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“I mean it. There’s no harm in a few stories. She’s just jealous, ’cause the only stories she can tell us are about old dead kings and their grubby descendants. She wouldn’t know a good tale if it rose up and bit her.”
The children laughed, until the branch that Anna was hanging from gave a sudden crack and she fell into a heap in the snow.
Serilda gasped and rushed toward her. “Anna!”
“Still alive!” said Anna. It was her favorite phrase, and one she had cause to use frequently. Untangling herself from the branch, she sat up and beamed at them all. “Good thing Solvilde put all this snow here to break my fall.” With a giggle, she gave her head a shake, sending a tiny flurry of snowflakes cascading onto her shoulders. When she was done, she blinked up at Serilda. “So. You are going to finish the story, aren’t you?”
Serilda tried to frown disapprovingly, but she knew she wasn’t doing a very good job at being the mature adult among them. “You’re relentless. And, I must admit, quite persuasive.” She heaved a drawn-out sigh. “Fine. Fine! A quick story, because the hunt will be riding tonight and we all should be getting home. Come here.”
She forged a path through the snow to a small copse of trees, where there was a bed of dry pine needles and the drooping branches offered some protection from the chill. The children eagerly gathered around her, claiming spots amid the roots, shoulder to shoulder for what warmth they could share.
“Tell us more about the god of lies!” said Gerdrut, sliding beside Hans in case she got scared.
Serilda shook her head. “I have another story I want to tell you now. The sort of story that belongs under a full moon.” She gestured toward the horizon, where the new-risen moon was stained the color of summer straw. “This is a different story about the wild hunt, which only rides beneath a full moon, storming over the landscape with their night horses and hellhounds. Today, the hunt has but one leader at their helm—the wicked Erlking. But hundreds of years ago, the hunt was led not by the Erlking, but by his paramour, Perchta, the great huntress.”
She was met with eager curiosity, the children leaning closer with bright eyes and growing smiles. Despite the cold, Serilda flushed with her own excitement. There was a shiver of anticipation, for even she rarely knew what twists and turns her stories would take before the words slipped from her tongue. Half the time, she was as surprised by the revelations as her listeners. It was part of what drew her to storytelling—not knowing the end, not knowing what would happen next. She was on the adventure every bit as much as the children were.
“The two were wildly in love,” she continued. “Their passion could bring lightning crashing down from the heavens. When the Erlking looked at his fierce mistress, his black heart was so moved that storms would surge over the oceans and earthquakes would tremble the mountaintops.”
The children made faces. They tended to bemoan any mention of romance—even shy Nickel and dreamy Gerdrut, who Serilda suspected secretly enjoyed it.
“But there was one problem with their love. Perchta desperately yearned for a child. But the dark ones have more death than life in their blood, and thus cannot bring children into the world. Therefore, such a wish was impossible … or so Perchta thought.” Her eyes glinted as the story began to unfold in front of her.
“Still, it tore at the Erlking’s rotten heart to see his love pining away, year after year, for a child to call her own. How she wept, her tears becoming torrents of rain that soaked the fields. How she moaned, her cries rolling like thunder over the hills. Unable to stand seeing her thus, the Erlking traveled to the end of the world to plead to Eostrig, the god of fertility, begging them to place a child into Perchta’s womb. But Eostrig, who watches over all new life, could tell that Perchta was made of more cruelty than motherly affection and they dared not subject a child to such a parent. No amount of pleading from the Erlking could sway them.
“And so the Erlking made his way back through the wilderness, loathe to think how this news would disappoint his love. But—as he was riding through the Aschen Wood …” Serilda paused, meeting each of the children’s gazes in turn, for these words had sent a new energy thrilling through them. The Aschen Wood was the setting of so many stories, not just her own. It was the source of more folktales, more night terrors, more superstitions than she could count, especially here in Märchenfeld. The Aschen Wood lay just to the north of their small town, a short ride through the fields, and its haunting presence was felt by all the villagers from the time they were toddling babes, raised on warnings of all the creatures that lived in that forest, from those who were silly and mischievous, to others foul and cruel.
The name cast a new spell over the children. No longer was Serilda’s story of Perchta and her Erlking a distant tale. Now it was at their very doorstep.
“As he traveled through the Aschen Wood, the Erlking heard a most unpleasant sound. Sniffling. Sobbing. Wet, blubbery, disgusting noises most often associated with wet, blubbery, disgusting?…?children. He saw the mongrel then, a pathetic little thing, barely big enough to walk about on its pudgy legs. It was a human baby boy, covered head to foot in scratches and mud, wailing for his mother. Which was when the Erlking had a most devious idea.”
She smiled, and the children smiled back, for they, too, could see where the story was headed.
Or so they thought.
“And so, the Erlking picked up the child by his filthy nightgown and deposited him into one of the large sacks on the side of his horse. And off he went, racing back to Gravenstone Castle, where Perchta waited to greet him.
“He presented the child to his love, and her joy made the sun itself burn brighter. Months went by, and Perchta doted on that child as only a queen can. She took him on tours of the dead swamps that lie deep in the woods. She bathed him in sulfur springs and dressed him in the skins of the finest beasts she had ever hunted—the fur of a rasselbock and the feathers of a stoppelhahn. She rocked him in the branches of willow trees and sang lullabies to lull him to sleep. He was even gifted his own hellhound to ride, so that he might join his huntress mother on her monthly outings. She was content, then, for some years.
“However, as time passed, the Erlking began to notice a new melancholy overtaking his love. One night he asked her what was the matter, and with a sorrowful cry, Perchta gestured at her baby boy—who was no longer a baby, but had become a wiry, strong-willed child—and said, ‘I have never wanted anything more than to have a babe of my own. But alas—this creature before me is no baby. He is a child now, and soon he will be a man. I no longer want him.’?”
Nickel gasped, horrified to think that a mother, apparently so devoted, could say such a thing. He was a sensitive boy, and perhaps Serilda had not yet told him enough of the old tales, which so often began with parents or stepparents finding themselves utterly disenchanted with their offspring.
“And so, the Erlking lured the boy back out into the forest, telling him that they were going to practice his archery and bring home a game bird for a feast. But when they were deep enough in the woods, the Erlking took his long hunting blade from his belt, crept up behind the boy …”
The children sank away from her, aghast. Gerdrut buried her face in Hans’s arm.
“… and slit his throat, leaving him in a cold creek to die.”
Serilda waited a moment for their shock and disgust to ease before she continued. “Then the Erlking went off in search of new prey. Not wild beasts this time, but another human child to give to his love. And the Erlking has been taking lost little children back to his castle ever since.”
Chapter 3
Serilda was half icicle by the time she spotted the cabin’s light across the field, illuminating the snow in a halo of gold. The night was well-lit by the full moon, and she could clearly make out her small house, the gristmill behind it, the waterwheel on the edge of the Sorge River. She could smell the wood smoke, and this gave her a new spark of energy as she cut across the field.
Safety.
Warmth.
