For a long time Hans lay in bed, not moving. He couldn’t sleep. He thought about the Schwarzwald. He thought about standing before the trees in the Road and not being able to go in. He thought about Mossbeard’s eyes burning in the sky.
Below him the house lay deathly still. It was late and all were sleeping. From time to time Hans heard a creak as Mother or Father or one of the girls turned in their beds. Not Granny though, she never made a sound – sometimes it was as if she wasn’t even there. Other sounds came in from outside: a patter of feet from some prowling beast, the low of the cow, the wind creeping out of the trees or the leaves muttering.
Tomorrow he would have to walk under those trees. Couldn’t he get out of it? But how? Hide in the wood-shed – but Father would find him. Win Mother to his side – but how many times had she wished him gone out of the house? He couldn’t believe his bad luck. It was his birthday! His birthday!
Tap … tap-tap … tap…
Neither dreaming nor waking but somewhere in-between, he heard a little sound across the room. Tap … tap-tap-tap … tap. It wasn’t rain on the roof. Tap-tap. He listened to it, awake under the blanket, his eyes shut. Where did it come from? Tap … tap… He drew down the covers and opened his eyes.
A little starlight glinted through the crooked window across the room. A dark shape blotted out the panes. The shape moved and Hans fancied it looked like a crow. But it was bright green and bigger than any crow Hans had ever seen in his life. It pecked at the glass and made the tapping sound.
Tap-tap-tap-tap!
The starlight shone in the bird’s eyes. There was a small white spiral-mark over its eyes, but the rest of the crow was so bright and green that Hans could see nothing in its feathers, wings, or breast.
‘Go away. Go away, bird!’
But the green crow wouldn’t leave. It perched at the window and rapped its beak against the glass like a man knocking at a door, knocking and knocking and never stopping until he got inside. And such men never come with happy news.
Hans shivered. There was something weird and wicken-like about the giant crow. Hans pulled the covers back over his head. His warm breath shuddered up his face. Once more he heard the crow. Tap-tap, tap … tap. Would the thing never leave? Tap! Tap-tap-tap! The creature might even break the window-pane and come into his room.
He lay quite still. Tap … tap … tap…
At last it seemed to end. Hans waited. The moments grew. He peeked out from under the covers.
The starlight shone through the glass. The window was empty. The crow was gone.
Outside he heard singing.
Hans slid out of bed.
The window now hung half open. Chill night air flowed across the floor. Hans leaned into the sill and ducked outside.
Yellow lanterns came down the Road, swinging on long poles. Men bore them – wretched, dirty men. Their clothes were tatters and filthy rags. Their hands, arms, faces and beards were black with grime. They were the Charcoal Burners whose Road it was. They trudged down from their haunts deep inside the Schwarzwald, dragging carts behind them heaped with the charcoal they made to sell in Mutterbad town.
The Charcoal Burners were the lowest men in all the realm. The poorest of the poor, the Charcoal Burners couldn’t afford to live anywhere but in their huts deep in the woods. When the winter froze hard and food was scarce, the Dimmerthal farmers said, ‘At least we’re not burning charcoal.’ The farmers mistrusted the Charcoal Burners. They called them thieves and worse. But Mother pitied the wretches and if they came by when she was yet awake she never failed to give them some fresh water, a crust of bread, and maybe some milk.
Twice each month, at the full and the dark of the Moon, the Charcoal Burners hauled their loads down their long Road to Mutterbad town and traded for whatever poor goods they might bring back. Huddled under the walls outside the city gates they would drink spirits until the drunkenness overtook them and they lay about in the mud like foul beasts. When the fit passed and the drink ran out they took the Road back to their lairs in the Black Forest. They always went by night, being too ashamed, as Father put it, to show their wretchedness in the Sun’s bright light.
Below the house the wheels creaked and groaned in passing, and the Charcoal Burners sang a low sad song. In the night’s stillness their voices carried up to Hans as clear as if he walked among them. At first he couldn’t make out a single word they sang. It was as if their song came from another land or else it was unthinkably old. But as Hans closed his eyes and listened, the words shifted and slid and began to make a sort of sense:
We come to ply our trade again,
We come to burn and murder men.
How many snows have melted now,
How many lives wound up in beds,
Without a scream, without a blow
To break their bones and crush their heads?
We come to ply our trade again,
We come to burn and murder men!
The words so startled Hans that he blinked open his eyes. And he saw that not only had the voices changed with the words in the song but the men also had changed, and not for the better.
The long poles on whose ends the lanterns dangled now were spears and pikes, pale and sharp. The tattered clothes were plates of steel and linked mail such as soldiers wore in the long ago. The men’s faces showed now not misery but malice. Their noses were long and crooked from breaking. Yellow stained teeth jutted from their mouths. Their ears thrust out from beneath iron caps. Swords swung at their sides, and daggers, notched and darkly stained, crowded under their belts. Their wagons were filled not with charcoal but with cutlasses and muskets and swarming with black rats. Never had Hans beheld a more vile or murderous gang.
They had just passed under the attic window and the foremost men were already turning up the Road when the last man halted. He looked straight up at Hans.
‘He’s seen us and he heard our song! He sees us as we truly are!’
‘Never mind him!’ came a shout from the front. ‘He’ll get his – tonight!’
