The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “I swear, I did not kill him and I never once asked him to be mine.”

  “You’re a slut and a whore, why should I believe a word that comes from your mouth?”

  As they spoke, the woodcutter’s wife kept dragging my mother closer to the edge, her flaming branch held aloft like the Hand of Glory.

  “Please,” I begged my friend, “you must save her.”

  “I’ll save her.”

  “And I trust you to do that.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked, reaching for my wrist as I turned.

  “I must go to town. I must get to Grandmother’s house. I have a terrible feeling.”

  I looked back once, as my friend broke cover.

  *

  As he battled with the wicked stepmother, I ran as fast as my feet would carry me, down into the town. The soles of my shoes slipped on frozen leaves and tripped over cobbles. My lungs felt fit to burst, yet I would not slow down.

  “Grandmother!” I cried. “Grandmother!”

  Her door was locked. I had never known it to be locked in my life.

  “Grandmother!” I cried again.

  Kicking aside the flowerpot, I reached for the key beneath. It clunked as it turned and I opened the door.

  From the moment I breathed the air inside, I knew that something was dreadfully wrong. There was a tang to it like iron. It reminded me of the witch’s skinning rack.

  “Grandmother?” I whispered, as I took a step inside.

  In the light from the dying lamp, I saw the horror of it. My grandmother’s blood coated the walls, her ashen hand drooped over the covers of her bed, her belly slit from throat to privates.

  I placed my hand across my mouth.

  A noise caused me to turn.

  The woodcutter’s son stood in the doorway, his axe carried in both hands.

  He spoke my name with a smile.

  “You’re an animal,” I cried.

  “Granted, this is the work of an animal.”

  “How could you do it? How could you kill an old woman?”

  He raised the axe as he came into the room. “She was a viper with a poisonous mouth.”

  I stepped backwards until I pressed against the bed, my grandmother’s blood seeping into my scarlet cloak.

  “That colour suits you,” he said, turning the axe in his hands.

  I thought to tell him it was dyed with his father’s blood, but lamplight slid off the blade and I fell silent.

  “Please let me go,” I whispered.

  “My, what a sweet begging voice you have. All the better to spread your lies.”

  Two boys appeared behind him. I recognised them as the farmer’s sons, the stink of the hogsty clung to their clothes.

  “Get away!” I screamed, struggling as they took my hands behind my back.

  They gagged me with a piece of cloth and marched me to the village square. When my legs gave way, they dragged me.

  In the few hours that I had been gone, a wooden platform had been erected with a meat hook swinging from a rope. They bound my hands and lifted them high, skewering me like a fish, my feet barely flat on the ground.

  A few people were starting to gather, stumbling out of the tavern, wiping sleep from their eyes. I stared about but all the good people, the baker, farrier, chandler, seamstress and skinner, had gone to their beds long ago.

  “Cut her down,” one of the men called. He was tall and dark-eyed, gruff of voice and in need of a shave, yet at that moment he seemed beautiful to me. “The poor girl’s just an innocent.”

  “An innocent, you say?” The loudness of the woodcutter’s son’s voice caused shutters to open around the square, sleepy-eyed inhabitants gazing out. “You are sorely mistaken. Why, this woman led me a merry dance through the woods. Tried to tease and tempt me—”

  “And you objected?” a stout man replied.

  There was a chuckle from the crowd.

  “Yes, I objected,” the woodcutter’s son hissed. “You would have objected too if you knew what she was.”

  “What is she, then?” the first man challenged.

  “This fawning wench cavorts with the witch in the wood. She needs no starflower to find her way upon that path, for the Woman in the Woods threw open her gate.”

  “We don’t talk of women’s business here,” said a bent-backed flower seller, her eyes half covered by her cloak. “What you men send us into the woods to do, that stays between the trees.”

  “She did not go for that,” the woodcutter’s son said, pointing his finger accusingly at me. “She did not go there out of necessity. She went there for pleasure. The first time she asked the way, she told me she would give me a kiss if I showed her.”

  “I’d have asked for three,” the stout man shouted, and they all laughed.

  Quite a crowd had gathered now, yet still I did not see any of my friends.

  “Aye, you let your bellies bounce, but before long you’ll regret it. She weren’t looking for the witch for a ridding. She went there to find her friend, the wolf-boy.”

  “The wolf-boy’s just a myth,” another woman shouted, her apron bloody from the butcher’s block. “It’s a tale we tell the little ones when we can’t get them to settle. ‘Go to bed, else the wolf-boy will come and crunch on your bones.’”

  “The wolf-boy is real,” the woodcutter’s son said, his voice rising like a carrion crow. “He is real and he killed my father.”

  The tall man waved his hand and turned his head away. “You’re not still on about this? The old woman told us what happened. We all know the type of man your father was. Now let the poor lass go.”

  I felt as hooked as a ham in the icehouse. What had my grandmother told them?

  “Are you really so blind?” the woodcutter’s son persisted. “Has the Woman in the Woods cast a spell over all of you? The old woman was lying. She was lying to protect her granddaughter’s honour.”

