Fräu Trude
There was once a little girl who was obstinate and inquisitive, and when her parents told her to do anything, she did not obey them, so how could she fare well?
One day she said to her parents, “I have heard so much of Fräu Trude, I will go to her someday. People say that everything about her does look so strange, and that there are such odd things in her house, that I have become quite curious.”
Her parents absolutely forbade her, and said, “Fräu Trude is a bad woman who does wicked things, and if you go to her, you are no longer our child.”
But the maiden did not let herself be turned aside by her parents’ prohibition, and still went to Fräu Trude.
And when she got to her, Fräu Trude said, “Why are you so pale?”
“Ah,” she replied, and her whole body trembled. “I have been so terrified at what I have seen.”
“What have you seen?”
“I saw a black man on your steps.”
“That was a collier.”
“Then I saw a green man.”
“That was a huntsman.”
“After that I saw a blood-red man.”
“That was a butcher.”
“Ah, Fräu Trude, I was terrified. I looked through the window and saw not you, but, as I verily believe, the Devil himself with a head of fire.”
“Oh-oh,” said she, “then you have seen the witch in her proper costume. I have been waiting for you, and wanting you a long time already. You shall give me some light.”
Then she changed the girl into a block of wood, and threw it into the fire.
And when it was in a full blaze she sat down close to it, and warmed herself by it, and said, “That shines bright for once in a way.”
Anything to Me Is Sweeter Than to Cross Shock-Headed Peter
BRIAN HODGE
Concerning the brownstone building where they were housed, it was said that the sun had never once shined on the place in all the days and decades it had stood, and whenever the rain pelted it, it was always Arctic cold. And this was fitting, for it had been a terribly long time since the sun had shined on their lives, if ever the sun had blessed their unhappy countenances at all.
They were not children for sunny days and parks, for paddle boats and picnics. God, no. These were children for hailstorms and the roughest of back alleys, for shipwrecks and for plagues.
They still had their uses, of course. To visit them was to see the future, a destination at the far end of an ill-advised road, and know that all was not too late. To look at them was to know that for most any other child in the world, not nearly so far gone as these, there was time to turn around and mend their wayward ways.
And so, dim and dreary though the place may have been, people found their way there. Eagerly. By the car-full, sometimes even by the busload. Tours ran once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and—all the better for sending a child to bed with fresh nightmares—once in the evening. Pay your admittance to the stern-faced Mr. Crouch at the door, or more likely the even sterner-faced Mrs. Crouch, and the tour began. You could linger as long as you liked, anywhere you wished—sometimes extra minutes were needed to drive a point home for a particularly stubborn or stupid child—although tarrying too long was likely to mean missing part of Mr. Crouch’s helpful comments further along the way.
Peter had been listening to the man’s spiel for such a long time that he figured, should Mr. Crouch take sick, or better yet take a tumble down some creaky stairs and snap his wretched scrawny neck, Peter himself could take over without missing a beat.
He listened now—his ears were exceptionally keen—and hardly a word differed from the time before, and the time before that.
“This sullen little fellow’s name is Caspar,” Mr. Crouch’s voice floated up from below as the tour began with Caspar’s room. “And you’ll not find a more fitting name for the likes of him, because if he keeps up his habits, he’ll waste away to a ghost, just you wait and see.”
“What’s wrong with him?” asked some faceless woman. “He looks acceptable.”
“Decided he was too good for the food he was being served. His poor parents had such a time trying to get a morsel down him, he might as well have bolted his own mouth shut. So what could they do but bring him here, eh? He was a healthy boy once. A plump boy, you might even say. But look at him now.” There was always a pause for drama here. “Show ’em your ribs, boy. Show these nice folks your ribs.”
And here there always arose a gasp.
“Like to try and feed him, would you?” Mr. Crouch asked someone.
“No, no, that … I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” the someone demurred.
“Nonsense. Here you go, just try and offer him this. See what it gets you.”
