Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (6 page)

SIX

LITTLE BROTHER AND LITTLE SISTER

Little Brother took Little Sister by the hand.

‘Listen,’ he whispered, ‘since our mother died we haven’t been happy for a single hour. The stepmother beats us every day, and her one-eyed daughter kicks us away whenever we try to go near her. What’s more, stale bread crusts are all we get to eat. The dog under the table eats better than we do; he often gets a tasty bit of meat. God knows, if our mother could see how we have to live! Let’s go away together into the wide world. We couldn’t live any worse if we were tramps.’

Little Sister nodded, because every word her brother said was true.

They waited till their stepmother was having a nap, and then they left the house, closing the door very quietly behind them, and they walked the whole day over meadows and fields, over pasture land and stony land. It began to rain, and Little Sister said, ‘God’s crying now, and our hearts are crying with him.’

In the evening they came to the forest. They were so exhausted, so hungry and sorrowful, and so frightened of the dark that was gathering around them, that all they could do was climb into a hollow tree and fall asleep.

When they awoke in the morning, the sun was already shining down into their tree.

Little Brother said, ‘Sister, wake up! It’s warm and sunny and I’m thirsty. I think I can hear a spring – come and let’s drink!’

Little Sister woke up too, and hand in hand they went to search for the spring they could hear among the trees.

Now the trouble was that their stepmother was a witch. She could see through her eyelids, and she was watching the children all the time as they tiptoed out of the house. She crept after them, as witches do, flattening herself close to the ground, and she put a spell on all the springs in the forest before creeping back to the house.

Soon Little Brother and Little Sister found the spring they’d heard, and saw the fresh cold water glistening as it ran over the stones. It looked so inviting that they both knelt down to drink.

But Little Sister had learned how to listen to what running water was saying, and she could hear the spring talking. Just as little brother was raising his cupped hands to his dry mouth she cried out, ‘Don’t drink! The spring is bewitched. Anyone who drinks from it will become a tiger. Put it down, put it down! You’ll tear me to pieces!’

Little Brother did as she said, thirsty as he was. They walked on and soon found another spring. This time she knelt first and put her head close to the water.

‘No, not this one either!’ she said. ‘It says, “Whoever drinks from me will become a wolf.” I think the stepmother must have put a spell on it.’

‘But I’m so thirsty!’ he said.

‘If you become a wolf, you’ll eat me up at once.’

‘I promise I won’t!’

‘Wolves don’t remember promises. There must be a spring she hasn’t bewitched. Let’s keep looking.’

It wasn’t long before they found a third spring. This time Little Sister bent over and listened carefully and heard the water say, ‘Whoever drinks me will be turned into a deer. Whoever drinks me will be turned into a deer.’

She turned to tell her brother – but it was too late. He was so thirsty that he’d thrown himself full length and plunged his face into the water. And at once his face changed, and lengthened, and became covered in fine hairs, and his limbs changed into a deer’s legs and he stood up, tottering uncertainly – and there he was, a young deer, a fawn.

Little Sister saw him looking around nervously, about to flee, and she flung her arms around his neck.

‘Brother, it’s me! Your sister! Don’t flee away, or we’ll both be lost for ever! Oh, what have you done, my poor brother? What have you done?’

She wept, and the fawn wept too. Finally Little Sister gathered herself and said, ‘Stop crying, my sweet little deer. I’ll never leave you, never. Come on, let’s make the best of this.’

She took off the golden garter that she wore and put it around the fawn’s neck, and then she wove some rushes into a cord and tied it to the garter. Leading him along with this, she walked onwards, further and deeper into the forest.

After they’d walked a long way they came to a clearing, and in the clearing there was a little house.

Little Sister stopped and looked all around. It was very quiet. The garden was neatly kept, and the door of the house was open.

‘Is anyone at home?’ she called.

There was no reply. She and the fawn went inside, and found the neatest and cleanest little home they’d ever seen. Their stepmother the witch didn’t care for housekeeping, and her house was always cold and dirty. But this one was delightful.

