a presence answered, and she realized that things could be worse. Something long and cold stretch across her chest and pull her into an embrace. It did so slowly, but there was strength in it that was not to be resisted. She felt the sagging breasts through the sleeve of her shirt, the bloated belly against her thigh, the wet lips press against her ear. Steady, foul breath drew in and out, like wind blowing from an old cave.
She was held like that and listened to that sound until morning.
::
The girl did not think she slept, and yet in that blackness she dreamed.
She stood on the precipice of a great chasm. Her toes dangled over an edge of sheer white rock that extended ever downward into complete blackness. She looked up and saw that at her side was a hooded figure carrying a long shepherd’s crook. From its cowl grew a rack of antlers. It stared as well, and after a few moments lifted its head. She could not see eyes, and it gestured with the crook into the darkness.
And when she looked she saw fires wink into being and the things that danced around them.
They were naked, far too tall and far too thin, and moved from fire to fire with hands raised skyward and bodies writhing ritual undulations. The sounds of piping flutes, cymbals clashing, and beating pagan drums filled the air, the sheer walls of the cliff face modulating the sound with echoes. From her vantage point she could see more and more fires wink into existence. A galaxy of small lights unfolded before her, like stars in a clear night’s sky. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that others had begun to join the fray, and as they did the revelers threw themselves to the ground in subjugation. With dream logic, she recognized these creatures – chimeras of men and stags and goats and stranger things. They were old. They were so very old, and now she noticed that the music had ceased, and in its place there was a vibrating silence.
She had been noticed.
The revelers now looked up to her, their faces etched into pantomimes of abject emotion, like the masks a theater troupe that passed through her village had worn in happier times. Some wore too wide smiles, their mouths showing too many teeth, their eyes crescent moons of amusement. Others were parodies of sadness, mouths twisted into deep grotesque frowns. And then others screamed. Their mouths opened far passed what should have been possible, eyes bulging in a way that no thinking creature’s could.
Slowly they pointed to her, with long arms and fingers that extended further than what was possible in a rational world, and that was when she felt the quick shove from behind, and she was in the air, falling towards their waiting arms.
::
And then the spell was broken and she sat up in bed.
Her brother was screaming.
III
Of Blood and Gold
The girl did not know when the old woman – or whatever the old woman had become – left the room, but she found that she was alone. She darted out of bed and threw open the door, the sickly amber light of day blinding her. The boy remained in the corner of the room on the pile of hay, though now there was a cage around him. It was too small for him to stand or stretch his legs, and so he crouched, screaming and pulling frantically at the thick metal bars.
The girl rushed across the room and wrapped her hands around the bars, and then screamed and yanked them away. The bars felt as if they had been laying in a fire overnight. The boy was somehow unaffected by this, and he struggled in vain to free himself. He stopped suddenly, and looked over the girl’s shoulder, his face changing from panic to cold terror. Slowly, the girl turned to see the old woman, once again plain and unassuming, standing in the middle of the room, an open, toothless smile on her face and something like joy in her protruding eyes.
The girl scrambled to her feet and backed against the cage, then yelped as the back of her legs brushed against the bars.
The old woman cackled.
“I would steer clear of that, girl.” She said, shaking a finger at her, like a grandmother warning a child away from fresh cookies. “Not until you’ve completed your chores.” The girl stared at the old woman, trying to make sense of what was happening. “Don’t stare at me gawping like a fish you little bitch.” The old woman’s faux civility evaporated instantly, her face twisting into a rancorous knot, her eyes bulging even further. The girl flinched. The change in the old woman’s tone came so suddenly that she almost cowered against the cage, but stopped herself just in time. That toothless grin returned on the old woman’s face. “I’m going to put you to work.” She promised. Her tone had softened, but retained an edge of malice, and the girl knew at once that whatever these chores were would have a catch. Doing them correctly would save her and her brother. Doing them incorrectly… she preferred not to think about that.
“What would you have me do?” She asked, her voice sounding so small and weak in her ear.
