The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “Not a live one,” I replied. “But we got eggs and half a ham.”

  “Yummy, yummy. Fill my tummy.”

  His smile was a mantrap, all teeth and iron strength. I steadied my heart and headed for the pantry, aware of his padding paws and grateful he had forgotten my mother and my sister.

  I riffled through the baskets on the shelf, placing two brown eggs on the table.

  “More,” he said.

  I placed two extra.

  “More,” he repeated.

  Four became eight, eight became twelve. A full dozen eggs and only three left. I glanced towards the window. All was white, as though the snow piled higher than our house.

  “If you eat all our food,” I said, “we will starve before spring.”

  That grin again. Was that his plan? Eat our food whilst it was fresh, then eat each of us in turn?

  I pulled the ham down and placed it beside the eggs. He sniffed and then began to chew. Each egg crunched between his jaws, a little of the glair beading between his teeth as they opened and closed. I looked away as he started the ham, my own stomach begging for scraps.

  Once he was finished, he sat back on his haunches and picked his teeth with the bone.

  “Milk,” he demanded, so milk I fetched.

  First one pitcher, then two.

  “Please,” I said. “We ain’t got no more to give you.”

  He let out a loud belch and waved a paw.

  “My hunger is sated.” He rose and returned to the main room. I followed behind, his buttocks like boulders, each bigger than a human head. “I thank you for your hospitality,” he said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m a creature of the woods. I do not belong indoors.”

  “It’s a wild and wicked winter out yon.”

  “I’m a wild and wicked beast,” he replied.

  After he left, I set to building the fire before the chill woke my mother and sister. Once it was ablaze and I’d checked the shadows to make sure no other guests had let themselves in, I climbed up onto my mother’s bed and pulled my sister’s arm about me for comfort.

  WHITE

  My sister was not the same after Bern arrived. I don’t know why she took against him so. Our mother had barely opened her eyes in almost a week when the knock came at the door. It was very late. The fire had almost died in the grate, and my sister was sleeping across our mother’s breast.

  I rose, and stretched, and walked to the window to peer outside, but all the world was white and I had to open the door to discover our guest.

  The man was tall and barrel-chested. His arms were thick as logs and his face was so covered by beard that only his eyes shone through. He wore a knitted cap low across his brow, and the thick leather boots of a lumberman.

  “Good evening,” he said, removing the cap and using it to dust snow from his shoulders. “I’m sorry to call so late, but a goatherd passed my cabin almost a week gone, and told me of your troubles. I knew your father and I came to help.”

  A lump rose in my throat, that a stranger would hear of our plight and walk a week to comfort us. In truth, we needed more than his sympathy. The bucket had frozen to the bottom of the well, we hardly had another night’s wood for the fire, and neither myself nor my sister could swing the heavy axe our mother used.

  “We are so grateful,” I told him. “Please, won’t you come in?”

  Bern’s lips were hardly visible, but his whole beard rose and I took that to be a smile.

  I seated him before the fire, putting the last of our wood on to burn, then set about frying a pan of eggs and ham. He ate heartily and washed down his meal with a pitcher of milk.

  “Please, tell me,” I said, my voice hushed so as not to wake my sister. “How did you know our father?”

  The man turned his eyes to the fire and I saw the flames dance.

  “It was many, many years ago,” Bern said. “You must have been babes back then. Your father came walking in the woods. He found me injured and stopped to help.”

  “Injured, how?”

  Bern reached down and pulled at his boot, sliding his foot from its leather sheath. He rolled down his sock to reveal an ugly scar. It ran all the way around his ankle, the folds of flesh healed like a chain.

  “My days!” I exclaimed.

  “Don’t fret yourself,” he said. “It no longer hurts, and I still have my leg. Which I might not have done had your father not found me.”

  “He saved your life?”

  “Yes, he did. If there is anything I can do for you and your sister, it is only part payment for what he has done for me.”

  The sincerity in his voice touched my heart and I found myself kneeling to help him replace his boot. After he had eaten, he went out to the shed and returned with enough wood to keep the fire burning for a week. Then, just before dawn, he took his leave, saying that he would return with food for the pot.

  When my sister woke to make my mother’s breakfast, neither of us mentioned the missing eggs or the half a ham. She heated what was left of the milk for our mother, then stirred oatmeal with ice until it melted into porridge. We ate together, huddled by the fire.

  All that day we took it in turns to tend our mother and then the house. I swept whilst Rose pressed a cloth to Mother’s brow. She cleaned the pots whilst I stroked Mother’s hand and whispered soothing words.

  When the knock came late at night, my sister cried out to leave the door closed, but too late. Bern stood in the snow with a brace of pheasants in one hand, and a fat buck in the other.

  “Where did you find such a feast in this weather?” I asked

  “A little bit of luck and a little bit of faith,” he replied.

  I welcomed him into our home and turned to tell Rose who he was, but she hardly looked up, sat steadfast by the grate, poking the peat with a stick. I did not understand how she could treat him this way after all that he had done. His gifts may well have saved us from starvation. Yet I knew my sister well. We both had our moods. Sometimes I would giggle until I gasped for breath, whilst she would frown and decline to talk.