  “We’ve known the old woman all our lives,” the butcher’s wife cried. “She worked for a duchess once. She married at the castle and helped raise half a dozen kids in this town. She never passed out on the floor of the tavern like your father, she never went from bed to bed, keeping warm in the night. Why shouldn’t we believe what she said?”

  The woodcutter’s son turned the colour of snow. “Because that old woman loves her grandchild more than my father loved ale. She would say anything to protect her, and to protect her wicked lover, the wolf. If you don’t believe me, then go. Go and fetch the old woman from her bed. Let me question her, and I guarantee you’ll see she’s lying.”

  The crowd shifted and grumbled. For a moment I thought they were about to walk away, then my former saviour, the tall man with the rough chin, condemned me.

  “Very well,” he said. “We’ll have no rest tonight until we put this tale to bed. Let’s go fetch her.”

  I twisted on the hook and tried to call out, but my words were too muffled to hear.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” the woodcutter’s son said, sliding like a serpent to my side. “All these years, I’ve kept your secret. I’ve known why you walked the enchanted path to the witch’s cottage. Even as we kissed, I felt those eyes upon us through the woods. Those dark brown eyes of the beast. I knew you sought him out, sniffing his scent like a vixen on heat. You lured my father to his death, so that your friend could satisfy his thirst for blood. He feasted whilst you stood by and watched.

  “The people of this town were ready to storm the woods and string up your friend by his tail, until your grandmother arrived. She hobbled up here on her stick, stood high above the crowd, and told them that she had been the one to end my father’s life. She licked her lips and she lied until her cheeks turned blue.” He watched me struggle for a moment. “She told them she had been walking in the woods, gathering wintergreen, when she heard your cries. She said she had raced up the path to find my father on top of you. She told them he had rested his axe beside a tree and that she somehow found the strength to wield it. T
hey listened to her, and even those who did not believe, found the thought of my father above you so distasteful they turned away. No one questioned how a woman as ancient as she could race up a path or lift an axe. They simply believed her, and now they are going to believe me.”

  A moment of silence passed in which I hung from that hook, the cold breath of the woodcutter’s son blossoming in clouds across my cheek.

  Then the screams came.

  They could not carry the body of my grandmother to the square, because she was in too many pieces. Those brave enough to try found that she trickled between their fingers, as though her soul wished to rest upon her own bed. By the time the crowd came to order, my shoulders felt as though they would pop from their sockets. Tears came hot and fast, and I could not even wipe them from my face.

  “It is the beast, I tell you!” the woodcutter’s son screamed. “I warned you of this. I warned you she was lying, and now he has silenced her once and for all, that the truth may never be known. It was the beast who murdered my father. You all saw the blood. No mortal hand could have done such work. Now he has returned, and he will come again to save his lover from her fate.”

  I saw that I was lost. The eyes of the people shone up at me like little beads of glass. They were awake now, and sober. They held knives and pitchforks and sickles. The air rang with their sense of purpose and my cloak felt heavy about my shoulders.

  “Into the woods!” a man shouted.

  “No,” replied the woodcutter’s son. “We wait.”

  “For what?” another man shouted.

  “Hide yourselves away, behind the shops and houses. The beast will come for his she-wolf soon enough. Let him come, and then let him be captured.”

  Whilst the townsfolk scurried like rats to their holes, the woodcutter’s son unhooked me and pushed me towards the gaol. I cried out from the soreness in my arms, but he did not remove the gag.

  “Never you fear. Your friend will come sniffing soon enough,” he said, closing the iron gate against me and turning the key in the lock.

  After he left, I lifted my hands and removed the gag myself, taking thick lungfuls of air.

  I had no doubt that after my friend rescued my mother, he would come down here to the town to find me. Loosening my wrists by rubbing them back and forth, I wrapped my fingers around the bars of my cell and shook them as hard as I could.

  “Can anybody hear me?” I cried. “Please help me. Let me out!”

  The people of the town would have been horrified to see me in such a state, but they were already distracted with the hunt. Perhaps they thought the woodcutter’s son had taken me to his home, to protect me until the danger passed. Or perhaps they truly believed his tale, that I had stood by whilst my friend thirsted on the woodcutter’s blood.

  How could people be so stupid?

  I pulled at the bars and pushed at the bars, but they would not move.

  13

  It was just before dawn when they dragged his body into the cell next to mine. They had beaten him nearly unconscious. One eye was swollen to the size of a duck egg, black as tar. His hair was caked to his forehead with blood, and his lip was split clean open.

  Nobody seemed to notice me as they locked the door and left.

  I crawled to his cage, reaching my hands through the bars. The very tips of my fingers were just able to touch his.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I did not know it would come to this.”

  He spoke, but his voice was too weak to hear.

  We sat for a long time in silence, until the first of the dawn chorus sounded, and faint silver light began to drip down our prison walls.

  “I shouldn’t have lived,” he said, his voice a little stronger.

  I thought he meant they should have beaten him to death, and I told him how wrong he was.

