The Wild Girl (50 page)

‘But despite all her care, a thread of light touched the prince and he was transformed into a dove. The dove said to her, “For seven years I must fly about into the world. Every seven steps I will let fall a drop of red blood and a white feather. These will show you the way, and if you follow this trail you can redeem me.” Then the dove flew out the door. She followed him, and every seven steps a drop of red blood and a little white feather fell down, showing her the way.

‘When seven years were almost passed and the girl thought she must soon be reunited with her lover, the dove disappeared. The girl climbed up to the golden sun, followed the moon’s silver path and called to the four winds, and at last she discovered her lover. He was once again a lion but was fighting to the death with a serpent, who was truly the daughter of a
sorcerer. With the help of the wind, the girl was able to save her lover and return him to the shape of a man.

‘But the sorcerer’s daughter whisked him away, and the girl learnt they were soon to be married. Undaunted, she followed him and, with the help of gifts from the sun and the moon, was able to break the spell on him and win him back from the sorcerer’s daughter.

‘From that time on, they lived happily until they died,’ Dortchen concluded, and she got up to hang the gleaming bridle on the wall. Her heart was twisting inside her. When she had been a little girl, ‘The Singing, Springing Lark’ had been her favourite story. She had vowed that she too would follow her one true love wherever it took her, even to the ends of the earth, following his drops of blood and his fallen feathers.

‘That was the most beautiful story I have ever heard,’ Wilhelm said. He wiped his quill clean, then got up and stretched. Dortchen stepped away, pressing her back into the wall. ‘I like it much better than “
La Belle et la Bête
”, which is a French tale that’s rather similar. It does not have the girl’s quest, though, or the celestial gifts. It is just the sort of tale I wanted.’

‘I’m glad,’ Dortchen said, in a low voice.

He took a step closer towards her, his eyes intent on her face. ‘She was very brave, that girl.’

Dortchen could not reply or look him in the eye, so she dropped her gaze to his mouth.

He smiled and reached for her. ‘Just one kiss,’ he murmured, his breath brushing against her skin, making it tingle. ‘I’ve been able to think of nothing else.’

She raised her face to his, unable to resist him. She had loved him for so long that it seemed impossible to stop. He kissed her, and Dortchen poured down before him like golden silk unravelling.

The sound of the door handle turning flung them apart. Dortchen paled and made an urgent movement. Wilhelm bounded over the rail and into the pigsty, pressing himself against the wall just as the door opened and Herr Wild came in. ‘Dortchen, whatever are you doing out here for so long?’ he demanded.

‘I … I was mucking out the stable,’ she said, taking the rake into her hand.

‘You’ve not made much progress,’ he said, his eyes narrow and suspicious. Dortchen could feel from the heat in her cheeks that she was blushing furiously. In the corner of her eye she saw Wilhelm’s writing box, sitting half-packed on the barrel. She took a few quick steps forward, hiding it from her father’s line of sight.

‘I’m sorry. I’m … I’m not feeling well.’

Her father’s expression changed. ‘You’re feverish? You do seem hot. Do your limbs ache, and your head?’

She nodded.

‘May the Lord save us,’ he cried. ‘I had hoped you would be spared. You must come back to bed immediately.’ He came forward and took her arm, and she tried not to flinch.

Meekly, she allowed him to lead her from the stable, closing the door behind her. She felt strange, giddy and light-headed, with a hot, melting sensation deep in her pelvis that unsettled her. She allowed herself to be put to bed, and drank the willowbark tincture her father gave her. But she could not rest. Her limbs twisted back and forth in the bed and she kept replaying the scene in the stable over and over in her head – the feel of Wilhelm’s mouth on hers, the touch of his hands on her body, his body pressed so close to hers that every inch of her skin had been branded with its fire.

In the middle of the night Dortchen woke from a dream in which a man’s body was looming over hers in the darkness, holding her down, forcing her. She was shaking, her breath panting, her skin sticky with sweat. Was it her father in the dream, or the man she had loved since she had first laid eyes on him?

