The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart (12 page)

As she lightly prodded the swollen pinkness bordering the four gashes a branch snapped behind her. She knew without turning
that it was the creature she had taken for dead, that animal with an old man’s face. When she had seen the gnarled but distinctly
human head staring at her from the corner after chopping it free of its beastly body only fainting had kept her sane. She
knew if she ever saw it again the sight would kill her with fear, and now she knew it could not be killed.

She tried to pray but only a soft groan came out. So instead she began screaming wordlessly to her father and the Virgin and
the witch and the trees and the stream. Too weak to run or even move, her courage and spirit spent, she wailed until again
the effort knocked her into slumber, her mind shutting in from the strain.

Rolling closer to the fire in her sleep, she wrapped the blanket tight around her. She slowly crept back toward consciousness,
fighting nobly to remain asleep. The popping logs brought a smile to her dozing face, and through half-lidded eyes she resolved
to rouse herself and tell her father of the ordeal she had dreamed. Surely in the next few weeks they would make the trek
into town so she could pray at the church.

Even before she fully awoke the stinging in her leg alerted her that all was for naught. Tears slipped down her cheeks as
she opened her eyes, the dark trees towering at the edge of the firelight. The charcoal burner who had stumbled across her
by the stream sat watching, his curiosity mounting. He had of course heard tales of wild people in the woods who ran on all
fours and behaved as beasts, but a woodsman hears countless such stories, stories that are thankfully never proven true.

Unquestionably, her oddest feature was her lack of hair, save for the small bit that made him blush when he glimpsed it between
her legs. Somewhere between a girl and a woman, he thought her beautiful regardless of her baldness yet feared her to be possessed,
or worse still, a witch or spirit. He watched her as she slept with a mixture of awe and fear, wondering if he should have
left her where he found her.

Magnus, for that was the charcoal burner’s name, rarely saw other people in the wood, and women never. Those he only saw when
he dragged his load into town every few weeks, and he had not met the lass who would give a charcoal burner so much as a kind
word. Having inherited the trade from his father, at only twenty years of age he had the same blackened nostrils and fingers
as those who had been in his business their whole lives.

As he watched the girl cry before she even awoke, his stomach knotted. To properly manufacture charcoal he had to mind the
fire constantly for two days and nights, so the few hours of sleep he had snatched the night before meant little. He had the
coal-fog on his eyes and limbs, and even with the necessity of warming the strange, naked foundling he had been loath to kindle
another blaze. She had slept through the day and most of the night, only now opening her eyes to weep.

She cowered when he approached, but when he offered her a bit of hard bread she threw herself against him, moaning. He awkwardly
lay down beside the fire, her now-warm body vibrating against his. He stroked her bald scalp and prayed for her, noticing
the fresh scabs blemishing her pale skin. Soon he nodded off, holding her tightly with his dusty black hands.

Nobody in the village knew her, and while many were kind and offered her niceties, still Nicolette would not speak. Whenever
it was asked where she came from her eyes filled with tears and she would point vaguely toward the wood. Despite her silence
during the day and the night-horrors that roused Magnus as she whined, kicked, and sweated in her sleep, she seemed fond of
him, growing distraught if he left her side even for a moment. None protested when after a week he returned to his business
in the wood accompanied by the mute.

She hated the forest but bore it to remain with Magnus, and helped gather and burn and carry and cook and everything else.
After a time her hair grew back and her leg healed so one hardly noticed her limp and she could no longer be mistaken for
a girl instead of a pretty young woman. Still her voice refused to answer her bidding, but Magnus took to calling her Yew
as a woodsman’s jest, and the local priest was happy to wed them since she bent her head appropriately during Mass. Although
she was generally melancholy, Magnus often succeeded in coaxing a smile or even a small laugh from her. She would kiss him
sweetly all over but if he touched her naked body with more than a fatherly hand she would recoil and burst into tears.

Yet Magnus loved her fiercely, and so when he exited the smith’s shed after making the last payment on their horse and saw
the old man shaking his wife he rushed to her aid. Nicolette’s father, at seeing the daughter he had given up for dead so
long ago, embraced her passionately, shocked to find her in this town so far from home. He had made the arduous journey to
find cheaper hogs rumored to be sold, and at seeing her he wept and shouted with joy.

Grief had aged him far too quickly and at first Nicolette did not recognize her own father and tried to pull away. Then he
said her name and she crumpled in his arms. He begged her to explain where she had gone and why, but the words still refused
to come, Nicolette shaking her head and pointing to her mouth. Suddenly Magnus snatched her away, dropping his ax and berating
the poor old widower. Nicolette’s father stared dumbly at the charcoal burner, at his stained face and hands, hands that gripped
his child, and realized his worst fears had come true. This soot-fingered brigand had abducted his little girl and cut out
her tongue, taking her far enough away that she could not find her way home.

Miraculously, Nicolette’s long-useless tongue finally began to obey her again, and she tearfully explained to the angry Magnus
that the old man accosting her was actually her father. Her husband understood in an instant, and overwhelmed with happiness
at both hearing her lovely voice and her reunion, turned to embrace the old man. Her father had retrieved Magnus’s ax from
the road and, oblivious to his daughter’s words, drove it into the charcoal burner’s beaming face.

Everyone in the street screamed but none louder than Nicolette, her husband dropping dead, blood splashing her tear-ruddied
cheeks. Men seized her father and beat him mercilessly until a gibbet was raised in that very spot, and before Magnus’s corpse
grew cold the old man swung for the crows. While Nicolette could finally speak again, it was a very long time before she did
anything but weep.

