The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales

by Emily Brewes

  Enkil was not a stupid man. Yet greed does strange things to us all. At the mention of riches, he stopped and turned to face the girl.

  “What manner of riches?” he asked.

  “The kind that may only be shown,” she replied.

  She watched from hooded eyes as his avarice overcame his wisdom. He mounted his horse and turned it ’round, saying, “Be warned, farmer’s daughter, that if you intend trickery, you will regret it most sharply.” So saying, he rode back up the road to the inn to wait on the appointed time.

  And so it went that at midnight Enkil rode into the clearing that was once the temple yard. From the way he swayed in the saddle, it was clear he was more than a bit drunk. Little Tigerskin watched him from the top of the temple steps where she lay hidden. She had told the tiger when to meet his supper but had not seen him yet.

  Enkil dismounted and began striding about the clearing, calling for his betrothed. It was clear the liquor had somewhat softened his attitude toward her, for he cried most needfully.

  “Little Tigerskin! I am here! The night is cold, so come and embrace your husband.”

  The girl rose from her hiding place. When Enkil’s eyes lit upon her, they became bright as two stars. But no sooner was this done than the tiger sprang from his own hiding place, landing on the man and killing him in one blow. In a trice, there was little more on the ground than a pile of bones and the blood-soaked rags that were his clothes.

  The tiger licked his lips and said, “I can only hope they all taste so well as that one. Take his horse and use it as your own.”

  This the girl did. She sold the fine saddle for a set of hempen traces and a dented plowshare. She used it to till and sow her fields just in time for the rains to start.

  Within a fortnight, the next son came looking for the rent and for his elder brother. This was the middle child, clean-shaven and wary. He had no time for a woman’s wiles. Luckily, Little Tigerskin had Enkil’s horse, which his brother Ahmet recognized.

  “Here now! How did you come to have this horse?”

  “Oh, sir! I found it wandering near the ruined jungle temple. With no saddle and no markings, I could not tell from whence it had come. I thought it a gift from the Gods, for my father is gone and the fields needed tilling.”

  “Show me the place where you found it,” demanded Ahmet.

  “I will, sir. Only give me the day to make sure the way is not flooded. Stay here if you like. I haven’t much, but what I do have is yours.”

  Ahmet was not a stupid man, but he appreciated her manners and her hospitality. And so he obliged her request.

  “If you are not back by sunset,” he warned, “I will have you hunted down by the raja’s army.”

  Little Tigerskin ran to forewarn the tiger, then returned to the landlord’s second-born.

  “The way is clear, sir. Come with me that we may be back before the rain begins anew.”

  To save her legs, Ahmet let her ride next to him on his horse. They arrived at the clearing in record time. At once, Little Tigerskin slid to the ground and went to stand at the top of the temple steps.

  “Here is where I found the beast, and thus did I think it divine,” she told him.

  Meanwhile, Ahmet had spied the shreds of his brother’s clothes and bent down to look at them. No sooner had he done this than he, too, was slain and eaten. Another pile of bones and rags was left for the jackals to have at.

  “Well done, well done,” crooned the tiger. “Another sweet supper like that and I can die a happy creature. Go now; take this horse also and use it as you may.”

  Less than a week passed before the exercise was repeated, only this time with the landlord himself. Being a naturally suspicious man, he said to his youngest son, “I will go and see what has become of your brothers and of our money. Should I not return, you must not follow. Instead, call down the raja’s army and tell them there is witchcraft afoot. They will avenge our family.”

  Lord Ranjosh arrived in the dusty forecourt on the finest horse Little Tigerskin had ever seen. He called out for someone to greet him, which the girl obliged.

  “Where are my sons, for those are their horses?” he inquired, pointing to the hitching post.

  Little Tigerskin ducked her head, saying, “They came by, one after the other, and asked me to keep their mounts while they attended some business at the ruined temple in the jungle. Neither one has returned since.”

  “Show me where you mean that I may find some clue as to their fate.”

