The Glassblower's Children

by Maria Gripe

  “Now do you understand?” she asked faintly.

  And he heard himself reply, “No, not yet—but I think I will understand.”

  19

  NANA DIDN’T KNOW that Flutter Mildweather was in the House. Nor did Klas and Klara, though they wouldn’t have remembered her.

  Flutter had decided not to let herself be seen by them until the contest between herself and Nana had begun. Instead, she sent Wise Wit off to keep an eye on everything that went on between Nana and the children.

  The raven flew like a soundless shadow high up under the eaves. The only one who saw him was Mimi, who was both mute and silent as a tomb. And even if Mimi had been able to speak, she wouldn’t have said anything to Nana, because she didn’t mind another bird coming into the House, and she and Wise Wit had exchanged secret looks of understanding.

  In this way Flutter Mildweather got to know all of Nana’s habits—how she gave lessons to the children and how she carried on in general.

  She decided, finally, to attack during a singing lesson, for then Nana was always in her element. Then she was thoroughly refreshed and dangerous, for singing, which was her hobby, gave her strength.

  It may seem odd that Flutter didn’t choose one of Nana’s weak moments instead, but that would have been unthinkable. Flutter wanted them to be equally matched. There would be no real test of strength if one of them set a trap for the other. Nana couldn’t be given the opportunity to choose the moment of their struggle herself. It wouldn’t do, however much Flutter would have liked to, because Nana had absolutely no scruples about fair play. She was completely without conscience; underhanded, wily, malicious, and full of deceit.

  But they were sisters, nevertheless. Nana, like Flutter, was a force of nature; neither of them could be called ordinary or simple, and they both knew that. The fight between them had to be according to the laws of the wild: the stronger would win. For good or for evil.

  Therefore, it wouldn’t be right to attack Nana in one of her weak moments. If you really want to conquer evil, you have to face all its power and potential: you can’t use trickery. And this was the case with Nana.

  Flutter knew that, and her preparations did not include only her sister.

  First and foremost, she invited the Lord and the Lady to come to Nana’s singing lesson with the children that day.

  They didn’t want to at all—what did the lessons have to do with them? But when Flutter insisted, the Lady quickly agreed and then the Lord, too. They remembered their happy drive through the countryside and promised to go. For, in some dim way, they realized that the old lady had had something to do with it, though it seemed that she had just sat there in the coach without doing anything.

  Then Flutter rushed up to her tower chamber and exchanged a few words with Wise Wit. They agreed about something. After that, Flutter settled down for a little calm contemplation. She opened all the windows around the tower, and sat there a while, surrounded by the murmuring breezes of the summer. And thus she prepared to meet Nana.

  When the singing lesson began, Flutter Mildweather made her way down to the room where Nana was with the children. Over her head, Wise Wit swept through the air on his strong wings. Flutter carried two of Albert the glassblower’s bowls. When she met the Lord and the Lady she gave them each a bowl and asked that they hold them throughout the lesson. They were not to put them down.

  The Lady looked at the bowls in fear and awe.

  “Why, they look like tears!” she exclaimed.

  “They are tears,” answered Flutter Mildweather grimly.

  They stared at her wonderingly. They didn’t understand what she was getting at, but all they dared do was follow as she walked briskly into the room where Nana was.

  The lesson had already begun.

  Neither Nana nor the children noticed the three of them enter the room. Flutter signaled to the Lord and Lady that they should stand still and keep quiet.

  Green light seeped into the room. The windows were covered with thick, tangled creeping vines. The curtains, like the walls, were green.

  Nana stood in the center of the room, singing.

  Klas and Klara huddled back against the wall staring at her as if they had been turned to stone. Mimi sat in her cage near the ceiling.

  When Nana stopped singing, there was an anguished, trembling instant, while she glared at the children with her bulging eyes.

  After the silence had had its full effect, she spoke, raising her piercing voice higher with each word,

  “Now we’ll hear whether there’s anything wrong with your ears, children! Sing! SING! SING!”

