“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” —Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Welcome to the Renaissance Humans Newsletter. The Renaissance (“rebirth,” in French) spanned from the 14th to the 17th century and marked a period of cultural, artistic, and intellectual renewal in Europe. A Renaissance Human fosters curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, and character in a journey of never-ending learning. They cultivate Mind, Body, and Spirit, in service of Community, and oriented to the Transcendentals.
I submitted this to the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition. They randomly assign you a Genre (Fairy Tale), a Subject (Common Ground), and a Character (Food Enthusiast). It placed 5th out of 28 in my group, earning me a slot in the second round. Around 6,300 writers participated, and the top 10 entries in each group advanced—around 2,200. By the time you read this, I will be putting the final touches on the next entry.
Quick note— I listened to this while moving some wood at my uncle’s place for a few hours yesterday. The Emerald is a sonic feast. If you’re interested in spirituality and storytelling, it is worth a listen.
In the deepening gloom of a thick forest, two children wandered, tired, wet, and hungry. The twilight hour painted shadows that appeared to lengthen with each passing minute. Every call of a bird seemed to threaten and mock. Margaret stepped carefully around the deadfall lining the forest floor, but her brother plowed through them all like a rampaging bull. The cracking sticks echoed through the woods. Drops of water dripped down from heavy branches, onto garments already soaked from a mid-morning downpour. Insects sang their song to one another—the scribes in the city said it was their year to awaken, whatever that meant. She tried to ignore the pain in her side, which was more than simple hunger. Fear lived there as well, for how lost they were within the vast green realm.
“Hanze, do you want every animal in the area to know where we are?” Margaret asked, looking back the way they’d come through the trees. It was hard to see the path they’d trod in the deepening gloom. The children had already fought off a trio of wolves who took them for an easy meal—an ambush in the rain.
He ignored her, plowing through fallen branches like a cannonball fired by the King’s men on Winter’s eve. Suddenly, he stopped. “Smell that?”
Margaret inhaled. Yes. Wood smoke. And just underneath, the hint of something exotic. Spicy. It made her empty stomach quiver. A long-forgotten memory of warm food. She squinted under the hood of her sodden woolen cloak. “There,” she pointed. Barely visible, a light twinkled teasingly between wind tossed leaves in the distance.
Hanze grunted and began moving in that direction, more carefully than before. In a minute or two, a clearing appeared in the fading light.
The first thing they made out was a cottage, sided with wooden planks and clad with thick thatches of woven grass on top. From the chimney poured a river of white, flowing smoke, carrying the scent of a meat Margaret couldn’t identify. Next to the house was a small stable, where they occasionally heard the whinny of at least one horse. A vast garden took up the rest of the clearing, filled with fruit and vegetable plants of every kind. Even an apple tree or two. A stream traced the far side of the clearing, before meandering away into the woods. As she watched, a black cat darted from the garden and scurried to the back of the cottage.
Hanze squatted on his haunches, taking in the scene. “Think it’s her?”
Margaret checked her traveling gear, including a few choice items she’d kept sheltered from the earlier storm with oilskin in her pack. Still dry. “Who else could it be?”
Hanze shrugged. “Some other hermit or some such.”
“Well, let’s find out then. She’s supposed to have a scar on her cheek.”
Her brother nodded and started down the slight downhill to the clearing. As they got closer, the birds grew silent, and the insects halted their musical call and responses. It was as if a cone of silence had encircled the clearing. And for once, her brother crept quietly, down the slope of sodden moss and emerald ivy.
At the front of the house, curtains masked any glimpse of the interior through the window. The door was a solid slab of dark oak, carved with intricate runes that made Margaret’s eyes feel strange when she looked at them. As Hanze lifted his knuckles to knock, it opened, revealing a woman not much older than their mother had been when she passed, three years ago. Long black hair streaked through with white. She leaned on a shepherd’s staff. Her eyes looked them over with a sadness that Margaret could not quite place.
“Ah, my dear children, are you lost? Would you like shelter from the rains, and something warm for your stomachs?” The woman beckoned them inside with long-nailed fingers.
A look passed between the children as they saw a burn mark the size of an apple on the woman’s cheek. Then they nodded and followed the woman inside.
The main room of the cottage boasted an enormous hearth — easily a man’s open arm span in width and the same in depth. Several cook pots stood, suspended over a bank of blazing wood coals, bubbling merrily.
On the vast hardwood table in the center lay a feast, the likes of which the children had never seen. There were meats of various types—from what Margaret could see, it looked like venison, pork, chicken, and maybe a squirrel. They all gave off strange aromas, a mysterious melange of scents that both excited and filled the girl with an unknown fear. The vegetable platters were no less impressive—heaping mounds of steaming potatoes, candied carrots, and Margaret could recognize the whiff of both squash and cabbage in the air. Two different loaves of bread sat in the center of the table, and even butter for the spreading. But what really drew her glance was the trio of circular pies, resting on a wide kitchen windowsill.
The woman saw where Margaret’s eyes went and smiled, revealing a set of beautiful teeth. “Apple, Pumpkin, and Cherry. All picked this morning, in my garden.”
Hanze’s stomach growled audibly.
“Let’s get you out of those wet clothes, shall we? I happen to have some spare children’s clothes around here, somewhere.” The woman moved to a chest in the corner, raising the massive oaken lid with a groan of hinges. “Here.”
The heat of the fire seemed to radiate into Margaret’s sore muscles, kneading them in relief. The children found they couldn’t refuse and quickly changed. Dry clothes felt heavenly, after a day spent wet and shivering. They kept their knapsacks close, however.
