A Simple Story Ana Hein

ANA HEIN FAIRYTALE RETELLING

A SIMPLE STORY

Ana Hein is an undergraduate student at Emerson College pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing with minors in Comedy Writing and Performance and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has been featured in Blind Corner Literary Magazine, Wack Mag, Concrete, Gauge, Stork, and Generic, among others, has won multiple Editor’s Choice Awards from Teen Ink Magazine, and is forthcoming in Fearsome Critters and Terrible Orange Review. She can usually be found buying too many books, singing loudly, wearing red lipstick, complaining about the weather, staring into the void, and generally being very dramatic.

It’s dark here, and there is no escape. The trees are wicked things that ensnare a wandering foot or a stray lock of hair. The underbrush inflicts cuts and scratches on any unsuspecting sliver of skin it can catch. The sun doesn’t shine here like it should. Light warbles in the air, it doesn’t know how to descend in this harsh environment. The path can disappear in an instant, gone in a precious second spent scanning the area for predators. The animals that skitter about on the floor squeak and cry in quiet, agonized gasps that send shivers down the strongest spine.

The girl did not mean to go into the woods. She doesn’t disobey her sweet mother that smooths back her hair and works all day at the stove and with the broom until her hands bleed. The kind mother who, every night as the candle was just about to flicker out, read her stories about other little girls much like herself with round, red cheeks, and glossy golden-spun curls that went into the woods and never returned. And if they did, they were hardly recognizable as the girls they once were. In her retellings, her mother would tickle her in the stomach until she cried from laughter, then kiss her forehead before telling her, “This may be but a simple story, my darling, but there is power in such things. Never forget what lessons are to be learned.” Then the two of them would fall asleep

A Simple Story 43 wrapped up in a warm embrace and a quilt. The girl heeds the advice of her elders, listens to the stories of the wolves, knows to fear what she cannot see. She does not go into the forest.

She doesn’t know how she came to be in this perilous place. She saw that the fire was dimming in the hearth, heard the coughs of her mother from the bed they shared, and set out to collect more firewood, trying to create comfort for the sick. She doesn’t know how to care for someone who is dying, doesn’t know what the word entails, all the pain and misery and fading of self. She knows only that her mother will get better if the fire is stronger, if the room is warm and comfortable, and so she set out to look for wood.

She waited until her mother fell asleep. She sat by her bedside the entire time, stroking her wrinkled and scar-stained hand. She listened as her mother’s lungs rattled with unknown liquid as she settled into a fitful slumber. She saw her mother’s wrinkled eyes, the eyes of a woman twice her age, flutter close. Her mother gasped out, right before sleep took its hold on her, “My dear, my dear, how kind you are to sit with me. How sweet you are my child. How precious.”

“Yes mama,” the girl said.

And then her mother was asleep.

The girl meant to go to the woodshed, only to pick up a few logs and return within a few moments, but the woodshed was empty. With her mother bedridden and the girl too weak to split a log, the firewood had not been replenished in days. So, the girl bundled herself up in her warm red winter cloak, grabbed the wicker basket by the door, and stepped out into the world looking for wood. She searched in the garden but found only twigs that snapped at the slightest pressure. She searched in the street but found dirty rainwater collecting in gutters. She searched on the outskirts of the village but found brittle dead grass that would burn up in an instant.

So, she searched, ever so briefly, for no more than a second really, in the forest. She needed something of substantial size, something that could last through the night, something she would not have to chop down, as whenever she tried, she could barely lodge the axe four inches deep into the log.

The second her foot crossed the threshold of that forbidden land, she was lost in the landscape, swallowed up entirely by the thicket with only the barest hints of distorted daylight seeping through the canopy of foliage above her.

