The Coffin Maker: Part 5

The End

The huntsman did not know how his son would transfigure the doe back into his lady, nor how the knight would wed a queen, but it was not his place to interfere further in the son’s story. With a musing smile, he allowed contentment to flood him. Juliet and he had raised brave children, though he had never thought himself to be much of a brave man. Juliet had certainly had a warrior’s spirit. An image of his wife dancing with a golden sword in the light of the sunset, her small son watching with wide eyes, entered his mind. His smile grew wider, a private kind of joy growing within him.

Alone, he traversed the forest to find the solitary cottage that stood unchanged for all that took place around it. He paused only briefly at the grave of his wife. He did not like to linger as he knew her spirit did not.This was one of the many things that he would have like to attribute to the wisdom of age, though he suspected it was the wisdom of his children that had caused his newfound acceptance.

The huntsman went back to his quiet days, wondering how long his existence would stretch on, though without the bitterness he had once known. Beard gone white with time’s passing, the chilled nights irritated his bones more greatly now than ever. He felt as if there should be creaking sounds made when he walked, observing it all with the good humor that Juliet had taught him long ago.

The roses she had planted outside the cottage had wilted in her absence and the absence of their daughter, but the house was still beautiful and he felt no desire to leave it. Travelers were scarcer now, but a few had come to coax him back to the city. With the same words he had given his daughter, he refused them all.

Autumn painted the woods in a raucous masterpiece that the artist hidden within the old man envied. Blowing like jewels through the sky, leaves left their sturdy homes on journeys far and wide, though all the while they were dying.

And as the nights lengthened, one in particular presented the huntsman with a surprising gift. A knock on the cottage door roused him from an oddly contented sleep where he had dreamed of Juliet as he had done every night since he was a youth with splinters in his hands.

With long, aching steps, the huntsman crossed the room to open the wooden door. Its hinges creaked just as surely as his joints, but he ignored the sound. In the darkness outside, he could barely make out seven weary-looking wanderers. He ignored them as well, leaving the door open as he turned to start a flame in the hearth.

When spark caught, he stood, turning on his heel to face the guests. They were all men with thick beards and all were at least a head shorter than he. Eyebrows rising, he surveyed the group.

“How may I be of service to you tonight?” he inquired, finding his mood strangely improved over the usual.

“You are the coffin maker,” the eldest spoke up. A quiver in his voice told the huntsman of freshly shed tears.

“I was...once. I am no longer.”

“And you could be again. We heard tale of design you once made.” This was spoken gruffly from some shadowed figure in the back.

“A--A coffin...of--of sorts,” a small figure shivered. The huntsman bowed him closer to the fire along with his companion who seemed afflicted with some early winter sickness.

“You have come far?” the huntsman inquired, dodging the statement as he observed the chilled group.

“Not too far,” the first man spoke again. “We are here to implore you to build us the coffin of legend.”

“I am sorry but I must refuse you. No--” He held up a large hand to ward off the quickly offered bag of gold. “I can’t take your money. You see, even if I wished it, my hands are no longer young enough to craft such a thing.”

“But, sir, it is for a good cause.” The huntsman sat, allowing his head to fall tiredly into his palms. A part of him was aching to accept the task, to allow himself to build the masterpiece that he had so long ago set aside.

“Tell me your story,” he said. Settling around him, the men began to speak.

They wove a tale of a lost princess, the fairest of them all, of treachery and poison.

“She is still beautiful in death, sir. I don’t know if you can understand this--”

“I know.” He closed his eyes on the pristine memory that floated now before them.

“Of course he knows, dolt,” the angry man spoke gruffly to the youngest man who had been telling that part of the tale. “Do you think he would draw such a creation if he had not known beauty such as we have?” The younger man shrugged and shut his mouth, staring dedicatedly into the fire. Another man spoke up then.

“Just tell us, please, if you truly made such a thing. We do not even know if the rumor is real.” The huntsman rose then, from his well-worn chair. Stepping carefully through the men sitting all around on the floor, he withdrew from a trunk (which he himself had carved with roses and vines and all the things Juliet had loved) a box. Feeling sickeningly like the sorceress who had caused so much destruction, he pulled from the box, not a dagger, but at scroll.

Two of the men dragged the kitchen table, which had taken part in so many stories, into the light of the flames. Tenderly, with careful fingers, the coffin maker smoothed the parchment flat for all to see. He heard their gasps as if from far away. The sight of his creation made him young again, in that moment, and fervor began to set his blood boiling.

“You have the drawing. You are the only one who could make such a thing, even now.”

“Even if I could, which I don’t think I can, I--” He did not want to explain his story, did not wish to talk to these strangers about his wife. But he knew that the girl these men cried for was the girl he had been sent to kill and he felt a strange mixture of guilt and rage when he thought of it.

