The Grimm Conclusion (7 page)

He walked through deserted corridors and peeked into rooms where ancient lords and ladies lay in heaps on the rich rugs. All the windows were shrouded with brambles.

Finally, Joringel found a narrow stair where the windows were bright and airy. The thicket had not yet grown tall enough to cover these, for they led to the great tower that brooded over the valley. Joringel climbed up and up and up until he found himself in a small room. In the center of the room stood a bed, richly hung with bright fabrics. In the bed lay a girl. A beautiful girl. Unlike the others, she did not appear to be sleeping. She appeared to be dead.

Joringel approached her. He bent over her. Her delicate eyelids were closed. Her red lips were barely parted. Her locks, silky and dark, surrounded her face like a halo. Joringel drew his face closer to the girl's. Closer still. He thought he could feel breath, breaking ever so faintly, over her lips.

Joringel leaned over and . . .

Kissed her.

Right?

He kisses her, and she wakes up, and they get married. Everyone knows that. Even the Brothers Grimm tell us that.

Which is why everyone, including the Brothers Grimm, are wrong.

(Sure,
you're thinking.
The Brothers Grimm are wrong, and you are right? Why should we believe
you
?
Well, maybe I'll explain it to you later. If you're nice.)

Anyway, what really happened was this:

Joringel leaned over and grabbed the girl by the shoulders and hauled her into a sitting position. Her head listed off to one side lifelessly. Joringel then tried to lift her to her feet, in the hope that no one could remain sleeping standing up. He had gotten her halfway to her feet when her legs gave out under her, he lost his grip, and she went crashing to the floor. Her hip hit the bare floorboards, and her head followed. Joringel did not move.

“
Oops
,” he whispered.

Just then, the girl's body shook. It shook again. Then it heaved, and a horrible scratching sound came from her throat and then she coughed and coughed and then she threw up.

There, on the floor, lay a chunk of apple.

The girl sat back against the bed, breathing hard.

“Hi,” said Joringel, staring at her. “Are you okay?”

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. She nodded.

“Oh,” Joringel said. “Good.” Then he said, “I'm Joringel.”

The girl's heaving slowed. “I'm Briar Rose,” she said. And then she said, “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to come to the castle where no one felt any pain.” Joringel paused.

The girl watched him.

“But now I'm not sure I want to stay.” He looked confused, and a little bit afraid.

“Why?” Briar Rose asked. “What's wrong?”

Joringel helped her to her feet and led her down the winding stairs from the tower. They passed through the eerily silent corridors and down to the grand hall. There, the dozen people had their faces buried in their bowls. Briar Rose's eyes went wide. “What's wrong with them?” she demanded. She approached her mother and father, their faces submerged in a black mud that was once puree of carrot. She took her mother's head and lifted it. Briar Rose screamed. She let her mother's face fall back onto the table with a thud.

“She's a crone!” Briar Rose screamed. “What's wrong with her? Is she dead?” She moved cautiously to her father and lifted his face from the soup. She dropped him too, and his face shattered the soup bowl. “What's wrong with them all? They look so old!”

Joringel shrugged. “You tell me.”

So Briar Rose told Joringel of the Wise Woman's curse, and her promise to make the pain go away.

“You've been asleep?”

“I guess so.”

“For how long?”

Briar Rose examined her mother again. “It looks like forty years have passed.” Her voice was distant and sad. “I think I've missed everything.” A sob broke from her throat, and Briar Rose fell to the floor. Joringel knelt down beside her and let her rest her head on his shoulder as she cried.

As the sound of her sobs echoed through the halls of the dormant castle, the sleepers began to stir. Off in the stables, a horse shook its head and whinnied. The hounds stretched and whined and began to wag their tails. The pigeons on the roof took their heads out from under their wings. The fly on the wall began to crawl again. The fire in the kitchen flamed up and cooked the meal, the roast began to crackle, and then even the ancient cook, now too thin for her apron, got to her feet and yanked the now middle-aged kitchen boy's hair.