44 Ana Hein

All the stories her mother told her in the fading candlelight surface in her memory, stories of girls torn apart by wolves or turned into birds or hacked into tiny little pieces of flesh to be served with steaming bowls of soup come supper time. She is not keen to wind up like them. She knows no one met in the woods is to be trusted. She understands that no one who enters the woods returns, on those rare occasions one makes it back at all, quite the same as they were before. They return with scars along their faces, with limbs torn asunder, with clothes degraded into rags that barely cling to their emaciated bodies, with trophies of their kill dangling between fingers slick with blood, with dread permanently etched into their brows. The girl anticipates the plucking of her innocence like an apple from a tree. She swallows the lump of a sob rising in her throat, pulls her cloak about her, and steals herself for the journey ahead before taking a tentative step, the first of many such steps, forward.

After an hour’s walk through the tangle of barren branches with rotting leaves underfoot, she comes upon a clearing with a little pool that has not yet frozen over leading into a simple stream. She rushes into it, free at last of the clawing grasp of the woods. She sets down her still empty basket by the water and leans down to take a sip so as to quench her cracked lips.

Suddenly, at the very instant her guard falters, there is a crunch behind her that sends a primal surge of fear rushing through her blood. She bolts up, darts her head about looking for the thing that has made the sound.

“I did not mean to startle you, young miss,” a voice calls out from the forest. Into the clearing steps a man in a hunter’s cap with a musket strung over one shoulder, an axe in hand, and a kind smile dancing on his mouth. “I am not used to seeing other people in the woods. It seems I am the only one that looks for game here,” the hunter says as he approaches the girl.

“That’s because, sir, one mustn’t go into the woods if one wishes to remain alive,” the girl says by way of greeting. She cannot simply turn her head and will him away. One must be polite in these scenarios, for the beasts are less likely to strike if one participates in polite, if curt, conversation. “There are monsters and all manner of dangers lurking about. Did your mother not tell you as much when you were a boy?”

“Alas, I never had a mother. Died when I was but a month old, so they tell me. I used to think my father found me in the dirt of

A Simple Story 45 the fields when he was plowing, but I’ve since grown out of such childish fancies. Stories like that are nothing but rubbish spoon-fed to babes to make them eat their vegetables and go to bed before night falls in order to save candles. Have you ever heard of such things going on in these woods, young miss?”

“I-I… I’m sure I have heard of something terrible happening here,” she stammers as she eyes the weapons the man carries, thinking of all the ways they could do harm.

“The terrible thing,” the hunter says as he sets himself down on a small rock a few yards away from the girl, “is that no one hunts these plentiful woods for the rich game they provide. I’ve caught my fair share of deer and pheasant in my time. If more people took advantage of the resources in front of them, perhaps the village would not constantly be teetering on the brink of starvation.” He laughs to himself under his breath; it seems more like an afterthought than a genuine expression of mirth. “But then again, I suppose that would mean less game for me.”

“I suppose,” the girl says for lack of a better response. But then an idea strikes her. “But still, those stories are valuable.”

“How so?” he asks reproachfully.

“For one thing, they teach young girls to be cautious of strange men met in strange circumstances, as any rational girl ought to be.” At this, the hunter bursts out laughing again, a jolly thing that has no place in the woods. “And what do you find so funny, sir?” the girl asks. “I wasn’t trying to amuse.”

“That is a very sensible thing to have said, is all,” replies the hunter. “I assume I am one such man in your view?”

The girl stands up, basket empty still, despite it all, tightly clutched in hand. “I must be going now. Good day.” She’s spent too long in pointless conversation with this man. This man who, despite his grin, is in the woods, which means he is dangerous. If she wishes to remain intact, best to leave as fast as she can. Her skin is prickled with gooseflesh; she shudders uncontrollably. She is seized by terror in its purest form. She is desperate for escape from the woods, from this man. She will not die here. She refuses that fate.

“That answers that question,” the man says. “I mean you no harm, miss. I hope you know that. I am a good and honest man, as any of my mates in the village will vouch for. I wish to offer you my services. I see your basket is empty. What is it you are looking for? I will help you gather it.”

46 Ana Hein

The girl takes a few steps back. Now he has become interested in her. This is never a good sign. “I mean no offense, sir, but I don’t require any assistance, least of all from you.”

