Black Forest Gaslight

CW: Contains references to psychological abuse, cannibalism and implied domestic violence.

Adalfuns had been taking the children into the forest with him of late. Never mind the lofty dangers of his occupation, or the aurochs and the wild boar. He told her the children would be safe with him. He knew exactly where they must stand when he felled a tree so they would not be crushed by the weight of them. He told her that animals were dumb and easily scared away by the thunder of a man’s lungs.

He told her that it was good for Gransel to learn his father’s trade, and for Hetel to be with her father and brother, to return home with rosy-blushed cheeks.

Gisela felt confused by it. It was a woman’s job to tend the children, and although she tried to follow the path of pure thought, she nonetheless felt jealousy and redundancy. They were just seven and five after all, and although she left them bread and cheese for their forest days, they always forgot to take it with them.

There was hunger in the towns and villages. The price of timber had been reduced accordingly, but they were not short on the requirements of life. The climate in the forest had changed less than the flat river plains where the produce was grown, and where the sun had scorched the crops. Here there were animals to trap. She sold the meat in the village and the candles she made from their tallow. The wicks were made from the pith of the reeds which grew beside the mountain tarn. It was a living of rattling groats, but they were better off than those in the valley bed.

For now, at least. For this season, at least, but there was no one alive who trusted fortune’s cycle.

Alarmingly, the children had stopped talking to her. It had started slowly, but now the silence was quite total. Several weeks before, she had asked Gransel why he was so cold with her, and he said, ‘because you are not our real mother.’ When she demanded to know why he thought that, he merely smirked at her, as though she was a piece of grit in his eye. Hetel was no better, and although there were times when she still wanted her mother’s arms about her, Grensel flicked her away. She tried to speak to her husband, but Adalfuns just laughed and laid out all his proverbs on the stupidity of women.

And so she stirred her stewpot and wondered what devilry was abroad.

*****

The forest was vast and unknowable to all but a few. There were creatures, and humans, who were born with an instinctive sense of the cardinal points. They would observe the moss on a tree’s trunk and know which way north, but Gisela was a townswoman, and this plot of earth, gloriously resplendent in the autumn season, was both enchanting and chilling to her. She dared not stray too far beyond the clearing, the grounds of the large timbered building she inhabited. The path to the village was clear, but all else was a mass of beech, birch and maple. As the land rose, these were replaced with tall pines and firs.

Almost every area within the triangular building was piled with logs, drying for later use. It provided warmth in the winter and sweat in the summer, and it attracted great scuttling spiders which her town ways had never grown accustomed to.

She wished she had never married the forester, but then there had been Gransel, and so she must.

She missed her children when they were with their father in the forest. She missed them even more when they returned, their sullen, angry faces turned against her, without rhyme nor reason. In time, she began to wonder whether her life was a dream, an ill-conceived distortion of the truth. Had she imagined birthing them? Were they abiding in sanity when they accused her of usurping the place of their real mother? Was she abiding in madness, even when the silvered marks on her own stomach bore witness to the truth?

One late afternoon, before the sun sank below the horizon, the children returned home ebullient until they saw their mother, like a harsh reality had stopped a passion play. Gransel appeared to have had his locks cut, and Hetel bore a new style of plait, something that was elaborately coiled around her blonde head.

‘Is there a barber in the forest?’ she asked Adalfuns. ‘Is there a woman’s maid to braid our daughter’s hair?’

Adalfuns looked at the children and rolled his eyes.

‘Woman, their hair is exactly as it was when they left this morning. You should walk yourself to church on Sunday and pray for the restoration of your wits.’

That night, in the bedroom in the loft, she unbraided her daughter’s hair. The child was violent with her, kicking and scratching. Gisela told her that her hair was too tightly coiled, and that it would hurt her head when she slept; that she would wake up with a headache. And then, leaning forward and speaking quietly, she asked who had braided her.

‘My mother,’ said the child.

‘But I am your mother.’

‘No, you are a witch,’ she said, turning her face away.

*****

She had made good trade in the village the next morning, although the experience was lessened by the absence of her children, who used to love the weekly adventure. Finding herself free, she packed up her things and went to the tavern for a small beer, and the innkeeper passed her the beer in exchange for a candle.

Somewhat typical of his profession, Herr Schenk was usually an amiable sort, but on this day he was out of kilter. When Gisela asked him if anything was wrong, he told her that on old friend of his, a merchant who liked to stay on the premises when he was visiting, had failed to arrive the day before.

‘He comes through the forest,’ he said. ‘He prefers it to the high road, where he fears being waylaid.’

‘Does he not also fear getting lost? asked Gisela.

‘Oh no!’ said the innkeeper. ‘His pony is that rare animal that instinctively knows the way.’

‘Then perhaps he has been delayed,’ she said. ‘There must be a hundred reasons why.’

‘I might agree,’ he said, ‘but his pony turned up yesterday without him. The animal wore no panniers, so it seems certain that he was not as safe in the forest as he thought.’

‘Have you told someone?’ she asked.

‘I have tried to muster a force, but no one appears to be interested.’ He shrugged his meaty shoulders. ‘No one much cares about the fate of rich men, Gisela.’