The people in the castle all stood and marveled at one another's wrinkles and tried to figure out what had happened.

And still Briar Rose wept on Joringel's shoulder. The little boy wondered at the magic that a few tears had wrought, as the girl muttered, “I missed it all . . .”

Within a few hours, the brambles around the castle had withered back into the ground, and the castle was surrounded with a field of purple flowers. And Joringel took his leave of Briar Rose and her ancient, astounded parents.

As he walked through the violet field, picking his way past the corpses of princes in various stages of decomposition, the wind blowing the pollen sweet and thick into his hair, Joringel imagined that every flower was a weed. He stomped on them furiously. But the pain, and fear, and anger would not go away.

Where is Jorinda?
he wondered. He missed her. He didn't want to. He was furious at her for leaving him. Thinking about her, or his mother, or anything from home, caused sharp shooting pains in his head. He tried to stamp down the feelings like so many flowers in a field.

But it didn't help. Not at all. There were millions and millions of flowers.

O
nce upon a time, a girl walked, aimless and lonely, through the rich, green wood behind the Castle Grimm. The leaves glowed golden in the warm sun, and birds seemed to be playing a game of tag out in front of the girl's path.

But the beautiful wood did not cheer Jorinda.

She came to a clearing where there stood a great oak tree. Bunches of acorns hung from its gnarled boughs. A squirrel shimmying up its trunk stopped and watched Jorinda suspiciously, and then disappeared around the far side of the tree.

Jorinda put her back against the oak's rough bark and slid down until her rear rested on the warm, damp ground. She sighed.

Joringel was gone. She had sent people to look for him. There was no trace. He had been at home one day, and the next, he wasn't. It was her fault. Jorinda closed her eyes. Tears poked at the backs of her lids. She tried to choke them off.
Push it down
, she told herself.
Don't cry.

But tears are sneaky. One crawled between her tightly shut lashes and began wending its way toward Jorinda's chin.

Back in the castle, the king sat gloomily on his throne. Plush cloth hung from the ceilings. Wide windows gave out onto the thick, green Kingswood.

The prince sat on a velvet step at the king's feet. “I don't know what I saw in her,” he sighed.

“Well,” the king responded, pulling at his beard, “she's clever. And she's brave. But you're not terribly interested in those qualities. Are you?”

“Not really. She did look nice in that red dress.”

“Yes! Always a good criterion for choosing a bride. How she looks in a red dress.”

The prince, who did not do well with sarcasm, perked up, “Yeah! That's what I thought!”

The king tugged at his beard. “What is to be done? You cannot marry a child. Nor a servant. Not even a servant as brave and clever as Jorinda.” He cursed. “She survived Malchizedek! How? She must be able to do anything!”

“Anything?” The prince looked up at his father.

“Well, practically.”

“Can she say the alphabet backward?”

The king squinted at his son. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“Wow,” murmured the prince. Then he said, “Can she do this?” And he curled up his tongue into a little tube.

“I'm not sure, son,” the king sighed.

“I bet she can't,” the prince said, satisfied with himself. And then he stopped. “Can she ride a unicorn? I would love to ride a unicorn. . . .”

“Boy, unicorns aren't real. You know that. I've told you that. A number of times.”

“Oh. Right.” The prince looked crestfallen. “I would like to ride a unicorn.”

Just then, the door opened a crack, and in slipped a short, stocky man with a grizzled beard. He wore leather breeches and a leather jerkin and a leather patch over one eye.

“Ah! Fänger!” the king exclaimed, brightening at the sight of his capable master of the hunt. “Come in!” The huntsman approached, his footfall soundless even on the stone floor. The king lowered his voice. “I need your help. It seems that my son here was a little
rash
in his choice of a bride.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Something needs to happen to her.”

Fänger nodded.

“An accident,” the king said.

The prince looked up. “Like, in her pants?”

The king exhaled loudly.

Fänger said, “You can rely on me, your highness.” The huntsman bowed to the king and the prince and slipped silently from the room.