“We know that the favor we ask is not a small one.”

“We w-would not ha-have come if--We are quite distraught, sir.”

“You owe us nothing, it is true. But, sir, how could such beauty be laid in the ground?”

He thought of the beautiful child, of the fear written on her innocent face. He thought of the sorceress who had finally destroyed her, and he realized that laying such beauty in the ground would be exactly what the woman wished. Finally, he thought of Juliet, of looking on her sleeping face and watching it come to life.

His shoulders lumped, his fingers working intricate patterns over the design. FInally, sage eyes rose to meet the nearest gazes.

“I will try,” he promised. And so it was done.

Though his hands were slower now, and his back far weaker, the coffin maker found that his body remembered the rhythm of the work. Perhaps the years had taken many things from him, but they had not been entirely cruel, and he remained an artist still.

It took much time. Winter frost began to cling to the trees and ground and the coffin maker’s eyelashes, but he finished the coffin before the first great snow. And then he brought it to the young woman.

He met them in the blossoming glade, though it was naked and empty in winter’s wake. They surveyed his work with awe, and he was not too modest to admit that he had missed the glow of such praise.

Then, from behind, the men bore forth the body. She lay limply in their arms, like water or mist. He helped them lie her in the bed, helped them close the many glass parts that formed petal-like shapes which encased her. He gazed through the glass and thought that, though she was not the fairest woman he had ever known, she deserved the gift he had given her.

“I have known many corpses in my lifetime,” the coffin maker said. “But I have only known one other as vivacious as she.” The men were crying, heads bowed and backs taught with grief. The coffin maker knew enough to see the purity in their despair; they loved her truly. “That woman woke, due to the love I bore her, for I can see no other cause. And perhaps your princess will be granted the same chance.” The eldest and youngest men smiled at him through dewey masks.

“You are kind, coffin maker, but we all know here that your relationship with death is far kinder than ours. We will not hope for such a gift.” Inclining his head, he granted them their solitude, for the last time exiting the glade where the trees bloomed with pink flowers.

For the last time, the coffin maker crossed the threshold of the ivy-covered cottage. For the last time, he sharpened his axe and stoked the fire. Quietly, he finished the last toy soldier, put the finishing flourishes on the crib he had built. And then, for the last time, he exited the cottage to kneel in front of Juliet’s grave.

The winter swept the forest which was no longer emerald. Somewhere in its midst, a princess slept with her own story’s end on pause, but in the clearing where the sturdy cottage stood, a legend was laid to rest. The coffin maker embraced death, his old friend, finally forgiving him his follies.

The children knew, of course, they felt it in their well-trained hearts, and they came to bury him in his crystalline coffin where he could sleep beside his Juliet underneath a blanket of snow. When the knight married, his wife revived the roses which had struggled through the snow, and they bloomed a blanket over the sleeping couple so that they would remain untouched by both love and war, forgotten finally by short memories, in the forest where stories were born.

The Coffin Maker: Part 4

One summer, the trees in the wood sprouted leaves a lovely shade of green, translucent, fragile things that filtered the life in gentle shades. The old man sat on deep green moss in the shade near his home, eyes closed and listening to the song of a nearby bird and his mate.

Then foreign sounds entered the forest, an approaching rider silenced the animals. Nature held its breath in waiting. The old man hardly knew what sort of person could seek him now, for he had hardly anything left to offer.

Slowly, a chestnut horse appeared in the clearing, blinking brightly in the sunlight. It shook its head importantly, but its rider was the only thing the old man saw. It was his daughter, grown into a young woman who looked like a portrait of her mother. Slipping from the saddle, she smiled at him. A rose flower tucked heavy curls behind her right ear, and a fine gown scraped the blades of grass below.

“Hello, father,” she said, blinking back the moisture that had begun to gather in her eyes.

“Hello, daughter.” Then she was racing forward, and he was forcing himself from the forest floor, and she was in his arms, smelling of roses. He laughed for the first time in years; his daughter had come home.

“I saw you,” she said as they sat with tea inside the cottage that had not changed almost at all since she had left it. “Don’t ask me how, but I knew--I saw you in such pain, and I couldn’t leave you any longer.” Wide eyes begged for understanding. The father covered her small hand with his own.

“I’ve missed you. But tell me of your adventures.” It was as if he had unleashed a flood. The daughter was all too willing to tell of her grand story but, from it all, he remembered only the end, the part where she fell in love. The emotion shining in her eyes was almost too much for him to bear. He felt a pride and joy in the region of his chest that had been absent for far too long.

The father had not even realized that such a thing could be repaired. In that moment, he stopped imagining Juliet’s empty, still face, and began to picture the way her mouth and eyes would have looked at the news of their daughter’s happiness.