“If you would like,” the hunter says, “I’ll lay down my weapons on the floor.” Before the girl can utter a response, he sets his axe upon the grass and leans his musket against a tree. “Am I a bit less frightening, now?”

“A bit,” the girl admits as she takes a few tentative steps forward towards the now unarmed stranger.

“I am glad, for I truly mean you no harm. I wish only to help in whatever way I can.”

“Why?”

This gives the hunter pause. He has never had his motives called into question before. He is used to people trusting his nice eyes and his cheeky grin. He has always been honorable, helping mothers locate lost children and farmers reign in their cattle. He has never given anyone any reason to doubt him.

“Because I am a good man, young miss. When I see someone in distress, I wish to alleviate their pain,” he says in a defensive rush.

“That is very kind of you, sir,” the girl says as she approaches him. “But it is not necessary, I’m afraid.”

Quick as a blink, the girl grabs the axe lying on the floor, and she swings.

The blade glints in the distorted light, shiny as newly polished silver.

And then it is bloody.

The girl heaves from the effort. Her arms are not used to exerting such force. The axe has logged itself in-between the man’s ribs. Flesh is softer than wood, she has discovered, much softer. It splits open as easily as the rind of a peach.

The handle sticks out from his chest. The wood is varnished. He must have loved this axe.

The man slumps over. The girl leans over him. Pokes at him with her foot. “Sir?” she calls out. Red bubbles gurgle at his mouth; spittle lands on her cheeks. She wipes away the mess with the back of her hand as the man breathes in for the last time. For the first time in her life, the girl understands what death is truly like.

No one met in the woods is to be trusted. No one who enters leaves quite the same.

The girl riffles through the man’s pockets. There must be something here that can be of assistance to her. And there, in his

A Simple Story 47 jacket pocket, right underneath the blade, is a compass splattered in red. The girl cups it in her tiny hands, opens it up, and follows the direction the pointed arrow leads her in, but not before grabbing his musket off the floor.

She comes upon the break in the trees soon enough. She is free. She is out. She has survived the insidious woods. She looks back over her shoulder, and she tries to see what she saw before: the evil, the horror, the unknown terrible thing that destroys all that penetrate its borders. All she sees are trees with barren branches and dried, cracked leaves pasted to the wet earth. She sees a forest and nothing more.

She walks back to her mother’s house, bones weary and aching, heart heavy. But she does not regret. She is alive. She may be sorrowful, but she does not regret. She knew–oh she knew–that the man had meant her the most grievous harm, to rip her clothes from her still developing body before foisting himself on her, to use her in any way he wished. She does not regret avoiding that fate.

The house is cold, the hearth, dead. The girl takes off her red cloak, just the slightest shade darker from the blood, and hangs it upon the rack by the door. She goes to the fireplace, empties the musket of its ball and powder, sets the weapon inside the grate, dusts it with some of the gun powder for kindling, and strikes the flint stones against it, creating a blaze that rivals the sun. The metal warps and begins to melt; the wood chars. It is warm and comfortable in the girl’s cottage. The sound of the crackling sparks wakes up her mother, who has spent her day dreaming of times before her daughter was born when she was young and bright, before her body had been hardened and made ugly by housework.

“My precious child, what are you doing?” her mother coughs from the bed.

“I’m okay, Mama,” the girl says as she makes her way to the bed. “I went out to collect some firewood and kept the fire going. I hope it pleases you.”

“Did you go into the woods?” her mother asks in a grave tone.

“No, I did not.”

“Good. The woods are dangerous. You never know what lurks in the leaves.”

“Yes, Mama.”

The girl slides into her mother’s bed and falls asleep. Her cheeks still have their youthful red tint, her curls are still glossy, her eyes are still sweet and delicate. But only in her sleep. When she wakes in

48 Ana Hein the morning, she will notice there is a new look to her eyes, a hint of something fearful, of something primal and instinctive; she will forevermore look ever so slightly paranoid. It is something almost imperceptible to the average person, but not to her.

And not to her mother.