“What kind of accident?” the prince asked. “Number one or number two?”

The king closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

Jorinda had fallen asleep in the warm sun. In her dreams, she was riding away from Joringel on the prince's horse. She looked back to see him, but he wasn't there. He was in their mother's study. She knew that, somehow. She ached to be with them. But the horse wouldn't turn around. It galloped down the hot roads, and her cheek rubbed against the prince's rough shirt. She could really feel it—the coarse, warm fabric scratching her cheek.

Her eyes flew open. She nearly screamed.

There was a horse licking her face.

It was barely a horse. It was small and delicate, with spindly legs and a small, round trunk. It was a foal, as black as midnight.

She had startled the little foal. He had pulled back and was staring with wide eyes.

Which made Jorinda laugh.

The foal watched her for a moment, uncertain. Then, slowly, he came toward her again and resumed licking her face.

She laughed again.

He pulled back, watching her. Then he hopped to the left and pawed the ground.

“What do you want?” Jorinda smiled.

He hopped to the right and pawed the ground again.

“What are you doing?”

Then he sneezed. Jorinda laughed loudly. The little horse shook his black head and approached the girl a third time. Very slowly, he folded his too-thin legs underneath himself, lay down, and put his head in her lap.

Jorinda began to stroke the foal's jet black mane. It was like silk. She ran her thin fingers up to his forehead, brushing the short, thick hair of his hide with her fingernails. And there, on his forehead, she felt a bump. More than a bump, really. A small stump, made of smooth horn that twisted like a braid. It was very small. No more than an inch long.

The little girl looked at the foal with his head in her lap. Her eyes narrowed. The corners of her mouth turned up as she whispered, “What, exactly, are you?”

Day after day, Jorinda came to the clearing in the Kingswood and sat beneath the great oak tree. She brought the little foal carrots and apples and other treats, and he sniffed at them with his unbelievably soft nose and ate them right from her hand. Once he had eaten, he'd bound around the clearing, trying to get her to play with him. Sometimes she did, jumping up and chasing him here and there. She could never catch him—his little hooves could change direction in an instant—but he would taunt her, pawing the ground and hopping from side to side. And then Jorinda would get tired, and collapse under the oak tree. And he would hop from side to side again, hoping to provoke her into chasing him some more. But she would only laugh. So he would sneeze and shake his head, and she would laugh harder. And then he would fold up his spindly little legs and lower his head into her lap. Often they slept through the hot, sunny afternoons under the great oak tree just like that.

One evening, as dusk fell, Jorinda opened her eyes. The little foal was still asleep in her lap. She sighed. “If you never leave me, little horse, I will never leave you.”

The foal opened his eyes and sneezed.

“Okay.” Jorinda giggled. “So we agree.”

The walls of the royal hunting lodge were lined with the skulls of deer. Seven hundred and three skulls, to be exact. Fänger didn't have to count them. He knew. A pity he wouldn't be able to put the skull of his latest victim on the wall. Wouldn't be proper.

The deers' antlers spread like dead, blanched trees from white bone. In the flickering candlelight of the early, early morning, their shadows looked like great spiderwebs clinging to the walls.

Fänger fletched the final arrow for his quiver and picked up his longbow. There were not ten men in the whole kingdom who could pull his bow. An arrow loosed from it would go straight through a man. Fänger knew. He had tried it.

He dropped his hatchet through a loop on his belt. The hatchet was for cleanup work. If he was out hunting with the king and the king missed his shot (as he often did), Fänger would go follow the dogs, springing over hedges and under hemlocks, and fall upon the poor, flailing beast. And with one swift blow, the hatchet would fall and the spine would be severed and the beast would lie still.

Fänger slipped out the door in the cool, early morning.

It was before dawn. The moon hung low in the sky, and the stars up above glittered dimly. The dew speckled the huntsman's boots as he made his way to a low hedge, just a stone's throw from the door to the royal chambers. He crouched behind it and waited.