  “No,” he replied. “When I was a boy.”

  “You mean the night of the storm? When you first came to us?”

  “No. Before that.”

  I thought for a moment he had slipped from consciousness. His head rolled away from me and he fell silent.

  “Please don’t die,” I whispered.

  As faint as thistledown, he whispered back.

  I told him that I hadn’t heard.

  “You heard me,” he replied. “I dyed your cloak with my own father’s blood.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “The woodcutter loved your mother since the first day they met. When she married another, he took to the taverns. He drank himself stupid from morn until eve. To ease the pain, he took women to his bed, sometimes three or four at a time. Eventually, he sobered and took the soaper’s daughter to bride. The same day she discovered she was expecting, there came a knock at the door. The soaper’s daughter opened it to find a woman on the doorstep, holding the hand of her infant son. Neither looked as though they had washed in weeks.”

  He fell quiet again and I stroked my fingers against his, waiting for him to continue.

  “‘What do you want?’ the woodcutter’s wife asked.

  “‘Warmth and bread,’ the woman replied.

  “The woodcutter’s wife took pity on them and brought them inside. She offered the woman stew and fetched cake for the child. She asked where they were from, but the woman said nothing, too hungry to raise her eyes from the bowl.

  “That evening, when the woodcutter returned from the forest, he found the woman and the child asleep by the fire, and his wife upstairs in bed. Without waking his wife, he took the woman and the child to the yard.

  “‘Why have you come here, to my door?’ he asked.

  “‘We were hungry, and I have no money for food.’

  “‘What happened to the money I gave you?’

  “‘It has all been spent, and I cannot work with a child to my breast.’

  “The woodcutter left, and when he returned he carried a pail of water. Before she had time to stop him, he took the small boy by the scruff of the neck and held his face under the water.

  “The woman tried to push him away, but the woodcutter was too strong.

  “‘You come here to my house. You eat my food, you steal my warmth and you show your face to my wife. If you cannot keep yourself because of this child, then I shall relieve you of your burden.’

  “‘He is your son!’ she cried.

  “‘He is nothing to me, and neither are you. My son has not yet been born.’

  “The woman screamed and screamed. She clawed at his face and kicked until the pail tipped over and her child lay choking in the mud. When she tried to reach for him, the woodcutter trod on her hand and her fingers broke.

  “‘If you come to my door again, it will be the end of you both,’ he told her.

  “In fear, she ran deep into the woods and built a house out of mud and moss. Even with a fire blazing it could not ward off winter’s frost. In summer it was wet and warm, teaming with blood-sucking flies. The boy caught a fever and almost died. Two years later that same fever returned and took his mother. The boy woke one morning, but she did not. He did not know what to do, for they had lived alone life without friends or family. He could barely speak, for his mother had been so lost in sorrow that she often went for days without uttering a word.

  “Eventually, the boy grew so hungry that his need for food overcame his fear of the woods. He kissed his mother’s cold hand one last time and set out on his own.”

  “That night there was a thunderstorm,” I said. “The boy reached the edge of the woods and saw a house.”

  “He could smell food,” my friend continued. “He crept closer to the cottage, afraid of what lay within. Then he saw a little girl through the window, and he was not so afraid.”

  “And then the tree fell.”

  “Yes, and then the tree fell.”

  His face was a blur through my tears.

  I was about to tell him that I loved him. I was about to say again how sorry I was for all that had happened. I was about to ask his forgi
veness.

  “Get up, you wicked mutt,” a voice came through the dark. “It’s time for you to answer for your crime.”

  I called to him over and over as they dragged him away.

  *

  I lay in the stinking straw of my cell, listening to the crowd outside.

  The baker came to give me bread.

  “For strength,” he said.

  The farrier came to give me a horseshoe.

  “For luck,” he said.

  The chandler came to give me candles.

  “For light,” he said.

  The seamstress came to give me a kerchief.

  “For comfort,” she said.

  The skinner came to give me his knife.

  “For protection,” he said.

  And then the bent-backed flower seller came. The one who had spoken out from the crowd that night. She carried a fluting white lily. At first I was scared. I did not know the flower seller, and lilies are for the dead. Did this mean I was going to die?

  She passed the flower through the bars, but I did not move to take it.

  “Smell it,” she said. “It smells sweet.”

  I crawled across the floor to take it. As I pressed it to my nose, I understood what she meant.

  “It smells as sweet as freedom,” I replied.

  Deep inside the lily was a large iron key.

  “The Woman in the Woods is a friend of mine,” she said, lifting the hood of her cloak just enough that I could see her yellow eyes. “She never asks nothing of no one, but she asked this of me.”

  I reached in to take the key and when I looked up, the woman was gone. Wasting no time, I slipped it into the lock and released myself. As I crept along the corridor, pressing my hands to the cold stone, I could hear the sound of the crowd outside. They sounded fearsome. Cries of ‘Hang him!’ and ‘Drown him!’ rose from the melee and sank back into sound. Even the guard had taken leave of his post to watch, for who needed to guard a girl?