Dirk thought, I must be capable of saying something; I must be capable of knowing something about the world now I’ve lived in it a bit longer. Surely friendship is built on the sharing of private histories. One has to start somewhere.
“I was born, I don’t know where. Or of whom. I was a foundling in a basket, and raised in a forest by an old man and an old woman until, I forget why, I ran away.”
“Were their names Pan and Pythia? They sound like the same pair of people. Old and cross and full of mystery.”
“Isn’t that anyone’s parents?”
Felix snorted with surprise, as if Dirk had just given an amusing disquisition in classical Greek. It was only relief, Dirk guessed—relief that Dirk was capable of an actual opinion.
But pry and prod as Felix did, Dirk couldn’t reveal much more about his origins. The old man and the old women were self-sufficient. Indeed they might have suffered some sort of fear of society, as they lived like hermits and never went to town together, and avoided all manner of travelers in the woods as best they could. “The only time I really remember someone at the waldhütte,” admitted Dirk, “was the day before I left. A man was wandering along looking for someone to share the common stories of the district, and he found the old woman and listened carefully to stories she told. She was good at storytelling, I will grant her that much.”
“Like those philologists, the brothers from Steinau, who produced the Household Tales. Die Gebrüder Grimm. I wonder if it was someone following in their footsteps. Or if it might have been one of the brothers himself? You should ask your Mutter.”
“I don’t know where the old people are. Or if they are alive, even. They were old when I was young.”
“So were my parents, and they’re still alive. Sort of. We should find your old folks. We could go on a hunt. Where do they live?”
“They are as lost as the Little Lost Forest,” insisted Dirk, and would say no more about them. Luckily, Felix’s crimson cape started to whip about his shoulders, flapping and snapping too noisily to talk above. The subject was abandoned as the travelers turned their faces into a strengthening and sharply chillier wind.
Within another half an hour they began to think perhaps Tantchen Isabelle had been right to suggest they postpone their departure for Meersburg. A rainy slick began to fall. “We’ll not make Meersburg, and I’ll miss my concert,” said Felix. “At the rate this is falling, if it turns to snow before we regain the main road, we’ll lose the track, too.”
When that happened, they knocked on the door of a farmhouse in whose windows a few cozy lights shone. No one answered the knock, and Dirk wanted to turn away, but Felix said, “We’ll perish in a snowy chasm, clutching each other for warmth until we die, and what good to Nastaran will you be then?” There was sense to his argument, but Dirk let Felix be the one to try the handle of the door, which opened to him easily enough.
“Hello; we are harmless strangers in this sudden storm,” called Felix, for the house had the aroma of occupancy. Food in the kitchen before them, laid out and half-eaten; a fire in the kitchen stove, and an iron kettle of water on the boil. A cat playing with a half-dead mouse looked up at them with scorn, and the mouse escaped for a few more moments of life until the cat could return to its game. “Hail, are you at home?” called Felix again.
A step on the stairs, and a beefy farmer with bloodied hands stumbled into the room. “Has the midwife sent you two bekloppts in her place? Where is she?”
“I don’t know, we’re not her lads,” said Felix. “If she is on the road, she’s imperiled by this sudden snow squall. We’ve come to ask for your roof over our heads until morning.”
“Do you know about midwifery?”
Felix shook his head in mock horror. Dirk said, “I saw a cat give birth to kittens once. That’s all I know.”
“You can’t stay here, my wife is in knots and the house is too small—take the water up to the chamber and let her hold your hand if she will—”
“You have too much trouble already; we’ll risk the storm,” decided Felix, grabbing Dirk by the hand. But before they could back away, the door opened behind them and a bony-shanked woman came huffing in. Her skirts were tucked into her waistband, as if making allowance for having had to ride on some donkey or broomstick, whatever had come to hand. “Your Frau, she couldn’t have kept her legs closed another twenty-four hours, either nine months ago or tonight? It figures. Country women have no sense of timing,” she snapped. “What are you lads gaping at? Go tend to my mare before she breaks loose and bolts.”
“The wife in a bad condition, and you’re late yourself.” The distressed husband held up his reddened hands. “I’ve been doing what I could.”
“Haven’t you done enough already? Give me a quarter hour to assess the situation and I’ll holler down when I’m ready for the knife.” She lumbered for the staircase. The man paled and collapsed into a chair, which collapsed onto the floor. Dirk and Felix helped him up and Felix lit his pipe for him and stuck it in his mouth.
“Go do as she says, and stable the mount,” said the farmer. “Blankets in the loft. You can stay there. You won’t want to be near this home. If you hear screaming, pay it no mind. I’ve sent the other children to their granny. Grab some food as you go, and don’t come back until morning unless I summon you. The goodwife will sleep on the kitchen floor if there is sleeping in her immediate future. I doubt it.”
The night seemed to have come in. A mangy horse with a disagreeable expression allowed them to lead it around the corner of the house, where a set of sheds and barns, already settled with a white pall, were dissolving into vortices of snow. Inside, several other animals, two cows and two horses and some sheep. As he’d learned to do last summer, Dirk milked one of the cows and then the second, so he and Felix had warm milk to share in the one tin cup. Then they shucked off their sodden freezing garments and hung them to dry on pegs along with the farm implements. They climbed a ladder to a loft where, in the hay, they found several blankets and even a couple of ratty sheets, which, once the mouse droppings were flapped away, were comfortable enough. Felix had stripped to the bone, but for modesty Dirk retained his shirt, which fell to his mid-thigh, and that was something at least.
60.
Dirk had brought to the loft with him what was left of the staff as well as the knife with the gnome-figure handle. The crutch was almost useless now, as the narrower, earth-ended point of it threatened to splinter. The thicker part, though, the bole that fit naturally under the arm, was still solid and good. So Dirk broke the staff across his bare knee. With the old fabled knife of his childhood, he set to scraping at the hardwood knob.
“What are you making?” asked Felix, wrapping himself in a brown blanket and lying on his side, his temple propped up by his curled fist. “Is this another of your secret talents?”
“Another?”
“I mean, besides talking to the spirits of the sacred grove?”
“You ridicule me, you toy with me,” said Dirk in sudden heat. “For certain I’m a superstitious dummkopf, but why must you mock me?”