Now there was a clatter and a clang, the door within the door opening, just wide enough to admit something that was too big to fit between the bars. Like, for instance, a bowl.
Peter knew what was to come. Only it didn’t. Not today. It happened like that sometimes.
“Say your line, boy,” growled Mr. Crouch. “Say the line!”
“‘Take that nasty soup away!’” cried Caspar, but his heart wasn’t really in it. It happened like that, too, sometimes.
There was another clang as Mr. Crouch chuckled. “See? Told you. Incorrigible, that one. He’ll be dead within the month, I give him.”
Mr. Crouch had been giving Caspar a month for years.
“Which brings us to Pauline,” said Mr. Crouch, amid a shuffling of feet, then came another great swelling gasp that didn’t even wait for a prompting from the sour old man. “Liked to play with matches, she did. Even the kitties knew better, but not her. And you can see what it’s got her. Looks more like lizard than girl now, what with all the bits the flames took.”
At this point, Mr. Crouch would toss her a matchbox containing a single wooden match, no more than that, lest she get up to old mischief and give everyone much more than they’d bargained for.
“That’s it, dearie,” he would say. “Let’s see that trick of yours.”
A scratch, a pop, and then a hiss. Sometimes another collective gasp, other times a group groan.
“Now, don’t you folks fret none,” Mr. Crouch soothed. “She can’t feel a thing. If that blackened lump of tongue has got any nerve endings left, I’m the king of Siam.”
The herd moved along, as herds always do, clumping up the stairs to the next floor, and as often happened, as they gathered around the next door of the tour, people began to complain that the room must be empty, that they couldn’t see anyone.
“Is that so?” said Mr. Crouch. “Look harder, why don’t you.”
Slowly, slowly, came murmurs of recognition and approval.
“Them three there, they don’t stand out much anymore. Thought it was grand fun to have a mean little laugh at folks with skin, let’s say, a few shades darker than their own. Well, darker than their own used to be.” Mr. Crouch always treated himself to a mean little snicker of his own here. “Dunk these lads in ink, and about all you can make out of ’em now is the whites of their eyes. I expect you could see ’em better if they’d smile, too, but we’re still waiting for that to happen.” He banged on the bars of the door to their room. “Don’t got much to smile about these days, do you, you miserable lot!”
The tour proceeded along the halls and up more stairs, and by now somebody was usually crying, maybe a great number of young visitors taken over by weeping and sobs, and the promises, oh, the promises—Peter had heard every promise a frightened child could make, a thousand times over. Promises to be good, promises to be better. Promises to never do it again, or to remember to do what was expected.
Next there was Philip, a fidgety boy who couldn’t sit still, and banged around his room until he was a mass of bruises almost as dark as the Black Boys, post-ink.
And there was Flying Robert, who’d foolishly gone out with an umbrella during a frightfully windy storm, and was swept away. Even mor
e foolishly, he’d refused to let go of the umbrella, until up up up he’d been carried, aloft among the rooftops, then dumped back to the hard streets when the wind tired of him as surely as his parents had tired of caring for such a feeble-minded lad.
“Bet you good people didn’t know arms and legs could bend that way,” Mr. Crouch, ever helpful, pointed out.
Then came Frederick, liked by nobody, even among the otherwise friendless few beneath the roof of this place where the sun never shined and the rain was always cold. Frederick was mean and cruel, spiteful and vicious, to every living thing on four legs and two. With anyone else, Peter would’ve felt the greatest of pity every time he heard Mr. Crouch turn the dog loose to harass him, and fight for the sausage that the wailing boy never got to eat … but with Frederick, Peter made an exception.
At last the tour arrived next door, one room over, almost done.
Here Mr. Crouch turned sly. “Wave to the nice folks, Conrad. That’s it, lad. Give ’em a nice big wave. Both hands, now.”