Dortchen did not know. She did not dare sleep again, and lay with hot eyes till dawn.

THE BEAST WITHIN

January 1813

For three days Dortchen stayed inside, creeping from one task to another, so confused by all she was feeling and thinking that it was hard to frame a response to her mother’s inconsequent conversation, or to remember how many cups of flour she had already put into a bowl. Then it was Sunday, and she knew she would have to go to church and see Wilhelm in the crowd. The thought frightened her, but her father felt her forehead and her pulse and pronounced her quite well.

As always, church was an ordeal. The sermon dragged on far too long, and afterwards the congregation stood about in the icy wind, exchanging meaningless pleasantries and wild rumours. Most of the talk was about the food shortages, and how any of them was to survive the winter.

‘It makes me wish I had a magic porridge pot, like the one in that story you told me,’ Mia said to Dortchen.

‘I don’t know that story,’ Jakob said, turning from where he was talking to Louis and Marie Hassenpflug. Wilhelm turned too, and Dortchen’s traitorous blush gave her away to all who stood near. She tried to regain her composure.

‘I thought everyone knew that one.’

Wilhelm shook his head, his face grave. ‘Won’t you tell it to us?’ he said.

‘It’s a simple enough tale,’ Dortchen said. ‘It’s about a poor little girl
who lived alone with her mother, and they no longer had anything to eat. The girl went into the forest, where she met an old woman who gave her a little pot. When she said, “Little pot, cook,” it cooked sweet porridge, and when she said, “Little pot, stop,” it stopped. The girl took the pot home to her mother, and they were freed from their poverty and hunger, eating sweet porridge as often as they chose.

‘One time, when the girl had gone out, her mother said, “Little pot, cook.” And it did cook, and she ate until she was full. Then she wanted the pot to stop cooking but she could not remember the right word. So it went on cooking, and the porridge rose up and poured over the side, filling the kitchen, and the hallway, and all the rooms. It kept on pouring till the street was full, and every house on it, as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world. No one knew how to stop it.

‘At last, the little girl came home and said, “Little pot, stop,” and it stopped cooking, and anyone who wished to return to the town had to eat his way back.’

They all laughed. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a pot like that,’ Lotte said. ‘Though you’d get sick of porridge after a while.’

‘I must write that down,’ Wilhelm said. He bent a little closer to Dortchen. ‘Could I …?’

She shook her head, not looking at him.

‘When?’ he whispered. ‘I must see you.’

The others were all laughing and talking about what kind of magic pot they would like. One that produced beef stew, Louis Hassenpflug said. No, a different meal every time, his sister said.

Dortchen stared straight ahead. ‘Not at the house,’ she whispered.

Wilhelm was silent for a moment, thinking. Lotte turned to him and asked him what he would want a magic pot to produce. He flashed a quick smile and said, ‘Porridge at breakfast, soup at lunch, then roast goose at dinner,’ which made everyone laugh again.

As the little group began to break up, ready for the walk home through the snowy streets, Wilhelm turned to Dortchen, bowed and doffed his hat, then said quickly, ‘Meet me at the orangery on Friday afternoon.’

He did not need to tell her the time. They both knew the exact moment at which Herr Wild would close up his shop and walk to his church elders’ meeting; the old man was as reliable as a clock.

She did not nod or smile, but her eyes flashed up to meet his before she turned away. It was not just Herr Wild who was watching her and Wilhelm, she knew. Many in the congregation had a long nose for scandal and shame.

The following Friday, Dortchen drew her coat close about her and made her way swiftly down the steep, icy steps to Aue Island. The park was deserted but for a lone man strolling by the frozen river, his dog trotting behind him.

Wilhelm was waiting for her by the entrance to the marble bath, his hands thrust into his coat pockets. ‘You came. I wasn’t at all sure you would.’

She nodded.

‘Is all well? Were you suspected?’

She shook her head. ‘I said I was unwell. Father thought I was feverish.’

He crooked a smile. ‘I certainly was. Dortchen, I’m sorry. I seem to have no self-control where you are concerned … I shouldn’t have kissed you.’

