Cottage in the Woods

Carl Walmsley

W hen Rebecca heard voices outside her cottage, she locked the doors and hid. Nobody ever came this deep into the forest.

When the strangers did not leave, she peered over her bedroom windowsill and saw two children gathering berries and scratching roots from the soil. Rebecca watched them for a time and realised how much she had missed children.

There was no way to know if they were alone, however, so she closed the curtains and tried not to think about them.

When it grew dark, the voices faded; the silence which followed felt strangely empty. Rebecca crept along the garden path and found them sleeping beyond her gate. Wolves were howling in the trees, closer than usual. She scooped the children up and ushered them inside.

In the candlelight, they devoured cakes and pastries, gulped down mugs of milk. Rebecca dabbed their knees and elbows, slashed and grazed by the unkind forest. She thought of other wounds she had tended, and her fingers trembled.

Rebecca led them, half-dozing, to the bedroom and wrapped them in woollen blankets. They slept together, brother and sister she supposed, heads bobbing like mice in a winter burrow.

Rebecca found it almost impossible to sleep with others in the cottage. The children’s breath seemed to beat at the walls, and the space around her shrank. She could not have ignored them though, for all the promises she had made. She would tend their wounds, fatten them up, and move them on. That would be safest for all of them.

“W here are your parents?” Rebecca asked, as the children wolfed down breakfast.

A pause. A shrug. Rebecca sensed their pain and did not push. Many children were abandoned. Sometimes, there were just too many mouths to feed. And yet their clothes, torn and mud-stained, were well-made.

The girl licked jam from the corner of her mouth, collected every crumb of pastry, then stared at the door. The twitching of her knee rattled the chair. Rebecca wondered if the girl was scared of what was outside or would bolt back into the woods the moment the door was open.

“I have jobs that need doing,” Rebecca said, closing the big oven. “If you like, you can help me.”

They spent the morning gathering herbs from the garden, washing and chopping them, leaving them in the sun to dry. That evening, Rebecca sorted them into jars and the children crouched by the fire watching the stew simmer and pop. Bellies full, they once more slept beneath bundled blankets. Rebecca marvelled at how quietly they moved and how they could vanish into tiny spaces whenever a noise from outside startled them – like critters that have learned to live in the shadow of a hawk.

For five days, they ate food like it was treasure and, slowly, their hard eyes and brittle skin softened. The jut of bones sank beneath new flesh.

Lying in bed, watching the wall as if she could see through it to where they slept, Rebecca decided that, now, she really had done all she could. Tomorrow, she would send them on their way.

“T hank you.”

It was the first time the boy had spoken. Rebecca could not have been more surprised if he had sprouted from the earth like a beanstalk. She studied him for signs of what she feared most. His eyes were broad and honest, his smile shy but true. His fingers curled and uncurled nervously. Even now, after almost a week, he was frightened.

Frightened men did terrible things. Frightened men turned angry, and once drove her from her home. She’d thought she would die, limping alone through the forest, until she found an abandoned cottage, tended and healed it, and made it a new home. And, perhaps, when the children came and she took them in, she too was at last beginning to mend; though her fear of frightened men was still as strong as her hope that such would never trouble her again.

But the boy was not a man. Not yet. Perhaps he would not turn out like others she had known.

“You’re welcome,” she told him, finally, and presented him with another slice of cake.

“W hat plant is this?” asked the boy, running his fingers through a circle of purple petals. His nails were chewed to the quick and rimed with blood. Rebecca washed them every night before bed, but at breakfast they were always the same.

“Echinacea.”

When he could not say it: “Coneflower is its other name.”

The girl sniffed an orange bloom.

“That’s calendula. I used it on your cuts.”

The girl touched her elbow, still crusted with scabs but healing nicely.

The children pattered around the garden. Elderberry for colds, thyme for a cough, milk thistle for the liver, St John’s Wort for an ailing mind. By lunchtime, they could recite the names and use of every plant in the garden – including those that could kill as well as cure, like the autumn crocuses and henbane.

