Family Picnic

 

Family Picnic. 

Boy. Boy,! Quick now!

His stout little legs tripped over themselves as he scuttled down the wooden ladder apace. He stands to attention beside Sister. Her eyes are red-rimmed. A convict afore the black-capped judge. His little hand shoots into his pocket. There; the smooth, ivory pebbles. He strokes them with the tips of his pink fingers. 

‘Tis cold abroad. Wrap thouself in this. 

About his neck, with perfunctory care, Step-Ma looped the skin of a stoat. Rescued from long hibernation in the bottom of the family chest, where, despite the long seasons of breath-snatching cold, this battered skin remained buried.  The smell of dust-mites and futile tears.

A family stroll it is to be today. Stick close, lest the ogre eats thee for his dinner. 

Sister’s face; impassive. Yet, behind a tightly curling lip do we espy just a flash of tooth?

Out little Sis goes, the flash of fox fur a momentary challenge to winter’s tyranny. With a shunt, and a squeak of displaced snow, the boy joins her, his rag-wrapped feet already snow-swallowed. Step-Ma’s next, and the door slams behind, as if to say good riddance to you all.

In a corner of the hovel’s empty room, a spider’s husk swings then grows still on its empty web. Under floor-board the infant mouse nudges its pale snout into its dead mother’s flank. The chain-gang of famished ants shoulder away their fallen soldiers. The bare cupboards ache. Another layer of dust settles over pots and pans. The stools vainly attend the cold ashes of the hearth. 

Get on with thee now! Mush.

Step-Ma’s tongue lashes them on, and no mistaking. Pa’s out front. An iron silhouette, aloof. Stalking through the granite trees he ploughs this way then t’other. A labyrinth of skeletal giants, above, the fierce wind makes their claws dance. Denser, the forest grows. The boy believes the darkling air is accursed. So say the old tales of these woods. The girl’s feet are blue and benumbed. The cold they say, can freeze the very marrow of your bones. The cold can stop your heart and make your tears fall as diamonds. 

Flanked by Step-ma and Pa the kinder are harried deep down, far down through the forestland. 

Step-ma’s voice croaks out a story. Once upon a time, there was a wicked little boy, and he had a little sister, just as wicked. 

Pa’s hand tightens on the handle of the axe aswing at his belt. 

For hours the woody maze flashes by. Then, a clearing. A family picnic? Meagre hunks of bread pushed into frozen little palms. No, there’s no milk to sop it, your majesty! Sit here, little madam and you there. Ma and Pa’s got to piss. Wait. Heed us or else. Stay.

Frozen with both cold and fear, the little pair huddle together, each the other’s raft in arctic currents.  

Of course Ma and Pa are gone. Their footsteps covered by fresh snow. 

But hark! The boy’s pocketful of stones! Yes, he followed the plan they had concocted. Yesternight; their hot, wet cheeks pressed together under the rough blanket as they eavesdropped on their parents’ scheming. 

Plop, plop plop. Every few strides. He’s scattered the stones. They’ll shine us back like guardian angels. You’ll see!

When they dared, they searched. Not even the headstone could be unburied from the snow. Abject, near frozen in the cold and the dark, they crawl into the hollow of a tree, to nestle

‘gainst the strengthening wind. 

Then morning. Sweet miracle! 

Snows melted. Bone dry! Sun high in cloudless sky.

Swift work then, to trace the gleaming white beads back ‘cross the rugged land to the hallowed ground of home. Oh how clever we will look! Quick, pick those frozen berries. There, there! A squirrel, dropped quite dead from his branch. Bag it. Bring it. Wild garlic, stiff but still plenty green. Oh ho! My belly smiles! 

Their hearts aflutter, their heads full of bliss-sweet dreams of welcoming arms and penitent tears, the babes march homeward.

Dare they knock the door? No one attends the shy little rap. The doorknob too high for their outstretched little hands, even when the boy clambers atop his sister’s back.

Should they cry out?  At  that very moment - the door swings back and there stands…

Step-ma. Clenched teeth, yellow against her pallid face.  Bulwark at the gates. Filling the doorway, she’s all sharp-cheeks and hungry-eyed. Her mouth hangs open like a dying dog and ‘tis about to transform into a ravenous snarl, but then - 

Little arms stretch forth, loaded with the riches of the forest.  Enough for a hearty soup, you’ll see!

