The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

by Jesse Bullington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The result could be seen immediately. Magnus’s scream sent night-birds into flight and a nearby hare’s heart burst in terror. He heaved away from her, thrashing and convulsing, his guts bursting out onto the leaves with
out his hand to hold them in. Nicolette watched aghast, raising the knife numbly to her own throat lest she had killed her husband. Then, as the horse stomped and pulled at the rope leashing it to a nearby yew, the bloody coils of his insides reversed, sucking back into the wound. Nicolette smiled, then began to laugh and cry simultaneously.

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

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

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

  VIII. Enough Distractions

  The snow had stopped and the sun had risen. Time passed in silence, Hegel gawking at Nicolette. During her tale she had eaten bowl after bowl of a muddy substance from a bucket beside her chair, but things other than her apparent taste for clay bothered the Grossbart. He shakily stood and cast his bottle into the fire, where it exploded. Drawing his sword, he yelled for his brother.

  “On your feet, Manfried!” Hegel kept the blade between himself and the witch.

  She clucked softly, not stirring from her chair. Manfried blearily pushed his back against the rear wall and rose halfway to his feet. Perplexed, he looked from Hegel to the seated geriatric. Christ, was she old.

  “Calm, calm,” she murmured.

  “Calm? You goddamned witch, I’ll have your head!” Hegel’s vision blurred, from fatigue or rage or drink, he could not be sure.

  “Witch?” Manfried tried to stand but slid back down the wall. “Is it a witch, brother?”

  “You knew what I was when you let me touch up you and your brother,” she said patiently.

  “That true?” Manfried shot his brother a withering stare.

  “Stay the Hell back!” Hegel moved between Nicolette and Manfried. He intended to hack off her head with a single swipe but was hesitant to approach her. Clearly she possessed dangerous powers.

  “Keep your word, Grossbart,” she said, eyes flashing even without a blazing fire to reflect in them.

  “She summon up that manticore on us?” Manfried’s head swam, and his weapons were nowhere to be found.

  “Damn it all!” Hegel could not stop shouting. “Wasn’t no damn manticore, it’s a damn garou, just like I told you!”

  “That’s French for wolf,” Nicolette offered. “Don’t think it really applies to Magnus, save metaphorical-like.”

  “Shut it!” Hegel’s temples pounded. “Just be quiet!”

  All three were silent. Manfried managed to edge up the wall to his feet, knees wobbling. Nicolette remained seated, staring at Hegel, who stumbled back, gripping his brother’s shoulder.

  “What’s happened?” Manfried hissed in their tongue of two.

  “Witch,” Hegel hissed back in kind.

  “I managed that, what the Hell we doin in its house?”

  “You was ill, I dragged you here. She healed you up.”

  “Don’t mean to second-guess, but that sounds awful honest.” Manfried peered around Hegel for a better look.

  “I paid.” Hegel shuddered. “Nuthin honest bout it.”

  Nicolette had watched them intently during their discourse, head tilted like a curious pet. Now she smiled and leaned back in her chair. It had taken her a moment, but she had it.

  “So she’s a witch, what you waitin for? Get’er quick fore we’s hexed!” Manfried shook his head in an effort to rattle out the sleep-mist.

  “What are you waiting for, Hegel?” she asked in the same unique cant.

  Both stared in shock, their code never before cracked.

  “Maybe, Manfried, your brother is a man of his word?” Her smile widened.

  “Dunno what word my brother gave, but any words we give’s ours to take back when we want, and don’t apply to heretics and witches no-way,” Manfried fired back, dropping any pretenses at secrecy. “Stab her, Hegel!”

  Hegel took a step forward despite the ringing in his ears and the chills lancing through every other part of his body that cautioned against such an act.

  “You break your word, Hegel, and I break mine.” She leaned forward in her chair.

  Hegel paused, like a child working up the nerve to plunge into frigid water. Manfried held his breath, not understanding his brother’s hesitation. Perhaps he had already fallen under some charm.

