A warm summer day, eight years ago.
Doves take flight, wings fluttering in the air. They are no ordinary grey pigeons, the kind that roost by the thousands in the rafters of churches and houses. These delicate little birds have shimmering plumage in shades of pond green, deep blue, royal blue, pale pink, bright red, black and white, multicolored. They hail from the Far East. Their outlines blur in the bright orange light of the evening sun.
A pair of bare children’s feet races across the unmown lawn of a grand old estate. The garden is landscaped, but untended. The once-trimmed shapes of hedges and shrubs are now barely discernible. The flowers in the flower beds are suffocated beneath a blanket of weeds, and the mighty old trees groan under the weight of their own crowns. At the far end of the grounds lies a large lake. A weathered jetty once invited visitors to swim or take a boat trip; an adult would probably break through it now. In the middle of the garden stands a wooden dovecote, its stepped terraces faintly reminiscent of a Mesopotamian ziggurat or an Incan temple. The large birdhouse is not yet complete. A roof and two side walls are still missing. The boards for them lie neatly stacked, and on a rickety, homemade workbench, hammer, nails, saw, plane, square, and the like wait to be used.
But today, no one is working here. The air is still warm; it shimmers faintly in the heat.
A black venomous snake slithers through the ankle-high grass, its tongue flickering, moving toward the barefoot child playing in the garden. The long, dark creature hisses, but the sound is is drowned out by the relentless chirping of grasshoppers somewhere in the tall, dry reeds down by the water.
Feathers swirl through the air. A lone dove flutters frantically beneath the high ceiling of a grand dining room, nearly colliding with one of the two ostentatious chandeliers. In her panic, she cannot find her way out through the wide-open windows, each more than three meters tall. The room resembles a small banquet hall, with ornate stucco moldings, gold-framed paintings on deep-purple wallpapered walls, and a heavy wooden dining table at the center, large enough to seat twenty. An old, stooped maid stomps around it, her heavy footsteps clattering on the floor.
“Shoo! Shoo! Go on, off with you!” cries the spiteful, lumpish woman whose mouth, by all signs, has never once curved into a smile. She flails her arms about as though she might take flight herself at any second. With her face flushed a bright red, it looks as though she might faint at any moment.
Her grey dress, woven from coarse, heavy cloth, resembles an extra layer of weary old skin she carries around like a burden. Sweat stings her eyes. She blinks hard, then wipes her face with shriveled hands. In doing so, she fails to notice the pigeon settle on one of the chandeliers above, its head jerking in sharp little motions as it peers down. By the time the old maid glances upward again, she is unable to spot the bird.
“Please say nothing to my husband,” a timid, pleading voice comes from the hallway.
The maid turns and first catches sight of the tall, lanky, conservative teacher stalking past the dining room door. Following close behind is a petite young woman, no more than thirty years old, with almost childlike features. This is Marie, the lady of the house.
However, one would be more likely to mistake this shy, inconspicuous person for a nanny or chambermaid. She tries to stop the teacher, but cannot get past him. He pulls a long face. Bitter, insulted and hurt, he strides towards the front door. Floorboards creak beneath his feet. The hallway is dimly lit, making the dark green wallpaper with little swans on it look rather black and oppressive. A few old, dusty deer antlers hang crookedly on the walls. The house smells musty and seems unchanged for at least two generations.
“I’ll make it right”, the young woman pleads.
Abruptly, the teacher stops and turns to face her. In each hand, he holds one half of a book that has clearly been sawn in two. He waves them in front of Marie’s face. She implores him: “My husband mustn’t find out about this! Pleeeeease. I’ll pay for a new book next time.”
“There won’t be a next time!” the teacher hisses viciously through clenched teeth. “I should have listened to my colleagues’ advice and warnings from the start. Your child is not a girl. It is an animal.”
He spins around and stumbles over a small child’s shoe lying on the floor. For a moment, it looks as though he’s about to fall face-first onto the floorboards, which would surely have cost him a few teeth and a bloody nose. He stumbles, staggers, but at the last moment manages to grab hold of one of the deer antlers. Upset, he takes a deep breath and hurries away. Just as the heavy front door slams shut, the old maid pokes her head out of the dining room and croaks, “She stole the curtains! I just washed them.”
For a brief moment, the young woman closes her eyes and collects herself. By “she,” the maid means Marie’s daughter. It is also a single red child’s shoe belonging to her daughter that nearly spelled disaster for the teacher. The shoe lies on the floor in the middle of the dimly lit hallway. The mother picks it up. As she straightens, she coughs lightly. Quietly, she slips over to the maid’s anxious face, which is still peeking out from the dining room.
Shortly after, both women lean out of the large windows in the dining room, scanning the garden. There, the little doves continue to coo and flutter about. But the barefoot daughter is nowhere to be seen.
“Ninan! Ninaaaaaaaaan!” the mother calls out, holding the red shoe in one hand.
No answer. No child. The old maid frowns and lets out a soft, disdainful sound. At that very moment, the dove that had been perched all this time on the chandelier flutters past her head by mere millimeters and out the window. The old woman angrily swings at the bird, but misses. Mother coughs.
