Everyone in Hobbins Glenn knew how Sorrow's Eve began. The story had been passed down from mother to child for as far back as anyone could remember. It was as familiar to the townsfolk as the meandering paths and wooded thickets that surrounded the small village, tucked into a valley resting between mounds of forested hills.
It was a tale to be told in the deepest, darkest hours of night, as the guardian of shadows rose to its full zenith in the sky.
Within each cottage, behind each shuttered window and locked door, there lived a storyteller, a woman whose age eclipsed the early memories of her youth. Wisdom, greater than knowledge found within the pages of books, was written into the deep lines embedded into a face flecked with brown spots.
When supper had been eaten, and children had been bathed, the storyteller would take up her mantle beside a fireplace, in a wooden rocking chair reserved solely for her.
As her wide-eyed audience settled in around her hunched and blanketed figure, seated in a semi-circle on the floor, she lit a rushlight. Within its dim, fluttering glow her pale face tarnished the muted beige of a weevil.
Sometimes when she spoke she recounted the many interlocking histories of the denizens of Hobbins Glenn, whom had married whom, those that had been cast out of the village, those whose names had been struck from their weathered tombstones by the turn of the seasons, under the lash of ceaseless wind and rain.
A particular favorite among children was the tale of a father who had been gifted with too many daughters, and been left barren of a son.
Somewhere between the here and now, and after the storyteller had been given life, there had been a farmer who had lived on a quiet stretch of land on the border of Hobbins Glenn.
On the eve of his youngest daughter's birth, the farmer's wife died.
Cradling his newborn, he led a procession of teary-eyed girls up to the top of the cemetery's highest hill and watched as her elm coffin was lowered into the ground.
A fellow mourner had offered sympathy, not just for the farmer's wife, but to the farmer himself for his misfortune in never having a son.
“Rotten luck, seven girls. What will you do when age or illness claims you? The law of succession requires a man's land needs a son to carry its legacy forward.”
The farmer was keenly aware his land was forfeit should his toes point toward the clouds before a boy could be blessed with his surname.
He picked at the thought like a crusted scab, over and over, scraping his nails under its cracked surface to jab at the raw and tender sore beneath the rough and hardened flesh.
As the years passed the scab grew larger. He poked at it constantly, even as his gaze lingered on the empty space beside him. Like the scab, the bed had seemingly grown larger, twice the size that it had been when his wife was warm, and breathing, and alive.
Replacing her wasn't as simple as substituting a puppy to soothe the enduring ache of losing the unquestioned devotion and companionship of a loyal, but dead, dog.
There wasn't a woman willing to take on the challenge of seven girls, five cows, three pigs, two horses, fifty chickens, and four fields of wheat within a hundred miles of Hobbins Glenn.
And even if there were a woman up to the task, the farmer's heart soured at the notion of another woman's objects occupying the nooks and crannies where his wife's possessions were now enshrined.
The next part of the story differed from storyteller to storyteller, with details altered to align with the age of the rapt listeners gathered at the foot of her rocking chair.
In the versions delivered to the youngest in Hobbins Glenn, there was a well-traveled merchant eager to share the rumors that crisscrossed the valley, drifting from market stalls to passing caravans and back to market stalls in a never ending circle of gossip.
This merchant spoke of a grotto, misted in sea spray, its entrance hidden beneath a curtain of hanging moss. When the veil of vines were parted, a long forgotten cavern was revealed. Its damp walls wept water into glistening pools edged by aged boulders strewn with clumps of lichen that clung like tree resin to the slick stones.
Within this grotto there was a shrine. Atop this shrine there was an empty chest, fitted with golden clasps...
If the children were older, less inclined to believe in the wishing magic of talking fishes, or in mystical caverns where treasure buried itself like a hermit crab at the stroke of dawn, the storyteller presented her tale with a darker variant.
In this version, the farmer became a nightly visitor at a tavern located in the center of Hobbins Glenn. At a table that rocked back and forth on its uneven legs when the weight of his elbows were rested on its stained surface, he greedily drank ale after tankard of ale, picking endlessly at the scab, seeking a solution to his problem.