The frozen lips on the Step-ma melt a little. She steps back into the bare dark, where father, slope-shouldered, stares into the chimney’s ashes. 

Days pass. Snow falls. 

Barren. Frozen. Bare. 

Midnight. Shaken awake, shook into their furs, shoved over the threshold, with shrieking at their backs. Again, the forced march into the impossible dark. Unsuspecting, the boy has no cache of stones. He pats his empty pockets in ghostly hope. There! A tiny hunk of dry bread, stashed away through blessed foresight. A torn crumb here; tramp and tramp, and tramp. And here. With a faux trip, another piece is planted. And right under Step-Ma’s beady eye! 

The girl’s heart fails when, aware of her brother’s plan (little vixen that she is) she spies a crow land on a marked spot. It cocks its head towards them - is that incredulity in its black eyes? With a click-click, a dart, then a snap, the breadcrumb is gone.

The map is torn. The compass altogether crushed!

Unbeknownst to the boy, old man crow hops along behind them. He bolts back the bread, eating their pathfinders right up!  Soon its brethren are onto the game. They swarm down, a plague of beating wings turning the sky a deeper ink.  A crow pecks the breadholder’s eye out. Beaks clamp bloodied beaks. A cascade of black feathers fall. Step-ma’s stick swings right to left, but only when supper’s done, are the crows done. With an eruption of caws, the onyx-eyed, adamatine-hearted fiends disappear in a puff of ebony smoke. 

The slow-brained boy shovels the last of the bread into his frozen mouth, and chokes on tears.

They wake alone, from nightmares into incarnated nightmare. The morning sun refuses to face them - poor orphaned waifs - but lingers ashamed behind the gloomy cloud. 

The little ones know they are as irrevocably lost as the shade of memory. As unreachable as a feverish old pirate’s dreams of sunken treasure.

The little ones know that this was their elder’s design.

Heavy of heart and weary of limb, the hungry little ghosts wander through thickets and swamps, through cold days and terrible nights, through dark valleys and darker agonies of the heart. Their bones protrude the skin. Their eyes protrude the skull. Teeth loosen in gums. Vultures settle in their wake to silently observe their limping progress.

Then - for the first time in weeks - can it truely be - a house?

Through blinking hunger-weakened eyes, swims the vision - Christus! Salvator meus - a house! And what a fine house! A feast for the eyes!

They quicken their pace. They trot fast as their starving limbs will trot. The homestead appears so pleasant. A rich house of wide orange brick, with, oh by our Lady, a second story! A cherry red door. Sun softly tumbles upon the roof, illuminating the eaves of yellow wheat. The window shutters an apple green. White smoke blows from the chimney. Could that be the sweet smell of baking? Yet their jolting steps, and their feverish hunger knocks their vision askance. The dwelling strangely distorts before them, and the rainbowed sky flickers as if wakefulness was pulling at the threads of a dream. No matter. Forward they lurch, stumble and scramble. Insane-sweet dreams of welcome propel them.  Fancies of outstretched arms, of warm chairs and bowls of steaming broth.

A few paces from the door the girl stops dead. She sinks to her knees. Her hand brushes the pretty pebbled pathway. She snatches at a white stone. Quick as lightning, she deposits it in her mouth! Her face snaps toward her brother. Sweet bread! The path is very bread! 

On hands and knees she shovels the soft white morsels into her mouth and swallows with hardly a chomp of her poor, sore teeth. She snatches more. With her cheeks full as pillows of duck feather, she turns to her brother, rigid with wonderment;

Eat! Bread! So tender-soft. The best bread you’ve ever…

and round and round she chewed and mashed and swallowed. Her eyes close in bliss. Her face that of a tortured martyr who glimpses heaven’s gates. 

