Hilary McKay's Fairy Tales

by Hilary McKay

  And I don’t care either, thought Fraulein Angelika Maria. And I can even see that some of the children might really be adorable. Hansel, anyway. But they are so incredibly sticky and they will come back after lunch even stickier. If only there was a spare drip bucket, they could wash their hands in the full one . . . I could warm it on the stove . . .

  Spare Drip Bucket, wrote Fraulein Angelika Maria triumphantly on her shopping list. Then, finishing her apple, she turned back to Gretel’s story:

  The windowsills of the witch’s house were made of gingerbread. I ate a lot of windowsill while Hansel was licking the barley-sugar windows. It tasted a bit mouldy but I was so hungry I didn’t care. The roof was nicer. It had sugar-icing patterns. There was so much wood in the forest it seemed silly to build a house of gingerbread, but that was what the witch did. The other thing wrong with having a house made out of gingerbread is what about when it rains? It would go soggy. And why didn’t rats and mice and birds eat it up? And foxes and bears? Perhaps it was a trap for children like Hansel and me. But I don’t suppose many children go that far into the forest.

  Hansel and I only went so far because we were lost. We couldn’t find Hansel’s breadcrumbs. Do not think Hansel was not brave, miss, because he was so frightened at the witch’s house. Anyone would be frightened if they were locked up in a cage and fattened up for a witch’s dinner. Until that happened Hansel was the bravest of the brave.

  I’m sure he was, agreed Fraulein Angelika, nodding.

  At that moment, the schoolroom clock struck one. The door burst open. All the children rushed back in and flumped down at their desks, stickier than ever, as Fraulein Angelika Maria had known they would. But now she was no longer under her terrible cloud. Now she had a plan. Towels, she wrote on her shopping list, Pink and Blue (with spares). Floor Polish, Desk Polish, Dusters. Window Boxes, Lettuce Seeds. Compasses (one each, so they don’t get lost in the forest) . . .

  Goodness! thought Fraulein Angelika Maria. There is so much to do, and I have only got a year, and nearly three days gone already! Gretel is clearly a genius, and Hansel is actually a cherub!! (New Jacket for Hansel, she wrote on her shopping list). That little girl in pink must be taught to say her ‘Rs’. None of them seem to know how to sing . . . (Song Books, she wrote on the shopping list), or how to play (Skipping Ropes, Balls, Storybooks). A piano would be useful . . .

  Piano, Fraulein Angelika wrote. She adored shopping. She could hardly wait to begin, but meanwhile there was afternoon school, and an empty seat beside Gretel.

  ‘Where is Jack?’ asked Fraulein Angelika Maria.

  ‘He’s not coming back this afternoon, miss,’ said Gretel, ‘because of taking their Sukey to market.’

  ‘He can’t just miss school like that!’ exclaimed Fraulein Angelika Maria. ‘I should have had a note.’

  ‘He said he gave you one,’ said Gretel.

  Fraulein Angelika looked down at the dampest and stickiest piece of paper on her desk, and realized that he had.

  ‘He’s not had to go all the way to market, though,’ continued Gretel. ‘He met a man who wanted to buy her almost as soon as he started. So he sold her for five beans.’

  ‘Gretel,’ said Fraulein Angelika Maria, in a very pleased voice, ‘you are telling a story forwards! That’s very good indeed! If Jack sold Sukey so quickly he should have come back to school.’

  ‘It’s not a story,’ said Gretel, ‘and he didn’t come back, because he thought he’d better give the beans to his mother in case they got lost.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ said Fraulein Angelika Maria. ‘Did his mother want beans so much?’

  ‘She didn’t want them at all,’ said Gretel. ‘She said they wasn’t magic and she throwed them out the window.’

  ‘She threw them out of the window.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew,’ said Gretel. ‘Did you hear her shouting? She’ll be surprised in the morning when they grow into a beanstalk with a castle on the top.’

  ‘Miss, have you wead my witing yet?’ asked the little girl in pink.

  ‘I have,’ said Fraulein Angelika, ‘and we must talk about how to spell “porridge”. It is a word full of “Rs” not “Ws”. But first I have to bring the register up to date. I know about Jack.