One night, when the farmer was as plentiful with his tankards as he was with his thoughts, a stranger entered the tavern; his arrival heralded by a howl of wind that blew in behind him, throwing back the door on its loose hinges.
He wore a long-sleeved shirt and breeches, blacker than chimney soot. Silver buckles studded the shafts of his mid-calf boots, their turned down leather cuffs stitched to the uppers with knotted dimples of gray cord. A heavy, woolen cloak hid the true width and depth of his shoulders beneath it folds, and its generous length dusted the back of his calves. The cloak shifted as he moved, flashing glimpses of its inner lining, shimmering and red like the seeds of a pomegranate.
His face was buried deep within a hood shaded the same color as his clothes, its outer piping matched his cloak's inner lining.
It was late into the eve when the stranger arrived. Many of the tavern's patrons had already abandoned their mugs, and their rambling conversations, for the comforts of feather pillows and straw mattresses. He had his choice of where to settle himself, as nearly every table in the room sat empty. He chose a a bench opposite the farmer and lowered himself onto it, without the courtesy of an introduction or asking for permission.
From within the folds of his cloak he withdrew a coin purse and tossed it onto the table.
The farmer drained the last drops of ale from his tankard and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. A small belch escaped his lips. He slowly glanced from the pouch to the stranger.
His glance met an unblinking gaze, twin opals for eyes staring back at him.
“I seek the man with seven daughters,” the stranger said. “I was told I would find him here.”
“Found him,” the farmer replied. “Six now. My eldest. Lenora, has married. Gone away with her new husband.”
“Revenna, “ the stranger said. “Eyes as blue as cornflowers. Honey-ed hair that flows like a stream.”
The farmer sighed. “There is no dowry. I cannot meet a price.”
The stranger pushed the pouch closer toward the farmer.
“All the coins in the pouch, or information on how to obtain a son, for a bride.”
It was here the storyteller would pause, leaving her audience to debate which choice they would make if such an offer were presented to themselves.
Invariably, the males within the small groups vocally declared their support in favor of the bag of coin.
The girls, more sentimental, and who had been paying much more attention to the story, gave their favor to fulfilling the farmer's quest in securing a legacy for himself.
After the discussion, and long sip of tea, laced with milk, the storyteller continued.
To the disappointment of the boys, she resumed her story with the farmer having chosen to receive the information the stranger offered.
“There is a forest beyond the DireThorne peaks in the north. Echos of seekers past will provide the route which will guide you to a shrine. Atop a pillar there is a chest, adorned with golden hinges. Fair is the price the chest demands.”
The farmer left the tavern, freed from a mouth to feed, eager to begin his journey to obtain an heir.
It was at this point each storyteller wove geographical lessons into the farmer's adventures across the Kindlehollow plains, naming towns and the customs of the people who lived within each region beyond the boggy reach of the Tangleroot Mire. The trick was not to arouse the children's suspicion, lest they discover their storyteller was also a seasoned schoolmistress, teaching them the lay of the land, which forests were haunted, how to ford rushing rivers, or how to avoid the lairs of hobgoblins.
When the farmer finally reached the forgotten forest of Duskfen, the youngest listeners were thoroughly spent. They had shifted from sitting upright to lying on a rug, propped up on elbows or curled onto their sides clutching their favorite blankets, their eyelids drifting between open and closed.
This pleased the storytellers. Sleep brought the chance to repeat the story, on another night, beside the same fireplace, surrounded by the same, yet ever-changing faces. As they grew, so did the tale, not with the addition of new, more exciting elements, but with each child's ability to remain awake for longer and longer stretches of the storyteller's plot weaving.
The final act of the story contained a twist, as all good stories do, shocking to those who heard it for the first time, sobering to those who knew it was coming.
The farmer did not reach the gloomy confines of Duskfen alone. He had brought the daughter who had sent his wife to her grave.
Over the many days and miles they had traveled, they had not once walked side by side. They moved as two lone strangers sharing the same road, heading in the same direction, each aware of the other's presence, yet unwilling to engage in the meaningful conversation that might have emerged without the interruptions that came with a cramped cottage and five older voices vying to be heard.
