Hans opened his eyes. He was lying in his bed in his attic room. Mother sat over him chafing his hand. Father stood at the door.
‘How are you, my darling?’ asked Mother.
Father touched her shoulder. ‘Go back down now, Mother. The girls will be wanting you.’
‘But what about Hans?’
‘Oh, he’s all right. Aren’t you, my boy?’
Hans nodded. It was true. At least, his parents looked themselves again and his room seemed as it should be.
Mother shook her head and sighed. Father led her to the door. ‘He was tired from being out all day, that’s all. Come morning he’ll be jumping down the stairs again. You’ll see.’
She cast a look back at Hans and he nodded to her. She smiled but her eyes kept their troubled look. Then she left.
Hans sat up. He felt as though he were a little boy again. He noticed that his feet stuck out beyond the end of his bed. ‘A game?’ he asked.
Father shut the door and gave Hans a long look. Hans sank lower under the blanket. From the chest, without a word, Father drew the chessboard and the box with the men. He laid the board on the blanket and sat at the foot of the bed. Hans took out the carven chessmen and set them on the board. He felt Father’s eyes on him but didn’t look up.
White fell to Hans, and the first move. He sent a soldier onto the battlefield. The carved wooden knights and soldiers cast wavering shadows across the board in the candlelight. He saw Father’s black soldiers standing against him in a wall. It made him shiver.
‘Father, how does a fellow cut wood? Is there some trick to it after all?’
‘Never fell a tree that isn’t willing, and aim your axe only where the wood tells you.’
‘Is it so little as that?’
‘Yes, as great as that. Few men learn it. And fools find death soon enough in the Schwarzwald.’
‘Is the Forest evil?’
‘Evil,’ said Father, moving his knight. ‘Why would you call it that?’
‘All the farmers call it so. And there are tales…’
‘Tales, now. Tales, is it? I’ve gone into those woods since I was far younger than you. My Father took me in and taught me what trees to cut and what to leave alone. Some day I’ll show you also. There’s little to fear in the Schwarzwald. Not for one who knows what he’s doing, and what a man is allowed to do, and what he is not.’
‘But Lost Souls Path, and Devil’s Cathedral, and the other names they tell.’
‘I’ll teach you all about the Lost Souls Path and the Devil’s Cathedral some day.’ Father set his Bishop to tear down the White Castle. ‘Mind you, I won’t say there are not troublesome things in the woods. Long ago they were worse. But I won’t call even the wicken-things evil.’
‘Father, tell me about wicken-things!’
‘Hush, boy! Do not speak that name lightly. Most of all at night with only one small candle between us and the dark.’
‘But you said–’
‘There is in truth a wildness about the Schwarzwald, a wildness old and deep, and greater than men can fathom. And it little likes being mocked by humble folk like us.’
Father looked out the little crooked window as though his eyes could pierce the blackness into the Forest beyond. Hans sat watching him. Father almost never spoke so much.
‘Here, I’ll tell you a tale from long ago, Hans. Maybe it will help you understand.
‘A long time back, before the Crusades, before Carl the Great, before the Kaisers ruled in Rome, a great army came here out of the East. They had strange names and were half giants, and laid waste to every land, burning and killing all before them. They made slaves of the women and children and killed every man. They beat the Greek knights, they beat the Roman knights after the Greeks. It seemed they would trample every land under the Sun, until they reached the Schwarzwald.’
‘They came to Dimmerthal?’
‘No, not here. I don’t think it was here. You must understand that in those nights the Black Forest was greater than it is today. Many leagues it stretched, from the mountains West to Burgundy, North up the Rhine to the sea’s hemline, and far out East to the grasslands where the Sun wakes up each dawn. No Greek would set foot in the Forest back then. No Roman would. Nobody dared go far into the Schwarzwald in those nights, not even the witches. The trees stood ten times taller than they stand today, and wilder, and … unsafe. Unkind. Unholy.’
In his mind Hans saw the Forest like a vast cruel kingdom stretching far away across the Earth, as Father’s deep voice spoke on.
‘The East-men didn’t know the Schwarzwald. They had crossed many forests in their wanderings and to them the Schwarzwald was just another forest. So they drove their carts and wagons and cattle and slaves before them and marched into the shadow of the trees.’
Father’s words were full of sadness and loss. He sat quiet a while. At length Hans asked, ‘Well, what happened then?’
Father turned back to Hans. Were there tears in his eyes? For a moment Hans was sorry he’d spoken.