“How do you have so many?” the boy asked.

“I brought them with me,” said Rebecca. “From another garden.”

“Where was that?”

Rebecca fashioned a smile. “Time for lunch, I think.”

After they had eaten, the children wanted to learn more. Rebecca sat them beside the goat, and placed a pail beneath its tummy.

“Her name is Mary.” The children stroked the animal’s soft flanks. Wherever they came from, they were not farm children.

Rebecca plucked a caterpillar from a leaf. “Do you see how he moves?”

The green strip undulated across Rebecca’s palm and she set him down on the hedge. She reached for the boy’s hands but he recoiled, making them into fists. Rebecca waited until he was ready, then guided his fingers to the goat’s teats.

“Hold them both, and roll your fingers like the caterpillar.”

Nothing happened.

“Keep trying.”

Finally, the pail rattled. The boy laughed, watching the stream as if it were the funniest thing he had ever seen.

“This is Hettie,” said Rebecca, placing one of her chickens in the girl’s lap, while she sat and watched her brother. Before the pail had filled with milk, Hettie laid an egg in the girl’s lap. She held it up and smiled as if she had made it herself.

W hen the boy was strong enough to lift the iron dishes, Rebecca showed him how to work the oven. It was bigger than it needed to be, for Rebecca had always enjoyed baking and remembered what it was like to feed more mouths than her own.

“Like this?” he asked, kneading the dough.

Rebecca smiled and helped him to sculpt a big fat loaf for supper. “You’re a natural.”

At bedtime, the boy sniffed the air and grinned, for the cottage still smelled of the bread he had baked.

After that, the oven was rarely cold, for they both enjoyed feeding others as much as they enjoyed feeding themselves.

O ne morning, Rebecca found the girl poring over her books. She stepped away, startled, all at once as fearful as the day she first arrived.

Rebecca smiled and guided her back to the table. “Can you read?”

“Father says books are bad. Mother had some, but he took them away.”

It was the first time the girl had mentioned her parents.

Rebecca turned the pages and the girl traced the letters with her finger.

“My words,” Rebecca told her. The girl’s eyes widened.

Rebecca dipped her pen and offered it to the girl. “Would you like me to teach you?”

T hat evening Rebecca led the children into the front garden, where the vegetables were ripening nicely, and peered over the little fence into the wood. It was thick and green with the rustling of unseen life.

Rebecca was afraid of the forest, for she could not forget the men who lived beyond it. She would never go back, but she needed to know if the children wished to do so. If they did, it would have to be now.

“Would you like to go for a walk in the woods?” Rebecca asked.

The boy – whose smile had clung to his lips like jam since milking Mary – looked suddenly frightened. The girl shook her head, and gripped Rebecca’s skirt till her knuckles whitened.

Rebecca hugged them to her, overcome by an unexpected surge of relief. Still holding them close, she turned and led them inside.

T he garden bloomed and faded, as summer passed and winter came. The forest became a wall of frosted thorns. Whatever lived there slept, but the trees still frightened the children. They were always at their happiest when the door was locked and the three of them sat by the fire eating cakes or listening to stories from Rebecca’s books. Most nights the girl took a turn reading and, more than once, Rebecca fell asleep in her chair listening to the child’s voice. If she slept through till morning, she always awoke with her blanket tucked carefully around her, to the smell of fresh baking.

T he coming of spring changed everything. A fist on the door shook the cottage.

The children hid – so quickly that Rebecca did not see where – but she understood their fear. Her fingers shook as she opened the door.

Three men were outside, big and dirty as the hogs that rooted in the forest. One lounged against the hedge, holding the gate open with his foot.

The man who had knocked peered past Rebecca, into the cottage. “We’re looking for two children.”

“I have no children,” Rebecca said. She tried to close the door, but the man leaned into it, holding it open with his weight.

“And your husband?”

“Will be back soon.”

The man’s teeth appeared through his thick beard. “My men and I are tired. The squire sent us to find these children. Been searching all day. P’raps we should wait ’til your husband returns. Maybe he’s seen something.”