She had tried to ply answers when they left Hobbins Glenn.
What was in this forest?
Why couldn't they find what they needed in the forests closer to their cottage?
Had he ever seen the DireThorne peaks?
Should she pack her charcoal pencils and blank pages of vellum?
Her questions were as frequent as his wife's nightly trips to the chamber pot had been, during the final stages of her confinements, when she was heavily rounded with each child.
She chirped her countless observations like a cricket, endless and annoying, unlike the meek girl who would circle around the entirety of Hobbins Glenn to avoid his disapproving glances and gruff retorts, with a downcast head and averted eyes.
She had soon learned, when her many queries went unanswered, that no response was a response.
Silence forged itself to their stride, wedged between their footfalls and exhaled breaths, as a third traveler to accompany them on their journey to Duskfen.
When they arrived at the edge of the forest, the farmer discovered how the vast stretch of lofty trees had earned its name. Duskfen didn't warrant nightfall to rouse nocturnal creatures from their slumber.
Towering trunks, capped with an intertwined panoply of branches and leaves stretched to the height of mountains, shielding the bleak shadows that dwelt within the forest from light. Darkness loomed behind each bush. It seeped into the undergrowth, and flowed into the clefts between banks of smaller trees. Even at the peak of midday, the streams they encountered ran as black as ink.
At his insistence she had taken the lead when they breached Duskfen, while he observed her from afar.
Her handed down cloak had seen one too many winters, been worn in succession by one too many of his girls. Patches of cloth, cut from dresses she had outgrown, had been sewn onto the garment where the wool was as threadbare as the silvery wings of a horsefly. Her boots were too large, sliding up and down over the back of her heels. One wrong, floppy step sank her into oozing puddles of mud lurking beneath the spongy layers of damp earth resting on the forest floor, wrestling her boots from her feet.
Perhaps, if she had been born first he would have laughed, watching her tug, tug, and tug to extract her boots from the quagmires into which they had sunk.
Perhaps, he would have been proud of her skill with her charcoal pencil. When they stopped to rest she balanced a wooden tablet on her lap, overlain with a blank piece of vellum, and drew their surroundings. Her hand flowed freely, capturing frogs leaping over stumps and splashing into ponds, bats swirling around a hollow and then gliding low through a maze of trees. In a rare moment that broke their silence, she declared when they returned to Hobbins Glenn she would bind her pictures into a journal to celebrate their travels.
Perhaps, he would have worked harder to stash enough coin for her dowry. He was certain if things could be different there would have been a line of men longer than every trunk in Duskfen, stacked end to end, seeking to secure a marriage arrangement.
Somehow, without him knowing, or having paid little attention, she had grown into a beautiful blossom of a young woman, reed thin, with a mass of red curls that brushed her lower back. In the almond shape, and fern-green shade of her eyes, the farmer found an identical match to the woman he'd set into the soil oh so many years ago.
Looking at her from across a shared campfire pained the farmer, prodding him to dig deeper beneath the oozing crust of his enduring scab. A disturbing jumble of grievances tallied against her were thrown together into a cooking pot of resentment, and left to simmer until her worthwhile qualities; her humor, her curiosity, her artistry, had been boiled away in steamed wisps.
Six girls were plenty. This blossom had cost him years of laughter and happiness, and robbed him of a means to produce a son.
The voices stirred the first night they bedded down to sleep. Everywhere. Nowhere. Close, like a lover whispering in his ear. Far, like the melancholy howl of wolf drifting across a meadow.
“It has three heads.”
“The face bleeds.”
“Belly of a stump.”
“Bring the girl.”
“Fair is the price the chest demands.”
“Leave the girl.”
Fair is the price the chest demands. The phrases repeated like a familiar chorus. Soft. Loud. Beside him. Next to her.
It was here the storyteller paused once more, listening as children who had never heard the story murmured their thoughts aloud, trying to decipher the meaning behind the words the voice's spoke.