  Out of Klas and Klara came their usual hoarse, terrified, breathless peeps.

  Then Nana started shaking with rage. She pressed her hands together and walked toward the children with slow, menacing steps.

  But something happened that she hadn’t expected. Klas and Klara caught sight of Wise Wit, who urged them to run.

  Nana didn’t see Wise Wit, but she flew into a terrible wild rage. With two awful strides, she caught up with the children, swept them up in her powerful arms, and grabbed hold of their ears.

  “Did you think two such unmusical pairs of ears could get away without being PUNISHED?” she stormed. “Stand still, you weak-kneed dumbbells, you little empty-headed jugs!”

  At that moment Flutter Mildweather stepped forward.

  She was calm. She held her head high. Her cloak billowed as if it had come alive, and sunbeams seemed to shimmer on the butterfly wings decorating her hat.

  Nana caught sight of her, turned her back, but didn’t drop the children. An inexplicable, triumphantly malicious smile spread over her face. Her mouth twisted and her eyes glittered sharp as tacks.

  She didn’t look scared, hardly even surprised, merely scornful. She drew herself up, so powerful, so massive that next to her Flutter Mildweather seemed reduced to nothing. Whoever looked at them then would have had no doubt which was the stronger, which one would win.

  The Lord and his Lady scarcely dared breathe as they stood watching.

  But Flutter did not face them, so they were unable to see her eyes. Nor would they have been able to look, for no human being could have endured the expression in her eyes at that moment. No words can describe it.

  Nana trembled, but still stayed firm. Her face was also terrible to behold, but it was, after all, only wicked, only evil, only cruel—whereas Flutter’s eyes were like a tornado, a fire-spouting mountain, an earthquake. Yet all the while they remained the same peaceful, untroubled blue of a summer night sky. Her glance, her spirit, could never be quenched.

  Now her voice could be heard, eternal, terrible, calm.

  “Nana, children become what you make of them. Look at your empty-headed pupils.”

  Nana tried to overcome Flutter’s stare, but then her eyelids began to jerk and twitch. She caught them a couple of times and managed to keep on staring back before she had to give up. Then she looked down at the children.

  She backed away violently. The evil expression in her eyes turned to fright.

  Even the Lord and his Lady stood still as stones. They saw it all.

  For Nana was holding onto the handles of two clay jugs. Klas and Klara were nowhere to be seen. They had vanished.

  In that instant, Mimi shrieked. Her shriek was higher, more full of dread and horror than ever before. It was a waking scream this time, and caused a pain that was almost not of this world.

  When it died away, a strange shattering tinkle of glass could be heard. Over all the House glass broke into smithereens. So shattering, so totally shattering, was that scream, that it crashed all the mirrors and all the window panes.

  With their hands full of fragments, the Lord and his Lady stood there. The bowls they were holding had broken before their very eyes.

  The Lady began to sob quietly.

  In that instant everything stopped. A stillness fell as if nothing in space existed, only eternity. It was as if life couldn’t start up again. As
if, when Mimi screamed, everything had stopped.

  But then Wise Wit rose up and glided silently through the room. He reached Mimi’s cage and opened it with his beak.

  Mimi flew out. Straight into the light, and out through the recently shattered window panes, through the tangled creeper vines, out into the free wind she rose, higher and higher into space . . . in pure joy. She didn’t look around, she just disappeared with a boundless, unending cry of joy.

  Wise Wit watched her fly off from the window ledge, and when she had gone he explained, “In ancient times we were young together. We two can understand each other. . . .”

  At his words, everyone in the room came to life again. The Lord and his Lady turned to each other in confusion, and the Lord took her hands.

  Nana seemed to have completely lost her mind, for she wandered around witlessly, tearing up her belongings, muttering mysteriously to herself. She left the room in a panic, but then returned immediately. Her eyes searched around the room and rested on Flutter. She went up to her and their eyes met, but without hatred now. The power had gone from Nana—she had given up.