They shuffled past her and the third man, thin and greasy as a river rat, bolted the door behind them.

The first man flopped into Rebecca’s chair, resting his muddy boots on the blanket the children covered her with at night. The second man paced the two small rooms in a few strides, his restless eyes taking in the crooked stairs and the clutter of furniture, before settling on the hearth beside the fire. A stew bubbled there. He unhooked the spoon and sniffed it. Even then, his eyes continued to flit about, like wasps trapped inside a bottle.

“Mmm…” He took a slurp. “We’ve worked up a proper appetite today.”

The third man, who had not moved from the door, smacked his lips. “Reckon we have.”

“Let me feed you,” said Rebecca.

She scooped up three bowls, filled one, and offered it to the man on the chair, face all teeth and beard. Their fingers touched. His skin was rough and calloused, his nails dark as peat.

“There’s a reward for these children,” he said.

“Then I hope you find them,” said Rebecca.

He lifted the bowl and lapped from the side. “What does your husband do?”

Rebecca served the wasp-eyed man. “He’s a woodcutter.”

“Then he’s out in the forest?”

Rebecca nodded, filled the last bowl, and took it to the rat-faced man by the door, willing her fingers to stop shaking.

“We didn’t see anyone,” he said. “And we’ve been out in the woods all day.”

The first man slurped the last of the stew, leaving gobbets in his tangled beard.

“Good stew.” He held out the bowl and, as Rebecca took it, their hands touched a second time.

“It’s getting dark,” whined rat-face. “Might not be safe to go back out.”

Wasp-eyes by the hearth twitched his gaze between the stairs and Rebecca. “There’s a bed up there, I suppose.”

“Must be,” said rat-face. Again, his lips made a moist, slapping sound.

Another knock rattled the front door; and every eye in the room turned to stare at it.

Swallowing her fear, Rebecca smiled. “That must be my husband now.”

Rat-face stepped away from the door, his jaw moving like it was stuck on a piece of gristle. Wasp-eyes slid a knife from his belt and, after too long a pause, used it to slice a piece of carrot in his stew.

Teeth-and-beard looked from the door to Rebecca. It was the kind of look you could feel, settling where it pleased, as rough and black as his callused hands. His presence became a palpable force, using up all the space in the room, draining the air till Rebecca felt the breath catch in her throat.

“Open the door,” he ordered.

Rebecca scanned the little tables that held pots of flowers from her garden, searching for something she could hold and thrust. Whatever happened to her, she would not let them hurt the children.

The bolt scraped and the door opened. “There’s no one there,” complained rat-face.

“Go round and check the back.”

Rat-face skittered out of the front door, while wasp-eyes skulked toward the rear of the cottage.

Teeth-and-beard dropped heavily into her chair again, and Rebecca almost gasped when a small hand appeared from under the table. Red-rimmed fingers pressed speckled yellow and white petals into Rebecca’s palm; understanding, she moved to the pot on the hearth and dropped them in. She was still stirring as the two men came back inside.

“Might’ve been the wind,” rat-face said with a shrug. Teeth-and-beard rolled his eyes.

“Perhaps you should wait for my husband,” Rebecca said, re-filling a bowl and offering it to the man in her chair.

Teeth-and-beard did not move but, after a moment, wasp-eyes took the bowl from her. “Never waste good food.”

“Did I tell you who these children belong to?” asked teeth-and-beard.

“I haven’t seen any children.” Rebecca began to fill another bowl. “I told you.”

“The squire. He’s an important man. Their mother tried to run away with them last year. Troublesome woman. She had all sorts of funny ideas.”

Again, Rebecca offered him a bowl. Again he only watched her.

“You having that?” Rat-face snuffled forward and sniffed the re-filled bowl. Rebecca handed it to him. He smiled and began to slurp it up.