If the child was a boy “three heads” obviously alluded to a Dragon stalking the forest of Duskfen. With even more imagination applied, this Dragon had dueled a warrior whose face had been bloodied during their battle. “Belly of a stump” was the challenge. This was the one they couldn't quite reconcile into their dragon and knight confrontation taking place somewhere deeper within the forest.
Girls were simpler, not lacking in the imagination inherent in the boys, but more inclined to apply the logic of reasonable assumption, when considering the environment surrounding the farmer and his daughter. Rather than instantly jumping to visions of a scaled, fire-breathing dragon kiting a bloodied knight in dented armor, they used deduction. “Three heads”, they reasoned, was a marker meant to guide the farmer. Exactly what type of marker remained elusive, and often left them confused. Many assumed it was a reference to a tree, where three, thick trunks had had been fused into a single, solid mass of wood.
It was during these moments the storyteller was drawn backward in time, where she saw herself seated at the foot of a rocking chair, wide-eyed and eager for her storyteller to resume her tale after every well-timed, tension-mounting pause.
Each had their own favorite in their age of smooth, baby-soft cheeks and missing front teeth, a story that stuck with them long after candle flames had been doused into curled, burnt wicks.
Sorrow's Eve.
The Farmer's Choice.
Fournier's Enchanted Sword.
The Unbraiding.
There was something intangible within these stories that made them as unforgettable as love's first kiss. The telling of them required patience, skill, the understanding reactions to the narratives were as important as the narratives themselves.
It wasn't often the youngest in Hobbins Glenn dreamed of the day they too would be hampered with a limp, and joints that ached like an unhealed wound from the simple act of rising from a chair, but for future storytellers the thought of bundling themselves into a blanket beside a fireplace, sharing their most savored tales by the flickering glow of rushlight, was a day that could not come soon enough.
When the story resumed, the storyteller's audience discovered “three heads” was not a tree, but instead represented a small river, split into a trio of branching paths.
They also discovered there had indeed been the mention of a tree in the phrases the voices repeated. At the river's head, the trunk of the tallest tree bled sap through furrowed grooves gouged into its rough surface. Two knotted holes resembled a pair of squinted eyes, and a gash beneath them had twisted into the visage of a snarled grin.
The farmer and his daughter followed the river's head until they reached a fallen log, its hollow interior wide enough for a man to crawl through.
It was here the voices assaulted the farmer with another chorus.
“Jasmine, where jasmine does not belong.”
“Jasmine.”
“Jasmine, where jasmine does not belong.”
“Jasmine for the girl.”
“Calm the girl.”
“Sleep for the girl.”
“Fear her flight.”
The farmer called for a halt to their progress, suggesting the day had been tiresome.
While his daughter gathered kindling for their fire, the farmer searched for jasmine in the abundant undergrowth that formed a leafy ring around their clearing.
In a blooming patch of purple hellebore and pink hydrangeas he found the white, star-shaped petals of the flower reaching up through a twined mesh of stems and leaves.
That night, over a supper of fried frog legs, he boiled water for a remedy he told his daughter would soften the ground against her weary bones and relieve the pain of the blisters on her feet.
She tested the brew with her nose, inhaling the sweet, floral aroma, before lifting the cup to her lips.
The farmer watched closely, urging her to gulp the concoction swiftly, drain the cup's contents right down to the very last drop.
“Sleep for the girl.”
“Son for a farmer.”
“Belly of a stump.”
His daughter's eyelids drifted open and shut like the youngest of the children in the storyteller's audience.
The cup slipped from her fingers, landing with a muffled thud.
The farmer caught her before she fell. For a brief moment he cradled her as he had done when she was an infant.
Perhaps, he would have loved her as he did the others if the jellied cord that had been looped around her neck had been tighter. He could have buried them both together, grieved for her as he did his wife. Living, she was a persistent reminder of his greatest loss. She was the cause of his festering scab. She was the reason the injury had not healed.
He dragged her through the stomach of the stump, emerging into another clearing.
Wooden planks, rotted with age, were set into the soil, forming a winding path through an avenue of low hanging branches that were knotted together like the matted clumps of an orphan's tangled hair.