“Speak up.” The old woman said the two words so fast they sounded like one. She advanced on the girl with surprising agility and pinched her hard on the back of the arm. The girl yelped and instinctively pulled away. The old woman grabbed her by the hair and with startling strength, forced her face down towards the bars of the cage. She stopped when the girl’s eye was an inch away from the bars. The boy stared into his sister’s face, so close, and yet he could do nothing to help her. “When you speak to me,” the old woman said from outside the cage, “you will do so loudly and clearly. Do you understand?” The girl nodded vigorously. “ANSWER ME.” Her voice was altered. Inhuman. It was a ululating drone that felt as if a wasp flew into the boy's ear.
“Yes, madam!” The girl shouted, and her voice did not waver.
“That’s more like it.” The old woman said approvingly, once again calm. She let the girl fall to the floor, and was already walking to the house door to go outside. “You will clean the oven, scrub the floors, wash the dishes, and prepare the vegetables for supper. If you should find any treasures, you will put them in the chest inside the bedroom. If you do not complete these tasks you will pay, do you understand?”
“Yes madam!” The girl shouted.
The old woman beamed toothlessly. “Well then!” her eyes hardened and the smile dropped a fraction. “What are you waiting for?”
::
The girl began by cleaning the oven. She opened the metal grate at the bottom, and had to squeeze her entire upper half inside. It was filled with soot, and half burnt wood. What treasures could the old woman expect to find in such a place? She swept out the inside on her belly, making herself filthy in the process, until she had a large pile of refuse to dispose of. She sifted through the pile, looking for anything that could be considered a prize, until a glint of something caught her eye. She plucked it out with her fingers, then spat into her hand to wash the piece. The glint of gold finally showed through the grime, and the girl wondered what it was doing inside the ash trap of an oven. Then she almost dropped it back when she realized what she held.
It was a gold tooth.
She looked at it, and then towards the bedroom. The door was ajar. She loathed to enter that room again, but at least this time the old woman was no longer occupying it. Still, she stepped lightly towards it, afraid that a thin pale hand with fingers that moved like a spider’s legs would reach out and drag her inside and slam the door shut.
This did not happen.
Inside the room, the girl was surprised to find that the chest was not locked, and more surprised still when she saw what was inside. It nearly overflowed treasure. Gold coins and precious gems, white and black pearls, and even furs, feathers, and jars of rare spices. The bounty reflected warmly in the dim light, in the way that only something valuable can. The tooth she held in her hand hardly seemed to belong with the fortune, but she was determined to follow the old woman’s instructions to the letter. Her mind raced constantly with images of what unspeakable punishment awaited her and her brother if she did not. The girl placed the tooth in the chest, and before she closed the lid, noticed that a few of the coins on top were stained with blood.
Next she got down on her hands and knees with a bucket filled with lye and scrubbed with a brush. The lye burned her hands and the suds turned pink as she worked. She noticed this, and then saw that the coarse bristles of the brush had pried something from the floorboards. The girl picked it up and inspected it. Then she noticed the shallow scratches that covered the floorboards, irregular and crisscrossing, but all seemed to follow a general path: from the cage where her brother was imprisoned, to the oven. It was then that she noticed the grain of the wood was infused with blood. She looked back at what she held and this time she did throw the object when she realized what it was. The human finger nail, still red around the bed, clattered across the floor.
She started frantically scrubbing again, as tears began to burn her eyes, almost as much as the lye on her hands.
The day continued from there, each task painstakingly completed. Things were cleaned, and then cleaned again to avoid even the most minute speck of dirt. And all the time the boy hunched in his cage, wanting to cry out to his sister but knowing that if he did so she would be punished for not completing her tasks.
He did not know what happened in that room she disappeared into the night before, but he saw strange lights from under the door and through the cracks, and stranger noises that would jar him awake throughout the night despite his exhaustion. And when the trickle of sunlight fell upon him through the window, he opened his eyes and found himself imprisoned.
He felt ashamed, not only because he was unable to help his sister, but because of the relief he felt, that it was she the old woman visited her attacks upon and not him. It was his sister, not him, that was made to share her bed in that horrible room. He could almost weep tears of relief.
Not him.
The girl’s hands were sodden and pruned, her fingernails weakened from being submerged in hot water for so long, but she had nearly finished the dishes, and that would complete the old woman’s list of chores. She did not know what would come next. She dried the last tea cup and hung it with the others on the one remaining hook, and no sooner had she done so did a voice behind her call out.
“Sweet child.” The girl flinched so badly she nearly toppled over, but she recovered herself quickly and stood straight to face the old woman. The girl had not noticed her return. Neither had the boy. The room was empty, save for his sister one moment, and then the next the horrible old woman appeared as if from thin air. She had that same expectant, toothless smile on her face that she wore that morning, only this time she held in her hands a pair of long sheers. The girl tried to keep her eyes on the old woman, but they involuntarily flicked to the cruel looking metal. “Get the pillows from the bedroom.” The girl did as she was told, and when she returned the old woman smiled. “Open them.”
The sacks they had used as pillows the night before were filled with human hair. Clumps of reds and yellows and browns were matted together with a gummy black grime, and the girl knew that they were very old. A beetle crawled from the depths of one pile. It emitted a loathsome clicking as its antennae twitched.
The old woman sat the girl down on a stool, then pulled one up for herself and sat behind her. She pulled fistfuls of the girl’s hair painfully and hacked pieces off, yellow strands fluttering to the ground. “Waste not, want not, eh, girl?” the woman said, cackling as the shears clamped shut dangerously close to her ear. “You look like you have something to say?”
The girl didn’t face the old woman, and so her face gave nothing away, but she did in fact have something to say. “Our father paid you to take care of us, didn’t he?”
The old woman laughed like she had never heard anything funnier in the world. “Now, this is good. Wait until you hear this. For years these pig farmers and shit rakers have been sending their children to me. Truth be told, I’m not sure I even recall why. They always fill the children’s heads with nonsense about all of the sweets and candies that await them here. To fool them into shutting up, I’d wager. But here’s the funny part: your father actually paid me to take you.” She threw her head back and laughed, slapping her knee. “Your father, who was such a failure he couldn’t support you two brats paid me four coins. And cut his hand! He cut his hand! I never told him he had to do that! Oh, I could barely keep a straight face! What these peasants come up with...” She wiped a tear from her eye. “So now here’s something for you to think about: either your father was such a fool that he paid me thinking I would take care of you, or he hated you so much that he needed me to take you, and would pay his last thin penny to make sure you two wound up here. With me. How does that make you feel?” The girl felt numb, but she didn’t know what to say. She had to answer or be subjected to some unspeakable punishment. The question was rhetorical, however, as the old woman continued. “It may be small comfort, but that cut on his hand is going to go bad, poison his blood, and kill him. That’s what happens when you dip an open wound into pig shit all day. Hah, the fool! Then your mother will hold out until she’s forced to return to the town and whore herself out. It will take a while, she's a strong woman, but not strong enough! A few winters from now she’ll freeze to death anyway.” The girl’s head snapped around and looked at the old woman, who just smiled and nodded. “I know these things."
“Why are you doing this?” The girl asked weakly.
The old woman’s face went slack, and then positively quivered with rage. She stood up so quickly the stool she was sitting in flew across the room and bounced off the wall. She stormed over to the cage the boy was kept in, reached through the bars and in one quick motion grabbed his index finger and snipped it off at the knuckle with the shears. It happened so quickly that neither the girl nor the boy knew to scream.
The boy started first.
He held his hand to his chest and screamed. The blood that leaked down his pale arm looked black in the dimming light. The girl gaped at him, then looked to the old woman. She held the severed finger over her open mouth and drank the blood that dribbled from the stump. The girl realized with fresh horror that the old woman’s mouth, once gummy and toothless, was now filled with rows and rows a razor-sharp fangs. That was when she started screaming. The old woman shook the boy’s finger and the last few drops fell, then she tossed the whole thing into her mouth, crunching it twice before swallowing. The old woman, with a thin trickle of blood leaking out of one corner of her mouth, looked at the girl with her protruding eyes and her mouth full of teeth and nodded gravely.
“You will remember to speak up next time.” She said over the boy’s screams.
::
IV
Of The Oven and The Crook
The days blended together. Every morning the girl was made to perform grueling chores with nerve-wracking and confounding addendums, but she dare not question or shirk them. Her brother cradled his mutilated hand and wept quietly most days. The only time he stopped was when the old woman would force him to eat bowls of lard and acorns. The girl was given scraps.
