For there are so many things in these woods left still uncounted, even now: Trees whose branches rise high as church-spires, a perfect shape for the keels of bewitched canoes to scrape themselves upon. Caves in which squat the dried-out corpses of savages, hunted beyond endurance and sick with strange diseases, who starved to death rather than allow themselves to be captured and corralled like animals; their hungry ghosts may yet be heard keening at twilight, ill-wishing any white man whose shadow dares to cross their doorstep. A lake that goes up and a cathedral that goes down and a woman dressed all in birch-bark walking, rustling, with her left hand clutched tightly to her chest—that dead-white skeleton hand whose touch to the unwary forehead means madness, whose touch to the unwary back means death . . .
Yet here we sit snug and warm and dry nonetheless, traders and settlers and immigrants bound for even more distant places alike, before this open, welcoming fire; here we may eat and drink our fill and go ‘round the circle in turn, each of we travellers swapping a story for our place beneath this roof ‘till morning. And I will be more than glad to add my own contribution to that roster, if only it should please you to bend your ear and listen.
Might it be that you have a place already set at your table for a poor old woman such as I, Monsieur? Madame? A place at your sideboard for a starving, childless widow, mesdames et messieurs, s’il vous plait?
Oh, no matter; I have walked far tonight, expecting to go yet farther, before I saw your sign and heard your merriment. But I am not yet so weak with hunger that I cannot seat myself.
* * *
Once upon a time, and a time it was . . .
. . . there were two sisters who lived all alone, with no mother and no father to care for them, in the very deepest and darkest part of the woods. They lived in the house of their grandmother, who was often away on long trips, but they were not lonely, these two; never so, not in each other’s company. For they were used, from long experience, to making their own amusements.
And what brought this lopsided little family to the heart of the forest, deux gamines and one old woman, so far away from everything that is soft, feminine and civilized? Their property dated back to before the Plains of Abraham, before the French Revolution; granted land in perpetuity, as dowry and domain, ‘till one of them might be inclined to sell or give it away—and if that sounds like a curse rather than a gift, then so be it. A not-so-self-imposed exile in the no longer-New World for reasons untold, or (at least) unspoken.
The name, messieurs? Ah, but our names have come to mean so very little here in this empty country of ours, have they not? Just as our definitions tend to . . . shift, down the centuries. Tessedaluye, Tesse-dal’oeuil, Tete-de-l’oueil—“head of the eye,” no? Or perhaps a misapprehension never corrected: Head of something very, very different. L’oueil, la luce, la loup . . .
And so it was, after all: Tete-du-loup, “head of the wolf.” Wolf’s-head.
A strange name, certainly. And yet I know it as well as though it were—my own.
The savages who had occupied this particular plot of land began to shun it soon after the family first arrived to take possession of their new hunting-grounds. For they were ferocious hunters, these ones, male and female alike; from winter through spring, summer and fall, each season to its own sort of prey. In the old country, it had been whispered that the Tessedaluye kept their own calendar, and maybe even their own prayer-book too—had pledged themselves neither wholly to the Catholic nor the Hugenot faith, in those dark days after Catherine de’Medici and her brood split France limb from limb, twisting the wound so that it would never heal cleanly again. Which made them no sort of Christians at all, perhaps.
Or not good ones, at any rate.
And where was this house, you ask? Oh, not so very far from here at all. Not so very far that they were not often diverted by the light and noise of The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise which spilled towards them from across the lake, since they had never seen a public-house before, or travellers in such numbers: music, laughter, the rumble of ox-carts, bright city-bought fabrics, men and women dancing like leaves in the wind. These things were mysteries and amazements to the two sisters, poor solitary bumpkins that they were!
For they knew many things, these girls, you see, though the ways of Man were not among them. How to trap a rabbit, and skin it. How to tell the track of stag from that of moose. How to cook a hedgehog under an earthenware bowl, peel its stinging quills free, and crack it for its tender meat. What parts of every creature may be dried for carrying, which must be hung awhile before they become palatable, which may be pickled, or otherwise preserved. And which parts are best eaten just as they are, raw and red and dripping, on the very spot where they were butchered.
The human animal, only, was one they had never hunted. Let alone . . .
. . . tasted.
* * *
Girls are curious creatures, a fact their grandmother was well acquainted with—fated to be wild in their season, just as she had been in hers. So even though she understood that her warnings would (in all probability) go unheeded, she was constrained to voice them anyway.
Come close, my darlings, come closer; listen to me a while, before I go where I must. We do not meddle with those we do not know, yes? Therefore keep always to the safest path, the well-trod road of needles rather than the easier-seeming road of pins—back and forth to Grandmother’s house, where you may pull the bobbin and the latch will go up, open the door and come in.
And perhaps you should have stayed behind, old woman, if you feared so for their safety; this is what you may be thinking, and not without cause. But we cannot always choose the way things happen. I have my habits and my instincts, just as they . . . did.
A cry from the back, now: You, sir, repetez-vous? Ah, were they pretty, of course. For the most important questions must be answered first, naturally.
Well. We all know the tale of Rose Red and Snow White, do we not? From which one may gather that one was coarse and the other fine, one dark and the other fair. One might have been considered pretty, even in this company. The other—
—the other, not so much.
It was winter by then, which made things harder. Winter settles hard upon us all in this inhospitable place, am I mistaken? For when the light grows thin and the nights long, there is very little to amuse one’s self with, aside from sleep. Or hunting when the hunger takes you, which is often enough.
The people at the inn, also hungry—some of you here amongst them, no do
ubt—tried their hand at hunting as well. But when one does not know the territory, c’est difficile. The girls watched their distress mount, counting down the days to their grandmother’s return, and I think that it must have seemed to them that without their aid the men and women of The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise must surely pine and die like bear-cubs woken too early, beaver kits trapped in an icebound lodge . . . for they were tender-hearted creatures, as all girls are. Yes, indeed.
Almost as much so as they were also born hunters, long-used to watching and waiting while prey struggled deeper and deeper into its own trap. To check for signs of struggle in the snow or drops of blood in the underbrush, for the uneven prints of some weakened thing, for whatever Nature herself might have selected—pre-ordained, in her own magnanimous way—for them to cull.
* * *
The Feast of Stephen, Saint Stephen’s Day, has long been set aside for charity. So that was the day our two sisters set out for the inn across the lake, bearing gifts with which to barter their welcome: furs they had cured themselves, berries and fruits they had stored, a goodly portion of meat left over from their own store-room.