I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.
This is Hansel and Gretel, and we’ve lost Hansel… just not in the woods. This is Part IV; Part V arrives next Monday. Part I. Part II. Part III.
If you had asked the knight what sort of knight he was, he would have said, “Ordinary.” He was young (there are not too many old knights), and comparable to his peers in stature and in deed. He’d been to war and to the court, and he thought that he had a pretty good handle on life. He’d seen, he supposed, the things that there were to see.
But on that day, in the forest by the cottage, he had seen something so entirely unlike anything he had ever seen before, that he felt he knew nothing. There was, he felt, a different world – a new world – that he had walked into, and he was at a loss for what he should do next.
But he knew what he could not do; and that was abandon this new thing. No, he was in – caught by the surreal, haunting beauty of unwary Gretel.
So he returned to the cottage. As much as he was drawn, a part of him was not yet willing to plunge himself completely in to this fantasy place, and so the knight returned, but only watched the cottage from the fringes of the forest. He tethered his horse some distance away and approached the clearing on foot.
The knight was wary of the witch. He could feel threat in the air, palpable and real. He had smelled fear before, in battle, and the air around the cottage was the same. He could not describe it, but he did not need to. He knew it was there. It was a dangerous world, this.
But then Gretel appeared and all thoughts of danger vanished… for here was beauty.
It was as if he had been shackled and now released. As he saw her emerge from the cottage, everything else faded. There was now no cottage; no witch. There was nothing but the girl, and in such a world the knight’s reaction was unconscious, automatic.
Gretel heard a rustle and looked up from the garden to see what was coming out of the forest. In the first instant she did not know what she was seeing. The shape and figure was there, the motion and the light…
But the last man she had seen was her father, and of him she had only fleeting memories. She was looking for a deer, or perhaps a badger, and when a man came… her eyes could not tell her what she was seeing.
Gretel shrieked. The sound did not wait for Gretel to command it, and Gretel heard it ring in her own ears before she knew that she had cried it.
The man darted back into the woods, vanishing as quickly as he had appeared.
There was a clattering, and then a banging behind Gretel. She turned and saw the witch emerging quickly from cottage, with her wand in hand. “What is it?” she cried in a shrill voice. “Who is here?”.
Gretel fumbled for words. None were coming; she could see the witch, and the grass, and the cottage, and the forest beyond, but she felt very far from any of them. It was as if she was trapped in a dream, unable to move or speak.
She was sure her lips were moving, but no sound came. What had she seen? Was the man real? She looked at the grandmother and the wand, and she instantly knew that that the man was about to die. It was a terrible knowledge, beyond conscious thought – she could not speak or think, but she knew that the man, real or not, was about to be killed. She knew with equal force that she did not want the man to die, she wanted him to live, she wanted him to show himself again.
She had to keep the witch’s gaze; Gretel screamed again, and then began to wail. Anything to keep the witch from looking to the forest. As she kept crying out, words finally arrived.
“Oh grandmother, so horrible! Such an awful, ugly boar! I thought for sure that he would charge upon me! He had such dark and beady eyes, such terrible gnashing tusks and jaws. He was terrible, grandmother!”
The witch looked at the trembling young woman with disgust. “Have I taught you nothing, girl?” she demanded. “Frightened by a boar! Had you kept your wits about you we’d both be eating him tonight. Not that he’d have come near you, in any case. The racket you’re making would frighten the devil himself.”
The old woman stormed back into the house, leaving Gretel to pull herself together in the garden.
She was a total wreck. She brought up her hand to cover her mouth in amazement and realized that she was crying – really crying. Every part of her was shaking, and all the thoughts that had previously refused to come were now flooding in at once.
A man? Here! What was he doing? Why had he come? Would he come again? Seeing him had brought back thoughts of long, long ago. She could see her father again – so tall and broad; as knotted and gnarled as the trees he chopped, with a scratchy beard and matted hair. She could almost smell again the smell of sap and earth he always carried with him.
But… this man was not her father. She closed her eyes and she could see the knight’s face, lean and well defined. In her mind. she watched him come from the forest again. There was the rustle; she turned again to see the shaking and the parting of the leaves, and then he came out.
She saw every detail perfectly, savouring each one. Yellow hair that bristled messily like thatch, his nose and cheekbones burned dark, standing out from a fair complexion. He wore a dark green shirt with a dark brown leather jerkin. She could see the sword at his side; he was holding it against him so it wouldn’t catch or clatter.
She could see the buckles and the straps of his gear, his pouches and his dagger.
He was moving slowly, deliberately. She saw his head turn, look suddenly away. His manner changed. It was as if he had been asleep and in an instant came alive. Every part of him was tense, alert, poised and balanced. She saw power in his shoulders and arms. No longer loose or hanging, they sprang up, ready before him.
He was quick, and so agile! Gretel saw him turn. The motion was fluid, but fast, as he sprang back into the woods, gone once again.
Gretel opened her eyes again. There was the place where he had come out. Quiet, peaceful. She turned back to the garden. Her hands worked automatically, and her thoughts turned to the grandmother. She felt again the awful knowledge that the woman wanted to kill the knight.
“She hates him.” said the thought. “She wants to kill him.”
“No,” she cried. “She cannot kill my knight!”
“She will.” said the thought again. “You know she will. He’s from outside. She wants to destroy him.”
Gretel knew the thought was right. If, in all her years in the witch’s house, she had ever grasped the true nature of the witch, then she had told herself something else. If she was to live with a witch, the witch could not be a witch. No one can live with a witch, and so she had lived with an old woman, a grandmother with strange ways. She had been a child, she had to live with someone, and so she had told herself the woman was not a witch, was not as evil as she knew she was.
But now she knew. She knew. The knight had shown her the truth. She could feel, even now, the hatred that dwelt within the cottage. She had tasted something from another world and it had changed hers.
Gretel remembered the sight of the witch, rushing from the cottage with wand in hand. She felt ashamed; ashamed of having lived in that place, with that witch.
Gretel was distracted by a rustle. This one was soft; barely audible. She looked back to the forest, but could see nothing.
But she heard it again. She could see no leaves stirring, but she heard the sound. Gretel glanced back to the cottage. “The witch is mixing potions today” thought Gretel to herself. Making potions was a tricky, painstaking task, and whenever the witch took it upon herself to prepare batches she was always fully engaged.
So Gretel got up from the garden, very quietly, and went towards the rustling sound.
She had not gone very far into the trees when she stopped. The rustling had ceased. Gretel trembled with excitement; she did not know what was going to happen, but she anticipated a great deal.
“If I come out, will you scream?” a voice said softly, nervously.
“No.” said Gretel. She blushed. “I’m sorry I screamed before. I didn’t mean to, but… I’d like to see you, if… if you’ll let me.”
“If I’ll let you?” the voice laughed. A very relieved knight stepped out from behind a tree.
It was the oddest meeting of two worlds, a bashful girl and a nervous knight. It was as if each had appeared by magic, walking from a fairy tale, drawn from a realm of pure fantasy. The forest carpet crinkled beneath their feet of the knight and the beauty, as each dared to walk into a new, unwritten, story.