  “Oh, sir! I dare not enter the jungle, for that temple is haunted. If you do not know the way, it is merely a matter of following the trail of sweet amaranth that grows along the path.” So saying, she pointed to a low-lying plant crowned by dusty purple flowers. “They flourish nowhere else around here.”

  Lord Ranjosh nodded curtly before spurring his mount away to the wood. Once he was out of sight, Little Tigerskin mounted one of her own horses and took off at speed to find the tiger. Breathlessly, she told him to make haste for the clearing.

  “If the landlord sees his sons’ remains and leaves this place alive, he will surely send for the raja’s army, and they in turn will burn this jungle to a cinder to kill you.”

  Away went the tiger, and home went Little Tigerskin, walking the lathered horse. She did not see the landlord die but heard one cry of alarm from the distance. Then she heard only the stony silence that surrounds a predator in the jungle.

  DOGGO FELL ASLEEP before I finished, so I was just telling the story to myself at that point. I felt like the tale wanted to be told. I felt it like a presence in my mind. Or like a crouching tiger, waiting to pounce if I could no longer soothe it.

  The story, the story, the story! It demanded telling, but who knew how it ought to end? Perhaps a happy reunion between father and daughter. Or maybe a tragedy where everybody dies and no one is redeemed. I looked inside, playing for time. The tiger’s eye glinted like gold in dark water and it smiled at my struggle.

  “If you want a story so bad,” I informed the tiger, “you finish it!”

  Silently, the tiger began grooming its paws. Great pink tongue covered in tiny pink knives, combing the deceptive softness of its front feet. With the totality that only a cat can muster, it ignored my very existence.

  Fuck.

  Back at her home, Little Tigerskin fell to the floor and wept. She did not mourn the landlord, nor his sons. She wept to quench the fire of guilt at her part in their deaths. She wept for the barren, stony plain of loneliness her life looked onto. No father, no mother, no sibling, no spouse.

  “Why do you weep, Little Tigerskin?”

  Thinking the voice was the tiger’s, she confessed her guilt. “I fear my soul is so laden with karma that I’ll never escape. I haven’t the heart, nor the mind, of a tiger. Gobble me up and have done with it — save your gift for one who is worthier of it.”

  Then a gentle hand touched her shoulder, causing her a fright.

  “You’re not the tiger,” she exclaimed.

  It was true. No tiger but the landlord’s youngest son stood before her. He was a slender boy, beautiful in aspect, with dark eyes that shone like beads of pitch.

  “I’m not. My name is Vilesh. And while I do not condone what has been done to my family, I likewise lay no blame at your feet. Clearly, the tiger used you to fill his belly. Come with me and stay in my house. Be wed if it pleases you, or remain in leisure if it does not.”

  Little Tigerskin leapt up from the floor and embraced Vilesh tightly. Then together, they made their way back to the lord’s manor, there to live out their days.

  Several days passed before Little Tigerskin’s father returned to his farm. He’d had quite the set of adventures himself and was grateful to have made it back to his own door. Within, instead of a thankful daughter, he found a sleeping tiger.

  “Ah, me! This beast has eaten my only child and now thinks to reside in my home. Devil take him, for he has thought wrong.”

  So saying, he
clubbed the beast on the head with the handle of his shovel (which was his only remaining possession), then slit its throat with the blade. Going to the shed for tools to flay the tiger and tan its hide, he found two fine horses. They were hungry and thirsty but otherwise fit.

  “What the Gods take, they give again,” he concluded.

  THICKER THAN WATER, THINNER THAN MILK

  OLIVIA NEVER WANTED to leave Dad. From the moment we departed, she kept trying to sneak back to the house in Trout Creek. Trailing behind until she was out of sight. Or waiting until we were asleep for the day and just outright heading for the hills. It might have been funny if we weren’t so aware of the peril. Little arms pumping, the look of grim determination on her tiny face. Hair plaited in pigtails with ends clipped into tiny plastic butterflies.

  About the third or fourth time she took off, Mum went ballistic. It took us hours to find her, because she turned out to be hiding in a culvert full of thick, foul-smelling mud. Screaming, in tears, Mum gave Olivia the business about how dangerous it was and how irresponsible she was for sneaking away.