‘I don’t believe you were the only one doing the kissing,’ she answered, not looking at him.

He grinned, and she could not help but smile too. ‘Shall we walk? It’s too cold to stand here.’ He offered her his arm and she slipped her hand in the crook of his elbow, and they walked down a snowy path between tall evergreen hedges.

‘I’m so glad … that we’re talking again,’ he said, finding his words with difficulty. ‘And for the stories … and, yes,’ he burst out, ‘for the kiss. It’s been a whole year, since that day in Hanne’s summer house. A whole year of longing for you. Dortchen, what are we to do?’

But she did not want to talk about the future. It was too dark and unimaginable. She squeezed his arm. ‘Tell me about the book. Have you had any better reviews?’

A shadow crossed his face and he shook his head. ‘Even Arnim says he thinks the book would have been better with fewer annotations and some
illustrations. He said his daughter loves some of the stories, especially the ones with rhymes, but that he cannot bring himself to read others to her.’

Dortchen thought about the maiden with no hands, and the girl disguising herself in the fur of flayed animals, and thought she understood why. ‘Couldn’t you add some more rhymes into the stories, then?’

‘I’m not meant to change them,’ he said. ‘We decided we would only record what was told to us, so we could keep the stories as close as possible to the original – except that, of course, it’s so hard to decide what the true original is. We heard so many different versions of the same story.’

‘Well, that’s to be expected,’ Dortchen said. ‘Each time I tell a story, I change it just a little. Like the little rhyme in the story about the brother and sister and the gingerbread house. That just came to me one day, so I said it, and Mia liked it so much that I kept it in.’

‘I wonder if that’s one of the rhymes that Arnim’s daughter likes?’

‘Of course it is! How many other rhymes are there?’

‘How did it go again?’ Wilhelm screwed up his face, trying to remember.

‘Nibble, nibble, little mouse, who is nibbling at my house?’ Dortchen said. ‘Mia always loved that part. It would be easy enough to add another rhyme in answer to it.’

‘Would it?’ he said, teasingly.

‘Of course.’ In a high-pitched voice, she said, ‘It’s the wind so wild, the heavenly child.’

‘Did you just make that up?’

‘I did.’

‘You’re a natural born poet,’ he teased.

Dortchen swatted him. ‘Still, I don’t see why you couldn’t add a few more little rhymes like that to it,’ she said. ‘And some illustrations. You could take out the nastier stories, like that one about the murderous sausage. That’s enough to give any child a nightmare.’

He smiled absently, his mind far away. ‘Perhaps …’ he said. ‘Arnim told us that Clemens … Clemens himself said …’ Muscles clenched in his jaw.

‘What?’ Dortchen asked, after he did not go on.

‘Clemens said you can display children’s clothing without it being all
dirty, with the buttons torn off and the shirt hanging out of the pants.’

There was such hurt in Wilhelm’s voice that Dortchen reached out both her hands and pressed his arm between them. ‘He’s just jealous. He wanted to collect old tales himself but was too lazy. You sent him all your stories and he lost them, remember.’

‘I know, but …’

‘Your book is wonderful. One day you’ll be famous. Everyone will say to me, “Is it true you knew the famous Grimm brothers?” And I will fan myself and put on airs, saying, “Indeed, they lived right next door to me. I used to make them bread soup.”’

Then Wilhelm said in a gruff voice, ‘One day people will say to me, “Is it true your wife told you all those marvellous old stories?” And I’ll say, “Yes, indeed, that’s how we fell in love.”’

There was a long silence. Dortchen was so choked with tears that she could not speak. They spilt down her cheeks, and Wilhelm put up his bare hand and wiped them away.

They had walked down the length of one of the pathways. The park stretched away on the other side, empty and white, the view framed in bare black branches. Nearby was a stand of old yew trees, their evergreen branches casting a deep shadow on the snow. Wilhelm drew her into the shade, and his mouth found hers. Soon her hands were at the back of his head, dragging it closer.