‘What we’ll do,’ she said to the fawn, ‘is we’ll look after this house really well and keep it nice and clean for whoever it belongs to. Then they won’t mind us staying here.’

She spoke to the fawn all the time. He understood her well enough, and obeyed her when she said, ‘Don’t eat the plants in the garden, and when you want to do pee-pee or the other thing, you go outside.’

She made him a bed on the hearth from soft moss and leaves. Every morning she went out and gathered food for herself: wild berries, or nuts, or sweet-tasting roots. There were carrots and beans and cabbages in the vegetable garden, and she always gathered plenty of fresh sweet grass for the deer, who ate it from her hand. He was happy to play around her, and in the evening, when Little Sister had washed and said her prayers, she lay down with her head on the deer’s back for a pillow. If only Little Brother had still been human, their life would have been perfect.

They lived like that for some time. But one day it happened that the king held a great hunt in the forest. The trees resounded with the notes of the horn, the barking of the hounds, the joyful shouts of the huntsmen. The fawn pricked up his ears and longed to be outside with the hunt.

‘Let me go with them, Sister!’ he begged. ‘I’d give anything to join them in the hunt!’

He pleaded so passionately that she gave in.

‘But,’ she said as she opened the door, ‘make sure you come back by evening. I’m going to lock the door in case the wild huntsmen come by, so to let me know it’s you, knock and say, “Sister dear, your brother’s here.” If you don’t say that, I shan’t open the door.’

The young deer was out through the door in a flash, bounding away into the trees. He had never felt so good, so happy, or so free as when the huntsmen saw him and started after him, and failed to catch him; whenever they came near and thought they’d surely caught him this time, he leaped away into the bushes and disappeared.

When it was getting dark he ran to the little house and knocked on the door.

‘Sister dear, your brother’s here!’

Little Sister opened the door, and he trotted in happily and told her all about the hunt. He slept deeply all night.

When morning came and he heard the distant music of the horn and the hounds once more, he couldn’t resist.

‘Sister, please! Open the door, I beg you! I must go and join in, or I’ll die of longing!’

Unhappily Little Sister opened the door, and said, ‘Don’t forget the password when you come back.’

He didn’t reply, but bounded away towards the hunt. When the king and his huntsmen saw the deer with the golden collar, they gave chase at once. Through brakes and briars, through thickets and across clearings the little deer ran all day long, and he led the hunt on a wild chase. Several times they nearly caught him, and when the sun was setting, a shot from a gun wounded him in the leg. He couldn’t run fast any more, and one of the huntsmen managed to follow him home, and saw him knock, and heard the words, ‘Sister dear, your brother’s here!’

And the huntsman saw the door open, and the girl let in the deer and shut the door again. He went and told the king.

‘Is that so?’ said the king. ‘Well, we shall hunt him all the harder tomorrow.’

Little Sister was frightened when she saw that her deer was wounded. She washed the blood off his leg, and bound a poultice of herbs there to help it heal. In fact the wound wasn’t a serious one, and when he woke up in the morning the little deer had forgotten all about it. He begged to go out for a third time.

‘Sister, I can’t tell you the passion in my breast for the hunt! I must go and join in, or I shall go mad!’

Little Sister began to weep. ‘Yesterday they wounded you,’ she sobbed, ‘and today they’ll kill you. And I’ll be left alone in the wild woods – think of that! I’ll have no one left! I can’t let you out, I can’t!’

‘Then I’ll die here in front of you. When I hear the notes of the horn, I feel every atom of my body leaping with joy. My longing is too much for me, Sister! I beg you, let me go!’

She couldn’t resist his pleas, and with a heavy heart she unlocked the door. Without a backward glance the deer leaped out and bounded away into the forest.

The king had given orders to his huntsmen that they should do the deer with the golden collar no harm. ‘If you see him, put your guns up, and hold the hounds back. Ten golden talers to the man who sees him first!’

They hunted the deer through every part of the forest all day long, and finally as the sun was setting the king called the huntsman to him.

‘Show me where that cottage is. If we can’t catch him one way, we’ll trap him another. What was the little rhyme he said?’