  My sister just glared up at her, a six-year-old pillar of defiance. She was Dad’s kid, always following him around the woodshop or traipsing through the woods for hours, going nowhere in particular. That stare was like a wall that needed to be broken down before Olivia would do as she was told.

  So Mum hit her.

  Jaw set, she threw one cold crack across her daughter’s face. Olivia was knocked off balance. Mum caught her, but Olivia wrestled free and ran over to hide behind me. I was nearly knocked over by the stink she brought with her. They stared at each other for one tense moment, then Mum turned away to sit by the fire, back to us.

  I didn’t want to get involved, but as usual I didn’t get a choice in the matter. Jesse Vanderchuck: eternal monkey in the middle. Parking Olivia on the edge of what had been a concrete fountain in somebody’s backyard, I gathered up a wash rag, a towel, and a set of clean, dry clothes. While I helped clean the muck off her, I did what I could to patch things up.

  “Hey, kid. It’s okay. Mum’s just tryna keep us safe, you know?”

  Olivia glowered at me, rubbing the slap on her face that was starting to glow it was so red.

  “You leave on your own,” I went on, “we can’t go back for you. You could get attacked by bad people, by a bear.”

  “What about Dad?” she shot back. “He’s on his own. He’s not safe!”

  “Well, that’s no call to put yourself in harm’s way. Think it’s smart to rescue somebody by jumping off a cliff?”

  Her chin started to quiver some, but she just clenched her jaw and turned her glare on the ground. Looking at her was like looking at a reflection of our mother. The same set on the same jaw, only smaller.

  “Maybe Dad’s not safe on his own,” I conceded. “There’s nothing you can do about that. Besides, think about this: what if he’s on his way here now, and you take off and get yourself killed. Or worse. How’s he gonna feel then?”

  One fat tear struck the dirt with a wet splat. Olivia sniffled and snirked as the dam of her resolve broke into a flood. Tiny hands swiped at her cheeks in a hopeless attempt to staunch the flow. There was nothing to do but let her cry it out.

  It took a bit for her to wrestle enough control to ask, “Doesn’t he miss us?” Instead of looking up, she continued staring at the ground.

  I put an arm around her and pulled my sister close. “’Course he does,” I assured her.

  She looked up at me. The tears in her lashes made them dark. “Then where is he? Why hasn’t he come to find us?” Some thought occurred to her then. She didn’t voice it, nor did I, but I saw it flare in her eyes like the proverbial lightbulb. Maybe the worst had already happened to Dad, at home or on the road to reach us. The mortar adhering the bricks of her defiance crumbled in response. The wall inside fell. She collapsed, hugging her knees and wailing.

  I tried my best to comfort her, but I felt removed from any sense of tragedy. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about Dad. There was danger in the land and in the weather, though if there was one man who could survive it, it was our father. As for us, it didn’t feel like we were escaping to the Underground. We were like a trio of ants scurrying from an approaching thunderstorm to a hill that was destined to be flooded.

  Besides, leaving Dad seemed something of a mixed blessing. I loved him, but I can’t say I liked him very much. He was hard to like if you were different from him, and I might as well have been a Martian as his kid. I enjoyed ideas, while he was enormously practical. High-falootin’ versus hands-on. There were a couple of attempts made to bridge the gap. To take some lofty ideas and give them physical shape; to conjure their objects from the thin air of thought. I was frustrated that he misunderstood me so thoroughly, and he was put out that I wouldn’t even try.

  In the end, we arrived at a live-and-let-live stalemate that included avoiding all but the most cursory of contact. Nods and monosyllables at the breakfast table, punctuated by the occasional row over chores or whatnot.

  Now he was gone and all I felt was a space. Not sorrow, not joy, just vastness. An ocean of distance between here and home. A hollow shape where he used to go in the puzzle of daily life.

  I rubbed the spot between Olivia’s shoulder blades that helped her relax. When her tears were calmed, she lay down with her back to the fire, and to Mum, and pulled the blanket over her head. I went to sit beside Mum.