They both dreaded nightfall, when the girl would once again share the old woman’s bed and experience fantastical and terrifying visions in the pitch blackness, while the boy would cower back as much as his cage would allow, trying not to listen to the gibbering, unnatural voices that came from behind the closed door. There seemed to be more and more voices every night.
While the girl wasted away, the boy became plump, and both knew that whatever grim purpose was intend for them would soon come to pass. The girl thought often of the scratch marks she found carved into the craggy wooden floor, the horrible implications weighed on her mind everyday as she knelt to her aching knees and dipped her sore, red hands into the lye to scrub the boards. She did not tell her brother of them.
Then their fears were realized.
One sunny afternoon, the girl was drawn to the main room by the sound of rhythmic scraping. She emerged from the bedroom to find the old woman seated at the table. She held in her hand a long butcher’s knife, that she licked in a practiced motion with a whet stone three times per side, before placing it on the table, next to a row of many more knives of many different sizes. The old woman noticed the girl, and glided the whet stone with flourish over the new knife she had picked up.
“This is one chore I won’t have you do.” She said with that toothless smile of hers. “This part is for me. For my pleasure.” She punctuated the last word by nodding her head and raising her eyebrows. “I will have you start the oven, however. I want it to be positively screaming hot.” She cackled very much like the witch that she was at that.
The girl’s mind raced. She looked at her brother, whose eyes were wide as he stared at the gleaming metal that was meant for him. But she did not betray her emotions. She simply walked across the room and bent to her task, thinking all the time. She noticed that while the ash trap she had been made to crawl through for so many days was very small, the oven itself was quite large. She began to load wood onto the grate, carefully stacking it so that it would catch quickly and burn evenly. Her whole body easily fit inside. She lit a small bundle of tinder with the flint, then blew gently on the flames. Soon the dry wood caught, and a sustained fire burned. Then she waited, and thought, adding more wood from time to time.
The old woman continued to sharpen her knives, and as she did she said, “I’m going to eat you both tonight.” The boy began to weep. “I’m going to carve your fat brother into pieces and roast him with carrots and onions. But first,” she placed her knife on the table, stood from her seat, and walked across the room towards the boy’s cage, “first to whet my appetite I’m going to eat your sister whole. Right here in front of you. I want you to see it before the heat of that over turns your eyes to jelly and blackens your skin. Before that skin sloughs off your bones. I’ll make sure you can feel it. I’ll make sure-“
“Madam.” The girl said steadily. “The fire is lit but I cannot tell if the heat is to your liking.” The old woman turned slowly on her with a look of complete bafflement on her withered face, as if she could not believe the girl would interrupt her in her long awaited moment. The girl then spoke quickly, explaining herself with her hand held pacifyingly in front of her. “You told me to get the fire very hot, and I did not wish to disappoint you. I can see that this feast means a lot to you.” Her voice trembled, and the girl’s stomach went cold, but the old woman’s expression softened. The girl supposed the tremor in her voice might have been taken as simply an eagerness to please.
“Well,” the old woman acquiesced, “Miracle of miracles, you’re not wrong on that score, girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve mucked the whole thing up.” She walked across the room and bent over, opening the black iron door which groaned in protest. The old woman was reaching her hand towards the now roaring fire when the girl sprang.
She had become little more than skin and bones since she’d arrived at the house, but at a running start her weight was enough to send the bent old woman tumbling headlong into the fire. A shrill scream filled the room, as embers and acrid smoke bellowed from the open gate. The girl quickly reached for the old woman’s flailing legs and shoved them all the way into the oven as well, and no sooner had they passed the threshold did she slam the door shut with a clang and fasten the latch.
The screams ululating from within became modulated and echoed, and the girl silently congratulated herself on a job well done. The old woman had said screaming hot, after all. The burners on top of the oven exploded into coronas of blue flame, which licked at the house’s ceiling and caused it to blacken and smolder.
The girl knew that she had to act fast. She ran to the key that hung from above her brother’s cage and removed it, then stood before the bars. Tentatively, she reached a hand towards them, remembering the searing pain touching them caused her, before she stole her nerve and wrapped her hand around one. It was cool to the touch. Whatever spell the old woman had cast on the cage seemed to have gone away as the old woman herself was burned.
