Hildegard

Old Hildegard was getting on in her years.

Some of the barmaids in town whispered that she was a witch, because she lived alone in the forest. A few of the schoolboys thought her a hermit, secluded by her own fear of the world. 

Most knew her for what she really was: a little old lady, isolated by time. A stubborn woman, unfortunate enough to have made her home at the edge of the woods.

It was difficult, some days, the villagers knew. The cobbler’s wife would send her daughter out—little Annemarie—to visit her mother; make sure she was getting by all right, and keeping well. They knew she worried about her mother, living all by herself—but no matter how many times poor Elke begged, old Hildegard would say she had to take care of her garden.

“Her garden!” Elke would scoff. “What good is her garden if she trips over a trowel and snaps her neck? She can plant a new garden in our yard in the village!”

But what a garden it was.

Whenever Annemarie visited, old Hildegard would take her out to the yard and point out all the plants. It had the staples, of course:

“That right there is a cabbage,” Hildegard would tell her wide-eyed granddaughter.

“But it doesn’t look like a cabbage, Omi,” Annemarie would complain. “It just looks like a bundle of leaves!”

And old Hildegard would smile and tell her, “that’s because it’s young, Annemarie, my sweet. But it will one day grow up to be big and strong and delicious—!” She said this last as she took Annemarie in her arms and swung her up to the sky—though lately she’d taken to just spinning her around by the hand. Annemarie would giggle and ask,

“And then we make it into sauerkraut?”

“And then we make it into sauerkraut,” her grandmother would confirm.

“What are those?” Annemarie would then wonder, pointing at another bed.

“Ah, those are the potatoes.”

“But there’s nothing growing there!”

“That’s because potatoes prefer to grow in the dark….”

As wondrous as the vegetables in old Hildegard’s garden were to her granddaughter, Hildegard’s own favorite plants were the flowers.

She didn’t have much—only the simple cornflowers and chamomile buds that bloomed anywhere they could—but Hildegard thought they grew extra bright in her garden. She would care for them specially, as she always had, though everyone told her it was a waste of time.

“It’s not a waste if it’s beautiful,” she always said.

And she thought they were.

Every time little Annemarie—just Annemarie, now, Elke always told her; she wasn’t so little anymore—came to visit, Hildegard would make sure to have a few bundles of flowers ready for her to bring home. She wanted her daughter to have something of herself in her house, even if she wasn’t willing to live there.

In exchange, Annemarie would hand Hildegard a basket of cake and wine—the wine Hildegard would place on the table and the cake they would finish together. Hildegard didn’t truly need the cake or the wine—she could still cook for herself—but she knew it made Elke feel better to send it. And, of course, she always so looked forward to having Annemarie’s company.

In fact, Annemarie was supposed to visit her grandmother that very day.

“Mama, must I go now?” Annemarie was complaining to her mother. She was going through that stage in life where she preferred to question everything she was told to do, and Elke was quickly growing impatient with it.

“Yes, Annemarie,” she told her daughter curtly. “You know your Omi is getting older. She lives alone in the woods, for Heaven’s sake. And that woman adores you. The least you can do is go make sure she’s still alive.”

Annemarie grumbled and rolled her eyes. “You know she always lets me eat most of the cake, anyway,” she muttered.

“Well, then, all the more reason to go,” said Elke, not having any of her daughter’s nonsense. “And take your cloak, for goodness’ sake; it’s chilly out.”

Annemarie mumbled something that sounded rude—but since she grabbed her cloak and pulled its crimson hood over her head, Elke chose not to say anything about it.

Annemarie stepped onto the path, shutting the door—a bit more forcefully than strictly necessary—and set off toward her grandmother’s house.

It was truly unfair that this task always fell to her, she thought as she walked. She had three little siblings, and Mama never made any of them go to Omi’s house. Which made no sense, since Annemarie had been going since she was even littler than them. 

The other girls made fun of Annemarie; they said she was cursed. They whispered that the witch of the woods had stolen her soul and kept it trapped in a jar in her kitchen, and that Annemarie had to go visit it every month, or she’d die. They thought she couldn’t hear them, but she did.

“Stupid cows,” Annemarie muttered as she thought of those girls, relishing the way no one told her off for the insult. Perhaps the walk to Omi’s wasn’t so bad, after all. 

Annemarie quickly revised this opinion when the wind whistled past, making her shiver in the cold. Her mother was right; it was nearly winter now. Annemarie pulled her cloak tighter, ducked her head, and kept walking.

From the trees beyond, a pair of gleaming yellow eyes watched her go.

Aside from Annemarie, old Hildegard was occasionally visited by a young huntsman who often passed by her house on his way into the forest.

Wilhelm was a kind boy, Hildegard thought. He always left his rifle by the door and offered to help with yardwork. She would wave him off, though not before she’d convinced him to have a slice or two of plum cake. He would make jokes so she’d laugh and ask after her family in the village. 