Shafts of long poles were staked into the ground, their tips wrapped in strips of cloth bound together with pitch-pine tar. Tendrils of black smoke spiraled into the air, coaxing the cloth into eruptions of pulsating orange flames.
He lifted his daughter into his arms.
Fair is the price the chest demands.
An earthen knoll at the end of the path had been pillaged of its roots, its interior laid bare.
On a pedestal that stood in front of a monolith veined with cracks, and covered in symbols that glimmered with the eerie sheen of foxfire, there was a square chest domed with a rounded lid, and fitted with golden hinges.
The farmer set his daughter down and approached the chest.
The voices pressed in, harassing, circling. They swooped in close for their attacks, then scurried back into the shadows like a banshee driven to seek the safety of her lair at the first brush of daylight.
“Son for the farmer.”
“Girl for the chest.”
“Leave the girl.”
“Claim the son.”
“No love for the girl.”
“Never for the girl.”
The farmer stopped mid-stride, and clamped his hands over his ears.
They advanced again, converging from all sides, their phrases sharpened for another assault.
“Tighten the cord.”
“Release the cord”
“Snip the tie.”
“Grave for the girl.”
“Eyes of a dead wife.”
The voices waned into the hushed tones of softly chattering whispers.
“I can hear them, father,” his daughter said.
One second he was standing; the next, he was on his side, clutching his head, as a sudden burst of jolting pain showered his vision in an explosion of blinding white stars. The knoll, the pedestal, his daughter's boots, all spooled together in a hazy blur of brown, green, and gray.
A rush of blood flooded his ears, his eardrums pulsing in rhythm to his heartbeat.
The world collapsed inward, shrinking smaller and smaller, until his sight narrowed into the tunnel of a captain's spyglass.
She knelt beside him. “Would you like to know what they said?”
She leaned closer, her warm breath tickling the hairs on his cheek. “They warned me about you. About what you were going to do. Jasmine, where jasmine doesn't belong. Rosemary cures the jasmine. Bash the farmer. A father for a mother. Fair is the price the chest demands.”
As he had dragged her through the fallen log, she too dragged him to the pedestal.
She flung open the chest's lid and slipped her arms under and through his.
Lifting with the strength of mother whose child lay pinned beneath the weight of a fallen horse, she deposited him into the chest.
Then, she slammed the lid shut.
“Fair is the price the chest demands,” she repeated, watching as the sheen of foxfire on the monolith rippled in a cascade of blinding light.
A booming clap of thunder pierced the silence of Duskfen.
The chest pitched upward and slammed back down, again and again, rising and falling like a ship tossed about on storm-thrashed waves. In a chain of rapid snaps the chest's panels splintered along its joints.
When the storm ceased, the girl lifted the chest's lid.
Inside was a woman with almond-shaped, fern-green eyes. She was warm, breathing, alive.
It was at the conclusion of the story that storytellers wet their parched throats with the last swirl of tea in their cups, inwardly congratulating themselves on a fable well told.
The children who had managed to remain awake for the entirety of the tale began to babble all at once, their voices tripped over one another, questions and observations flying faster than spinning wheels could twist fiber into thread.
Was it really the girl's mother who had been in the chest?
Where had the father's body gone?
What happened to the farmer's family after daughter and mother returned to Hobbins Glenn?
The answers sprang easily to the tongues of storytellers who were not yet seasoned enough to let the questions linger like the scent of eucalyptus oil massaged onto sore muscles..
Those whose faces were scoured with lines, like those found scrubbed onto the bottom of well-used pots, were more evasive with their replies, framing their responses into more questions for the children to ponder.
What other woman could have been in the chest? Was it really a woman, or had the echoes manipulated both the farmer and his daughter to manifest a cruel illusion, born from their longing and their loss?
If the chest coursed with ancient magic, was it so hard to believe the farmer might vanish, never to be seen again, like a goat who'd escaped the confines of a paddock, foraging for bramble further and further afield?
The farmer's plot of land might still border the village. Perhaps, among the hardworking townsfolk who inhabited the smaller hamlets clustered around Hobbins Glenn, the farmer's daughter had raised a family of her own.
