The Tangled Forest

by Marion Grace Woolley

  When I reached him, I held out my hand.

  He took it without looking at me, and I pulled him to his feet.

  I started walking back to shore, but he didn’t follow.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “My foot is stuck.”

  I reached down and felt about until I found a fist-sized stone resting across the top of his shoe. The current caused it to press down solidly and his toes were wedged in the dip beneath. Try as I might, the stone wouldn’t budge.

  “This is unnatural,” I said, straightening and looking around.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Wait here.”

  I strode to the opposite bank and pulled a lengthy stick from a bush. Returning, I jammed one end under the back of the stone and heaved down. With a splosh, the stone flipped out of the stream and disappeared a few feet away. Little ripples circled as the stream bounced it along the bottom.

  “Thanks,” Franz said, more of a mumble.

  “You’re welcome.”

  It wasn’t until we were safely on shore and I’d broken half my bread for him, that I asked how he’d come to be stuck in such a ridiculous fashion.

  “That’s just me,” he said. “Ridiculous and clumsy.”

  “You may be ridiculous, but I’m no fool. This is to do with the Lady of the Forest, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “By no, do you mean yes?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed again, looking down at his sodden shoes in misery.

  “Is she bullying you?”

  “I rather deserve it.”

  “Well, I think it’s rotten, and if I ever see her, I’ll tell her.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Watch me.”

  He took a bite out of the bread and looked over. “Why do you spend time with me?”

  “Because you won’t leave me alone.”

  “That’s true. But why do you help me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It’s just, your sister’s reaction. That’s normal.”

  “To scream and shout, and hit you with a fire iron?”

  “Mostly, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, don’t you find me, you know?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I mean, ‘don’t you find me, you know’ – no, I don’t know.”

  “Oh. Ugly.”

  I looked him dead in the face and told him, in no uncertain terms, that I would not be used as a crutch for his crippled sense of self.

  “I’m not fishing for compliments.”

  “You’re trying to catch a whale,” I replied.

  “Fine,” he said. “Then just tell me what isn’t completely hideous about me.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “Fine. Well.” I took a moment to study him. “I suppose your beard’s all right, and your moustache. Sort of gallant, I suppose. You’re not fat, and you’re quite tall, that’s pleasing in a man. You have—”

  He held up one finger, licked his lower lip and repeated, “I’m quite tall?”

  “You couldn’t see the castle from up there, but you’re not watching the weasels.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m not saying another word.”

  “No, please. Just one more question. You said before that you were travelling with a bear?”

  “To the Royal City, yes.”

  “You mean it? A real, proper, hairy bear?”

  “We’ve been over this.”

  “I just want to be certain. He’s a bear and I’m tall?”

  “He’s a bear, you’re tall, and I’m going home,” I said, standing to brush down my skirt before walking off.

  WHITE

  The next few days passed in lazy silence. Mayflies and butterflies danced about us as we wound our way through the woods. There was nothing as exciting or tiring as the swamp, or as enchanting as the waterfall, or as strange as the antlers on the circle of silver birches. The forest was pleasant enough, in the way our meadows had been pleasant. Nothing to threaten or to fascinate.

  On we went, sunrise and sunset, until one evening we bedded down beside a large oak. Bern rested his back against it and announced we were only three days from the Royal City.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” my sister and I said as one.

  All I wanted to do was turn on the spot and see in every direction. The trunks of the trees were like the stripes on a cat’s tail, they started to flicker before your eyes until you were mesmerised. Until you couldn’t keep track of time. Until you lost count of your footsteps. Until you weren’t sure whether you were walking backwards or forwards. I longed for an ocean of sky, for a faraway horizon where the hills grew gold, then purple, then black.

  But I was afraid, also.

  Bern’s words had seared into my thoughts. In my dreams, I found myself in a beautiful ball gown of winter white, my hair trussed up with pearls. There was a ballroom as big as a vale. Ten score people going round and round, as hard to see through as the forest. All of them with flawless faces and ivory smiles. Every one of them painful to look upon. I fell in love with each of them. One glance was all it took to send my heart skittering across the marble tiles.

  I’d wake in a cold sweat, Bern’s arm lying heavy about my waist. I’d place my own hand over his and lock our fingers so tightly. Was this how afraid he felt of losing me? Each day he slowed his pace a little. No longer did he whistle as we walked.

  Never would I leave him.

  Never.

  This strange man who had appeared at our door covered in snow, bearing food and warmth to see us through the winter. It was because of him that we were alive. Though he would never ask me to pay with my love, he had earned it anyway. I could never be happy without him.

  My fears fled before the first light of dawn.

  That morning, we ate as heartily as we had the night before we left our valley home. We were as glad of the end of our adventure as we had been to begin it.

  The next day, my sister went skipping ahead on the path, eager to be the first to reach the wood’s end. I looked up and chanced to see a nest high in a tree.

  “I bet there’s eggs in that,” I said.

  “One way to be sure,” Bern replied, bending his knees before it and rubbing his hands as though he were about to lift the trunk clean out of the ground and give it a shake.