The boy stumbles, falls, steadies himself on the gate. A slat of wood comes off in his hands. His brain cannot comprehend - yet his stomach asks no questions - how what he is holding can be a plaited loaf. In it plops and down it goes. Staggering to the house, he snatches a flower basket. Ravenously feeding on the petals, his senses explode with the taste of variously flavoured marzipan, each bud more delicious than the last. Only when he licks the remnants of the consumed basket from his fingers, does he seek Little Sis. Her legs are in the air and her head’s down the well, lapping and sucking and guzzling it dry. She glances up, and with a giddy squeal of delight burps forth- CUSTARD! Her dripping yellow chin providing firm proof of the pudding. Her fingers dig into the brickwork! Bread Pudding! Scrumptious! 

Peals of laughter erupt from Little Brother’s mouth. The sugar sends his soul shooting skyward! He spins joyfully and tumbles to the ground. He thrusts his tongue between the bright stonework, his tastebuds exhilarated with jam, jam, jam. He bites and groans and moans as he consumes the paving-loafs and the pancake stairs. He crawls towards the masonry of the house and claws at it, stuffing ginger-bread pieces into his famished maw. Please, never let me wake from this heavenly dream! Forever let me dwell in this heavenly place! 

Meanwhile the girl is plucking toffee apples from a nearby tree. One bite, then over her shoulder it goes. Too busy is she, to see what crawls from the felled apple as it withers and decays behind her. Possessed with pleasure, she snatches the next and licks with a soft moan. Her little frame shudders. She can’t fill her mouth quickly enough. Never have her senses been so illumed! She wishes she could stick the sweet fruit into her ears, her eyeballs, Oh for a hundred mouths and still not enough. A thousand years here and I would never sicken!

Yet, that very moment, her distended stomach begins to churn. Then it seethes and sickens. Torrents of vomit plume through her lips, a deluge of sticky liquid from her nostrils. Thrilled at her humiliation, yet nauseated by the sight, her brother’s belly-laugh is interrupted by his own river of puke. The girl’s sickness abates and after the requisite fraternal mocking, she reaches again for the food, elysian food, food to feed her soul! She gnaws at the chocolate bark of the toffee apple tree, as her brother gnashes down on the thick meringue of the window pane. And so they would have stayed, for ever and ever and ever -

-If the soft voice did not sing out. The voice as soft as nursemaid’s hands. As gentle as mother’s love.

Children? Oh my poor children! You haven’t tasted anything yet. Come, come, come inside. Why not? My poor angels. 

Whose was the sweet voice? The cherry red door stands ajar.

Filthy and ashamed, the pair tiptoe into the house.

The crackling fire is framed by cushioned chairs of deep velvet. Their eyes dance over sideboards bursting and shelves a plenty, all filled with fine things. Foodstuffs, provisions, vermillion-bound books and jars - jars of all sizes. Some full of preserves, hanging red shapes imprisoned within. Some with funny labels, of a language unknown. Bushels of drying herbs, cooking sauces, preservative oils. Statuettes of various animals, toad, hare, with marble eyes aglint. Shining cooking implements, knives and long forks hung from the walls, and a magnificent collection of saucepans, enough for a grand feast, by my right eye, and then some!

The door creaks closed. There stands the most beautiful woman the girl had ever seen. The boy’s cheeks blushed bloody.

Oh kinder, sit. By the fire, so. You look frozen solid. Let’s get you good and piping hot.

The boy flops into the seat with a joyful sigh. The girl hesitates, one hand on the armrest, the other pinching her muddy dress between her fingers. But the woman’s radiant smile encourages her to surrender. Verily, who could resist? 

She floats around them, conjuring soft lamb’s wool blankets from here or there, which she lays upon their bony legs. She tuts faintly, and shakes her head, her beautiful locks tumbling this way and that.  Like a pebble thrown into the centre of a crystal lake, shock and concern ripples over her sweet face. Oh my boy. How you have suffered. We’ll put flesh back on those bones. We’ll fill out those juicy cheeks and charm colour back into those scrumptious lips. She turned away, exotic perfume in her wake. She did not see the crimson colour that flushed across the boy’s face and neck. But the girl did. She sniggered, and gave him a sharp kick. 

