'It's funny when you look back at it,' she mused at the steaming log.
He made her wait. 'What is?' he growled, uninterested.
'Our childhood. The only thing we're famous for. Our fifteen minutes.'
He grunted. 'Oh, that.'
'Is that all the wood we've got left?'
'There's plenty more out there. Miles and miles of it. You know where the axe is.'
'Hans, you're a great fat pig. I don't know why I put up with …'
'Yes you do,' he replied, his little babyblue eyes fixing her suddenly with dislike.
* * *
Peas in a pod they were, identical fringes and a slight dimness about the eagertoplease round little faces, tasty morsels indeed.
* * *
I don't know what Vati would say if he could hear you now.'
'Well, he can't. He's brown bread, not gingerbloodybread. And you do know. Nothing. He never said a bloody thing.'
'He tried to stand up to her.'
'Tried!' A snort of disgust. 'Fat lot of good it did us. He was terminally weak.'
'The old block, then.'
'What?'
'You the chip off of.'
'I don't think so. In fact, I was the enterprising boy hero, the perfect little male role model.'
'You were good at lying.'
* * *
Witch. Now let's think about it. No, let's not. A witch is a witch. All the signposts up and running. Well no, not running but pointing, that's what signposts do, but you know what I mean. Admittedly there was no mention of pointy hats or broomsticks, but really. For credibility's sake at least, couldn't they have made me more 'normal'? Would have been far more convincing if I was supposed to be hoodwinking the kiddywinks. A nice-looking, mumsy sort of person, that would have done the trick. Instead we have this delightful ageist-uglyist stereotype. Great. And the words they put in my mouth. So upfront - I'm going to fatten, butcher, cook and eat him. Not much room for doubt there.
Look at my dear sis. All she had to cope with were a few cabbages, a dumb tart with a hair problem, an even dumber 'hero' with a less than rudimentary knowledge of birth control, and they called her Mother Gothel, her with all the maternal instincts of a sea slug. Besides, she's 100% Disney, wart and all, and you can't go much lower than that.
Didn't even deign
to give me a bloody name.
* * *
'And you were good at crying. All the bloody time, sobsobsob blubblubblub.'
'I had to, it was the weepy wimpy girly role I was given. That's the way the two old gits set it up, and that was apparently what the punters wanted in the early nineteenth century.'
'How do you know? We haven't reached the nineteenth century yet. And we never will. We're timeless.'
'You can say that again. And you probably will. Again and again and again.'
* * *
Nobody's mentioned me so far -- directly, that is -- and I don't want to stay as just 'her', though I, too, have been blessed/cursed with no name, so I'd better say my piece.
'Unnatural' mother they'd call me. Well, what would you expect? Stuck there on the edge of nowhere, with him … Only managed it twice, after a bottle or two of kirsch with his equally half-witted chums, and look at the result -- two angelic-looking boobies destined to appear in a so-called 'fairy' tale. But who believes in fairies, and in any case, where are they when you need them?
Added to which, those two jokers threw in a couple of famines for us to cope with, thereby providing a convenient justification for my unnaturalness. And by the end, of course, I had conveniently died. That would have been my choice if I had been writing the thing, believe me.
* * *
'Is that the last log?'
No reply. 'So I suppose we'd better go up soon,' she continued.
'Up? There is no up. This is a woodcutter's cottage. Remember? There's this room and that room.'
'You know what I meant. It's what real people say. Up the wooden stairs to the Land of Nod.'
'Doesn't sound very real to me. Anyway, what do you know about real people?'
'I'm real. You're real. We're real. This' -- she waved an arm vaguely to include everything -- 'is real.'
'If you say so. Depressing, isn't it?'
'It's what we've got. I'm used to it now.'
'You took your time. If you're going up, as you real people call it, don't forget to warm my side of the bed.'
'It's all your side of the bed. You've expanded over the years.' She caught a glimmer in his eyes that meant he was trying to word a hurtful retort. 'All right, I'm going. But I can't help feeling there is something wrong with the ending to our story.'
* * *
Hello. No-name (the first one) here again. I could give myself one if I wanted. A name, I mean. After all, I'm a figment, so I can do whatever I want, or rather whatever the person who is writing this down allows me to do, which is pretty much anything I choose, because I don't think he'd dare stop me, but I really can't be bothered. Besides, I think anonymity gives one a certain mystique.
I can't help sympathizing with little Margarete (sadly she's not so little now, though nowhere near as porky as her indolent bruv). Her/their ending must be a let-down all round, but it's rather more plausible than the version put out by that pair of so-called folklorists (or Volkskundler as they would have styled themselves, their English being resolutely academic): suddenly two innocents (well, our Marge is not that innocent; she's just done a spot of witch burning) are faced with a pile of jewels that they can't do anything with in the middle of nowhere with not a pawnbroker's in sight -- and even if they could have popped them there was nowhere to spend the readies -- and a duck conveniently but unfeasibly big enough to transport children, and a neatly dead stepma. And then it all ends with inconsequential abruptness: "They lived together in perfect happiness." As we have seen, there is some room for doubt here, but old Jacob and Wilhelm believed in giving the customers what they wanted, so that is what they got.
* * *
The log collapsed on its ash and embers and Hans replied: 'The story ends how it ends. We're stuck where we are, where we were. The ending was in another country. No, it wasn't; it was in no country at all. It was somewhere in Mitteleuropa, at no time at all, except nightmare time, a time outside real dreams and real waking. And besides, the witch is dead. Until next time.'