  As if it were very obvious, she said to Flutter, “We’ll meet again, sister.”

  And Flutter nodded wearily.

  “Yes,” she replied, “we’ll meet again. . . .”

  And then Nana left.

  But the Lady leaned against the Lord and sobbed and sobbed. He stroked her hair but looked equally downcast himself. For he wasn’t wicked and he couldn’t rid himself of the picture in his mind of the jugs that Flutter Mildweather had just taken, one under each arm.

  “It is all my fault,” he repeated, “my fault, my fault. Who can ever forgive me. . . .”

  “Poor little children,” sobbed the Lady. “Will they ever return to life again? Do they have to be jugs forever now, Mademoiselle?”

  Flutter Mildweather stopped before them on her way out of the room. Her strange eyes were full of compassion.

  “No, not forever and ever,” she said. “Only as long as they remain here, for here in this house they cannot be anything else.”

  “But if they were to go home?” asked the Lord anxiously.

  “Yes, then they would be children again.”

  And then the Lord said something he thought he would never ever say again. He said, “Thank you.”

  And the Lady whispered falteringly, “I wish . . . I wish you happiness.”

  “I wish the same for you, my Lady,” said Flutter, and then walked over to the door. There she turned and called out, “And for you too, my Lord.”

  Then the Lord said thank you a second time. It was the first time Flutter Mildweather had called them my Lord and my Lady, whatever that may mean. . . .

  Wise Wit spread out his wings, and flapped protectively over her head, and Flutter walked through the House carrying the clay jugs. She was exhausted.

  The House had so many rooms and stairs. Too many.

  In one room she came upon the old coachman, who stood there bending stiffly over a round table on which twelve glasses lay shattered in a ring around the rim. His shadow fell over the white tablecloth like the hands of a clock that had stopped forever.

  Flutter Mildweather walked over to him and touched him.

  “There’s no need to brood over that any more,” she said gently. “A bird’s cry has been breaking the glass this time. Not the little boy. But the bird has flown off now, and the children are gone. It will never happen again. . . .”

  But the coachman neither heard nor saw her. He was old; he stood still and the hands of the clock now pointed to seven.

  Flutter Mildweather saw it was evening already. They had to hurry.

  She left the House by a back door. She didn’t want to leave through the town gates, but instead used a smaller door in the wall, which opened directly onto the River of Forgotten Memories. There a little boat was moored.

  She hopped down into it and rested the jugs in the bow, while Wise Wit perched in the stern.

  She untied the boat and let it glide out into the river.

  The breezes of day had died down; the water was calm. She sat a while quite still, resting on her oars as the sun set.

  The House was reflected in the water. And that was just how the House should look! It shimmered and shivered until the boat slowly slipped out across the reflection as if through a dream.

  She began to row as the dusk fell. Rowing felt good to her now.

  The river was deep and hid many forgotten memories. Those that had sunk there were lost forever. Flutter knew this.

  And when she reached the other bank, she also knew that everything had been accomplished. She laid down her oars and turned slowly around.

  It was exactly as she had thought.

  Klas and Klara lay asleep in the bow. There was not a trace of the clay jugs. She took a little rug that lay in the boat and spread it over the children. Wise Wit watched her carefully.

  “You bewitched them,” he said.

  “I changed their appearance,” she answered.

  “They changed . . . but I trust you didn’t change as well.”

  “Yes, I had to see the same thing I wanted the others to see. The jugs were an illusion, for they have been children all the time.”

  The raven nodded wisely.

  “Wise Wit knew that and wasn’t a bit confused,” he announced.

  Flutter smiled and looked at him for a long time, but said nothing more. Then she tied the boat to a tree and lay down in the hull, wrapped in her cape. Wise Wit was already asleep, with his head tucked under his wing.

  They would continue their journey in the morning, but now they must rest.