“If only your brother could find such happiness,” he told her as she ascended to her saddle once more the next evening. The daughter was in quite a hurry, as she had left someone rather important waiting for her. The father she left behind was far different than the one she had greeted, and her heart felt lighter for it.

“You could come with me,” she begged, not for the first time. Sadly, the father shook his head, stirring dust motes in the rays of sunshine seeping through the canopy of the forest.

“I won’t leave her.” It was the answer he had already given her many times. The daughter nodded, for she finally understood why. The father stood tall for the first time in many years; never again would he allow himself to bow so low to the pressure of life. He watched his only daughter return to her love and he was glad.

Though the father’s hands were old and tired, he often forced himself to cut wood to use in the fire, though it would never again be so roaring and well-stocked as it had once been, and he often woke to find it had burned itself out. The wood cutter sometimes whittled little things in the wood with the thought that he might one day send them to his grandchildren; soldiers and unicorns, boats and castles, things that they might play with and remember him.

Now one day, his other child returned to him, though in a manner far less stately than his sister. The son returned to the ivy-covered cottage in the woods in a whirlwind of hooves and cloak and chain mail and sword. His golden hair was in a beautiful disarray like a sun burst. The father had the thought, as he looked at the young knight, that he could not fathom how he had raised a child to go to war. Like thunder, the son leapt from his mount.

“Father,” he cried, and it was then the wood cutter knew that his son had not come home for a simple visit.

“You need my help, Sir Son.”

“Always,” the son answered with a boy-like smirk.

“What makes you think I can help you?” The wood cutter’s skin was suddenly riddled with bumps, the ghostly memory of another such encounter assaulting him with chills.

“Father, she is my love, and I know no other who would understand.” Breath catching in his throat, the father surveyed the son’s desperate face, the wrinkles that had begun to form already in his brow. The son was the same age the coffin maker had been when he first laid eyes on Juliet.

“Of course.”

As they sat at the same table where father and daughter had discussed grand adventures, the wood cutter watched the son become a knight before his eyes. The knight had much success and much despair to share with his father, but he cut quickly to the tale.

“She had been transfigured, father.”

“A sorceress then, son?” The knight nodded in sadness and angry impotence, his hands forming fists on the table top.

“Into a doe.” Muscles tensed in the wood cutter’s back as he remembered the crime he had committed against a similar creature, once upon a time. “We must find her.” The knight’s voice held a note of despair.

Silently, the father swore that death would not win this battle. He let the silent promise ring to the sky as he promised his child that he would help him find his doe.

The Father

Shortly after, the huntsman left the cottage with the knight at his side. The sky did its best to cloak them in darkness, but the huntsman remembered the ways of the woods. Though his eyes were old now, his mind was not. Blood pumping with challenge, the huntsman tracked his son’s love.

Time was essential, every moment increasing the chance that the doe would be lost forever. The knight’s palms sweat and his empty chest rang hollowly with phantom beats, faster and faster with every moment.

The forest seemed cold and dark as the hunted, but the huntsman was legendary and the son had faith as only children can have in their parents. Eventually, they came upon a lake that was clear and pearly beneath the moonlight. Both men felt a peace steal over them as they observed it.

And as they stood at the water’s edge, a creature emerged from the sheltering trees. On fragile legs, a velvety doe tiptoed toward the water and lowered her graceful head to drink from its depths. The knight’s heart flew back to his chest and he gasped at the impact, his eyes full of the sight.

To the huntsman, the deer looked just like any other, but he was not surprised that the knight recognized her as his love. The knight raced along the lake’s edge and the doe did not scamper as deer generally do.

The father saw, in the smooth liquid surface, the reflection of a tall and pretty woman with dazzling brown eyes and mahogany braid. She smiled at the knight as he approached with a sad sort love. Reaching out a shaking palm, the knight lay his hand on the doe’s tender snout. In the water, the knight embraced his queen.

The Coffin Maker: Part 3

The Wood Cutter

Their life was glorious, golden and fragile like sunshine. Those days went by faster and faster, spinning top-like on the wind. The huntsman, in his previous life, had spent much time with death, but still he began to find his new occupation too cruel and, now that his skill had grown great enough to attract attention, when two children had been born to Juliet and him, he decided to take up work as a wood cutter instead.

The children of the wood cutter and his wife looked exactly like their mother. They were a boy and a girl of only a few years’ difference. The wood cutter and his wife doted on them, and always Juliet could be found leaping about in the yard with their son, teaching him to brandish the wooden sword that the wood cutter had made for him, or else kneeling in the garden with their small daughter, their pale arms caked with dirt. The wood cutter had, for his children, become an inventor. He built for them a castle, high in the trees. For his son, he built a wooden puppet, but the son traded it to a wandering carnival caravan. The boy cried with guilt when he saw his father’s face that day. The wood cutter was far to happy to have found the wandering child to care much for the toy, but children find much grief in the smallest things.