“My granddaughter is coming to visit me today,” Hildegard was telling him now over a cup of steaming coffee.

“How lovely,” he said with a kind smile. “Remind me how old she is?”

“Hmm,” Hildegard thought for a moment. Then, beaming, she told him, “I believe she’ll be thirteen next month! Why, in my mind she’s still just a little girl of seven, climbing things she’s not supposed to and letting rabbits into my garden!”

Wilhelm laughed with her and sipped his coffee.

“Ah, how quickly the time passes when you’re old like me,” Hildegard sighed. Wilhelm smiled, a bit sadly. “Well, you must have work to be doing,” said the old woman, shaking her head at her own musings.

“Ah—not too much, this time of year, really,” Wilhelm said. “Still have a few weeks until the winter work starts.”

Hildegard gave him a knowing look. “Sweetheart, I know how much you want to sit and chat with a lonely old lady, but you’ve got yourself a job to do, and people depending on your salary.”

Wilhelm sighed but stood. “I do enjoy chatting with you, Frau Kleingartner,” he said as he went to the front door and took up his rifle. He then put his hands up in mock-surrender. “But I understand when I’m not wanted anymore—”

“Oh, hush, you,” exclaimed Hildegard with a wry smile and a light smack to the boy’s shoulder. “Go hunt your deer, or whatever you do.”

Wilhelm grinned. “I’ll see you later, Frau Kleingartner,” he said, and then Hildegard was alone again.

There was time yet until Annemarie would arrive, and so the old woman busied herself with tidying up—the house didn’t get so out of order with only her living there, but cleaning was like an instinct for Hildegard: comforting and natural. Once the house was neat enough for her liking, Hildegard wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and went out into the garden.

Annemarie felt like she was being watched.

It was like that feeling she got when she was skipping rope in the street and had been going for a while and then turned to find a few little girls watching her, counting her skips. Usually, that’s when she messed up, and then the girls would disperse—or laugh at her, if they were the Schmidt girls.

But here in the woods, there was no rope to skip and no girls to be watched by, and so the feeling made Annemarie uneasy.

“It’s perfectly all right,” Annemarie told herself, trying to sound like her mother. “It’s simply cold out; that’s all it is.” She pulled her cloak a little closer.

But the feeling didn’t go away.

Hildegard groaned as she lowered herself down to the dirt, splaying her hands out on the cold earth to keep balance.

This wasn’t as easy as it used to be.

Every time she came out to her garden, she was reminded of this. 

Once upon a time, Hildegard had been able to stand in her garden for hours: picking thyme, seeding peas, spreading pine needles over her beds.

Now she sat on the ground, shawl wrapped tight around her, and harvested the remaining leeks, dropping them slowly into the bucket beside her right hip. Her fingers shook more than usual as she dug her nails into the dirt, trying to get at the white part of the stalk to pull the leeks out of the ground. Hildegard sighed, seeing her breath puff in the air before her.

She was getting on in her years.

Annemarie thought she remembered a story her mother had told her when she was little. A story about wolves.

Elke had always told this story when Annemarie was being stubborn and didn’t want to go to sleep at night. When she wanted to play with her dolls and started to cry when Elke told her it was time for the dolls to go to bed.

It went like this:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. The little girl loved playing games in the woods, and she would go there every day to laugh and make merry among the trees. Every day, the little girl’s mother sent her off to play with a smile and a reminder to be home before dark. Whenever the little girl would ask why, her mother told her that it was because the wolves came out at night—and the wolves didn’t like it when little girls played in their forest. The little girl thought this was quite silly—but she loved her mother, and trusted her, and so she always made certain to be home before dark.

One day, the little girl became cross with her mother. Her mother had told her she’d come home too late, and that if she kept it up, she wouldn’t be allowed to play in the forest at all. The next morning, the little girl left for the woods without nodding when her mother warned her to be back before nightfall.

Mama doesn’t understand, the little girl thought to herself. I’m a big girl, and I’m not afraid of the dark.

And so, as she skipped off into the woods to play, she resolved that she would only go back home after the moon had risen in the night sky.

All that day, the little girl played in the forest: she had a party with her dolls and skipped rope and even tried to climb a tree. As she played, the sun traveled across the sky overhead, going from east to west, until it hovered just so above the horizon.

Mama is probably mad at me by now, the little girl thought. Well, I’ll show her. I’m braver than her, anyway.

But what the little girl didn’t know was that a ring of angry wolves was closing in around her.

Annemarie had always grown cross at this point in the story. 

“You’re just telling me this because you want me to sleep!” she’d cry. “It won’t work! I’m not stupid!”

Elke would always sigh and purse her lips. She’d realized this a long time ago, and occasionally she wished it weren’t quite so true. Sometimes, Elke thought, Annemarie was too smart for her own good.