  ‘Does anyone know why Punzel, R has not been in school this term?’

  ‘She’s been stuck up a tower for ages,’ said Gretel.

  ‘Oh Gretel, really! And Simon and Dick?’

  ‘Simon went off with a goose, and Dick went off with a cat,’ said Hansel.

  ‘Beauty, the merchant’s daughter?’

  ‘She’s living with a beast. Her father took her,’ chorused half the class.

  ‘Absent, absent, absent, and absent,’ Fraulein Angelika noted in the register, ‘and none of them with a proper excuse.’ Living with a beast, her father took her indeed! thought Fraulein Angelika indignantly. I absolutely must organize a parents’ evening!

  ‘Is it sums again this afternoon, miss?’ asked Hansel.

  ‘No Hansel, it is Art,’ said Fraulein Angelika, ‘and Art is something so long to be learned, as the philosophers tell us, that we will begin at once. Gretel, please hand out crayons and paper. I should like you each to draw me a picture of My Family and My Favourite Pet.’

  ‘What if you just live with dwarves?’ asked a dark-haired girl from one of the middle-row seats.

  ‘Then draw the dwarves,’ said Fraulein Angelika.

  ‘All of them?’ asked the girl.

  ‘You may have two sheets of drawing paper,’ said Fraulein Angelika kindly. ‘Now then, Goldilocks, porridge! I’ve written it here in big letters, so come and show me the “Rs”!’

  The second time they took us into the forest Hansel did not have time to find stones. He broke up his piece of bread instead, and scattered a trail of breadcrumbs

  We went much further the second time; we walked for hours and hours and hours until it was like walking and being asleep at the same time. I do remember a pile of brown leaves and they looked so comfortable I thought I would lie down for just a minute and then I would hurry and catch them up but I went asleep for too long. When I woke up it was black dark and Hansel was asleep beside me and our father and our stepmother had gone.

  The breadcrumbs had gone too. The birds had eaten them up.

  The first time we were lost in the forest we got home again the next day by following Hansel’s white stones and we arrived at the house at morning and then I didn’t know what to do but Hansel knocked on the door and it was our father and he hugged us tight. But I saw our stepmother behind him. I saw her face. She was not glad that we had found our way back. She said we ate too much food. We heard her talking one night through the holes in the floor. She said there wasn’t enough food and so Hansel and me must be taken into the forest and lost. That was how it all began and that is why Hansel’s jacket is so tight.

  The End.

  Fraulein Angelika Maria could not help it. It was too sad. Her eyes filled with tears and her nose prickled dreadfully and she realized that she was going to sneeze at last. She felt blindly for her bag and discovered that she had no more handkerchiefs. ‘Oh dear,’ she said unhappily, and sniffed.

  Gretel was watching her. Gretel reached into her ragged pocket and pulled out a ragged bundle, a collection of little bits and pieces all wrapped in a handkerchief.

  ‘Here, miss!’ she said, tipping out the collection, and she pushed the handkerchief into Fraulein Angelika’s hand.

  She was just in time. Fraulein Angelika took a huge breath, closed her streaming eyes, and sneezed an enormous sneeze.

  ‘Thank you, Gretel,’ she said gratefully, when she had recovered. ‘Thank you! Whatever should I have done if you had not been there! And Gretel, you have written a wonderful story!’

  She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief and blinked.

  Gazed . . . and blinked again.

  A handful of pearls, a dozen or more gold coins, sticky but shining, on her
desk.

  She looked at them for a long, long time, and then she looked at Gretel.

  ‘It wasn’t a story, Gretel,’ said Fraulein Angelika.

  ‘No, miss,’ said Gretel.

  10

  Sweet William by Rushlight

  or

  The Swan Brothers

  A rushlight was a poor person’s light on a dark night. It was made from the pith at the centre of the stiff green rushes that grew, and still grow, near marshy ground. The green outside was peeled away to leave the white pith, which was dipped in wax or tallow and then allowed to dry. A good rushlight might burn for half an hour or more.