The man below the window grinned a great wicked grin so his sharp teeth pointed straight up. He winked at Hans and drew his finger across his throat. Then he spat on the grass beside the house. His spittle fell dark and red in the pallid, gray-green starlight. The wicked little man laughed, and jogged after his fellows.
Hans stared after him. ‘Ugh!’ he said, and shuddered, though not for fear. He had liked their song even after its sense came clear. And he had felt for a moment as though he’d rather like to go with them. The thought of breaking bones and crushing heads had seemed like fun.
The last wagon vanished around the corner of the house. Hans crawled out the window onto the roof after them. From the house roof to the roof of the wood-shed was an easy drop and he had done it many times, sneaking out from his room after Mother banished him to the attic for his latest prank. He dropped down to the ground.
At the bend in the Road he gazed up Dimmerthal valley.
The face of the Road, packed from ages of feet, hooves, and wheels, lay hard as ice beneath his feet. From over the brow of the fields a faint yellow glow shone far away. Murmurs of the song drifted down from there. The men, if they were men, had gone.
It was a fine Summer night. The heavens blazed overhead with a thousand stars. The Schwarzwald was a tangle of black threads out of which a few tendrils of fog were creeping. Starlight glinted on the Devil’s Cathedral. There before Hans rose the wicked old tree, the Mankiller from whose branches a Prince had hanged to death.
Under the big oak Hans fancied he saw where Lost Souls Path began.
The Devil’s Cathedral was made up of tall oaks and firs that stood like the columns in a cathedral. No one could say how it got its name, but all agreed that the Devil’s Cathedral stood at the head of Lost Souls Path.
Lost Souls Path was a legend in Dimmerthal valley. Men said it wound deep into the Black Forest, all the way to where the Old Man in the Woods lived. If a man were lucky enough to find Lost Souls Path, and could follow it to the end, he would find enough gold coins and jewels to line his pockets and be as rich as a Baron. But if his luck ran out anywhere along the path, even for a footstep, then he would lose his way and never find it again. And he would wander like a ghost through the Schwarzwald, never to go home.
Hans looked closer to be sure of what he saw. The Mankiller’s heavy branches drooped over his head. As the tree emerged from the fog, Hans saw for the first time that there was a knot-hole in the oak-trunk with something hanging from it. It looked like a falconer’s glove with a silver band about its cuff.
Hans reached out and took it.
For a moment he felt the glove in his hands. The leather was supple and soft and yet as strong as iron, like something he’d known a long time ago. Even so it felt strange, like something, something…
Suddenly he remembered.
‘Ach! No!’
He dropped the glove. He stared at it as if it were a serpent at his feet.
Had he forgotten his Dream? How could he do it? What had he done?
He was standing at the entrance to the Devil’s Cathedral in the Black Forest, on the far side of the Road. He whirled about and looked back at his old life far away.
The little lonely house stood as always. In one window the eight candles burned for the Old Man in the Woods but the mug of cream stood empty and only a few crumbs from the cake were left on the plate.
All at once the candles died. Their flames never flickered, it was simply that one moment they were burning bright and the next moment they were out, and the window was a black square in the house’s face.
Something pushed up in the ground beneath his foot.
Hans stared down, sweating.
A thing like an arm, long and dark, was growing between his feet. It stretched across the Road to the house, seeking here and there. The thing split into two further arms, then three, then eight. It looked like a young tree casting out branches. But it grew as fast as a man could climb a ladder. In moments the branches reached the window to his attic room. The branches clawed at the open window and crept inside.
Other trees were growing up around the house. The wicken-things burst up out of the Road and yard. Their branches twined about the wood-shed. They split Father’s tool-shed in two and wreathed about the house like ivy. They moved too fast. Hans had to jump aside as they sprang up about him. The branches clutched and grabbed him.
Crack! The attic wall burst open. Great black branches sprang out through the splintered wood. More branches broke through the rooftop. The house was cracked to pieces, shattered by a hundred branches that tore it from inside and out.
He smelled the nasty stink of burning hair and heard two high squeals. He knew his sisters’ voices.
‘Gerta! Guda!’ Hans started toward the house but roots caught his feet and tripped him. He sprawled across the Road.
He heard a drawn-out groaning, mounting to a cry.
‘Uhhhh – ahhhh – ai–’
It was his Mother’s voice.
‘Mother!’
The cry rose to a scream. Hans struggled to rise against the roots and branches.
‘Eeee-ach!’
The scream cut off, sharply, dreadfully. The squeals died too.
‘Mother! Mother, I’m here!’
He fought the branches off and got back on his feet. He pushed toward the house. The wicken-trees grew thickest there. They rose over his head as thick as hedgerows all around.
‘Mother! Father! Help!’
No answer came. By now he could scarcely see the house through the tangled mat of branches, leaves, and trunks. He squeezed through two trees, wriggled under a mass of branches. It was like crawling through briers. There was no way he could reach the house. Wicken-roots and wicken-branches wove about him. They grew thicker and thicker, tightening and squeezing. He wormed through the largest opening he could find, a thing no bigger than his fist. Scratched and bleeding, his nightshirt in tatters, he tumbled at last out onto open grass. He lay there gasping.
A new tree sprouted underneath him. He leaped aside and raced away. He ran up the Road. He didn’t look back.
When he could go no farther he fell onto the grass, panting and wheezing and shaking all over.
