Meanwhile, the little granddaughter grew up with no one to love or care for her or even clothe her properly. Only the old nurse, if no one was around, would give her some leftovers from the kitchen or a torn petticoat from the ragbag. But the other palace servants would force her from the house with pokes and pinches and cruel comments. They called her ‘Tattercoats’ and jeered at her bare feet, till she ran away crying and hid in the garden.
In this way, Tattercoats grew up, with not much to eat or wear, wandering the fields and meadows with not even a pair of shoes. Her only companion was the gooseherd. When she was hungry or cold, he would play to her on his pipe, so merrily that she forgot her troubles. Tattercoats danced to the gooseherd’s pipe, with his flock of geese as partners.
One day, the people began to talk excitedly about a splendid ball that the King was giving in the town nearby. The King was travelling the land with his only son, who was to choose a bride and all the lords and ladies of the county were to be invited.
Sure enough, an invitation was delivered to the palace by the sea, and the servants brought it to the old Lord, who still sat by his window, shrouded in his long white hair and weeping into the river that was swollen by his tears.
But when he heard the King’s command, he stopped crying and dried his red eyes. He told his servants to fetch shears to cut him loose, because his hair had tied him up like bereavement’s prisoner and he could not move. Then he sent them for his finest clothes and most impressive jewels and dressed in them. He ordered them to put the gold saddle on his white horse so that he could ride out splendidly to meet the King.
Tattercoats had heard all about the exciting events in the town. She sat crying by the kitchen door because she could not go. When the old nurse heard the girl’s distress, she went to the Lord and pleaded with him to take his granddaughter to the King’s ball.
The old Lord scowled and told her to hold her tongue, while the servants roared with laughter and said, ‘Tattercoats is happy in her rags, playing with the gooseherd, and that’s all she’s fit for!’
A second time, and then a third, the nurse begged the Lord to take the girl to the ball. But she only received black looks and dark words, till she was pushed out of the room by the sneering servants.
In tears by now, the old nurse went looking for Tattercoats – but the cook had swept Tattercoats away with a broom and she’d run to the gooseherd to tell him how unhappy she was over the King’s ball.
The gooseherd listened, then told her to cheer up. He said that they should go together to the town to see the King and all the wonderful things themselves. When Tattercoats looked sadly down at her torn petticoat and her bare feet, he played on his pipe so entertainingly that she felt better at once. The boy took her by the hand and they danced down the road towards the town, with the geese dancing before them.
They hadn’t gone very far, when a handsome young man in the finest clothes rode up and asked the way to the castle where the King was staying. When they said that they were going that way, he dismounted and walked beside them along the road.
The gooseherd began to play a low, sweet tune on his pipe. The stranger gazed and gazed at Tattercoats’ beautiful face till he fell deeply in love with her and begged her to marry him.
Tattercoats laughed and shook her lovely head.
‘You would be disgraced if your wife was a goosegirl! Ask one of the fine ladies you’ll meet at the ball and don’t tease poor Tattercoats.’
But the more she declined his proposal, the sweeter the pipe played and the deeper the young man fell in love. To prove his sincerity, he asked her to come at midnight to the King’s ball, exactly as she was, with the geese and the gooseherd. He would dance with her – rags, bare feet and all – in front of the King and the noblest in the county; then introduce her as his beloved, beautiful bride.
So when night fell, and the castle ballroom was brilliant with light and music, and the lords and ladies pranced before the King, just as the clock struck twelve, Tattercoats, the gooseherd and his flock of noisy geese came in through the great doors and walked up the ballroom. All around them, the ladies whispered and sniggered and the lords scoffed and guffawed, while the King on his throne stared in astonishment. But Tattercoats’ lover was seated next to the King and he rose to greet her. Taking her by the hand he kissed her passionately, then turned to the King.
‘Father,’ he said, for it was the Prince himself, ‘I have made my choice and here is my bride – the most beautiful girl in all the land, and the kindest too.’
Before he had finished speaking, the gooseherd began to play a melody on his pipe that sounded as sweet as a bird singing in the woods. As he played, Tattercoats’ petticoat was changed to a shining gown sewn with glittering jewels. A tiara gleamed in her hair, and the flock of geese behind her became an escort of elegant pages and bridesmaids, holding her long train.
As the King stood to welcome his new daughter, the trumpets played a fanfare in honour of the Princess, and the people outside in the streets told each other that the Prince had chosen for his wife the most beautiful girl in the land, and the kindest too!
The gooseherd was never seen or heard of again, and to this day no one knows what became of him.
The old Lord clopped home to his palace, because he could not stay at court when he had sworn never to look on his granddaughter’s face.
He is still sitting by his window, weeping his bitter tears into the river that runs into the sea.
Invisible
This lad lived happily with his parents on the edge of a village in the very last cottage before the forest began.
His mother worked in the woods collecting chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts.
His father laboured as a woodcutter, chopping up wood for furniture and fuel.