  They are easy to make. I have made them now and then myself for fun. You need to leave a green strip on the pith to stiffen it, and if you allow it to dry for a few hours before dipping it in your wax, then you get a longer-lasting light. But you can never tell with a rushlight. Some burn long, and some burn short.

  *

  I have seven rushlights to tell my story by.

  *

  This story has been told so many times. So many voices, so many memories, that the facts have been lost in the telling. How many brothers were there? Was it nettles or starflowers that were woven, and what was the name of the girl? Was it swans, or crows? And how many days, or was it years?

  Well, I was there, and this is my chance to write down the truth. With a swan-feather quill and seven rushlights to lighten the darkness.

  There were seven brothers.

  Nettles were woven.

  Her name was Elsa.

  Swans.

  It took seven years.

  *

  There were seven brothers, and they were princes of a small kingdom, mostly forest, mostly happy. The princes were born in pairs: Jacob and Joseph; Lucas and Mark; Timon and Toby, and then me. I was the youngest. I was Will.

  Will, Sweet William, Billy-O.

  Jacob and Joseph, they were our leaders, born, said our mother, at the moment the sun sprang into the sky. Jacob and Joseph were seldom to be found within the castle walls. Always, from little boys, they were away along the forest rides or out amongst the villages. Tireless and merry and everyone’s friends. If there was a field to be reaped, a fire to be tamed, a child wandered away needing to be found, a flood to be forged, a horse to be ridden, then Jacob and Joseph were there. The villagers loved them, but not more than we did. When they returned to the castle, you’d know it was because there was nothing left to do. They’d stagger sometimes as they led their horses across the courtyard, and they’d be soaked from a river or red-eyed from fire and they’d fall asleep in their supper bowls. They were good boys.

  Lucas was our minstrel, thin and dark-eyed. He carried his lute across his back so as never to have to hunt for it, and he kept a flute in his pocket. He had a talent for making little clay birds, hollow inside with a reed for a tail. With a drop of water inside and a breath down the reed, they would bubble and sing like a hedge full of finches. Half the children for miles had a little clay bird, and the rest had cuckoo-callers, cut from hollow stems. Lucas was a great whistler himself; he had ever a melody, you always knew he was near.

  Different to Mark! You’d think you were alone till you heard a laugh at your shoulder and there would be Mark. And at Mark’s side would be his great golden hound, Cadmus. The day Mark learned to walk they took him outside to practise on the soft grass, where it didn’t hurt to fall. Stagger, stagger, wobble, wobble, went Mark across the lawn, and tumbled through a gap in the beech hedge. Up jumped our mother, and up jumped Jacob and Joseph, but before they could take a step he was back. On his feet again, and walking much steadier this time, leaning as he was on the shoulder of a hound so huge that at first sight they took him to be a lion. But Cadmus was no lion. He was a dog. One of the ageless companions of the fortunate that step out of legends now and then to remind us that our deeds don’t go unwatched. Cadmus and Mark! Mark grew from a child to a man, but Cadmus might have been a painted picture, for all he seemed to change.

  The last set of twins was Timon and Toby. Toby, our court jester, dark eyes and apple cheeks and forever erupting into laughter. Timon was our dreamer, with his head full of stories. Those two were always together. Give Toby a cake, and he’d hand it straight to Timon. And if Timon caught a cold, it was Toby who would sneeze.

  I was the last of the brothers, a plain boy in a brown jacket, with scuffed boots and a knitted cap. But it wasn’t a plain life with brothers like mine, and I never missed not having a twin, because after me came Elsa.

  Elsa, our little sister.

  Our father used to ask a riddle: if I have seven boys and a sister for each of them, how many children have I?

  Elsa was a sister for each of us.

  Jacob and Joseph taught her to ride, and up she would go on the saddle behind them, to ride out to the villages in the morning. She would sing with Lucas, clear and sweet like a winter robin, and she would listen to Timon’s stories with her lips parted in astonishment and wide grey eyes. Toby made her laugh until she had to rush out of the room, and Mark would dance with her, but who taught her to curtsy afterwards? A careful dip to Mark and then a slow deep sweep to Cadmus.