  Up, up he went.

  Bern was a beautiful climber. I supposed that must have come from being born in a forest. Whilst he went up, I looked down. He’d left his satchel lying on the ground. I stooped to collect it, to stop it from getting dirty.

  When I looked up again, Bern was almost at the nest.

  I don’t know what made me think of it. Maybe watching him go up as though he were weightless made me wonder why the bag wasn’t heavy.

  It wasn’t, though.

  It didn’t weigh a thing. As though I held air in my hands.

  I looked at it.

  How could it weigh nothing? We had finished our supplies from home long ago, in the very first week, yet there were other things in the bag. There was a tinder box, the rabbit meat we’d dried by the fire the night before, the shawl my sister had snatched from Bern’s cottage, the little bag of coins I’d taken from the biscuit tin and which we hadn’t found any reason to spend.

  I looked up again.

  Bern was distracted with the nest, poking about for things to eat.

  Sidling toward a nearby bush, I wrapped my cloak over the satchel and drew the strings. Reaching in, I felt about and pulled out the little bag of coins. Relieved, I dropped them back, about to laugh off my silliness when something caught my eye. It was someone else’s eye. A rabbit eye. I reached back in and pulled out a brace of fat bucks. Then a pheasant. Then a wheel of cheese as big as my face. Then a bottle of wine, and another. I stopped, staring down at the pile of food by my feet.

  “Six eggs. I put three back,” Bern said behind me.

>   I turned and watched his face fall.

  “Bern?” My voice trembled as I spoke his name.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “My sister and I are thin as twigs and all this time you’ve had a banquet in your bag?”

  “You’re thin from the walk. There hasn’t been a day gone by that we haven’t eaten well. Your stomach has never grumbled.”

  “But, I don’t understand,” I said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a frosted cupcake with delicately iced butterfly wings. “You’re foraging in birds’ nests whilst all the while you have this?”

  “It’s better to live on what we can find.”

  “Better than what, magic?” He looked down at the ground. “Wait.” My thoughts took a moment to catch up with me. “All that winter in the valley, when we thought you went hunting for us, to keep us alive, you simply reached into your bag and pulled out a meal? That’s how you brought all of that food you couldn’t possibly have found?”

  “And you ate it, and you lived.”

  “Why lie about it?”

  “I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know what sort of women you were. You might have stolen the bag for yourselves and locked me out in the cold.”

  “You soon knew us.”

  “Yes, and then,” he paused. “I just— I didn’t think you’d be very impressed by someone with an endless supply of food. You thought me so terribly manly to go hunting in the woods, and I wanted you to be impressed.”

  I stared at him for a long while. “Where did you go?”

  “Around the back of your house to the cow shed. I climbed up to the loft and slept all day beneath the hay. I sleep a lot in winter.”

  I drew back my arm and threw the bag as hard as I could at his chest. The cupcake followed, leaving a thick, creamy smudge on the end of his nose.

  “Snow!” he called, but I would not turn back.

  RED

  “You were right!” my sister said, marching up beside me.

  “About what?”

  “Bern. He’s a beast.”

  “I know.”

  “That bag of his, do you know what it is? It’s magic. You can reach in there and pull out any type of food you fancy, any time you like. He’s been feeding us whatever he thought he could find in the woods, when we might have supped cherry wine and truffles instead.”

  “Huh.”

  “He’s a liar and a brute.”

  “Why didn’t he say something?”

  “He didn’t trust us.”

  “Well, that’s rich. We trusted him enough to follow him into the Western Woods.”

  “Then he thought I wouldn’t be impressed. He thought it wasn’t manly to pull our supper from a satchel.”

  I laughed at this, earning my sister’s scorn.

  “That is sort of funny,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. The bear was plodding along, his giant head swinging from side-to-side as though shaking away bad thoughts. “You could accuse him of many things, but being unmanly isn’t one. I’m sure he could have caught our supper if he’d absolutely had to.”

  “Do you know where he went when he left our house? The cow shed. He slept beneath the hay.” I laughed again. “That isn’t funny! Just because you knew what he was all this time.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, I promise. It’s just, you were so eager to think the best of him. Taking off his boots, massaging his feet, cleaning the house until it shone.” My sister folded her arms and frowned. “But maybe I was too willing to see the bad in him. I knew something wasn’t right, and so I thought him a villain, when all along he was just as uncertain as the rest of us. Anyone who works that hard to gain your affection can’t be all bad.”

  “I’ll never forgive him.”

  At that moment, a terrible racket rose from the trees to our right. The gravelly call of birds and the beating of wings were interrupted by something a little more familiar. I hitched up my skirts and ran headlong into the trees, my sister close behind, calling me to stop.

  A few feet ahead, we tumbled into a clearing.

  Franz was there, spread-eagled on his back, flailing at a dozen crows who were trying to peck out his eyes. I broke a branch from the nearest tree and swung it like a club, battering the birds left and right, but still they kept coming. In desperation, I dropped my stick and placed myself above his body, my back a barrier to them.