With the key, the girl threw open the cage and her brother staggered out, just as the ceiling burst into open flames. She could hear his joints and bones popping as he stood straight up for the first time in days. He embraced her, and then turned immediately to make for the door. The girl stopped him.
“There’s something we need to do.” She said, and guided her reluctant brother towards the bedroom. Inside they found the treasure chest, still unlocked. Together, they struggled to haul its weight out of the bedroom, through the house, and out the door. The fire had become an inferno, and burning furs and bundled stick sculptures fell from the ceiling.
The heat was incredible.
With a final burst of strength, the two hurled themselves and the chest through the front door and into the burnt light of late afternoon. Though it was not yet autumn and the heat of summer was still upon them, the air felt positively chilly after what they had endured inside the house. They picked the chest and each other up off the ground and ran into the field, carrying with them their bounty. When they were far enough away that they could not feel the flames, they stopped and turned back to look at the house, now burning freely.
They had escaped.
Tears flowed freely as the two embraced each other, more passionately now that the danger was over. The boy looked down at the chest, and wondered at its contents. The girl saw this and smiled, and then crouched to open it. She laughed as the boy’s jaw dropped.
“With this,” she said, the gold coins and jewels reflecting off of her face, “we can return home. We can prevent what the old witch said would happen to mother and father.”
“But she said-” but the girl cut him off.
“She said what she knew would hurt us. There’s no way mother and father could have known. They didn’t know!” Her tone was sharp with disbelief, and then it softened. “But it doesn’t matter. With this we can do anything, go anywhere. We’re free.”
The boy thought about this, and then smiled. They were free, and with the treasure they could make any wish come true.
Just like the story had said.
A cataclysmic sound filled their heads and the boy was brought to his knees. He felt his pants grow wet. It ended as suddenly as it had begun, and the boy saw the door of the burning house swing open. The girl’s back was turned, and she did not.
Something walked outside.
It was pale, and far too tall and far too thin. That same noise blared through their minds, and then whatever it was that stepped out of the door took off running towards them, carrying something in its hands. It crossed the distance the children had put between themselves and the house with unimaginable swiftness, reaching them in a matter of seconds. Now up close the boy could see what it held: it was the shepherd’s crook.
The girl did not see it as it came down around her neck.
As quickly as the thing advanced on them it retreated, this time dragging the girl behind. The boy heard a wet, sickening pop, and saw the girl’s body fly into the air like a ragdoll, trailing startlingly red droplets.
The thing that had stepped out stopped nearer to the house, and the boy heard a voice blaring in his head. “Kill me with fire?” It said, shrill and mocking. “I AM FIRE.” The creature extended its arms, and resembled a hellish mockery of the crucifix the boy's father hung above their front door. As if by demonstration, the fire grew and intensified. “You may take the gold you stole in exchange for your sister.” It droned impossibly loud, and the boy’s molars rattled as he clapped his hands to his head and breathed spittle through his teeth. “Take it knowing that we will be waiting here for you. You may dine with kings or wallow in the gutters, it does not matter. One night you will wake and you will feel me pressed next to you and you will know then that you have always been mine.” The boy’s head exploded into a lunatic’s hysterical laughter. The thing reached down and grabbed the girl by the leg, dragging her into the house like a broken marionette.
As it passed the threshold of the door, the flames burned higher and brighter than ever.
::
They found the boy later, gibbering and insane, raving about the thing out there in the woods. They searched, but never found the house or any old woman. The boy was taken to town and never spoke again, but the horrors he witnessed were etched plainly on his young face. A face that had aged by decades.
They took the treasure he paid so dearly for, and the boy spent the rest of his days a vagrant, the town idiot, suffering humiliation after humiliation at the hands of the villagers for their amusement. But what they never knew was why his eyes were so haunted, or that waking nightmares plagued his every moment. That sometimes he would see his sister’s headless body, shambling towards him as if in accusation.
They never knew where he went when one night many years later he disappeared, never to be seen again.
But to answer that final question, they needed only heed the words of the story their parents or grandparents likely told them before tucking them in at night:
The children that find the old woman never leave the woods.
No matter where they go.