*****

The days wore on without resolution, but as autumn quickened, Gisela decided that the time must come to follow her family into the forest. She collected as many hard reed casings as she could and placed them in a large sacking bag. These would be her markers.

She relied on her ears as she followed, wearing her outdoor boots and with her skirts pegged up. The children’s voices chirruped like the birds in the trees. She had almost forgotten the sound. At intervals of twenty paces, she sunk another reed into the forest floor. Yellow and amber leaves made the ground slippy underfoot, but they muffled her steps. She was glad to see the grey, lifeless sky through the denuded branches. The forest felt less like an earthy tomb as she hauled her way up the increasingly arduous slope.

But there was a point in the ascent where the ground levelled off, before rising again. The unexpected glade took her by surprise, and she realised that with another step, she would be exposed. The level ground was planted with herbs, although their best days were now over. There were hens in a coup, contented and fat, but no other discernible livestock.

Her husband, a tall and broad man, stooped as he crossed the porch. The children ran inside with the impetus of familiarity, as though they could hardly wait.

The house was small but beautiful. It was adorned with intricate carvings of gingerbread, doughnuts, wafers and marzipan cakes. Between these confections were apples, oranges and strawberries. Whoever had carved these friezes was a master craftsman, and the wonder of it left her rooted to the spot.

After several minutes, collecting both her breath and her composure, she stole around the wood until she faced the side of the house, which was as richly adorned as the frontage. From the chimney arose a fragrant scent of meat and herbs, an aroma which smelled better than anything Gisela could muster. It was small wonder, she conceded, that the children were enamoured of this place.

She was afraid of looking through the window, but the forest was still and the shedding trees, sentinel, afforded her a kind of reflection that other life, in other areas, did not afford her. To be furtive, she realised, was to be discovered. To be bold was to be hidden. And so she looked through, and there were her children dancing around the table while her husband kissed a woman by the stove.

She was a beautiful woman with hair the colour of chestnuts, slender and graceful. Her eyes were as green as the beech leaf in summer. She was bewitching.

She followed the path home, leaving the reeds where they were. Her husband would not notice them. Why would he notice anything but her?

*****

She walked down to the village, back to the tavern. Herr Schenk sat at the counter, lost in thought. The place was near empty at that time of day.

‘Any news on your friend?’ she asked him.

‘He has gone. I am sure of it,’ he replied. ‘I have no use for the pony, but I shall keep him a while. He’s a dear old thing.’

He poured her a small beer, and she paid with money.

‘Do you know a woman with red hair?’ she asked. ‘A very beautiful woman? Does she ever come to the village?’

Shenck whistled. ‘You must be thinking of Lina,’ he said. ‘She’s the only one I know who matches the description.’

‘And how do you know her?’

‘She sells me meat on occasion. She says it’s wild boar, but I know it isn’t. Wild boar is pink whereas this meat is white. She’s a dramatic woman, Gisela. She kills a common pig but romanticises it into something far less easy to despatch. When I put it on the menu, it sells out immediately. It is so tender, and I don’t know what herbs she uses, but—’

‘Do you know where she lives?’

Schenk shook his head. ‘She is not a one for talking, and I am not a one for prying.’

She made them no food that evening. The children, clearly used to eating two hot meals a day, were angry and spiteful. Her husband reminded her of the duties of a wife and she reminded him that if he could fell a tree then he could surely cut bread.

‘I am not the mother of these children,’ she told him. ‘This is what you tell me. And yet I am so sure that I am, because I remember giving birth to them and bringing my milk to them. But no matter, Adalfuns. I am sure you are right. I must be losing my mind. But you see, I also remember marrying you, and that must equally be false, wouldn’t you agree? Because if I am not their mother, then surely you are not my husband.’

She stayed in the outhouse that night, making candles.

Her life was in danger. After all, if a wealthy traveller could go missing without enquiry, then so could she. And that wondrous meat that Schenk so enthused over? She felt sure she knew what that was. There had always been tales of such things, but she liked him too well to tell him where his friend, and his money, had gone.

The owls were coming closer, those vestibules of wide-eyed wisdom. They seemed to encircle her in the outhouse, although they were never seen. They are so rarely seen. A squall whipped up and the owls fluttered away. And then it was gone, and it became so ominously silent in the forest, she could hear the leaves drop. Hetel was crying in the distance. The wind had always disturbed her, but she knew that if she entered the house, Adalfuns would kill her.

And she was reminded of the Judgement of Solomon. She had a brother across the tarn who would listen to his older sister. He was both uncle and godparent to her children. He, above all others, would stop this. The woman in the forest wanted her husband and not his children. They were not safe with her, their young plump flesh.

And as much as she knew she would have her children back, she also knew that the beginning and the end of this story lay within the gingerbread house. And in that story, her husband would be exonerated of his weakness. She, Gisela, would always be the wicked stepmother, but Lina, so uniquely beautiful, would never be the witch. That would be someone else, in another glade entirely.

It was of no matter to Gisela. Stories grew like the forest and their leaves blew far and wide. Adalfuns might live with Lina, but the children would not.

And he would not live long in the forest before he too was sold at market, a commodity as life-sustaining as the timber itself.