The story ended with the little girl being eaten by the wolves and her mother telling her spirit that she should have listened to her. It had never particularly helped Annemarie fall asleep.

The memory of that story now rose unbidden to Annemarie’s mind—and with it, that same feeling she’d always had when she knew what was about to happen to the little girl. When her mother had told it, Annemarie had simply interrupted her with another burst of tears.

Now, there was nothing to take her mind off that feeling.

Annemarie decided to walk a bit faster.

Wilhelm frowned at the carcass before him.

The poor deer had been blindsided; ambushed from behind. Wilhelm grimaced, examining the bloody, fleshy mess of its remains.

This was the third carcass he had found like this today.

Wilhelm adjusted the gun on his shoulder, shaking his head.

The wolves had been getting more aggressive.

Sometimes, Wilhelm worried for Frau Kleingartner, all alone in her house in the woods. But she never listened when he would tell her of his concerns. Once, he had offered to get her a rifle, just in case—but she had only shaken her head and told him an old woman like her would hardly be able to hold the rifle, let alone shoot it.

“That’s exactly why I think you need something to protect you,” he’d told her. “At least let me build you a fence.”

But Frau Kleingartner had only smiled and said that she’d be all right.

“I don’t want to trouble you,” she’d told him.

“It would be no trouble at all,” he’d insisted.

But if Frau Kleingartner was one thing, she was a stubborn old woman—and Wilhelm never stood a chance against her resolve.

Wilhelm sighed and hoped she was doing okay. He was glad her granddaughter was visiting. That woman didn’t get enough company.

Annemarie was not going to cry, because she was not a child anymore, and she was fine. Whatever had been making her feel like she was being watched had gone away—though it had left her with a feeling of unease—and besides, she was nearly to Omi’s house. She could do it.

Annemarie cried out as a gust of wind blew the hood of her russet cloak off her head. She shivered in the cold.

“Goodness, I hope Omi’s inside now,” she muttered to herself, making an effort to sound calm and poised, like the older girls in the village always did. “She’ll catch her death if she stays out too long!”

Hildegard had just begun cleaning out one of her beds with a spade when she sensed something strange.

It was not the first time she’d had this feeling.

Every so often lately, Hildegard had gotten the sense that she was being watched. While she was baking in her kitchen, or hanging up laundry to dry, or even before she went to sleep at night.

Now, as she was crouched in her garden, her old joints screaming and a light sweat sheening her forehead, the feeling she had was that of being hunted.

A wolf always sought out the weakest prey—and though Annemarie was a scared, small girl, this wolf could not help but be drawn to the lonely old lady before him. She would make a fine, quick meal.

Slowly and carefully, trying not to trip, Hildegard turned around—and came face-to-face with an enormous gray-brown wolf. She swallowed thickly, her grip on the spade like a vise, her hand trembling.

“You don’t want to do this,” Hildegard told the wolf reasonably. She was trying to stay calm. Maybe she could talk the creature out of this.

But little did Hildegard know, the wolf whose eye she’d caught was the biggest and baddest of them all. This wolf had been terrorizing the other creatures for months, and was the reason so many more deer had been dying—and it would not give up its easy prey.

The wolf growled, hackles raised. It was going to pounce.

“Please, don’t—” Hildegard started, but the wolf launched itself forward at her in a flash of gray fur.

With a grunt, Hildegard brought her arms up, wrapping her fingers around the shaft of her spade and driving it with all the force she could muster into the heart of the wolf.

The wolf stopped, mid pounce, and looked at her with its big yellow eyes.

“I am sorry,” Hildegard told the beast as red bloomed across its chest. The wolf whimpered at her, pawing desperately at the ground. “I did warn you,” she whispered to it.

The wolf sank to the earth, the light leaving its eyes, and Hildegard stood, shivering.

She studied its corpse and sighed. She would have to ask Wilhelm for help disposing of it later. For now, she decided, she simply wouldn’t take Annemarie into the garden. There wasn’t much happening in it this time of year, anyway.

“Omi!” a young voice called, as if summoned from Hildegard’s thoughts. Hildegard beamed, and made her way to the front of her house, leaving the dripping spade in the dirt behind her house.

“Annemarie, my darling!” she called, and Annemarie looked at her, unable to hide a smile and a sigh of relief.

She’d made it to Omi’s house. She would be fine now. 

Annemarie looked closer at her grandmother.

“My!” she exclaimed, “Omi, what a thin shawl you’re wearing!”

“I find it allows for greater movement in the garden,” she explained, wrapping her granddaughter in an embrace.

“Omi, it’s much too cold out to be in the garden!” Annemarie chided. “It’s not good for your bones!”

Hildegard smiled down at her granddaughter.

“You’re right, dear,” she told her. “Let’s go inside.”

Annemarie smiled and held the door open for her grandmother. 

“I am getting on in my years, after all," Hildegard added as she went inside.