He could have done it in Jorinda's bed, as the little girl slept. Even if she slept lightly, he could have buried the hatchet in her skull before the scream left her lips. But Fänger was a hunter. And he preferred to hunt.

Okay. Maybe you feel a little worried right now. Maybe you're not sure you want to read a story about a little girl being
hunted
.

I find that hard to believe, frankly. You seemed to have no trouble reading a story about a little boy being decapitated, or two young women dismembering themselves, or a little girl being strangled by a corpse . . .

But perhaps you've just about reached your breaking point, and you can't take any more.

Or perhaps it is not the little girl you're worried about. Perhaps it's the little black horse. Perhaps you are worried about what will happen to him.

Yeah, I can't blame you.

Jorinda rolled over lazily as the sun broke through her window. Someone was chopping wood down in the courtyard. She put a pillow over her head. Her blankets tumbled off her and fell to the floor.

She dressed quickly, walked through the kitchens—grabbing two apples from a wooden bowl as she went—and hurried out the door to the Kingswood. She ran past a low hedge, past the kennels where hunting dogs yowled and snarled at one another, past the hunting lodge with its hundreds of skulls, and into the forest. She did not notice that a figure was following her at a distance.

She arrived at the clearing and sat with her back to the oak. She did not notice the figure peering at her from behind a nearby hemlock.

She began to eat one of the apples, while the other sat in her lap. She did not notice the figure silently draw an arrow from his quiver and place it, ever so quietly, on his bowstring.

She did not notice him pull the string back, bending the heavy bow as few men could, and raise the arrow to his good eye.

She did not notice him breathe out nice and slow.

Nor did she notice his one eye grow wider, and his bowstring go slack, and his bow drop silently, limply, to his side.

For her little friend had appeared beside her, and he was nuzzling her neck with a nose so soft it defied belief. She giggled as he tried to chew on her hair. She gave him his apple. He ate it in three bites, core and all. Then he began to leap friskily from side to side and paw the ground, asking Jorinda to play their favorite game.

As the western sky turned red and gold, and the east became a royal blue dappled with gray spools of wool, the little girl stood up from her afternoon nap, stretched her arms high, and sighed. The little foal sneezed softly, and Jorinda kissed him on the nose. She walked to the edge of the little clearing and turned back. He was watching her every move. She smiled at him, waved, and began to make her way back to the castle.

The figure crouching behind the hemlock stayed where he was. He watched the little black beast sneeze once more, shake his midnight head, paw the ground, and then turn and disappear into the wood.

Fänger fingered the razor edge of his hatchet, shook his head, and smiled.

“She is not dead.”

“No, sire.”

The king put his chin on his folded hands and looked out from under heavy brows. “I was pretty sure she wasn't dead when she came into the hall for dinner this evening.”

“Yes, sire.”

“And when she finished her cauliflower soup, and her bratwurst, and all her sauerkraut, I was even further convinced.”

“Yes, sire.”

“And when she ate every bit of her black chocolate cake, I came to the unimpeachable conclusion that she is, indeed, NOT DEAD.”

The huntsman bowed his head.

“So, Fänger, before I throw you in the stocks for mutiny and deception, I will give you one sentence to answer this question.” And then the king shouted, “WHY NOT?”

Fänger took a deep breath. “There was a unicorn, sir.”

The king opened his lips to respond, and then he closed them again. Over in a corner, the prince looked up from his stack of colored blocks. (He had had them since he was a child; he still found stacking them a pleasant challenge.)

“Okay,” said the king. “One more sentence.”

“I followed her into the forest and was about to pierce her little heart with an arrow, when a unicorn approached and put his head in her lap.”

The king was staring now, and his mouth was not entirely closed.

“May I have another sentence, your highness?”

The king nodded dumbly.

“It is a juvenile. A foal. It has a very small horn. But it is, without any doubt, a unicorn.”

The prince shouted, “I want to ride it!”

His father cringed. “Fänger, that horn . . .”

“Priceless, sire. Utterly without measure.”

“I can kill the beast myself?”

Fänger inclined his head.