  Bern lowered himself onto our couch and kicked off his boots with his toes.

  “And how are you, Rose Red?” he asked. She answered him with a nod. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, reaching deep into his pocket and producing a fistful of leaves. “Frost Pepper. I found it beneath the snow where the stream meets the meadows.”

  I gratefully took the gift and busied myself in the kitchen, plucking a pheasant and stuffing it with herbs. I set a pot to boil on the stove so that we might warm ourselves with tea whilst we waited for dinner to roast.

  When I returned to the room, Rose had left her place by the fire to tend to our mother, who had taken to coughing.

  “Is she not cold through there?” Bern asked.

  “She is running a fever and prefers it cool. But we fill the bedwarmer with embers to place at her feet.”

  “What good daughters you are.”

  I felt myself flush with pleasure that he should see how much we loved our mother, and how we worked so hard for her comfort.

  And this was how it went. Every evening, just after dark, Bern would arrive at our door bearing food for the pot. My sister and I would prepare the meal whilst he cut wood for the fire. When the juices of the meat ran clear, Bern would sit on our couch and kick off his boots. We would eat our supper in companionable silence, then afterwards I took to rubbing his feet as part payment for his kindness, for I was certain that we would not see out the winter without him.

  Whilst I rubbed, and my sister tended to our mother, he would doze, waking himself with the occasional snort and mumbling through his beard. Then, as the cuckoo popped out of the clock to cry midnight, he wrestled himself up and made for the door.

  “Please, stay,” I implored. “My sister and I can share a bed, and you can take the other. Or we could pile up a place beside the fire. If you go out in the snow, you’ll freeze.”

  “I am touch
ed that you worry so,” he said, pinching my cheek with his thumb, “but if I am to bring you a meal again tomorrow, I must set on my way before sun-up.”

  I would lie in my bed after he left, the covers tucked up beneath my chin, worrying he might lose his way in the dark. What would we do if he did not return? The snow was so heavy outside, not even the goatherds came past until spring. We would have no way to feed ourselves or heat the house. We would be lost to winter.

  Yet, it was not purely the practical that concerned me. Over the weeks since Bern’s arrival, I found myself growing fond. He was built like a mountain, solid and dependable. His hands were as wide as the horizon, able to lift my mother’s axe as though it were a toothpick. He smelt of the earth, and the stream, and something I couldn’t quite place. When he spoke, his voice rolled out of him like sap from a tree. I longed to rest my head against his lap and listen to him talk.

  I pretended the warmth of my blanket was the warmth of the fire, and that my pillow was his knee. Within moments I was sound asleep.

  RED

  Night after night that bear came back and my sister let him in. He’d lope to the centre of the room and drop a duck or a pheasant from his drooling jaws. Snow would have to wash it before she could pluck it, otherwise her fingers would slip over his saliva.

  So, I was grateful enough. I said thanks for what he brought us. I’m no dolt, I knew we’d have starved without it. But what bothered me most was why he come. A big ol’ bear like that should have been tucked up in them mountains, sleeping off winter. It weren’t natural for him to be sloping about, tending to two cubs who weren’t even his own. I don’t care what he said our father did for him. Beasts don’t have no sense of loyalty like human kin.

  The first night he came back, he tried to talk with me. My sister were in the kitchen harrying the oven, and I was just sitting there silent by the fire.

  “Bet you wonder how she knows my name?” he said, looking at me sly from the corner of his eye.

  “No.”

  “Course you do. You just don’t like me knowing something you don’t.”

  I got up from the fire and went to tend to our mother. No one had ever taught me, but some things you know – you don’t go conversing with those who lie. Nothing that comes out of their chops be worth hearing.

  It was some sort of sickness came over my sister. She’d be on her hands and knees, blacking the grate, long before sunset. She’d plump pillows and open the door to shovel snow, letting the heat leave the house.

  I pulled a shawl about myself and watched, but would not help.

  I’d never seen my sister work so hard in all her life and hoped that maybe, if I left her to it, she’d work the bear clean out of her thoughts.

  More fool me.

  The harder she sweated, the happier she seemed, humming to herself. Then, just as the light began to fade, she’d heat a pot over the stove and wash herself down. She took a little of mother’s perfume, pungent Lily of the Vale, and straightened the ribbon about her waist.

  “She likes me, your sister does,” said the bear whilst Snow was cooking. “Why can’t you smile as much?”

  “If you try anything,” I hissed, “I have a knife under my skirt and I’ll skin you alive.”

  He chuckled at that and stretched out on the couch, one paw touching the floor.

  I was bluffing that night, but then after I really did keep a knife tucked in my stocking. A long breadknife with a serrated edge.

  At night, my sister would stir and sigh as she drifted off to sleep. I knew she thought of him. She had always loved dogs, and they loved her. The goatherders’ hounds would lollop up to our gate and she’d race out and throw her arms about them, letting them wet her cheek with their tongues. I supposed, to her, the bear were just a big dog. A really big dog. A shaggy mass of hair and claw, tooth and drool.