While it might appear this is a grim ending for poor Nicolette, rest assured the truth is even worse. If only such a tragedy
had occurred! Rather than splitting his skull and painlessly putting an end to Magnus, Nicolette’s befuddled father instead
buried the ax in his stomach and hefted it for another swing. Magnus collapsed gasping, only his fingers keeping his insides
where they belonged instead of on the street. Her father stared, not comprehending the hardness in his daughter’s eyes as
she shielded her husband from further harm. The ax flew from his hands as men descended upon him, driving him into the dust
under heels and fists.

The gibbet went up and the crowd grew but Nicolette did not watch. The charcoal burner slowly bled to death, his guts trying
to twist out around his fingers as Nicolette helped him onto their horse. Despite the forceful bids to help the witnesses
offered, all stood back as she got behind her husband, her severe demeanor deterring even the most stubborn. The sensible
blacksmith hurried to fetch the priest while Nicolette steered the horse slowly out of town, a crowd slightly smaller than
that watching the noose-tree builders following after.

Clearly the man would not live out the day but Nicolette refused to take him to the church for his last rites. The priest
caught up to her on the edge of town, the kind old man’s face twisted from sorrow and exertion. When she ignored his call,
his patience fled and he snatched at the reins.

“Please, dear,” he panted, “the only succor you can give him is deliverance into Heaven. Come with me to the church at once,
before the life is rattled out of him.”

Nicolette did not answer, instead spitting in his face. The priest slipped and fell, shaken to his core. He silently watched
them go as a dozen hands lifted him to his feet. Wiping the phlegm from his cheek, he scowled, and called after them:

“Only the Devil is pleased with the road you take! You’re damning yourself as well as him! He needs his rites or he will suffer
for all time, and you along with him!”

Nicolette did not answer the priest, instead whispering sweetly to her dying love. She urged the horse into the forest, and
despite her fresh resolve and purpose her heart quickened as her husband’s slowed. She led them deep into the part of the
wood where they never ventured, that ancient sylvan realm where Magnus had found her so long ago. The trees no longer struck
her as so huge and forbidding, although when they reached the stream the branches entwined too thickly for them to ride and
they dismounted.

The front of Magnus’s shirt glistened in the departing sunlight and he could no longer open his eyes. He mumbled to her, asking
her true name, and, tears again clouding her vision, she whispered it in his ear. He smiled and opened one eye to look at
her, then drifted into the slumber proceeding death.

She left him by the bank and rushed into the gloom, becoming more and more desperate as the night thickened. She thought she
spied a light, but when she broke through the underbrush the dilapidated shack was as dark as the wood around it. The door
had fallen off and the roof partially caved in, but her eyes had long ago become adjusted, and she saw her prize lying where
she had left it.

The room stank even after all the intervening years, and she dashed to the heap of rot near the hearth. The headless corpses
had grown together, putrescence blurring the boundaries between husband and wife, but resting atop them as if just set down
to warm their bones lay his pelt. Even in the dark it shone brown and black and red, and she peeled it off with the ease of
removing a sweaty blanket from a tired horse.

As she hurried back, those same roots and trunks that had befuddled her as a child now opened up a path, leading her at once
to the stream where horse and husband waited. He did not stir when she knelt beside him and raised his head, but he still
managed the occasional ragged breath, his whole body wracked with shivers. Trembling, she took knife from belt and raised
him up to slice open his shirt. Armed only with intuition and her nightmares, she removed the cloth, pressed the stinking
pelt against his back, and held her breath.

The result could be seen immediately. Magnus’s scream sent night-birds into flight and a nearby hare’s heart burst in terror.
He heaved away from her, thrashing and convulsing, his guts bursting out onto the leaves without his hand to hold them in.
Nicolette watched aghast, raising the knife numbly to her own throat lest she had killed her husband. Then, as the horse stomped
and pulled at the rope leashing it to a nearby yew, the bloody coils of his insides reversed, sucking back into the wound.
Nicolette smiled, then began to laugh and cry simultaneously.

She could not bear to see him suffer anymore, so while he threw himself against the dirt and barked and gibbered, she returned
to the hovel to make it ready. The moon rose as she dragged the decomposing remains outside, then took their heads and cast
them into the bushes. Being a charcoal burner’s wife, she soon caught the dry leaves ablaze and a fire roared in the hearth.
She righted the fallen chair and removed the piles of rags, then stripped her clothes and added them to the pile of leaves
she had gathered to fashion a nest beside the fire.

Waiting for her husband, she noticed fresh blood dripping down her thighs but knew at once it was only her monthly voiding.
Fearing in the dark his eyes might not be as good as his nose, she smeared it over herself, using her fingers to daub her
breasts and lips and cheeks. She remembered how she had waited long before, dressed in similar attire, and giggled like a
little girl. She did not wait long.

After they made love for the first time in their lives, he dozed beside the fire while she stroked his coat. Although his
eyes had glistened with pain and confusion his face held a new luster, only a scar on his belly hinting at what had befallen
him that morning. It was her turn to speak all night while he silently listened, telling him how they would leave the wood
and journey high into the mountains together. The forest would not remain unexplored forever, and she had many hopes for the
two of them. In time he would learn to use his tongue again, but until then she did enough talking for the both of them.

The snow had stopped and the sun had risen. Time passed in silence, Hegel gawking at Nicolette. During her tale she had eaten
bowl after bowl of a muddy substance from a bucket beside her chair, but things other than her apparent taste for clay bothered
the Grossbart. He shakily stood and cast his bottle into the fire, where it exploded. Drawing his sword, he yelled for his
brother.