Often, the wood cutter would take the children with him into the forest as he worked to give their mother a few moments rest. Juliet’s beauty had softened with age. Where she had been stunning, her beauty now was the kind to grow slowly in one’s eyes, until one could do no less than stand enraptured by it. Her jovial nature had only ripened with wisdom. Their life was glorious, golden and fragile like sunshine. Those days went by far faster than any of them noticed.

So the day of her death was hung with shadow. The sky sat a blank gray without promise and the trees shivered nakedly in the wind. The wood cutter took his small children with him into the woods, the girl cradled in his right arm, an axe in the left hand, the boy riding high on his shoulders. He felt a giant among men.

Laughing at some childish statement, the three of them turned to wave to Juliet who stood bathed in cool, fading light, a smile perpetually frozen on her face. Everything else was hues of gray; pale roof, charcoal trees, ashy sky, deep gray smoke from the still burning fire coming out of the shadowy chimney. But Juliet, she was bathed in every scrap of light, seeming to capture it and turn it about like a prism.

As they entered the woods, the wood cutter left his heart with her, as he had done every day of every year passed.

A scream split the silence of the sleeping woods, and the wood cutter knew fear for the first time in his life.

“Stay here,” he told is children, giving them the lunch Juliet had packed for them. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.” He could not risk bringing them into danger.

“Father,” they cried. “What’s happened?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. Everything’s okay. Just stay here. I’ll be back in no time.”

He ran--of course he did---but he still did not reach the house in time. His beautiful Juliet lay dead on the floor of their home. Her heart lay on a silver platter beside her. Gathering her close, the wood cutter gave in to his grief. Such was his pain in its purity, so silent and deep, that death, his old companion, felt for the first time, guilt. And some deep magic drew forth from the earth a mass of amethyst and topaz, obsidian and diamond which were given up as an offering of peace.

The wood cutter ran again, to the spot where he had left his children. But some part of him knew already they were gone. The sorceress was sworn to take from him all he loved, and so he could not expect any small mercy.

His grief that had before been boundless now folded in on itself, consuming all that he was inside. With his grief, the coffin maker made a resting place for his wife, mincing raw his hands on the jagged crystals gifted to him, for with her mangled heart, Juliet would no longer like a glass coffin. And he made a coffin for himself as well, as he doubted how long a man could continue on without his heart.

He buried her in her gemstone bed, satisfied that the earth itself had pledged to protect her. As night breached the horizon, the crystalline grave glowed with light that seemed dim in comparison to the beauty it housed. His eyes would never be able to comprehend the final sight of his love, and so he tore them from the sight.

The wood cutter set out to find his children. Juliet’s life with him may have been a stolen gift, but his children were subject to no such rule. He would have them back.

Now the children had inherited every bit of their father’s brilliance, and they had left him a trail from their lunch. He followed it with a savage intensity. Never had he been a man given to overt emotions, but in a short space of time he had become their slave. He was grief. He was pain. He was fear and anger and desperation. He was guilt.

When he found them, they cried, all three of them together, for the children knew instinctively the hard truth he had to tell them. They told him they had killed a sorceress, and he hoped they would take a sort of poetic justice from that, though theirs was not the same witch who had taken Juliet from them.

Again time passed in the forest, the children grew older and so did he. He was hardly half a man, but he could not bear to leave his children again, and death was no longer a friend of his, so he struggled on with a gaping wound in his chest.

He even added a new story to his legend when he saved a young maiden from a hungry wolf, though all that stuck in his mind was the crimson of her cape, stark red against the snowy wood. The tale hardly savored when he returned to a cottage where Juliet did not wait for him to share with. He ate dinner with his children who, though thoroughly impressed, could not stomach the gorier details. The wood cutter thought that death had given him an easy win anyway, but still he could not forgive his old companion.

With time, his children left him, both having an abnormal desire for adventure. His daughter went off to some enchanted palace in a distant and isolated land, and he rejoiced that she was free from sullying wars. His son hunted a knightly title with enough determination to earn it and spent his days slave to the love of a queen who he would never have.

Eventually, the wood cutter was hardly able to cut wood any longer, so frail had time wrought him, and so the fire in the hearth was mere embers more often than not. The nights were long and empty, and rarely did he have any cause to remember one day more than another.

His hands became stiff and painful, fingers aching with cold that seemed to seep from everywhere and cling to his very bone. There were many days in those emerald woods where he despaired of ever finding any semblance of peace.

In some moments, he even cursed his young and beautiful wife for leaving behind such an emptiness in his chest, for giving him a glimpse at joy and then taking it so suddenly. But immediately after those moments, he would be given over to ugly sobs of torment and guilt and his shudders would rock him to sleep.