  “Why’d you heal us, if that thing out there’s your husband?” Hegel asked.

  “Husband!?” Manfried slid back to the floor.

  “Everything that happens to me or him is Her Will,” she said softly.

  “Very enlightened,” Manfried croaked from the floor. “Least she respects the Virgin proper.”

  Nicolette’s laughter hurt their ears. “Hekate’s Will, Grossbarts. The only lady of true quality.”

  “Heresy,” Manfried groaned, the stress taxing his consciousness. “Quick, brother, quick!”

  “Hekate?” The name struck Hegel as familiar.

  “I’d heard Her Name whispered in my youth, in my dreams. I learned Her Ways mostly myself, but twenty years ago a traveler came to our house, a traveler even Magnus feared. He taught me what I didn’t intuit, which I assure you can and does fill volumes.” She had the same pleasant tone as when she told her earlier tale, nostalgia bringing a joyous glaze to her eyes.

  “The Devil,” Manfried managed, lights bursting in his vision. “She met with the Devil!” He passed out again.

  Hegel could not move, and while he would later attribute it to some spell, in truth he was too frightened to do anything but gawp at her.

  “Not the Devil,” she sighed. “Or even a devil. A man of letters, a scholar of sorts. He spent a winter with us. I knew how to farm a bit, and Magnus hunted, naturally, but times are always lean when one’s appetite is so pronounced. In addition to the unusual seeds from the East, he showed me how to make my own food, as well as auger and curse and all the other goodness the Church warns against.”

  “We.” Hegel swallowed. “We should be-”

  “You leave when I say. I lied. I healed you not for Her Will but my own. You will die eventually, Grossbarts, and it will be hideous.”

  Manfried caught that much, breaking back into consciousness and conversation as though his participation in both had been unfailing. “Yeah, everyone dies, witch, and then we’s gonna ascend. Might take us a while, but there’ll be no escapin your fate. You’s gonna be burnin for all time, long after we’s paid any penance we owe.”

  “Neither here nor there, I certainly don’t intend to debate theology with two such learned and pious Marionites as yourselves. If I was to slay you now, no matter how painful or drawn out, you fools would cling to your faith, and cheat me of my reward.”

  “Damn right we would,” Manfried snorted, trying to keep the lights at bay.

  “Take that sack down
, Hegel,” she said wearily, motioning to a high shelf.

  He obeyed, telling himself his action was born only of curiosity. It felt heavy and lumpy, full of gravel. He held it out to her, the sword quaking in his other hand.

  Shaking her head, she squinted at him. “Look inside.”

  Unknotting the top, Hegel peered in. His brow knitted, and he looked closer. Manfried laboriously got back up and also had a gander.

  “What’s this?” Hegel whispered, paler than milk.

  “Teeth?” Manfried pulled out a handful.

  “My children’s.” She sighed.

  Manfried hurled the teeth away, wiping his hand on his shirt. “Cut’er!” he yelled but fell on his brother, who dropped the bag and supported him.

  “Lean times.” Her eyes might have been misty, the room too dim for the Brothers to be sure. “Early spring sowing, to make sure they arrived before the snow. Then I’d have milk to last us through the winter, and some meat as well.”

  Hegel’s sword swayed in his fingertips, its tip brushing the teeth on the floor. Manfried dug his thumb into his brother’s shoulder, using all his strength to stay upright. Nicolette cracked her knuckles and yawned.

  “First few litters kept us well, but hard times more oft get worse before they’re better. After the first couple broods I stopped producing regular, and it’s a wonder we survived those years until he arrived. He taught me, yes, bake the bread far faster with a bit of effort, and they grow and plumpen far faster as well. The taste is one to be savored, surely, and I’d not begrudge Magnus anything, and yet… pure instinct, I suppose. Mothers want babes, all there is to it. To raise, I mean, not that. So if Magnus had caught you proper we’d have et real well this winter, but now I can have what he denied me through no fault of his own.”