  It will be nice to start weaving again, thought Flutter Mildweather. That’s really all I would like to do now. I hope I won’t have to tell fortunes any more or do any more witchcraft. I know better than that. This time it was necessary, but in fact you shouldn’t really ever let your shuttle run into other people’s tapestries. . . .”

  The boat rocked and bobbed so gently in the water.

  Soon Flutter Mildweather was sleeping, too. Her hat lay beside her, and the night breezes played with the butterfly wings. She smiled gently in her sleep but didn’t dream.

  Part

  Three

  “. . .if it so happens

  that you get what you desire,

  then it is as fate has decreed.”

  GROA’S MAGIC FORMULAS

  20

  THE DOLL SHOP was the first place Sofia caught sight of when she came to the fair. She felt a pang of grief, and didn’t dare look at the dolls. All she wanted to do was get away from there.

  But she couldn’t help her eyes being drawn to the shop, and her heart pounded with fright. Once more she experienced that terrible day when the children had disappeared. Couldn’t she be spared that?

  For in the same place, in the very same corner of the doll shop, hung a doll absolutely identical to the one Klara had longed for that time years ago. The doll with the black satin cloak, the long golden braids, and the lilac kerchief. The doll that the old lady had insisted that Klara had bought just before she disappeared. It was hanging there right now. Sofia stared at it, bewitched and terrified out of her wits, as if it had been a ghost. The doll swung back and forth on its little strings, and Sofia got the impression that it was looking at her with its bright blue-button eyes.

  She rushed away in complete terror. She wouldn’t say anything to Albert. Why should she dredge up sorrow for him, too, when it did no good? He was so gloomy and melancholy all the time now, anyway. Nor had she told him anything about her night visit with the ring to Flutter Mildweather. Why should she rouse the same illusion of hope in him that she had once felt herself?

  She had believed so blindly in Flutter Mildweather, and she still did, even now, sometimes. But an ugly doubt had begun to appear. Perhaps all Flutter had wanted was her ring; perhaps that’s why she offered to help. Though Sofia put aside the thought, still it returned.

 
She ran back and helped Albert in his shop. His glassware was in great demand now, as usual.

  It was summer, and the sun shone warmly. A crowd of happy people milled around, looking forward to the evening’s pleasures.

  But when Albert had finished selling his glassware that afternoon, Sofia wanted to start back home. What else was there for them to do at the fair? They couldn’t feel very joyful. They didn’t want to join in the amusements.

  Albert agreed with her. It was better to travel home. They would have fine weather for their journey. They could let the horse trot along all night if necessary, as long as they didn’t have to stay in the fairground and feel bored and out of place.

  He gathered up his things in the shop and they walked over to pack their wagon, which stood with the others near the woods surrounding the fairground.

  They walked past a bush that overhung a stone wall. Some gypsies had thrown things over the bush. Their wagons were nearby, and here they dried their patched laundry out in the sun.

  They heard music from one of the wagons. Someone was playing artlessly, a melancholy tune. Someone was playing all alone as they walked past.

  A little further off sat a raven that had flown up onto the stone wall. He sat perfectly still and studied his shadow solemnly as they passed by. He wasn’t frightened by them and didn’t fly away when he saw them.

  “Isn’t that Flutter Mildweather’s one-eyed raven?” asked Albert, pausing. But then the raven lifted its head, and he noticed that it had two eyes.

  “No,” he said. “It can’t be. This one had two eyes.”

  He wanted to walk on, but Sofia stayed there. She took a step nearer the wall and looked up at the raven thoughtfully. There was something so familiar about the bird. It turned one eye to her and studied her with an expression she couldn’t understand, for she had met that look before, but didn’t remember where. Her heart began to pound faster in her breast. The raven’s eye was green. It blinked. She felt dizzy, with a strange sense of unreality. It couldn’t be so.

  And yet she knew right off that that mysterious green glance had stared at her in the moonlight once before and blinked then just as it did now. She recognized it: the ring’s shifting green stone that had always upset her, that had always reminded her of a wild creature’s eye—a bird’s eye.