  She was staring into the fire, wringing her hands hard enough to look painful. “Jesus, what’s wrong with me?” she asked after a long silence.

  With calculated detachment, I told myself I ought to put an arm around my mother’s shoulders but some kind of teen awkwardness held me back.

  “It’s not you,” I tried to reassure her. “Everyone’s stressed.”

  She laughed. I’d never heard her utter a sound so bitter as that. The floating sensation I felt was suddenly jolted by a tether of worry.

  “Your father,” she began but bit off whatever else she had to say about him. She picked up a stick and stoked the fire.

  I took her hesitation for worry. The stubborn man she’d married had stuck his feet into the mud of the land and wouldn’t see sense. Same as Olivia, from a different angle.

  “He’ll be fine, Mum. He’s gonna find us when he’s ready.”

  Now it was her turn to cry. Silent tears slithered down a face growing more careworn by the day. She pushed them away with shaking hands. All these tears weren’t helping the surplus of rain.

  “Okay!” Mum declared, standing sharply. “Let’s get some food in us and get going.”

  As I helped her prepare a thin meal of broth and crackers, I wondered if the ability to switch emotional gears like that was an adult thing, or solely the domain of those who became parents.

  Olivia was coaxed over by the smell of cooking. She hovered by the edge of the firelight until Mum strode over to press her in a tight hug that lasted several minutes. Then they both came to sit and eat.

  We didn’t talk about Dad after that. He may as well have been dead. At least the dead are remembered. And Olivia stopped running away, at least until she grew old enough and wily enough to do it properly.

  I GUESS IT TOOK a week to remember the envelope Mr. Metzler had given me. I’d been tired, and my thoughts were scattered. Doggo and I had angled northward, looking for the lift my family had taken into the Underground. It was a tough journey, made no easier by my decision to skirt around the larger settlements. One thing that struck me was how few people we saw. Sure, the Underground was extensive, but thousands of people had come to live here. Where were they? Why was there so much unsettled, empty space?

  As though in answer, we found what we were looking for.

  We arrived to find the whole of the lift-shaft area derelict, piled high with the kind of sleeping pallets homeless people used to make — a sight I only knew from the movies. There were murmurs punctuated by the occasional rumbling cough, the shifting of an ail
ing body under piles of filth-crusted blankets and crumbling tarpaulins. This was a place where people came to die.

  The lift itself had been dismantled, replaced with a large scaffold-cum-bunkbed. Sheets of milky plastic hung like curtains around much of it. Light filtered in from above where the lift-shaft had been roughly boarded over.

  I hustled us out of there as quickly as I could, moving at a speed fast enough to stay ahead of my fear but not so fast that Doggo couldn’t keep up. I took us far enough away that guilt began to overwhelm terror. Sure, they were dying — probably infectious — but they were people, weren’t they? Once part of a family, or at least of the human family. It felt wrong to abandon them, but then there was nothing else I could think to do. If this dreadful hospice existed in the Underground, it did so under the watch of the authorities. Who could I tell? More to the point, who would care? Life was hard enough down here. No need to complicate it with death.

  We headed east. There was another northern trunk tunnel we could try for, though it had been more heavily guarded back in the day. There were lots of towers that way, so immigration was strictly controlled. And we didn’t exactly have papers of passage.

  We settled down to camp in the open. Not ideal, but I desperately needed to rest. The nightmare at the lift had exhausted me, and that was on top of walking all day. I sat and dug through pockets and my backpack for something to burn. There wasn’t anything that needed cooking. I just wanted to drive the chill from my bones that lingered from our encounter with that tower of death.

  I found the envelope. It had my name on it, written by my sister. Inside were pages and pages of her wide, loopy half-script. Much of it was dripping with angst, but the gist was that she had gone to find Dad. We weren’t to come looking for her, unless we wanted to help her in her search. It was important that our family be reunited. A second envelope, inside the first, was addressed to Mum. After reading its contents, I used that as my kindling. It was just as well Mum wasn’t around to read it, and if I ever found Olivia, it would probably just embarrass her. Teenagers say such careless and hurtful things.