“We found the mother, of course,” teeth-and-beard said. “She’d taken a tumble in the woods. Broke her neck.” Rat-face made a strange little sound in the back of his throat that might have been a laugh. “Never found the children, though.” He gripped Rebecca’s blanket with thick fingers and wiped the clotting drops of broth from his beard. “They’d be bones by now, of course. Picked clean. Unless someone took ’em in.”

Wasp-eyes coughed.

“The squire might even be grateful to anyone who had taken ‘em in,” said teeth-and-beard.

Rebecca did not trust herself to speak. Wasp-eyes coughed a second time.

“He just wants his property back, see? What man wouldn’t?”

With a clatter, wasp-eyes doubled-over and fell.

“What’s wrong with you?” sneered rat-face. He watched the choking man kick and gasp. Then he looked at the woman by the fire and the stew in his hands. “Bloody ’ell!”

He dropped the bowl and clattered through the doorway, squawking like a chicken who knows his neck is about to be wrung, running for the trees.

Teeth-and-beard rose from the chair and struck Rebecca with the back of his hand. It was an oddly casual gesture that broke her nose and left her crumpled beside the hearth. He strode to the man who lay gasping on the floor, reached down and turned him over. Those waspish eyes twitched feebly, as if they had finally run out of air inside their bottle, and then stopped their twitching altogether.

Teeth-and-beard took the knife from the dead man’s hand. Once more his presence filled the room.

“Have you poisoned me, woman?” he asked. Rebecca shook her head. “Call the children. Tell them it’s safe to come back. Do that and I’ll make it quick for you. If not… I’ll make them watch.”

Fear gripped Rebecca as surely as his hands would have done. She drew a long, juddering breath and forced herself to stand and walk to the open doorway.

“It’s alright, children,” she called, some little light dying inside her. “You can come out. There’s no need to be afraid.”

Rebecca heard the man moving towards her but was too afraid to look round. She wondered if she would feel the knife as he pressed it into her. She hoped that at least the children would have time to escape if he wasted time looking for them in the front garden.

As teeth-and-beard passed the blanket-draped chair where he had been sitting, a hand emerged from beneath the folds. It clutched the small, sharp knife Rebecca used to chop herbs in the garden. The blade flicked back and forth, parting his tendons so quickly that he managed another step before his legs folded under him. He struck the floor and began to bellow like a stuck pig.

The boy untwined himself from beneath the table, while his sister climbed out from under Rebecca’s chair. Teeth-and-beard screamed and swore, swiping with his own knife, but he could not stand and they walked around him to stand beside Rebecca. They watched as the frightened, angry man managed to drag himself to his knees, but when he tried to plant a foot could only topple heavily against the large, black oven. The boy opened its door helpfully, and the girl gave him a shove. As his head vanished inside, his teeth cracked on the hot metal frame and his beard caught fire.

As no-teeth-and-no-beard flailed and screamed, the boy handed Rebecca the rolling pin that they used each day to make their bread and pastries. She rested a hand on his shoulder and smiled at his sister.

“Close your eyes, children.”

Rebecca did what she had to, thinking mostly of the children’s safety, but a part of her saw other men and other faces, recalling what they had done to her before.

The room was in quite a state by the time she was done.

S itting outside on the lawn, Rebecca gave them both a pastry to eat.

“We shall have to air the cottage tomorrow,” she said. The smell at that moment was quite unpleasant.

“I can bake some bread,” said the boy.

Out in the woods, the wolves howled in chorus. Rebecca was not concerned. It reassured her that the third man could not have made it very far.

Once they had finished their pastries, they heaved the last body as far as they could into the trees. Rebecca did not want the children to help, but they insisted. The wolves would be hungry again soon enough, and then do the rest.

That night, when they sat together around the fire and the girl had finished reading from Rebecca’s book, she looked up thoughtfully. “Perhaps one of us should write about what happened,” she suggested. “Our escape from father and the bad men who came looking for us.”

Rebecca considered this for a moment.

“Is it something you want to be remembered?” she asked them.

“If we don’t,” insisted Gretel, “someone else will do it. And he may not tell it right.”

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