It didn’t look like I was going to get it, though. No sooner had I got indoors than I was presented with a massive – and I mean huge – pile of washing up. There were plates and bowls and dishes and saucepans and griddles and racks and rolling pins and cutlery of every size and description. Far more than we’d used – it looked like the Witch had been holding dinner parties every night for a month. 'What the fuck?' I said, as she grabbed my arm and hauled me into the kitchen, ‘I’m not skivvying for you!’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ she shouted ‘and you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head! And address me as Madam Demelzina!’ Each syllable was accompanied by a fierce shake of my arm. ‘You’re going to have to earn your keep if you want to stay here while I fatten up your brother.’
This was a pretty dumb thing to say on all sorts of levels, but telling her that didn’t go down well, and I got my first clout round the head. ‘Don’t get clever with me girlie!’ She said, ‘You’ll stay here whether you want or not! And if you don’t, why then I’ll eat you first!’ Her hand was bony; hard and jagged as a broken rock, and my head rang with the force of the blow. ‘Ow!’ I cried, clutching my ear. It was exactly as painful as the first time The Cow had hit me, after Dad left early to chop wood and I was helping Hansel tidy his room (he’d been told to do it by seven, or miss breakfast. She wanted it for herself, of course). The Witch just laughed, thrust a cloth at me and told me to get on with it. I remembered her frustrations from the previous night, though, so started straightaway to make a mess of it, wiping the dirty dishes with the tea towel and putting them on the rack before they’d been in the water, and taking clean dishes from the cupboard and putting them into the sink. She squinted and peered for a few minutes, huffing and tutting like she did, then slapped my hands away and barged me to one side. ‘There’s a right way and a wrong way, and you’re doing it wrong!’ I stood watching her for twenty minutes as she scrubbed away, sleeves rolled up and the soapsuds all lathered around her elbows, carefully placing plates on the rack with ‘First you clean, then you rinse, then you dry.’
I took them with a sweet ‘Oh, I see, that’s how you do it. Thank you so much Madam Demelzina, I just can’t seem to get it right.’ When there were only a few pots and pans left, she stomped away, saying ‘Well, you’d better learn, young lady, or you’ll be in the pot quick as you like!’ Meanwhile I looked out the window at Hansel curled up in the cage, and thought long and hard about what we could do.
***
It seemed like a perfect match to everyone, Dad and The Cow. She’d arrived in the village about eight months before, bringing a pretty face, a sharp wit, and a talent for growing vegetables – no mean feat in the middle of one of the leanest years anyone could remember. There was a quick (some said surprisingly quick) marriage to Tom Pedlar. He was out in all weathers, though, and no-one batted an eyelid when he dropped dead of rheumatic fever after a month. Everyone felt sorry for her, left to tend the garden on her own. It was obvious to everyone - Dad and her, the widow and the widower. It just sort of happened. One minute she was in widow’s weeds, then they were courting, then… bam. Married. Nothing about it was right. If there was ever anything important to discuss Dad would always sit us both down, and talk it over. Not this time. Dad stood, looking vaguely embarrassed, while The Cow held his arm. ‘Now, children, please pay attention.’ She said, ‘Your father and I are to be married.’ Well, ‘pin drop’ is the phrase. I think I did literally drop what I was holding. Hansel looked up with a puzzled expression; then we looked at each other and finally back at Dad. He smiled absently and patted The Cow’s hand. And that was it. Unbelievable, or what?
After that she made it pretty clear who was boss. ‘Things will be changing around here.’ She said. ‘Tidiness and orderliness. That’s what your father needs.’ Well, it was news to us. He was the most chaotic of fathers, and we loved him for it. The house and yard were scattered with half-finished carpentry, wood shavings, dolls, tools and offcuts. It was a standing joke that his favourite saying was ‘I think I’ve got something here’ after which he’d proceed to rummage for half an hour for whatever it was. There were wheeled toys everywhere, and he taught us to carve and sculpt and join from an early age. He’d spot a ragged neighbourhood child walking past, and shout out the window ‘hey! Wait a minute, I’ve just the thing for you!’ and he’d go charging out with some toy or other, or a doll, or even (once) a puppet theatre that he pressed absentmindedly into the bewildered hands of Yellowhair, the lame girl from the pottery (her real name was Isabell, but she had very yellow hair). When I was younger I used to stamp my foot and say ‘but we could sell them!’ (well, we could until the bottom fell out of the luxury goods market, what with the famine and all) but Dad would just say ‘no need, no need, my girl. We’ll get our reward.’ And then he’d tap the side of his nose and look mysterious, and talk about gypsy fortune tellers and all that nonsense. And then The Cow came, and it all got horrible very quickly.
***
I tried to talk about it to the Witch once, I was that bored. It was the last night, in fact. She was patching the dining room chairs (after I’d sewn her hat to the seat). ‘Watch me, you silly girl,’ she’d tutted, ‘I’ll show you the right way,’ while I surreptitiously tried to break off bits of the banister and stuff them in my mouth (it was only Hansel who was being fattened. I got fish bones and dripping). ‘Madam Demelzina,’ I said, around a mouthful of meringue, ‘If your Dad,’ – ‘Don’t have one!’ she interrupted, but I pressed on - ‘if your Dad met someone who was cruel and unkind, and they got married and she ordered you about all day, and your Dad didn’t seem to care at all, what would you do?’ But she just cackled and said ‘Well, I wouldn’t run away to a hungry Witch’s house that’s for sure! Bet you wished you’d stayed put and done as you were told now, girlie!’ But she seemed out of sorts after that, and sent me to bed without even a crab shell to suck. I could hear her in the cupboard under the stairs, rattling her treasures, and crept to the top of the banisters. I heard ‘Tomorrow, whether he’s fat or not.’
I should explain that comment. Earlier in the summer she’d been going to some big Witches party or something, and she’d got me stirring up the cake mix for the fairy cakes while she chopped up the fairies. (She’d magicked up the mix, but of course when I said ‘Why not just magic up the cakes, then?’ I’d got a boxed ear and a ‘That’s not the right way!’). Anyway, afterwards she told me to go outside and bury the bones, and I crept over to Hansel (who was playing with one of the field mice he’d enticed in – he loved their little uniforms and picked at the gold braid on their hats), poked a finger bone through the bars, and whispered ‘when the Witch comes to feel how fat you’ve grown, hold this out for her to squeeze.’ He looked at me wide eyed (I thought with a new respect), and whispered ‘Brilliant!’ Then he tried getting the mouse to sling it over its shoulder like a little gun, and I had to reach through the bars and slap him, ‘I’m serious!’ I hissed, ‘She’s as blind as a tailor!’ (He loved the story about the two travellers who get their eyes pecked out, or something). I grabbed the bone from the mouse and stuck it in his pocket (the bone that is, the mouse pulled a face and ran off, trailing braid from its hat). ‘Just do it,’ I hissed, and hurried back inside.
And it worked! Each week she’d hobble into the yard, cackling ‘Squeeze an arm, squeeze a belly, I’ll grind your bones to make my jelly.’ (‘Can’t you even be original?’ I asked, rolling my eyes.) And each week Hansel would hold out the bone, and she’d narrow her little red eyes, and feel it, and shake her head before hobbling back inside and calling me to help her with another cake or sweet, sticky pudding.
That last day it was drizzling. I came in from stretching a tarpaulin over Hansel’s cage, and heard her call from the kitchen, ‘in here, girlie. Time to bake some bread.’ I went through to find her holding a tray of dough, the big oven wide open and flames licking low at the back. As usual – for some obscure reason known only to witches - she’d conj
ured up the dough but had to bake the bread. I shrugged, and then, realising my physical eloquence was wasted on her, said ‘What, you need me to hold a tray now?’
‘No, girlie, it’s my oven.’ She gave a toothy grin, and waved her head from side to side, like a snake about to strike. ‘There’s a right way and a wrong way to bake bread. Not too hot, and not too cold. Just pop your head and shoulders in, and see if it’s warmed up nicely at the back. Then this can go in.’