‘What happened? Well, after that, the East-men burned no more lands. Their threat went with the winds. Ten thousand soldiers marched into the Schwarzwald, twenty thousand, maybe a hundred thousand – numbers beyond counting. A handful came out the far side. Only a few. And those few were haunted broken men, stricken with a sickness that left their bodies whole but scarred their immortal souls. They died soon after they came out in the sun. The local people – that was North of here, not close by – they wouldn’t even bury them. They were too afraid. They piled up deadwood instead, and heaped the bodies on top, and burned them all. Even that proved unwise. For where the smoke and ash from those bonfires fell, the fields turned barren, the cows gave sour milk, and the farms were all forsaken.’
The attic room was still. Hans could hear the wind dancing on the roof like the feet of hanged men dangling from a gallows-tree. Across the Road he heard the branches muttering among themselves.
‘It’s your move, Father, time’s up.’
Father grunted and moved a soldier. Hans moved his last Knight.
‘You’ll regret that move,’ said Father. ‘You left your Knight in my Queen’s reach, and now she’ll have him.’
Hans watched his Father make his move. Then he moved his Castle. ‘That’s check, Father.’
Father stared at the board. ‘Well so it is. I don’t see any way out for me.’
‘There isn’t any.’
Father toppled his King. ‘I didn’t even see that move.’
‘Father, how old are you?’
Father frowned. ‘Well, now, let me think. I was born in the nineteenth year of good Prince Ulrich’s rule. So to most men’s reckoning, I count … thirty-four winters in my life.’
‘So old?’
‘Thirty-four, and seven more make forty-one! But I’ll tell you that tale when you’re older.’
‘I saw an odd old fellow in the woods today.’
Father looked to him. ‘What kind of man?’
‘He stood in the tree-shadows. He was tall and thin, his garb was blackish-green, and it seemed as though it waved a little in the wind, like the trees were waving. His garb and hat were blackish-green but his face was pale and narrow, his hair and beard were silver, and he wore a big green belt pulled tight about his middle.’
Father clutched Hans by the shoulder. ‘Is that truth, boy? On your word?’
‘Yes, it’s true … on my word! Stop, you’re hurting…’
Father let go. His eyes were bright as if with fever. A light sweat shone upon his brow. ‘That was Mossbeard himself. But what could the Old Man in the Woods want with you? And why did he come so close to the edge of the Schwarzwald? Did he say anything?’
Hans shook his head. He thought Father was taking this game too far. ‘He said he was old. Something of the sort. That’s all.’
‘Hm. Well, he is not called the Old Man for nothing. Still, it’s odd. Mind you say nothing of this to Mother.’
‘I won’t. Why should I? It was only a dream I had.’
‘It’s uncommon enough that Mossbeard lets anyone see him. And at your age … ah! what am I saying, you’re not my little boy anymore, look at you – how you’ve grown! Where do the years go?’ Father picked up his King and turned it in his hand.
The black carved wood looked small in Father’s palm. Hans knew that if Father wanted to, he could crush the wood to splinters in his grip. But Father only set the pieces back into the box. He put the box and board away and took the candle.
‘Good-night, Hans.’
‘Good-night, Father.’
‘And Hans, no more shouting at table, eh?’
‘No, Father. But don’t Uncle Ludvig and Uncle Gunter shout at table?’
‘Your uncles live in the woods, Hans. We show better manners here.’ He halted at the door. He was still facing it, turned away from Hans, when he said, ‘Hans, tomorrow we mark your seventeenth birthday. One and seven make eight, and eight is late.’
‘Eight is great, you mean.’
Father turned to face him. ‘When I was seventeen, already I had worked at my Father’s side for four years. And that is how long since I ought to have taken you to work with me. I’ve done you a bad turn, putting it off, and for what?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘You will later on. Later on you’ll blame me for it – and you’ll be right. Enough! No sense weeping over a felled tree. Tomorrow we’ll go into the woods and begin your lessons.’
‘But … it’s my birthday!’
‘We’ll call it your birthday gift, then. How about that, my boy?’
Hans couldn’t believe it. ‘I don’t want to,’ he said.
‘Hans, I’ll be at your side. There’s nothing to fear.’
‘I’m not afraid! Who said I’m afraid? I’m not afraid of anything. I just don’t want to.’
Father sighed. ‘A man does many things in his life he doesn’t want to. We do them all the same, and so will you.’
‘I won’t go. I won’t!’
‘You’ll have to, I’m afraid.’
‘You can’t make me.’
‘You can’t stay a boy forever, Hans.’
‘Why not? I can do whatever I please.’ But he remembered his foolish words to Granny and he blushed.
Father’s jaw tightened under his beard. His eyes narrowed. Hans slid down a little under the blanket. But Father made no move toward the bed. He lifted the door-latch.
‘We’ll see,’ he said, and went out.
Hans sat in darkness, hearing Father’s heavy shoes tramp down the stairs.