  One night, I slipped verbena in her tea and she were asleep before he knocked. I rested her up by our mother and placed a screen before the hearth. Blowing out all the candles, I huddled up with them on the bed and pretended there was nobody home. Every night for a month he had come to our door, and I wanted one night without him.

  As the clock marked each hour, I began to wonder what kept him. I crept to the window to peer out, but snow still blocked the view. Back in bed, my stomach growled a racket. Each night before now it had been full, stuffed with meat and gravy. Why had I let it go hungry, it asked?

  When the knock finally came, I dragged myself to the door. Starved for a few hours was one thing, but starved until spring? As much as I loathed the beast, we needed him.

  “Take me with you,” I told him once. “Show me where you get the game and I’ll go a hunting for us. That way you can stay home in your cave and we’ll be all right until the thaw.”

  “Give away my secrets?” he chided. “To a little girl with a bread knife up her gusset?”

  I flushed red hot and wondered how he knew.

  “I’ll pay you for your knowledge,” I said, pulling the biscuit tin from its place on the shelf. “How much to tell us where you hunt?”

  He looked at the coins in my hand and laughed.

  “Keep your money. It isn’t a currency I deal in.”

  “Then what do you want? More milk, eggs, the axe in our yard?”

  “Merely the pleasure of your company.”

  His black gums parted in a smile, his sulphurous breath making my eyes water.

  Every night, after he left, my sister would ready herself for bed as though the day were truly done. I, on the other hand, waited until she washed herself, then pulled on my snow boots and cloak, sliding past the door. In the lamplight I squinted to make out his tracks, following them up to the top of the drift where I could look out across the valley.

  Two things bothered me about the bear. First, that when I reached the vantage point where all the world lay moon-kissed below, he was already gone. No beastly shadow stalked the valley.

  Second, and most disturbing, his prints changed shape.

  At the top of the drift and towards the valley, his fat, matted paws sunk deep in the snow. One, two, three, four. Goldilocks would have called porridge just looking upon them. Yet, between that snowy edge and our front door, there was no sign of the animal’s tracks. All I could see were boot prints, and it was impossible to tell which were mine, which my sister’s, and which someone else’s.

  Something didn’t smell right at all, but when I tried to broach it with Snow, she took my face in her hands and kissed both my cheeks.

  “What a wonderful imagination you have,” she laughed. “That’s what I love about you, sister dearest. You do enough daydreaming for the both of us.”

  “I’m not dreaming,” I insisted. “Besides, why do you love that beast so much?”

  “He saved our lives. How do you love him so little?”

  “But why does he save our lives?”

  “For our father’s sake.”

  “Our father’s been gone a good many years.”

  “And so would Bern if our father hadn’t helped him. He’s simply repaying a debt.”

  “Fine, but that’s no reason for you to go throwing your arms about his neck and swooning like a swallow. If you’re not careful, he’ll come to expect more of us than we care to give.”

  My sister shrugged and went to count provisions in the pantry. The look on her face told me she was willing to pay whatever he might ask, and that scared me. There hadn’t been a day of our lives we hadn’t been together. Me and my sister were inseparable. She held my hand and I held hers. What would I do if this bear bore her away to the forest and left me behind with naught but a sickly mother? What if she needed me and I was here and she was there? What then?

  My head spun as I swept the grate.

  WHITE

  When the first flower of spring raised its head, our mother took her last breath.

  We had been expecting it, my sister and me, yet still it came as a shock. That night she’d been restless, groaning
and moaning in her sleep. We mopped her brow and kissed her cheek until both of us fell to snoring across her chest.

  When I opened my eyes, my sister’s stared back, pulled from our rest by silence. We lifted our heads and looked upon our mother’s still form. Her bones no longer shivered and her chest no longer ached for air.

  “Is she gone?” Rose asked.

  “I fear so,” I replied.

  The cuckoo left its house to cry morning, causing us to jump.

  I do not recall much of that day. It passed as in a slow slumber. By the time Bern arrived, we had washed her body and dressed it in her favourite summer gown. It was the one she said she was wearing when our father left. Creamy white with buttercups all about the hem. It smelled strongly of our mother and we pushed our noses against it to comfort ourselves.

  We cleared the table in the kitchen and laid her out. I wanted to place a bouquet between her fingers but there were no flowers to pick. Instead, I tied a fascinator from feathers and black cord, and pinned it in her hair.

  My sister and I hardly spoke as we worked, only pausing to give instruction.

  When the sun went down and the knock came, we were huddled by the hearth beneath one blanket. Bern let himself in and stopped at the sight. His eyes travelled to the kitchen and back.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  I raised my face to his and allowed my tears to fall.

  “What are we to do without our mother?” I cried. “We have no parents to guard us, and with spring on her way, you will soon be gone.”

  “I will never abandon you,” Bern said, his voice so strong and steady. “Let me fetch wood and build up this fire, then allow me to make supper. We can speak of what to do once you regain your strength.”

  And that is what he did. Soon the fire raged and we were warmed through. The smell of stew simmering on the stove coaxed me from my grief. So long as I did not glance over, I could believe that our beloved mother still slept in her bed and that all would be right come tomorrow.

  “You know he’s dicing carrots at our mother’s feet,” my sister said.