But one terrible day the father had an accident in the forest and died. The lad and his mother wept as the father was buried in a coffin nailed together from wood he had cut down himself. They grieved for two winters, but when spring came again, the lad’s mother met a new man and married him.
When his mother and stepfather came home from their honeymoon, the lad was waiting for them.
His mother ran to him and kissed him, but his stepfather looked straight through him as though he wasn’t there.
When bedtime came, the lad kissed his mother goodnight, but when he looked to do the same to his stepfather, the man ignored him and carried on reading his book.
The lad climbed the stairs and lay on his narrow bed. The moon stooped and stared at him through the window with its scarred old face. The lad got up and looked out at the forest where his father had died, where alder, ash, aspen, willow, beech, cherry, poplar, oak, birch, hawthorn, hazel, juniper, lime, rowan, pine, elm and yew whispered in the darkness; but his sorrow had hardened now and his tears were small glass stones in his eyes.
The lad slept late and when he came down for breakfast, his mother had already left to collect nuts in the forest.
His stepfather was writing letters at the table and barely glanced at him when he sat down with his milk and his bread roll.
The lad ate in silence, conscious of the small slurps he made as he drank. The air around his stepfather seemed dark and heavy, as though he made his own weather. He was a handsome man, unsmiling and strong. There were black hairs on the back of his hands. The man looked up and the lad jumped, worried that he’d been caught staring. But the stepfather said nothing, took his coat from the back of the kitchen door and went out, banging the door behind him. The lad went to the mirror on the wall and stared at his pale thin face.
A sunny day came and the lad knew there was to be a trip to the travelling fair that was on in the big town. He woke early and washed himself and brushed his hair and got dressed in his favourite clothes. But when he came downstairs, he saw that his mother had been crying. His stepfather walked past him without a word and went outside to wait for his wife by the gate. The mother couldn’t look her son in the eyes.
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p; She pressed some coins into his palm and told him that he wasn’t to come to the fair, but was to stay behind and buy himself some lunch from the village shop. They would be back late, she said, and he was to be in bed when they returned.
Her son shouted at her and chucked the coins at her feet, but she shook her head and hurried to the gate to join her husband. The lad left the coins glinting on the floor and promised himself that he would go hungry rather than spend them. He stuffed his pockets with nuts from his mother’s collecting basket and ran to the woods.
Dusk came and the forest sulked and darkened. The lad grew cold and climbed down from the branch he’d been sitting on. He made his way back along the path, passing the stumps of trees cut down by his dead father. There was no one at home. He ate some fruit from the bowl, then went up to bed. Hours later, the noise of his mother and stepfather returning to the cottage woke him. His door was ajar and he saw them go past on the way to their bedroom. The lamp on the landing lit up their faces, but they did not look in his room.
The days and weeks and months went on till spring, summer and autumn were gone and it was winter again. The lad moved round the house like a ghost and if ever he caught his mother’s eye she looked away. He had stopped going to school, but nobody seemed to notice; and when his stepfather met the schoolteacher in the village inn, nothing was said.
One day, the lad came into the kitchen for an apple and saw his stepfather standing there. The lad reached for the apple in the bowl but as he did so the stepfather’s big hand swooped down and seized it. He looked into the man’s eyes and heard the crunch as he bit into the apple, but the man strolled past him, brushing against him as though he was air, as though he was nothing.
The lad went to the mirror again, but when he gazed there he could only see the reflection of the kitchen – his mother’s empty collecting basket on the table, the man’s heavy coat hanging on the hook of the door. He leaned closer to the mirror and breathed, but the glass stayed as bright and clear as before. He pressed the flat palm of his hand against it, but although he could feel the coldness of the mirror he could see nothing of himself.
Terrified, with his heart jerking in his chest, the lad ran upstairs to his mother’s bedroom. He sat down at the stool in front of the dressing table and stared wildly into each of the three mirrors there. His face was in none of them.
He fled downstairs and into the sitting room where his mother and stepfather sat. In her arms, his mother held a new baby, carefully wrapped in a soft white blanket. He called his mother’s name, but she bent low over the baby’s head and made a shushing sound. The stepfather stood up and walked towards him, tall and brooding.
The lad backed away before him and the man shut the door in his face.
And now the lad was truly invisible. He had grown in the year since his mother had married again and his clothes were tight-fitting or too short. Since no one could see him, he put on a big old shirt of his father’s and went about in that. He left home in the morning and spent his days in the forest.
In the evenings, he returned to the cottage, taking some food – bread or fruit or nuts – up to his room and eating it there. Sometimes he stood at the side of the baby’s crib and looked down at his half-brother, but he was always quiet as he knew the child could not see him.
If he passed his mother in the house, she busied herself at something, or buried her face in her baby’s neck. To his stepfather, he was less than a shadow on the stairs. At night he lay alone on his bed, hearing his mother cry and the man shout.
Time passed. One day, as he walked in the woods, the young man, who was tall now and broad-shouldered, saw a girl of his own age sitting on the branch of his favourite tree and swinging her legs. So used was he to being invisible, that he stood and stared at her from the path. But the girl turned her bright hazel eyes on his and laughed at him.