The woman flitted this way and that, chattering gently and humming sweetly, ladling meat from a stout barrel into her pot, which she set on the fire, adding all manner of fair-seeming things into it. The boy’s eyes grew heavy under the homely spell of warmth and peace. The girl’s eyes lighted on a box. It was full of tiny pairs of lederhosen and patched pinafores alike her own. A trunk beside yawned open, piled high with children’s bonnets and caps. Another crate contained small winter boots, and clogs such as children their age wore once upon a time. 

The girl’s mouth opened, but the woman of enchanting beauty spoke first, as if she had read her thoughts.  

Ah! You are not the first lost children to find your way to my gate. So I keep clothes fit for every child, be they frail or hearty, tall or ungrown. The winters are too harsh to send little ones upon their way with the wind whistling through their rags. I feed them up. I truss them up, that is, in shirts and silks. Then I send them on their journeys.  It fills me up. My emptiness inside. You see, I was lost in the forest once too. But I was saved. By the help of a wise woman who helped me  just like I have been tasked to help you. And here we lived together for a long, long time. 

The girl’s eyes widened. She should like to stay here forever! 

The woman gave a sad smile and her eyes sparkled strangely. Then she rose. It was time for bed. No stories - whose soul needs to fly any place, when the hereabouts is such a dream? Tell your brother there to crawl into that wooden crate. Just so. There be a mattress of fresh straw.  And my sweet little one, you shall rest here, warm and snug. The stove’s still giving off a goodly heat. 

I’ve work afoot aways from here.  My sweet ones, sleep soundly. No strangers ever bother us, no, no, never. We will meet again in the morn, and get acquainted, truely. With that, she was gone, a gust of wind in her wake. A black feather, no doubt blown in from the cold forest, circled in the warm  air and came to rest. 

In dreaming realms the girl chased foxes through tunnels barricaded by bone-gates; guarded by slavering fangs. In eerie dens she wrestled wolves. She raised her father’s axe to fell the beast, but after the dread thump of iron through bone her brother’s skull rolled, cleaved, about her naked feet. Her roar was answered by the boy’s fright-filled squeal.  The scene shifted; fresh night-bane. She was back in the house; brother’s little hands shook iron bars; his sleeping box transformed to a sturdy prison. His naked body a quake and doubled upon itself, a rat in a boot. His face, three holes of abject terror; two stricken eyes and juddering mouth; dire black.  She lurches forward, her little arms, her drowning arms, reaching forth. 

At one and the same time: a sharp leg pain, and the deeper, cruller pain in that space atwixt her small ears. 

This ‘tis no dream.

Heavy manacles, rust-toothed, bite into the girl’s white ankle.  

A voice murmurs from some unhallowed corner; I have feasted you, my pretties. Now one here must pay in turn.

The babes turn to see the woman, rocking in the corner. Her mouth a-growl and hair a streaming, eyes hollow and hungry as the horseman of famine. She points a white finger to the cage. That wicked little knave shall be my supper, days from now. Girl, if you stuff him full, like a sack o’fat gold pieces, I’ll spare your skinny hide. 

The frozen little statue wants to shake her head.

Fuck that little runt. He’s dead meat. Help me cook him, and you're off the meat-hook missy. Maybe you can be my little apprentice. Pocket wages are paid in sweetbreads. 

Labour she did, dragging chains round the house, clinking when she swept and clanging as she scrubbed. Up and down she rattled as the boy sobbed. Five times a day she lifted the heavy ladle and filled the wooden bowl with the thick, foul soup, mud-red.  If his quivering hands would drop the bowl, she fisted his hair and bit his cheek and had him lick the floorboards clean.

Once, whilst peering into his horrid dish, it peered straight back. An eyeball of brightest blue, bobbed up, like a pig’s bladder from a stream. It gazed fixedly. As his mouth opened to scream, the girl popped the eye right in and clamped his jaws tight. Then the boy too, stared in unblinking shock. 

One day, the woman decided the boy had outgrown his cage. Time’s up. Wench. Fetch the wood. Heat the oven. 

A braised hand, the flesh of one finger yet unpicked to the bone, dropped floorwards from brother’s astonished mouth. Sure, he had fattened in his habitual cell, but he was still such a small one, puny and boney, surely a fine lady of the woods should banquet on riper fare? 