Coming from next door as they did, the gasps and cries belonged to people now, not a crowd. They came from fathers and mothers, from girls and boys, in voices high and low. There was always at least one tyke screaming by now. Always.
“What happened to him?” some pushy mother begged to know.
“You can’t hold it against babies that they suck their thumbs. But there comes a day when a youngster’s got to give that up. Not for Conrad, though. His parents said they practically had to take a crowbar to pry his hand from his face,” said Mr. Crouch. “In a case this bad, best to remove the temptation altogether.”
Some grim father muttered as if he couldn’t decide whether he admired this or not. “Whoever would do such a thing?”
“Snip-Snap, he’s called. You don’t want a visit from him.”
And then, a most unexpected thing, almost certainly the most unexpected thing that had ever happened here. Up piped the voice of a young girl, betraying no more than honest curiosity: “What kind of scissors did he use?”
“Jenny!” barked a voice, dripping with a mother’s shame and scorn. “What kind of question is that?”
“What?” Jenny sounded plainly ignorant of her crime. “I just wanted to know!”
Mr. Crouch grumped and grumbled the way he did when he seemed to feel he’d lost control. “Sharp ones,” he said, and made a few quick shearing sounds. “That answer your question, you nosy thing?”
“You’ll have to forgive her,” the mother begged. “But she’s paying attention, and that has to be good, right? Most of the time she doesn’t even notice what’s in front of her at all.”
“You don’t say,” mused Mr. Crouch. “I know the type, all right.”
Order was restored, and all was well with the tour again, with just enough tears and blubbering to confirm that points were getting across and lessons being learned, but not so much so that people couldn’t hear what Mr. Crouch had to say next.
“And now we’ve saved the worst for last …”
On the other side of the bars, they came into view: a herd of staring eyes and craning necks, knees and shoulders and stamping feet jostling for position, grim-faced grown-ups shoving their progeny forward to look and learn. And though he supposed he should’ve, long ago, Peter had never wholly grown accustomed to the first wave of revulsion that rippled over their faces. It was the same every time—they peered in, then recoiled—and every time, it stung.
“Hard to believe, I know, but that’s a boy there, under all that mess and tangle,” said Mr. Crouch. “Just look at him! Guess he had better things to do than take care of himself so that he was the least bit presentable. Yep, them there are his real fingernails. Got so long by now the grimy things are starting to curl. And if his hair’s ever once met a comb, I don’t know of it. Shock-Headed Peter, we call him. The most slovenly boy that ever was. Even I can barely stomach the sight of him. Anything to me is sweeter than to see Shock-Headed Peter. And don’t get me started on the stink between hosings.”
Through the bars they stared and pointed, and he glared right back at them, and for as much as he hated the place, he couldn’t imagine leaving. Because in all the time he’d been here, and the innumerable visitors who’d filed past his door, not once had he seen a father or a mother who looked like someone he would want to go home with. Even if they’d have him.
“Let’s be moving along, now. Children need their rest. You’ve seen what you’ve seen and I don’t imagine you’ll be forgetting it anytime soon,” Mr. Crouch said as he began to sweep the herd toward the stairs. “But just in case the little ones do, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you responsible folks about the pretty little picture books we’ve got down where you first came in. Guaranteed to bring it all back again. For their own good, of course. Just see my lovely missus about that and she’ll get you fixed right up.”
Peter turned his back on them as they clomped along the scarred wooden floor, to wait until they were gone. More often than not, he wondered how they would react if they knew that the sight of them disgusted him probably every bit as much as the sight of him revolted them.
“Pssst.” A hiss of sound, soft enough to go unnoticed by grown-up ears in the thunder of their ponderous feet. “Psssst.”
He turned and the day changed yet again, for now this was the most unexpected thing that had ever happened here.
No one had ever stopped to talk. Never.
“You don’t scare me,” whispered the curious girl, Jenny, as she peered in, pressed against his door, her fingers curled round the bars. “You don’t scare me at all.”