Then she reached into the dense foliage of the tree, rustled there, and tossed him the shiniest, reddest apple in the world. He caught it low with his left hand, like a catch at cricket. Then he remembered that he had on only his father’s old shirt, which came to his knees, so he turned and ran away into the forest, clutching the apple. But the girl jumped down from the tree and chased him, and as she was a faster runner than the young man, she soon caught up with him, and she grabbed him by his shirt-tail and kissed him on the lips.
When he woke the next morning, the young man climbed up to the small attic and found the chest which contained his dead father’s things.
He put on some soft corduroy trousers, a clean linen shirt and a beautiful leather jacket, which still held the scent of wood shavings and pine. He took out his father’s watch, set it to the right time and put it on his wrist. He pulled on warm socks and good boots.
He went downstairs to the kitchen, where his mother was preparing breakfast. She stared at him and tears scalded her eyes and he knew that she saw him. But the girl from the woods was waiting by the gate and he went out to meet her.
He came home late, under the light of stars that had taken years to arrive, and went to his bed. In the morning, he went off with the girl again, and he felt his mother drink him in with her eyes as she watched him go.
After a month and a day of this, he arrived home one night and found his stepfather in the kitchen. The man looked older and smaller now that the young man had grown so tall and fit, and his black hair was greying. He shouted to the young man that he needn’t think he could come and go as he pleased, and with a shock the young man realised that the man was looking at him at last. But he pushed his stepfather easily away and went up to his bed. As he lay there, he heard the man’s yells and his mother’s wails. Outside his window, the moon scudded high up in the clouds, like a coin tossed for heads or tails.
The next day, the son woke early and for the first time made breakfast for his mother and her child and himself. As they were eating, the stepfather came in, but the son didn’t glance at him and eventually the man went awkwardly away.
That night, when the young man came home, he brought the girl with him and cooked a meal for them all, so that she could meet his mother and her child.
The stepfather came in again, just as the son was slicing up a pie, but the son ignored him until the man muttered to himself and disappeared.
Every morning, the young man rose early to prepare breakfast and each night he came home with the girl and cooked supper. He worked in the forest now, chopping wood as his father had done.
When the girl looked at him, she had love in her hazel eyes, like a light, and as it shone on him he grew stronger and more handsome.
The mother stared at her two sons and began to notice all the ways in which they were alike. There was no more shouting or crying in the house and the son resolutely treated his stepfather as though he was invisible.
The sullen man kept to himself and bothered nobody. One day he vanished altogether, taking his coat from the hook on the back of the door, and it was as though he had never been there at all. The young man worked hard in the forest to keep food on the table for the family and the girl took the collecting basket from the mother to gather chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts.
They were all very happy and as his small half-brother grew, the young man made sure to watch over him, with the light of love in his eyes.
Nine Words
A long time ago – before the invention of writing or even sign language – there was a Prince who was put under a curse by a wicked witch. He had done nothing wrong, but her evil spell was that the Prince could only speak one word each year. He was permitted to save up the words, though – so that if he kept shtum for a whole year then the next year he could speak two words, and so on and so forth.
One day he met a beautiful Princess and fell madly in love with her, body and soul. With almost superhuman effort he set out not to speak for two whole years so that he could take her hand, look at her and say, ‘My darling.’ But at the end of the two years he wanted to tell her that he loved her. So he wait
ed another three long years without uttering a peep. This brought the number of dumb years to five.
At the end of five years, he knew that he just had to ask her to marry him. So he bit his lip and endured another one, two, three, four years in total silence.
At last, as the ninth year of wordlessness ended, he took the lovely Princess to the most private and romantic spot in the royal garden and heaped a hundred red roses into her lap. Then he knelt before her, took her hand, looked into her eyes and croaked out in a hoarse voice:
‘My darling! I love you! Will you marry me?’
And the Princess tidied a strand of her soft hair behind the most beautiful of ears, opened her dreamy eyes wide, parted her soft pink lips and said, ‘Pardon?’
Wooden Maria
A King and his wife had a beautiful only daughter, Maria. When Maria was fifteen, her beloved mother became fatally ill and there was nothing to be done. Maria’s father knelt sobbing at the Queen’s bedside and vowed that he would never marry again. But his wife hushed him tenderly. ‘I must die,’ she said. ‘But you have our daughter to raise. I am leaving you this ring. You must promise to marry the woman whose finger fits the ring.’
The bleak mourning-time passed and the King began to search for a new wife. He went from one woman to another, but the ring was too big for half of them and too small for the rest. He was secretly relieved and decided to leave things as they were for now.
But one day Maria was rummaging through her mother’s things and she found the ring at the back of a drawer. She tried it on and couldn’t get it off. ‘What will Father say?’ she wondered. So she wrapped a bandage round her finger and when her father noticed she said she had cut her finger. He insisted on taking a look, undid the bandage and there was the ring! ‘Oh my goodness, Maria!’ he exclaimed. ‘I will have to marry you!’
Faery Tales Page 8