The roar of the oven silenced his pleading. Little sis stacked the wood and stoked the flame. 

From the corner of her eye, the girl saw the woman, her arms knotted tight, The cries of a wraith of a forsaken säugling could not ring more mournful. Up one leg and down its twin, across her arms, her heaving breasts, shone bloody bite marks. Twas as if a pack of unceasing hell-hounds had supped on her, perpetual. 

The girl clenched her tiny fists and spoke. Grant me one boon afore we do the deed. Answer me; you live surrounded by plenty. This very house could sate an army through winters untold. Yet why then must you feast on flesh?

From her entrails the women answered, through a groan of coffin air; 

I can’t eat the sweet stuff no more - look at my teeth!

Behind those rosy lips now wobbled jagged rows of rotten, rancid grinders. Yellow and sticky. Dripping as though she had guzzled a bowlful of cherries. Blood red!

Now open the oven. Time to post the piglet.

The little fox thought fast - which way to dart? Which fork in the trees is the surest route to the safety of my lair? 

She threw both rag-wrapped hands around the heavy oven handle. She tugged and she heaved and she grit her teeth in vain. With sweating brow she turned back to the women.

Frau, bitte! The door is fastened tight. My meagre strength can’t shift it. Ope the door for me, do!

With a grunt and a short and a shake of her head the woman flew to the handle and gave it a tug. Open, the door swung, light as a feather! Ya! My weakling girl, she began to snarl…

…but before the words could gallop out of her mouth, the girl gave her a terrific boot up the arse, sending her a tumble into the flames.  

Quick as a flash, she slammed the oven door to. Snap! Went the neck of the woman. Her golden bangles rang against the floor, as her arms groped this way and t’other.  Her head sizzled, and fizzled and finally popped! The boy shook his bars and whooped. 

Then on a sudden, the woman’s form shuddered and shrank. Her arms became frail twigs. Her strapping legs, those of a little bird. Her silken clothes melted away in front of their very eyes! All at once, there lay the body of a ragged child. A little, forlorn ghost of the forest. Her soiled bare feet ceased their twitching and grew still.

Outside, the eaves dripped sugar and the sweet walls melted. The delicious pathway dissolved and the lickable delights ran down the apple tree. The honeyed fruit plopped from the boughs. The house remained. But plain wood and hard stone it now was. 

A skeletal finger, of the hand rescued the broth, turned the lock on the boy’s cage. With a swing, the  barred door opened. Little brother did not move.  

They lived well enough, that sister and her kin. A search of the house had revealed crates full of small jewels wrested from rings. Minute earrings of pearl. A matchbox of small gold teeth. A Drawer of paper-thin bracelets, tarnished with age and dull necklaces of gold plate. 

 

T’was enough for provisions. And firewood was aplenty, though they never strayed far into the forest. They had little stomach for rich food. 

They would rise early and work. In the evenings they would together, sit. They disagreed often. But seldom did the pinching turn to scratching, the slapping to thumping. They mostly kept their teeth to themselves.

And when the lost children would come to their door, they would give them a place by the fire. They would clothe them and give them blankets and shelter for the night.  When they put food afore them, brother and sister would watch the children eat, and lick their lips.

But in the morn the kin would give the farmer a groat to ferry the children to town on his donkey. God knows how the castaway babes would fare ever after. Between the cruel schoolmaster and the flagellating nuns, the path is tough for little ones. 

But then again, life, tis no fairytale. 

And perhaps one early spring, when snowdrops might be sprouting from hard ground, not falling from the iron sky, the kin may pack cloth bags with bread and wrap cloaks about themselves.

They might return to the door of the hovel and boldly knock upon the door. No matter if they receive no answer. They can reach the doorknob. It turns. Though the door is stiff, it may open. The skeletal figures may be glanced sitting on dusty stools by the grey fire.

Though Pa’s eyes may flicker, and fail to hold their gaze. Though Step-ma’s eyes may not soften. The grown girl will light the hearth. The grown  boy will spoon warm food into cold mouths. They will break bread together, and sprinkle a coin or three into the empty chest.

Then by the fireside, they will sit, for a while.