  “Hello again,” I said, looking down into his saucer-shaped eyes.

  My sister picked up my stick and continued to wave it until the furious cloud eventually rose. The crows retreated to the trees, but they continued to watch us, hunched and beady-eyed.

  The moment I edged sideways, they came back. Their beaks snapping, their claws sharp. I covered Franz again, but my sister’s swings couldn’t drive them away.

  A ball of dark fur crashed through the trees with a roar. Bern launched himself above my back, catching three crows in his open jaw. When he landed, he shook his head so hard the birds’ necks broke and they lay silent. This was enough to scare the rest away.

  “Thank you,” I said, struggling to my feet and brushing the dust from my skirt.

  That was the first kind thing I’d ever said to Bern, and I’d expected at least a smile. Instead, he looked past me, drool dripping from his panting tongue.

  “You!” he said.

  “Oh-oh.”

  Franz leapt to his feet as fast as lightning and struck the nearest tree. He scrabbled to get his footing, but Bern was upon him. The bear’s massive paw wrapped about the man’s waist and threw him clean across the clearing. He landed with a terrible oomph.

  “You!” Bern cried again, loping towards him.

  I stood in his path.

  “Leave him alone!”

  Bern pulled up short, as though he’d forgotten I were there. His eyes travelled from mine, to Franz, and back again. Slowly, he lowered himself to his haunches.

  “This is my sister’s friend,” Snow said, coming to stand beside me.

  “I’m their friend,” Franz’s voice echoed behind.

  “You will not hurt him.”

  “You have no idea who he is,” Bern said.

  “I have no idea who you are,” Snow replied.

  At this, all anger left the bear. He appeared to melt like ice, his face drooping, his shoulders sagging.

  “Please. You can’t trust a word he says.”

  “I can’t trust a word you say.”

  At this, a little of the bear’s heart returned and he raised again on his hindlegs, causing us to draw back.

  “So, I didn’t tell you about the bag. But I’ve never once done you wrong. Never put you in harm’s way. I’m not greedy or selfish or self-serving. I’ve protected you, and I’ve helped you because I—”

  He was staring directly at my sister when he ran out of words, though it was clear what he meant. He loved her.

  “I think it would be best if you slept by yourself tonight.”

  I looked at my sister as she said this. The ice that had melted from Bern had hardened in her. I wanted to reconcile them, for I suddenly felt bad that their bond might be broken, but before I could think of the words, Bern had turned his back and disappeared between the trees.

  WHITE

  I distracted myself from my feelings by turning to Rose’s friend.

  I still found it hard to look upon him without the shock returning. Waking that morning, expecting to join my sister for breakfast, only to find a short little man helping himself to our store. Although, I realised now that he hadn’t been helping himself. My sister had offered him food.

  Rose had also risked herself to save him, throwing herself across his body to protect him from the crows. The back of her cloak was torn on his behalf.

  “Hello,” I said, stepping forward with my hand outstretched. He drew back as though I might peck at him, then took my hand in his. “I’m Snow.”

  “I’m Franz.”

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” />
  “Well, you’ve helped me out now,” he said.

  Such a funny little man. What was he, a goblin, a gnome, a kobold?

  That night he helped us to gather firewood, but we didn’t have anything to eat besides the three dead crows. They were tough to strip and slight of meat, and for the first time my stomach cried hunger.

  None of us spoke as we picked at the bones. I was aware of the dwarf’s eyes darting between my sister and me. I began to wonder whether they might speak more if I wasn’t there, and realised that must have been how Rose felt when Bern and I cuddled close beside the fire. Only, what could she possibly see in him? It wasn’t just his stature, his features seemed so sharp, so angular. Our mother always said, ‘Soft of face, soft of heart, sharp of face, dark of heart.’ As much as I was angry at Bern, his words stayed with me. It was true, he had always been looking out for us, even when he hid the truth. What did he mean about greed and selfishness? What was it about this hobbit that so riled him?

  Who to trust, my sister or my sweetheart?

  I did not sleep well without Bern’s warmth about me, but I refused to admit that my ash-stained eyes were because of him. I put it down to the hooting of the owls, the meagre meal we had eaten and the smoke from the fire entering my dreams.

  My bones cricked as I stretched.

  “I’m not sure I want to,” I said, “but I’ll have to find Bern if we’re ever going to make it the rest of the way to the Royal City.”

  “You don’t have to,” Rose replied. “Franz knows the way.”

  “What?” the imp looked up, blinking.

  “You talked of princesses, and about people only entering the woods to get to the castle. You’ve been there before, right?”

  “Uh, yes. I’ve been there before.”

  “So, you can show us the way?”

  “I, um.”

  “Good,” I said, relieved that I would not have to go to Bern and admit that we needed his help. “Lead on.”

  It was in the early afternoon that doubt began to plague me. Our journey had started well. The path continued straight and true, bathed in sunlight with the birds singing overhead. Then we reached a wooden footbridge, on the other side of which the road forked in two.