Seriously? How naïve did she think I was? Did I look like I was ten? (I was eleven last May). But I just said ‘Of course, Madam Demelzina.’
First, I caught the oven door with my shoulder, so it swung shut and I banged my head when I bent down. I giggled and said ‘whoops!’ and pulled it open a little bit so there wasn’t room for my head to go through. Then I stood with my ‘hummph’ look (I can do that pretty well), and examined it, before looking delighted, and pulling open the little grate in the middle. Of course it wasn’t big enough for even my head, let alone my shoulders, although I had several attempts to get in by scrunching my face down into my chest or holding my arm at an awkward angle.
Throughout this pantomime the witch was getting more and more exasperated. ‘What’s wrong with the education system in this country?’ She muttered to herself. I could hear her pointed shoe tap tapping on the floor, and her breathing becoming increasingly strained. Then, at my final attempt, she cried ‘For God’s sake, you’re doing it ALL WRONG!’ yanked me out of the way, then swung wide the door and stuck her head and shoulders in with a shout of ‘Like THIS!’
That was all I needed. I gripped the edge of the table, leaned back, put both my feet against her bottom, and shoved with all my might. The table screeched backwards, and she screeched forwards, hurtling head first into the fiery oven. As she thudded into the flames at the end I sprang forward, slamming the door with a loud clang and dropping the iron catch. I could hear her banging and yelling inside, and I opened the hatch in the front to make sure she was secure. There she was, crouched, beating at the flames that licked about her black clothes; hair and eyebrows singed and smoke rising from her boots. As the hatch opened she sprang to the door and pressed her face against the grille. ‘Open the door,’ she hissed, her red eyes glaring, ‘Open the door I command you! I’ll eat you alive! I’ll tear out your tongue and feed it to the rats! I’ll skin you and nail you to the floor!’ And she ground her sharp fangs together, while her spittle hissed away to steam. My eyes didn’t leave hers for a second as my hand fumbled for the gas control. Luckily for me, her hands were too burnt, and she was in too much pain, to cast a spell, and she must have seen the determination in my face, because her expression changed in an instant to one of pleading, ‘Ow, ow, it hurts! Please let me out! You and Hansel can go! I’ll give you treasure! I’ll guide you through the forest! Just help me out of the fire! Please Gretel!’
I leant forward as smoke rose upward, as small flames licked at the ends of her curly black hair, and put my face as close to the grille as I dared. I wanted her to see me clearly. ‘Oh, you know our names now, do you, you old cow?’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘You wanted to kill us both. You wanted to trick me into the oven, and cook me, didn’t you? That was your plan all along. Well, let me tell you, when it comes to trickery, there’s a right way, and there’s a wrong way, and then there’s MY WAY!’ And with that, I spun the gas control to full, and flames filled the oven from floor to ceiling. With a high, full throated scream she hurled herself against the door, but I slammed the hatch shut, and rammed the table against the oven. Her screams rang on and on while I stood there, and then they seemed to curl and billow away on a fume of black, oily, smoke that boiled out of the chimney and broke up in the cool air, while I lowered my hands from my ears, and shuddered.
And that was it, really. Hansel’s cage fell apart (along with most of the witch’s fixtures and fittings), and when we searched the cottage we found boxes of gems and jewellery and gold under the stairs. Result! It still took us three weeks to find our way out of the forest, but when we got home Dad was himself again, a widower (again), and overjoyed to see us (even before we showed him the treasure). He said he hadn’t had one happy hour since we went. So that’s, like, you know, the three of us.
***
‘Gretel, help your brother lay the table.’
That’s Dad now. Once, I would’ve complained. Hansel can lay the table by himself, after all, but I guess ‘many hands,’ and all that. I help Hansel, because actually he always messes it up, and Dad puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘Do you remember your late stepmother?’ He says, ‘She always used to get so wound up at Hansel. She’d stand and watch him, then she’d give that tut of hers, and take the plates out of his hands. ‘There’s a right way, and a wrong way’, she’d say, ‘and you’re doing it wrong.’ Remember that, Gretel?’
