Frightful Fairy Tales (2 page)

Generations passed and no one came to mourn the dead children any longer. The only visitors Persimmion received were young lovers who needed a place to meet in private where their parents would never seek them. She watched them kiss in the natural bowers, framed by trees while proclaiming their love.

They approached the statue with curiosity and touched her cold limbs. This was the first touch from a human being that Persimmion had ever had. If her heart had not been made of stone, it would have broken from longing. The lovers marveled at her sad expression and at the mysterious water that trailed down the long, dark stains under her eyes. Some wondered at the names carved into her, and carved their own names enclosed by hearts into the stone.

A century passed and Persimmion’s stood alone in the forest, gathering so much moss and lichen on her cold form that she was indiscernible from her surroundings. Her eyes wept ceaselessly. Through them, she watched animals return to the once-haunted place. She observed as small trout and watercress flowed in the stream that ran past her, as dragonflies and other insects buzzed around her. She marveled at all the beauty she had missed while she was alive.

The villagers had by now forgotten the legends surrounding the woods. Hunters frequented the forest searching for pheasant and other game. A careless young hunter, aiming at a stag, unknowingly shot off the first two fingers of Persimmion’s left hand.

Soon after that Persimmion saw this same young hunter bring his new wife to the clearing for a romantic stroll. The woman looked at the stream’s crystalline water and commented that it was the perfect place for the mill they wanted to build as their new home. Within a week the couple returned to begin building a new house for the family they hoped to raise there. Persimmion watched as they sadly buried one little coffin after the other, which she assumed were stillborn babies. She was happy to see their young daughter grow to the age of four but was almost as distraught as they as she helplessly watched the girl drown in the stream.

Years passed and the millers became prosperous. They finally bore a son, whom Persimmion observed through the thicket that had grown around her. As he played she heard his parents call him Gabriel. She loved him from the first moment she saw him, and she decided then and there that she would be his guardian angel. Once, at the age of five, Gabriel climbed an old tree above the brambles in which Persimmion hid. When the branch snapped, the thick undergrowth surrounding the statue broke Gabriel’s fall. As he got up, his young eyes caught hers, still weeping, but now with joy. Curious, Gabriel pulled a bit of moss away to reveal Persimmion’s beautiful face. He was instantly entranced. Just then his mother called him in for dinner, and he ran back to the house with a secret smile.

Gabriel frequented Persimmion’s thicket often as he grew. It became his hideaway. Over the years he completely cleared the statue of debris and polished it until it shone. Despite his scrubbing, he could never rid the statue’s eyes of the black stain left by the centuries of water that had run from them, water that still flowed as he worked. Gabriel wondered at Persimmion’s mysterious beauty, the sunlight caressing her cheek and breasts, and her eternal stone expression of compassion and sadness. If he stared at her long enough, her face and form wavered and seemed to have a life of its own. He always wondered how the statue came to be there and whose names had been carved into her. He had a suspicion she wasn’t a stone wrought in the shape of a woman by human hands; it seemed she had been born somehow. She seemed like an angel.

When Gabriel became a young man, he helped his father with his work and he planned to get married himself eventually and take over the mill. At night he tossed in his bed, his dreams plagued with visions of a beautiful, seductive woman at the end of a long hallway, her flowing golden hair shrouding her face like a veil. When Gabriel approached the dream figure, she pulled back her pale locks to reveal the cold face of the statue with its black trail of tears. In other dreams, she appeared to him as an angel, floating through his balcony window, kissing him and stroking his hair, bending to whisper in his ear and sing soothing songs to him.

I’ve waited for you a hundred years

I’ve watched you grow handsome through my tears.

My deepest desire is to be your wife,

To have you has my own for the rest of your life.

When he awakened, the balcony window that had previously been bolted shut was open, and the statue had resumed her position by the brook once more. He arose to begin work with his father and continued through the day listless and dazed.

This happened repeatedly for over a month, Gabriel waking from his passionate dreams in a feverish state. Finally, the miller questioned his son’s unwillingness to court any maidens of the village. But Gabriel had no interest in them and no answer for his father. After one particularly heated argument, Gabriel could stand it no longer and went to Persimmion for an answer. He fell on his knees and cried, pleadingly, “Stop taunting me. I am enamored of a statue who can never love me and become my wife. Let me free of my obsession, or 1 must leave this place and you forever.” He stared up at her beautiful face as if he expected a response. Hearing none, he arose from his knees, touched her hip, and leaned close, saying, “Good-bye, my darling angel.” With that, he softly kissed her. To his great surprise, his hand no longer felt a cold, stone hip but live, smooth flesh tinged with green. The mouth pressed against his was that of a living woman. The kiss, meant to be one of farewell, changed to one of salutation. After centuries of sadness and loneliness, Persimmion’s tears finally stopped flowing.

With a voice hoarse from years of disuse, she said to him, “My beloved Gabriel, you broke the evil spell my mother cast to bind me so many years ago. My name is Persimmion, and I have loved you all your life.”

Hand in hand, they walked to the house. Gabriel called to his father, “Come, meet the woman I love.” The father was shocked to see a beautiful young lady with long pale hair cascading over her shoulders and a wise look about her eyes. Most disturbing were the deep scars of many people’s names emblazoned on her skin, some with hearts around them, and her delicate hand missing two fingers. Gabriel’s mother could tell that Persimmion truly cared for her son and sensibly accepted Persimmion into her family.

Thus, after much rejoicing, Gabriel and his guardian angel married. They continued to live at the mill and eventually cleared away much of the woods around the house so peach trees could grow in the yard. For as Persimmion had stood there dreaming all those years of a place far beyond the wood, the world around her had changed, and her dreams had come to her.

THE DAMSEL IN THE WELL

High in the hills on a beautiful farm, surrounded by an idyllic landscape populated with a cornucopia of flora and fauna, lived the Sorrel family. Ma and Pa Sorrel were the third generation to work this land, and their hard work and prudence kept hunger and cold from their cabin door. They did well for themselves with only their small wooden farmhouse, their barn, and a couple of plow horses and chickens. The only thing missing from their life was children.

So it came to be that twin girls were born to the Sorrel family. They were christened Dulcet and Dorret. Dulcet was appropriately named, for she was sweet-tempered and quiet. Dorret was named after her grandmother, the strong woman who had settled the land they now worked.

When the girls lay in their bassinet, only two days old, their Aunt Gracie--who happened to be a witch--bestowed upon each of the girls a beautiful platinum charm necklace. Dulcet, the eldest by one hour, received a charm shaped like a W for wisdom. Dorret’s charm was shaped like an I for intelligence. Now it would be easy to tell them apart. Gwendolyn Sorrel, the proud mother of the twins, profusely thanked her sister for the lockets and sent the witch home with a dozen jars of preserves.

As the girls grew older, they began to explore the meadows and woods around the farm. When they were four, they discovered an abandoned well hidden in the underbrush near the house. The well was overgrown with weeds, and the pulley had completely rusted to a dried-blood color. Crudely nailed boards covered the opening, and moss and ivy grew around it; it made the twins think of old, dead things. As they got close to it, they heard rustling noises and water dripping far, far away. At lunch that day, Dorret asked her father, “Pa, what is that hole in the ground with strange sounds inside?”

“It is your grandfather’s old well,” he replied, “and you must be careful to go nowhere near it. It only takes a teaspoon of water to drown little girls like you, and the well is many fathoms deep.” He continued sadly. “Right after I was born, your grandmother disappeared near that well and was never seen again. She never received a proper burial, and your grandfather was so distressed that he boarded it up and could not bear to look at it again. I suppose he made that well her sepulcher.”