He unbound the rags, and a new pain gripped him as the swollen flesh puffed out beneath the wrapping. It was bigger than it had been that morning, redder and more tender. And now along with the redness the flesh was mottled blue and black.
The farmhand’s steps came up. A shadow fell down the Road across his leg. Hans wouldn’t look up. He felt close to tears.
‘The ankle, is it? Here, let me see.’
‘Don’t,’ said Hans, ‘it hurts–’
The gangly man reached out and felt the ankle. His hands were worn and rough, but their touch was gentle as lamb’s fleece. They felt the foot, ankle, and up the leg to the knee. There was no threat in the grip. The farmhand held the ankle with one hand and the knee with the other and then in a sudden move Hans felt the thumbs tighten, and the thumb under the knee slid down his shin and around to the back of his ankle. And the burning pain burst out and died away.
‘Ah!’ Hans cried out and straightened and pushed the farmhand back. He sat there rubbing his calf above the ankle.
‘It feels better now,’ he said.
‘A trick they use on the horses,’ said the gangly man. ‘They showed me how at Groening-stead.’
Hans began to wind the linen up again but the farmhand took it from him. ‘Let me,’ he said. In a few moments the ankle was bound up tight again.
‘Can you stand?’
‘I think so,’ answered Hans. He pushed on the staff, rose up a little and sat back down again. ‘No.’
‘Here take my hand.’ Hans gripped the man’s hand and pulled himself up. He stood, a little dizzy, and leaned against the farmhand’s shoulder.
‘Step by step now, lean on me,’ said the man. Hans tried a few steps. He was aware of his ankle with every step. It pained him, but much less than before. He found an easy pace, leaning on the staff and the farmhand, and the going was slow but steady. Hans found he was sweating from the pain, and wiped his brow.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s little enough beside all I owe your father,’ said the man.
Hans looked across at the fool’s face. ‘You knew my father?’
‘Ah, but who in the Dimmerthal doesn’t know the Forester? But I guess I know him better than most, seeing we lived as neighbors all those years.’
‘But you live at Groening-stead.’
‘Yes, now – and before. But in between I lived with my wife in a cabin quite near your father’s house. It stood right under the dark trees, and every day I went into the Schwarzwald to work.’
‘You were a woodcutter?’
‘Yes, well, I called myself one. Little enough I knew of the work. I grew up with the Groenings most of my life. So the woods were new to me. Many a time I felled a tree across my leg, or got my cart mired in mud, and only the Forester could help me.’
‘I never knew it. I don’t remember you at all.’
‘Well, it was a long time ago, before you were born, I guess.’
‘And how did you end up back at Farmer Groening’s?’
A shadow fell across the gangly man’s face and he looked away. ‘Oh, I was alone then, and grew tired of it all,’ he said, and he tried to make his voice sound easy, but Hans caught bitterness and pain underneath the tones. ‘I asked Farmer Groening if I could come back to him, and he said yes, seeing that the cause of the quarrel between us had ended. That was years ago, just about the time you were born, Herr Hans.’
‘What happened to your wife?’
‘But who said I had a wife?’
‘You did, you fool.’
The gangly man shook his head. ‘Oh no, Herr Hans, I never said that. You must not have heard me right.’
‘Well then, what was the quarrel you had with the farmer?’
‘Ah, that’s a long tale, for another time,’ he said and Hans knew he would hear no more about it.
Hans thought over what the man had told him. He was sure Otto had said he had a wife. Why did he now lie and say he hadn’t? And if he lied about this, what else in his tale was untrue? There was no trusting the man, fool or liar, either way. And yet what he had said about Father tugged at the boy’s heart.
Hans had always known there were other woodcutters who lived along the edges of the Black Forest. Many times they had come to the house seeking help from Father. Hans had thought nothing of it, for it had seemed like good help for neighbors as Mother called it. Now he wondered. It seemed as though all the help had gone from Father to the other men, and Father had needed none of their help for himself. Hans had never before thought of Father as a leader among them, or in any way a man better than most.
‘Your father, Herr Hans, is the finest man in the Dimmerthal,’ said the farmhand, looking at Hans as though he could read his very thoughts. ‘The best maybe in all Mutterbad too, outside the town and the knights who rule there.’
‘But he was only a woodcutter,’ said Hans. He felt now a kind of wrench inside his heart at these thoughts. It seemed to him he had a hundred questions now for Father, and a great yearning to know more about him and his life. But it was too late for that.
He went in silence, staring at the ground. He watched the staff pitch into and push the ground away and he thought about Father. He didn’t notice how the shadows filled the ground and the blue light of evening swallowed everything. Until all at once he felt the farmhand pull up sharp, and Hans stopped alongside him.
There was a stiffness about the farmhand’s body where Hans leaned against him. The man was trembling. And now Hans looked back over the past hours and knew that all that way, the gangly man had shown a growing fear as they neared the Schwarzwald. It was as though he knew more than he had let on about the woods.
Now Hans looked where the farmhand looked, and saw for himself.
In front of them the Charcoal Burners Road ran dead against the trees of the Schwarzwald. It was just as Hans remembered from the dreadful night. There beside the Road’s end rose the great birch-tree as if it had grown there for a hundred years.
‘It was true, then,’ said the farmhand. His voice quavered. ‘What you said, what you told us … it was all true?’
‘All true,’ breathed Hans.
A sick feeling hit him in the stomach, like a punch from a hard fist. He had known it, yes … but all the same he doubted it, too … and he had hoped. Oh how he had hoped that it was all a dream!
A movement high in the birch tree caught his eye.
On a branch something perched.
It was the green crow.
Hans stared at the bird’s black eyes. They seemed to pierce his brain. Then the bird scrawed and leapt off the branch.
‘Herr Hans! Look out!’ yelled the farmhand.
The green crow swooped straight at Hans. The green feathers and black eyes filled his sight. Claws opened and reached for him. He tried to duck out of the way but then the claws struck against his head.