  But with me she was my best friend ever, my keeper of secrets, my comrade in arms. I lent her my jacket when she was cold and she shared her apples and biscuits with me, and together we read many books, and fell out of many trees, and tracked many creatures across the snow, and pondered over many pictures, on our stomachs before the fire in wintertime, flat on our backs in the meadow in summer, squinting through our fingers to count the butterflies.

  Then our mother died.

  *

  Six rushlights left.

  *

  Our mother died in the deep of winter, on a day when great grey flakes fell from the faded sky and all colour was buried on the earth.

  We clung to each other that day, and after we shivered for a while.

  But not forever. Jacob and Joseph straightened their shoulders and looked out into the world to find the next place that they were needed. Timon remembered his stories. ‘Dark and light,’ said Timon. ‘That’s how they go. No light without dark, now and then.’ He looked up at Toby, and Toby, who was born to smile, smiled down at him.

  And Lucas discovered that the children in the villages still needed their clay birds, and that his lute still needed its tunes. Also Mark was still brave enough for a hero’s hound, and Elsa was still a sister to each of us. I remember she took my cold hands in her two warm ones and said, ‘Don’t be sad, Will, Sweet William, Billy-O. I will take care of you now.’

  So spring came and the snow went and we came alive again.

  But our father did not.

  Our father stayed in his winter despair, his mind a tangle of sadness and worry, and he paced the floors and the castle grounds and the roads and the paths through the forest and he wrung his hands and said, ‘What can I do? What can I do? Joseph and Jacob so reckless. Lucas so pale. Mark lost without that beast, and Timon with his head in the clouds. Toby never sensible for two moments together. And Will . . . more like a boy from the cottages than a prince. And Elsa! A girl needs a mother.’

  ‘Elsa, look at you!’ he would say, and then Elsa would hurry to wash her hands and untangle her brown curls and she would try and walk primly amongst us for a while.

  It was not enough for my father though.

  There is no easy way to put this, so I will have to choose the plain way.

  He married a witch.

  A witch, but not a hag. As fair a witch as you would find within the ringing of a bell. A heart-melting smile, and a way with her eyes when she tilted her head. Swift-stepped and golden-haired, and suddenly the swish and sigh of silken skirts in the castle again.

  *

  Well!

  Some polishing was done that summer! Some corners were swept! It was not long before our castle was a very different place. Lilies in the flowerbeds where our mother had grown her roses.

  A very powe
rful witch. Between sunrise and sunset Cadmus vanished, and Mark went very quiet.

  Then there was the baby. Yellow-headed as a dandelion amongst all of us brown boys. Our little brother, I suppose, although we rarely saw him. He was kept away from us. Even Elsa, who would have loved him, was hardly allowed by him. I didn’t like the way the witch spoke to Elsa.

  ‘Are you clean?’ she would say.

  Elsa would hold out her washed pink hands.

  ‘Curtsy then, to greet him.’

  Elsa would bob a friendly curtsy and hold out her hands.

  ‘Come Dandelion! Come Dandy! Come to Elsa!’

  ‘His name is Florian.’

  ‘Come Florian, into the garden.’

  ‘He may not go into the garden.’

  ‘Where may he play with me?’

  ‘He does not need to play. Curtsy and take your leave.’

  *

  ‘Poor Florian!’ Elsa said to us afterwards. ‘He’s just a little boy. But when I said that to his mother, she said, “He is not a little boy; he is a future king.” What did she mean?’ asked Elsa, and she looked at us, her seven brothers, seven future kings before Florian, and her eyes were very anxious.

  ‘They were just words,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Empty,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lucas . . . although Mark remained silent.

  ‘Silly,’ said Toby, looking at Timon.

  And Timon agreed. ‘A dream.’

  ‘He’s just a little boy,’ I said. ‘A dandelion head.’

  We forgot she was a witch.

  *

  Five rushlights left.

  *

  Our father said to us, ‘I am sending you boys to the old hunting lodge in the forest.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ said Joseph.

  ‘I am sending you boys to the old hunting lodge in the forest,’ repeated our father, bewitched if ever a man was.

  ‘For why?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Elsa is there already,’ said our father. ‘Alone.’