Then she was swept along with the rest, out of sight and out of hearing. But not out of his thoughts, because he had the feeling that he’d be seeing her again.
And so it was, and so he did. Jenny was back in less than a week.
But this time she was not here to learn. Someone must have decided it was too late for that. Instead, she was now here to teach. She was, same as the rest of them, here to be the horrible example of her very own self. She was here to stay.
Mrs. Crouch brought her up in the middle of the night. The cold, wee hours of darkness were when new arrivals were brought in, and those who were no longer working out taken away. Night, after all, was an informal time, between tours, when room doors were unlocked, and they all had the run of the residence … although not the lobby below, and the separate rooms down there they’d never seen, which Mr. and Mrs. Crouch called home.
The only spare rooms Peter knew of were across the hallway from him, and that was where Mrs. Crouch brought her. Because they were free to roam, and because this was an event that did not happen very often, the children from below followed the pair up. Lots of feet on lots of stairs, but still, Mrs. Crouch, her feet as wide as waffles at the end of her elephantine ankles, was the only one who made much noise. They’d all learned to tread quietly here, even Cruel Frederick.
“I would like to introduce you to Jenny,” whinnied Mrs. Crouch, as red-cheeked and stout as her husband was whey-faced and lanky. “Some of you may remember her for her unconscionable interruption of one of last week’s tours. What kind of scissors, indeed! But the most appalling thing of all is that she doesn’t yet appear to recognize that a tragedy has just befallen her. Can you imagine?”
She always had a look of distaste about her, did Mrs. Crouch, as though some invisible prankster were holding a stinky finger beneath her recoiling nose.
She was, however, telling the truth. With neatly combed dark hair and curious dreamer’s eyes, not only was Jenny quite clearly not scared, not of Peter nor of anyone else here, but she looked like a girl who believed she was on a great adventure.
“So I trust that the lot of you will waste no time in setting her straight on the matter,” said Mrs. Crouch, then checked her watch and tut-tutted about the time. “Sleep well, good urchins! Or don’t. It’s all the same!”
With that she was gone, flights of stairs protesting in her formidabl
e wake, until at last they heard the final clang of the great barred door down below and the jangle of keys.
They all gathered around Jenny, this pristine new arrival whose crimes and sins against grown-up sensibilities were in no way obvious.
“What’s wrong with you?” Conrad, whose absence of thumbs marked his misfortune at a glance, was first to ask. “You don’t look wrong.”
“Yeah,” sneered Cruel Frederick, and gave her shoulder a poke. “You don’t belong here. You’re not one of us.”
Jenny frowned at her shoulder, then at Frederick. “Don’t poke me again. If you do,” and here she pointed at Conrad, “you’re going to draw back a hand like his.”
A hush descended over the hall. No one had ever stood up to Frederick. Ever. They’d merely learned to live with his insults and bullying until he tired of them and went away.
“And then where will you be?” Jenny said, not nearly through with him yet. “Just an imitation of Conrad, only not as good. So what use will they have for you then? Because you can’t even make a proper fist anymore.”
Confusion knit itself all through Frederick’s thick and sullen features, until he seemed to realize he had no choice but to wave her off with a grumble and another sneer, and retreat back downstairs to his room.
Unheard-of.
“I don’t know,” Jenny said, returning to Conrad and his query. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t think anything was. I just know what my family thinks is wrong with me.”
Peter found himself crowding closer. They all were. Conrad and Caspar, the Black Boys and Pauline, and even Fidgety Philip had calmed down. All but Flying Robert, who’d never made it up here in the first place, because his poor smashed legs didn’t handle stairs well, or walking in general, for that matter.
“Jenny-with-Her-Head-in-the-Clouds … that’s what they’d call me. They only thought I wasn’t ever paying attention.”
“Oh,” said Pauline, solemn and grave. “They don’t like that. They hate that.”
Fearie Tales Page 30