And she continues coughing as she hurries along a small footpath through the forest, followed by the maid, who is cursing under her breath. Above them, the wind rustles through the treetops. The sun is already low, but the canopy is so dense that hardly a ray of light reaches the moss-covered ground, even during the daylight hours. It seems to be twilight here all the time. It is a wild, dark forest. A forest where one might lose their way, where no one comes for a pleasant stroll. This is not a forest where humans have the upper hand. This is a wild place.
Mother glances around. She isn’t afraid, but she has respect – the same kind the fisherman holds for the sea, or the mountain farmer for the peaks. She knows her way around here, at least in this part of the forest, which begins just beyond the edge of her property. She would never venture deeper. Even here, she comes only rarely, perhaps to gather mushrooms, collect fresh moss for wound dressings, or, of course, to search for a missing little daughter.
Soon after, the women reach a clearing. As if someone had pulled back the curtains, they suddenly find themselves bathed in the reddish light of the evening sun. Before them lies a round meadow of wildflowers, glowing in at least twenty different colours. In the middle of the clearing stands a little girl, eight years old. She is barefoot and holds a stick in one hand, on the other end of which she balances the black, poisonous snake. Mother remains completely still at the sight. The child, too, is entirely at ease. She speaks to the glistening reptile in a friendly but firm tone.
“I told you, you can visit the garden, but no eating little pigeons. Think about it.”
The girl lets go of the viper and the creature slithers off into the underbrush.
“And I told you never to go into the forest alone, Ninan! It’s faaaaaar too dangerous… and your father would be beside himself if he found out. Oooooh yes.”
Only her mother calls her Ninan. In truth, the grubby little girl’s name is Lotte. No matter how many times the old maid scrubs her clean, Lotte is dirty again in no time. The grime behind her ears seems to have become part of her. Lotte roams around, explores hedges, ditches, fields, meadows, caves, and of course, the forest. That’s her great passion. Her blue dress has been mended countless times. Her hair is braided into six thin plaits that stick out from her head in every direction.The maid lets out a sigh of frustration when she sees Lotte has wrapped herself in the freshly cleaned, almost five-metre-long blue curtains like a toga, with half of it trailing behind her across the forest floor.
“What a mess! What on earth is that supposed to be? A bride? You’ll end up a spinster,” scolds the old, unmarried maid.
Lotte replies, completely immersed in her role: “I am Inanna, goddess of war. I am going to the underworld.”
Mother interrupts her lovingly: “You’re descending to the laundry room to return the curtains.”
“But I want to keep working on the dovecote!”
“You’ve sawed enough things in half for one day”, her mother ends the conversation.
Lotte sulks. She has forgotten all about the teacher’s book. There are so many adventures to be had in a day that it’s impossible to remember every ruined curtain, every poisonous snake, every furious housekeeper or offended tutor. There is simply too much to discover. And just then, something catches her eye on the far side of the clearing. In the deep shadow beneath one of the trees stands a figure, watching her. How long has it been there? And did Lotte truly spot this person… or did they choose to reveal themselves?
Her mother hasn’t noticed yet. She’s lost in worried thoughts. How was she supposed to explain to her husband that their daughter had chased yet another teacher out of the house? It was the third this month alone. Word is getting around, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult – almost impossible – to find anyone willing to teach Lotte. For the last two tutors, mother had to travel several kilometres to another town, but even there, people had already heard about her daughter’s most unladylike behaviour.
Even worse would be if her husband found out about the book. If there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s wasteful spending. Yes, he is filthy rich, one of the wealthiest men in the country, and yes, he throws his money out the window with both hands – but only for himself. Most of his fortune disappears into the taverns of nearby towns and into expensive, custom-made uniforms. The household budget, however, is calculated down to the last thaler, groschen, and batzen. More often than not, it’s not enough, and mother has to ask him for more, which he finally hands over with a sigh after endless discussions and accusations about her wastefulness and poor housekeeping. No, he mustn’t find out about the sawed-up book. She’ll sell one of her dresses. That’s quite all right. Dresses don’t mean much to her.
“Is she the wolf woman?”
Her daughter’s question pulls mother back to the here and now. She flinches slightly as her eyes find the dark figure beneath the trees. The Wolf Woman, the Old Hag, the Herb Witch, the Madwoman from the woods, the Whore, the Wild One – these are just some of the names that the locals have given to the old woman who lives alone, somewhere deep in the woods. Mother always feels uneasy whenever the old woman appears in town or sells her goods and potions by the side of the road. Not because she finds her frightening, or looks down on her – no, it’s something else. The old woman stirs in her a quiet sense of inadequacy, something hard to name. And yet, if she’s honest, the Wolf Woman is rather frightening.
“You’ll end up just like that old forest witch!” the maid shrieks.
The mother gives her maid a sideways glance. “Don’t encourage her.” Then, turning to her daughter: “We have to go back. Your father is expecting us for dinner.”
TO BE CONTINUED
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