How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales Read Online Free Page A

cupboards were barren; even the mice didn’t visit. No matter how much food he brought home, still it all disappeared. “What kind of monster would do such a thing?” he asked the wife. “It doesn’t make sense that He would allow our children to starve.”

    â€œHe works in mysterious ways,” his wife answered, pouring pink wine from a box. The wife slurred her words, adding, “We need to take the children where He can’t harm them.” She said, “Why not take the children away to the woods and slip off and leave them? Away from the monster.” Surely, this would be better than their starving to death.

    The father did not agree with the idea of leaving the children in nature, though he liked nature and often walked in the woods with the children, looking for birds. He told her she spoke nonsense, as she so often did, and he wished that she wouldn’t. They argued. They drank. Then the mother quieted down, apologized, and comforted him. The comfort pleased both of them greatly and they found themselves in harmony, calm. They agreed she would seek some outside assistance for the whole situation.

    So after the father left, refreshed and hopeful, for his work selling windowpanes, the children were called from bed to their mother’s lap, and she held them in her long and beautiful arms; it seemed there were more than just two arms at that moment. To the younger daughter, it seemed there were eight arms. The eight-seeming arms offered great comfort to the children, and also to the young mother. It is strange how consolation may be sensed in many places, even places where things that are very bad happen. The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary, as it is said.

    The children gazed raptly upon their mother, whom they adored. She told them they were going on an adventure, and there wouldn’t be time to change from their nightgowns. They were very weak and hardly could walk; but their mother had poached some eggs for them to eat as they set out. The younger sister didn’t partake because she didn’t like how eggs wiggled. “We’re out here looking for fairy-tale monsters,” the mother said to the girls as they walked on the pine needles. She was drunk.

    â€œWe like our ogres and witches,” the girls said, holding her hands, one girl clinging hungrily to each side of her kind body.

    â€œSo you do, so you do,” said their mother. “And your monsters as well.” She tightened her hold on their warm little hands; never before had she been filled with such trepidation. She realized, slowly, it was the feeling of love: dread and fear for the children. This surprised her, because previously, she had not liked the children at all. Sometimes this sort of change simply happens in life. And so it was here. I won’t do it, she thought. The conviction was total.

    Yet, for some reason, when they were deep into the woods, she still went on with her plan. This is the way things happened for her—despite a decision to do one thing, she found herself doing another. Humans are foolish this way, which is a kind way of saying something about them. Brightly, the mother said they should go find some berries to eat. This would be old-fashioned, a real-life adventure. They were all so hungry, and they were the heroes of this very story: what a wonder it would be when they found berries and ate them and then they survived. That’s how she got the girls away from her side. They loved their fairy-tale heroes as much as they loved their ogres and witches.

    The mother ran home.

    The girls wandered for weeks in the forest.

    One day, they came upon a hut with the most wonderful sparkling windows, and they crept up and knocked on the door. An old witch came to the door and smiled at them; she said plainly, “Come in.” They went in and told her their mother was trying to starve them to death and had left them in the woods in order