Introduction – A Tale
Part I – The Twins
My sister loved when the fresh snows of November would fall slowly, trickling, sprinkling down upon the needles of the forest. One could, on quite a regular basis, find her sitting, staring with lingering thought, into the denseness of the Black Forest. Even with freshly laid snow she would find appropriate time to sit there on the edge of the small town. Constantly and frequently I would find myself sitting with elbows on windowsills watching her from behind the wavy, uneven glass panes of our home. Wondering, pondering her thoughts, sometimes in anticipation and other times in fear of the things that she contemplated.
From birth we were at odds. You see my sister was dead when she was born. The cord of my mother’s womb had strung itself around her neck and had made it impossible for her to breathe. The doctors fumbling old hands worked quickly to untangle the slippery mess and once free he patted her back with the heel of his hand. Two minutes had passed before she made the tiniest of coughs and came to life, animated into the residence of the living right before our mother’s eyes. They say it was a miracle. I leave this determination to the hearer of this tale.
We are twins of age seventeen, she and I, both having deep chestnut hair with fair skin. Our fingers were nimble as were our toes. The knobs of our knees were of disproportionate size to the rest of our legs. They jutted out like crab apples sitting atop a naked tree branch. They were the subject of many a joke aimed at us by the Gillings brothers. Another set of twins that lived across the town from us. Incessantly annoying and unforgivably ugly. Between my sister and myself though, from a merely cosmetic stance we were, for all intensive purposes, perfectly alike, except for the scar that ran along the flat of my left foot. From ball of heel to tip of large toe I had been run though by an orphaned hunters knife while running in the Black Forest.
My sister and I had been playing a game of hide and seek. The sun had set below the foothills to the west and twilight came on like a deep veil over the forest. I was seeking and could not find her. I shouted and shouted for her. I was beginning to become scared, my shoulders becoming tense, as I grew weary of the forest. Fear crept on like a cold blanket.
“Isabelle!” I shouted.
I knew not where she hid and thus found myself at a crossroads. Knowing that I could not bear to be alone in the forest at dusk I yelled,
“This is no longer fun sister, I’m going home!”
I ran as though being chased. I ran as though if I were not to run death would have me. I ran because of the tales that the hunters would tell at my father’s table. I ran because of the things that my mind had created from tidbits of wives tales. I ran because I wanted to live.
As I had finally reached the forests edge my thin shoe split and I found myself prostrate on the forest floor, bare stomach aching on the frozen, compact powder snow. I slowly rolled over, reeling from the pain, only to see a large swatch of blood creeping over the white snow that layered the ground. The hunter’s knife had cut deep and had made short work of my tender skin. I began to weep and that is when my sister appeared. The crimson cloud of snow continued to grow as my sister stood idly by. I looked up at her to see her staring, without movement, just watching as my blood pooled in the heel of my shoe proceeding to pour out onto the snow. She made not a sound and said not a word, just watched, standing over me. Then finally, in utter monotone,
“I’ll fetch Mother.”
She walked away slowly with a lull in her step that made me sufficiently uneasy. I began to feel woozy.
That is when Isabelle was lost as a sister. She had become something else. She was someone that I did not know.
Part II – The Hunter
William Forger was a man of gargantuan height and breadth. If you were to think of a large wooden cask of brewed hops then you will have an ample visualization of his chest. He rarely spoke to other people of the town and kept mainly to his cabin, which sat on the outer rim of the village. William was by far the largest man to ever live in our town. His shoulders were as broad as cliffs and in the snowy season children would follow him and jump, two feet at a time, into his boot marks as he sauntered from side to side with enormous lunging steps.
In the winters Forger would take two weeks time and cut wood in the Black Forest for all of the elderly folks in the village. For this he gained the compensation of baked goods and fresh bread year round from frail, withering old women. When he would go cottage to cottage to deliver wood the old women would, with shaking, aged hands, grasp his muscular forearms and think back to when their husbands were strong and capable. Many of them dead or deaf by now. Forger was the town’s head game hunter. He led hunting parties year round into the Black Forest to gather quail and deer for the town. He was fearless. He had a past that would make any man hard to the gentler side of life. Four winters prior he had lost his bride and his newborn son.
In the middle of a warm spring in 1806 he had taken a three days venture through the forest to hunt the elk of the western planes with three other men from the town. One day while he was gone his wife went to the edge of the wood to gather berries for a pie that she would bake for a family with a sick child. She gathered up her baby son in a basket filled with blankets and walked the two hundred yards or so to the wood’s edge.
She was more beautiful and graceful than words can describe. And, even if I tried, I would be doing the work of God’s hands a great disservice. Try to picture Eve if you can, the mother of all women. Her hair was an indescribable shade of yellow and her skin, flawless. If you were to look into her eyes on a clear sun-lit day you would think less of the day for it. She was kind and gentle, warm and giving. All of the women in the town loved her. All of the men wanted to be her husband and to do chores for her and to love her. But those jobs were for William.
In the summers leading up to her fifteenth birthday Forger would watch her as she would go to the creek in the wood and would wonder things about her.
How could something so beautiful be worthy of viewing by a man such as himself?
OR
How does a woman keep her skin so flawless in a world such as this?
He loved her from the first moment he saw her and when they were both of age they married. He built her the cabin on the edge of the town and they were happy and loved one another with an indefinable love.
When night had fallen and the lights of the cabin were not lit Ms. Kreps, a mid-wife who lived in town, became worried and ventured up the gentle hill to the cabin. No lights lit, no one in the beds, just silence. Ms. Kreps ran down to Roger Rawling’s cottage to tell of the missing pair. Roger Rawlings was the mayor of the town, a strong stolkey man with large hands a scar that ran from his left ear to the bottom of his chin. He was an Indian killer from the early years. He didn’t speak of it much and everyone in the village loved him and respected. To find the missing woman and child he gathered two separate parties of men. One party to search for the wife and baby and the other to ride the three days to fetch William’s hunting group. But before the men had reached William the towns people had found the wife and baby, or what remained. For fifty feet in any direction it was as if a cloud had opened up and rained down red water on the lush grassy floor of the forest. The town’s people feared for their own safety, gathered what they could and returned back to their homes. The basket, the damp red blankets and his wife’s spotted, torn summer gown were left on the porch of the Forger’s cabin.
It took seven months for William to come down into town after that, and even then he only spoke one or two words here and there. Mainly you could find him talking quietly to Roger Rawlings about the needs of the elders or about what level the meat supply was at. He came to church on Sundays but remained in the back pew with his head bowed low. I like to think he was in prayer but I never knew for certain. I never did speak one word to that man.
Once that first year had come and gone after his wife’s murder he would go into the forest every spring for the full length of a month. At first people thought it was to hunt, but he never returned with anything. Just his rifle, ax, knife and a large hook connected to a length of chain. The hook and chain were used for hanging and cleaning deer and other large game. So as to why he took it with him into the Black Forest every year was a mystery. For, cleaning had always been done at cabin side where he could hang the pelts and skins of his kill more easily. The men never asked why or questioned what he was doing out there in the bleakness of those woods. They just knew that he did what he needed to do and that was enough for them. It was enough for all of us.
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