The woman hung their cloaks and clothing near the fireplace, where the damp soon steamed from the garments. She urged them to sit down and dig in, as she brought steaming mugs of tea to warm their hands. The black cat they’d seen earlier scampered in from a back door and nestled on a chair in the corner.
“You sure like to cook, lady,” Hanze said, as he shoveled food into his mouth.
“I confess I find myself enjoying it. As the years go by, I grow more and more devoted to the art. Taking food from nature and enchanting it into something new with skill. It passes the time. I so seldom get visitors.”
Margaret felt the gaze of the woman fall on each of them like a sword. “What brings you little ones out so far into the great forest?”
Hanze nearly choked on the meat, so Margaret answered. “Our parents couldn’t afford to feed us in the city, and they sent us to live with our uncle at the logging camp. But we got lost along the way. Turned around in the storm.”
The woman nodded thoughtfully, caressing the puckered burn on her cheek. “I can certainly point you in that direction in the morning. It’s too dangerous to travel the forest in the dark.”
“We’re not scared,” Hanze blustered, feeding potatoes into his mouth at an unhealthy pace.
“Ah, but maybe you should be, my dear,” answered the woman, reaching down to touch his cheek lightly.
Margaret gave in to her hunger and filled her plate with abandon. For long minutes, the only sound was the muted crackle of the wood coals, and the children chewing and slurping the meal. The children had a slice of all three pies, each tasting more wonderful than the last.
For her part, the woman contented herself to sit in the corner with a cup of tea of her own, the cat purring at her side. At length, she stood up with the aid of her staff to stir the fire, facing away from the children.
Hanze stood up quietly, pulling a pair of daggers from his knapsack. Margaret hissed for him to wait, but her brother was too impatient. He always was. Hanze slunk toward the woman from directly behind. Margaret tried to pull a weapon from her knapsack, but in her haste it caught within the oilskin.
“You know, you don’t need to do this,” the woman said, still stoking the fire. “I was once like you. Forced by hunger to toil for the King and do his dark deeds. We can sit and talk about it, and you can leave in the morning. We can come to an understanding.”
Hanze stood shocked for a moment, but then before Margaret could yell out, he ran for the woman, both daggers poised to strike. “Die, Witch! Go back to the hell that spawned you!”
Before Margaret could blink, the woman had spun in a circle, sweeping her staff around, and knocking Hanze into the fire. He immediately screamed, thrashing about, and knocking boiling pots onto himself.
“No!” Margaret cried, redoubling her efforts. Finally, she withdrew a flintlock pistol from her pack, hands shaking with rage. With the sounds of her brother’s mewling cries filling her ears, she took aim at the Witch and pulled the trigger. Just then, the cat leaped onto her arm, throwing off her aim. The pistol boomed, but the shot….. went directly into her brother. She shrieked impotently as he ceased his struggles, going still on the wood coals. A ghastly sizzle filled the cottage, and the smell of burning. Margaret threw herself at the Witch, who pivoted and used Margaret’s motion to toss her into the woman’s corner chair.
“NOW SIT!” Roared the Witch, and Margaret felt compelled to stay in the chair, despite the burning desire to avenge her brother.
Seconds turned to minutes, as the Witch pulled her brother off the fire. Gently, ever so gently, she carried his body outside, then returned at length and pulled up a stool in front of Margaret. The girl could not move a limb, and tears coursed down her cheeks as she stared balefully at the Witch.
“How much did the King offer you to kill me?”
“Enough to buy our Papa and us a house outside the city, and food till the end of our days.”
The Witch considered. “And how much is that, these days?”
“Twenty gold. Said you had a weakness for helping children, couldn’t help yourself. The King said he loves us, and we’re doing his special work.”
“Did he also tell you he gave me this little mark?” She dabbed her face lightly. “A lesson, from his excellency. The price for spurning his affections.”
“N-no,” Margaret replied, staring at the woman’s face in a new light. “Does it hurt?”
The Witch smiled. “Not anymore, my dear. You may get up now.”
Margaret stood up fearfully, hugging herself. “There… there are three other pairs of children, you know.”
The Witch nodded slowly. “I figured as much. I’ll leave in the morning. And you will too. Back to the city.” She tossed a crimson velvet pouch to the girl, who caught it with a jangle.
Margaret opened it, and her eyes became saucers as she beheld the riches within. There must have been fifty gold pieces, glittering in the fire's light.
“My horse will carry your brother. He remembers the way back to the city. I only ask that you set him free, that he might return to me.”
“I give you my word, what little value that has,” Margaret replied sheepishly.
“Hush, child. Remember, I was once like you. A poor youth of the Kingdom forced to dance to the King’s fiddle. But no more. And now you can fly far, far from his dangerous whims.”
“But my Hanze…. I killed him.”
The Witch leaned down and held the girl as sobs coursed through her body. “It will get easier. Over time, love. What’s done is done.”
Margaret fell asleep in the Witch’s arms, and when she awoke, she was alone. The Witch had gone, taking the cat and most of the cookware. Margaret found the horse in the stable outside, watered and fed, with her brother’s body carefully lashed onto the saddle in a burial shroud. The sight filled her with anguish, the rawness of which she couldn’t put words to. But she had to get back to Papa now. He was starving, close to death, because he gave every scrap of food to them. She wondered where the Witch would go, and wished her the best as she set off into the forest, sunlight dappling the damp earth.
Superb. Love it. As always, Guz, you deliver a great story with an excellent use of language. The only downside is I want more. But such is life… AND the short story.
“It will get easier. Over time, love. What’s done is done.” That's a lesson in life.
I like the common ground theme as well - who, in the end, controls our motives if we choose not to do it ourselves? And what harm do we cause?