The huntsman repeated it for him. When they reached the cottage, the king knocked on the door and said: ‘Sister dear, your brother’s here!’

The door opened at once. The king walked in, and found standing there a girl more beautiful than any he had seen. She was frightened to see a man and not her little deer, but the man was wearing a golden crown, and he smiled kindly. He reached out his hand and took hers.

‘Will you come to my palace with me,’ he said, ‘and be my wife?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Little Sister. ‘But my little deer must come too. I won’t go without him.’

‘He can come by all means,’ said the king. ‘He shall live as long as you do, and he shall want for nothing.’

And as he said that, the deer himself came bounding in. Little Sister caught his golden collar and tied the cord of rushes to it. The king lifted the girl on to his horse, and they went home to the palace, the deer trotting proudly behind his sister and the king.

Soon afterwards the wedding was celebrated, and Little Sister became the queen. As for Little Brother the deer, he had the whole palace garden to play in, and a team of servants to look after him: the Groom of the Grass, the Valet of the Horns and the Hooves, and the Maid of the Golden Curry Comb, whose job it was to groom him thoroughly every day before he went to bed and deal with any ticks or fleas or lice he might have picked up. So they were all very happy.

Now all this time the wicked stepmother had thought that the brother and sister must have been torn to pieces by wild animals. But when she read in the paper that Little Sister had become a queen, and that her constant companion was a deer, it didn’t take her long to work out what had happened.

‘That wretched boy must have drunk from the stream I put the deer-magic on!’ she said to her daughter.

‘It’s not fair,’ the daughter whined. ‘I ought to be a queen, not her.’

‘Shut your moaning,’ said the old woman. ‘When the time comes you’ll get what you deserve.’

Time went past, and the queen gave birth to a child, a handsome little boy. The king was out hunting at the time. The witch and her daughter went to the palace disguised as chambermaids, and managed to find their way to the queen’s bedchamber.

‘Come now, your majesty,’ the witch said to the queen, who was lying weak and exhausted in her bed. ‘Your bath is ready. It’ll make you feel so much better. Come with us!’

They carried her to the bathroom and put her in the tub. Then they lit a fire underneath it, such a great fire that the queen suffocated from the smoke. To hide their crime they closed the wall up by magic where the door had been, and hung a tapestry over it.

‘Now you get into the bed,’ the witch said to her daughter, and when the girl had clambered in, the old woman put a spell on her so that she looked exactly like the queen. The one thing she couldn’t do anything about was the missing eye.

‘Lie with that side of your head on the pillow,’ she said, ‘and if anyone speaks to you, just mumble.’

When the king came home that evening and heard that he had a little son, he was delighted. He went to his dear wife’s bedchamber and was about to open the curtains to see how she was, but the false chambermaid said, ‘Don’t, your majesty! Don’t open the curtains on any account! She needs rest, and she mustn’t be disturbed.’

The king tiptoed away, and he didn’t discover that a false queen was lying there in the bed.

That night the deer wouldn’t sleep in his stable. He climbed the stairs to the nursery where the baby lay, and refused to leave it. He had to do so without explaining, for since the death of the queen he had lost the power to speak, so he lay down beside the cradle and went to sleep.

At midnight the nurse who slept there awoke suddenly to see the queen coming into the nursery, and she seemed to be wet from head to foot, as if she’d just come from the bath. She bent over the cradle and kissed the baby, and then she stroked the deer and said:

‘How is my child? How is my deer?

I’ll come here twice more, then I must disappear.’

And then she went out without another word.

The nurse was too frightened to tell anyone. She had thought the queen was still lying in bed recovering from childbirth.

But next night the same thing happened again, except that this time the queen seemed to be covered in little flames, and she said:

‘How is my child? How is my deer?

I’ll come here once more, then I must disappear.’

The nurse thought she should tell the king. So next night he waited in the nursery with her, and when midnight struck, once again the queen came into the room. This time she was wreathed in thick black smoke.

The king cried, ‘Dear God, what’s this?’

The queen ignored him, but went to the child and the deer as she’d done before, and said: