“Stories have their own pull,” said the guest. Dirk now thought of the visitor as a young man, or younger anyway than the old man. Dirk sorely wanted to see a stranger. Something in the old woman’s tone of voice, however, made him hold his tongue.
“Until the next time, Frau . . . Fr?ulein . . . ?”
She didn’t supply a name. The door clicked open and clacked shut.
Dirk felt the fur of the bear irritate the back of his neck. He wanted to roll around and collect the bearskin all about him and hide in it. Become a bear, and lumber away. He couldn’t yet move, though. He might be able to speak if he tried, but he didn’t try.
“So he’s gone,” said the old man, coming in. “I hid out in the lee of the shed until I saw him leave. What did he want?”
“Not what you think,” said the old woman.
“Did he ask about Dirk?”
“He wanted stories. He wrote down what I said and then read it back to me. I told him one of the hoary old tales. He couldn’t wait to go back to the village and tell his brother. He’ll be back tomorrow.” She began to cry.
Usually at a moment like this, Dirk would have felt a rise of warmth toward her, but this time he could not.
“Why did you bring the boy back?” she managed at last to say.
“I thought it would be better to sling him in the hog pen than to leave his body in the wood where hunting dogs might find it. The hog has to eat, too.”
Dirk thought perhaps he wasn’t actually alive, but only halfway, somehow.
“And you with that wound in your leg!”
“As near as I could make out, the boy had cut a useful crutch for me before the tree fell. Once I woke to see his prone form by the fallen tree, well, what was I to do? Better to butcher him here than to have someone stumble across his corpse and start asking questions. We have the only waldhütte in this district. We would be the first to suspect.”
“You can’t do a blessed thing right.” The old woman began to berate the old man with a tongue more foul than the boy had ever heard her use.
As much to silence her as for any other reason, Dirk cried out, “Where have I been?”
The silence in the room was like a heavy ghost pressing all the air down to the rude floorboards.
“And now the saints have deserted us,” hissed the old woman. She meant it as a whisper but Dirk’s ears were alert with panic. “The boy is alive. You ought to have buried him there when he was too far gone to suffer. And so it all starts again. How shall we manage now?”
“He made me a crutch,” said the old man. “What else was I to do?”
“Where have I been, and where have I come back to?” called Dirk.
The cloth in the doorway whipped aside. “Hush you and your mouth,” said the old woman. “You’ll wake the dead.”
“He woke himself,” said the old man, at least a little kindly. “How are you feeling?” He peered over the old woman’s angled elbows. He was leaning on a crutch.
“Why would you lie to that man about me?” asked Dirk.
“You’ve had a bad spell, you’re making up stories in your bruised head,” the old woman said. “You don’t understand.”
He managed to sit up. He pulled the bearskin with him and clutched it around his sides like a blanket. “What happened to me? Where is the Queen of the Thrushes? Where is the fierce little knife-man?”
“You’ve been told too many stories,” said the old man, “and that’s the truth in a nutshell.”
“From what I hear, you were dead,” said the old woman. “I have known it to happen once or twice before. A maiden from Arnhelt was struck by lightning and crumpled to the ground, and the smell was bitumen and sulfur. She had no pulse when they reached her. Her face went that color of plums too far gone for jam. Then somehow, she came back.”
“Back from where?” Dirk managed to say.
“From death. But she was never the same. She had been an accomplished young woman, daughter of a wool merchant. The banns for her marriage had been called. After the lightning hit her, though, she wouldn’t marry. She took up the flute and played till—well, the end. Rarely spoke to a soul, or smiled. That’s a bad eye you’ve earned; be glad for what you won’t need to see.”
“Don’t scare the lad,” said the old man.
“He’s witnessed enough to be scared already, I can’t make it worse.” She clapped her hands suddenly, but the boy didn’t start. To the old man: “Do you see what I mean? And now what are we going to do?”
They went outside to talk beyond the far side of the woodshed, for privacy. The dark was falling, though whether this was the dark of the same day or some other day, Dirk didn’t know.
He looked down. He wasn’t naked anymore, but dressed in his same clothes, his only clothes. Cut-downs from the old man.
The old man and the old woman had meant to lose him at best, to kill him perhaps. If he’d truly come back from death, they must be terrified.
He hated them. He also didn’t want to terrify them anymore.
He didn’t know why he was such trouble to them, but he couldn’t wait around to find out.
So he made the effort to pull himself up. He dragged the bearskin with him, turning it around so the black fur was on the outside. He stumped to the table in the middle of the main room. There was a knife with a carved head lying there next to a red, red apple. He left the apple but picked up the knife and wrapped it in a scrap of leather for safekeeping.
The old woman wouldn’t care—she’d wanted him gone anyway. But the old man might follow him. The boy took the crutch so as to slow the old man down should he consider pursuit. Then the boy climbed out the window. He left his life, but in a more conventional way than before. He was still a boy, but he was no longer a child.
A Posthumous Education
8.
At this point it would be false to say the world sang to Dirk in his new freedom. It may have been singing, but not to him; or he was deaf, unschooled in such melodies. He tramped along, aware of his bruises and aches, unaware of shafts of Rheingold light, birdsong, malodorous water cabbage, rococo flourishes of ivy along the boughs of ancient oaks.
A bit of a dolt, that is to say.
The farther he got from the waldhütte, the more indistinct it grew in his mind. As if he’d never lived there. Peculiar, especially since he had never lived anywhere else.
The light was rational and the shadow romantic, and he could sense a purring tension, but he had no words, no references by which to articulate it. And no one to tell it to.
The one thing he did notice was the water. It seemed every time he crested a slope and walked or slid down the other side, he found a stream at the bottom.
You can’t be so surprised; where else is mountain water to go? It doesn’t just stand upright on the tops of ridges, picking its nose, said the figure on the knife in his hand.
Of course, knives don’t talk. Dirk suspected he was imagining things out of worry. Nonetheless, to be polite, he asked the knife which way he should go.
If what you want is to live among your kind, then follow the next substantial stream, said the knife. It will end in a lake or a river. People tend to gather on those shores. They will provide interest and possibly supper. But if what you want is to be unencumbered by human sorrow, keep to the forest. True, the forest is full of appetites on four legs. You might easily satisfy one of them before you know it. Your bearskin cloak will conceal you only so long. But you will be free until the forest catches up with you. And I’ll be free when you let me go. I’ve waited this long, I suppose I can hold my temper until then.