I nod, and smile a little, and place the knives properly. ‘Yes, Dad. I always remembered that.’ I say.
The End
Jan Edwards
Jan Edwards lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands,with her husband, Peter Coleborn, and three cowardly cats. She was short-listed for the 2011 BFS Award for Best Short Story; nominated for the same award in 2012. She won the Winchester Writers’ Festival ‘Slim Volume’ prize. To date she has had around three dozen short stories published, both in print form and digitally/on-line. These publications are as varied as The Mammoth Book of Dracula (Robinson press), Dark Currents (Newcon Press), Dark Valentine (EZine), Necronomicon (Screaming Dreams Press), Alt-Zombie (Hersham Horror) Demonologia Biblica (Western Legends Publishing) and The 13 Ghosts of Christmas 2012 (Spectral Press). Most of these stories are inspired by her passion for folklore and mythology. Jan currently has several novels/novellas in planning with publishers.
Other work includes scriptwriting for TV spin-offs, reviews, interviews, poetry and articles. For full details of publications go to www.janedwards-writer.blogspot.co.uk
Jan has edited various publications for the CHWG, the British Fantasy Society and for the award-winning Alchemy Press (http://alchemypress.blogspot.co.uk/ ) Most recently Jan co-edited The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders with Jenny Barber in 2012 and at time of writing the dynamic duo are taking subs for The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic.
I asked Jan, 'Which fairy tale inspired your story and how?'
Fairy tale princesses tend to get a rough deal - a reflection of the times in which they were written. Even rich and influential women did not marry ‘with’ a dowry but rather were a part of the dowry in the form of a walking womb. Thus women invariably succeeded more through their wits than from being able to wield a big sword.
The Princess and the Pea is the simplest of fairy tales and has inspired many interpretations over the years. I have tried to remain true to the original whilst still empowering our socially restricted heroines to gain their objectives by manoeuvring themselves into power with the weapons readily available to them; those of stealth and the power of manipulation over an unsuspecting mind. Plus... It was fun to write!
Princess Born
by Jan Edwards
A fire crackled in the Library’s out-sized grate thickening the air so that everything but sleep seemed such an effort. Prince Adras lounged back in his chair, long legs thrust out across the rug before him, flicked another playing card at his older brother’s discarded coronet. The Knave of Hearts slid over the rim to settle face-up in the centre and he smiled.
The next card skittered across the table and onto the Book of Native Fauna that was the object of his brother, Crown Prince Clovis's attention. ‘How about a jaunt out to the lakes?’ he murmured. ‘Bag a few ducks maybe? Or a spot of fishing?’ He flicked an imaginary cast into the centre of the room, scattering the remainder of the deck in a wide arc before him.
Clovis lifted his head in bemused affront at the interruption. ‘Ducks?’
‘Ducks.’ Adras agreed. ‘You know, quack, quack?’ He flapped his hands limply at his sides.
Clovis considered the word carefully. ‘Ducks,’ he repeated. ‘Stopped raining has it?’
‘Hours ago.’
‘Right then.’ The book snapped shut. ‘Hobbs?’
‘Sir.’
‘We’re going to the lakes. Get my stuff.’
‘But your Mother. The Queen was quite clear about staying in the grounds… Of course, Sir. At once.’ Hobbs paused at the door. ‘Will you require a Captain's escort?’
‘To the lake? It’s not even out of sight of the walls. Anyway, you can’t take those clods out for a hunt. Bloody great boots stamping about frightening fish and fowl for miles. Just a footman or three, thank you Hobbs.’
Hobbs stiffened, but swallowed the reprimand he would have given when the Princes were younger. ‘As the young Sir wishes.’
Clovis allowed one of his rare grins. ‘Ducks it is brother,’ he said. ‘But my turn first.’
***
‘Really Clovis.’ Do get a move on. Dammed birds will start roosting before I fire a shot.’ Adras leaned on his gun rest, and shifted awkwardly where he lay in the tangle of tall reeds. They had an excellent view of the water, and of the Eiders and Mallards idling among the reeds and lilies.
Grimm and Grimmer: Volume One Page 4