Trickster’s Gambit

There are many of us in the forest. Grimmlings, we are, imp-wraiths of the woods. All the same, each to each, such that even where there is one, there is no I. And we slither unseen through the prickly brush, and you do not see us, for you do not even know we are there.

We are tricksy, foolish mortal, and it is best that you do not cross us, for we serve the Erl-King, and he is a vengeful lord, though fair and pleasing to the mortal eye. And this he knows, ah, this he knows too well, for he likes to lure the maidens to the forest there, and they do not often return to their village homes. Some stay with us and join our court, but others do not, and it is they who the villagers find floating in the streams, strewn with wreaths of flowers, and it is they who wake up dead upon the barren drifts of snow beneath the ancient pines, enveloped in brightly colored swaths of their own red blood.

There is a Man-King who lives above the village in a castle upon a hill. He had a son once, a beautiful boy with hair like a field of wheat waving when the wind blows strong and eyes the color of the dark Danube. And the Erl-King, collector of beauty that he is, wanted him desperately.

He sent us to him at night, to fill his dreams with things of terror, his days with visions of our face. And readily we obliged, for the Erl-King is our master, and nothing would we not do for his good opinion. He rewarded us greatly, with rare fruits and the shells of giant limpets that crawl upon the rocks by the ebbing river. We wore each shell as a hat until it crumbled into iridescent bits, and we fed the fruits to our bird-friends among the pine needles in winter, and they sang for us and told us not to torment the boy, for he was often kind to them and left seed-things for them on the hillside. But we did not listen, for it is the Erl-King we serve and not the winged ones, however wise and beautiful they may be.

It was not long before we had the boy terrified, and it was then that the Erl-King appeared to him as a reprieve from the wicked visions of us grimmlings. He seemed a savior compared to us, with his ragged curls and his opal eyes, and his victims love him for this, for he has saved them from the horror that is our face. It pains us, sometimes, to consider this, but the Erl-King is our master, and even if he uses us so, it is just, for to frighten without frightening purposely is our purpose.

He took the boy then, and carried him to his forest citadel, where he was pampered by the eller-folk and the maidens of the court. And they fed him with such delicacies as are only available to the woods-folk, and they dressed him in spider-silk doublets with gems from the Rhine, given to the Erl-King by the Lorelay on her yearly visits.

But in time came the Man-King to our vast and mighty forest, calling for his lost son in a voice like a wounded lion. For the Man-King loved his son as he had loved his late queen, and the boy was the last thing of hers that he had been able to cling to. It hurt the hollows in our chest to hear him, as he begged and wept.

Day after day he came and called, and we wished to stab our ears out with the pointed sticks of the Erl-King’s warriors, but we could not, for our ears are the Erl-King’s, and his alone to maim. But we did creep close to the Man-King, drawn by his sorrow, and began to follow him in his ramblings through the dark woods, hoping that our very presence might keep him from harm, for he was known to be a just and goodly king in his own way, though only a man.

A week later and some days thence, we spoke to the Man-King for the first time.

“Where is my son?” he was asking, and again, “Where is my son?” Over and over, he asked, until our ugly head spun with the lamentation and we could not help but answer, lured by his misery:

“He is safe, Man-King, and not very far.”

He stopped suddenly at this, and swerved about as a blind man swivels looking for intruders in a darkened room.

“Who said that?” he whispered hoarsely. “How would you know?”

“We know much,” said we, cowering at our own audacity. “But we cannot tell you more than that. Master would be displeased.”

And we ran off, quivering to think if the Erl-King knew, for it is said that the very trees report back to him. Though the birds, now, the birds are their own. And sometimes, just sometimes, we envy them.

At night we tossed and turned, pondering the sadness of the Man-King. We liked him, for he seemed a worthy sort, and his son was sweet and we loved him as well, and yet we could not reconcile these feelings with our duty to the Erl-King. Was his son not well-treated here? Had we not given him the best of our best? Was he not happy?

But then the boy began to ask for his father, and we knew that he was no more happy than a turtle torn from its shell. He wanted to go home. And yet the Erl-King would not let him, for the boy was his prize now, as indelibly precious to him as a diadem of pure silver.

The next day we returned to the wandering Man-King with his ragged beard and dead-man’s eyes, and we twitched most violently, yes, most violently indeed at what plans were forming in our traitorous head.

“Man-King,” we began, and again, “Man-King,” all the while never daring to show our face, for if we did he would never trust us again, and he would call us all manner of names, and we wanted so much to help him, poor fellow.

“Is it you, little beastie?” he asked.

“Indeed, Man-King, sir, and we wish to help you.”

“Help me? How?” Even in the dim of the tree-shade, we could see a glint of joy spring to his haggard eyes, and it gave us courage.

And there in the grotto, well-hidden, we told him of our plan.

That night we wrapped ourselves in a cloak of midnight silk and went to see the boy, careful to cover our face so as not to startle the child. And we coaxed him to follow us to the banks of the ebbing dark river and it was there that we took his velvet cloak and dirtied it in the silt and left it to wash and wave against a water-logged branch, and it was there we left scrabbling marks in the mud as though he had slipped, struggling, into the wet and been carried off like a bobbing apple by the current.

We let him run back to his father, and there were small crystal tears on our cheeks when he left.

They found the traces of his drowning in the morning, and the forest mourned, and the Erl-King raged, but there was naught that he could do, for the water was not his to command.

And yet all was not well.

It was the aspens, they say, that whispered the truth and told the Erl-King of our grimmling treachery. Frightened trees, always shivering, their leaves perpetually writhing with a dry, rustly gossip. And the Erl-King listened, and heeded, and called us to his court.

“Grimmling,” he said, and again, “Grimmling. Is it true that you have given the boy back to his father?”

“Ah, but Master!” we said. “How can you accuse us of such slickery deceit? Have we not been your good minion for many a year?”

“Grimmling,” he growled, “it is not good to lie to your Master.”

And we knew that we were caught as a fly in a web.

To punish us, the Erl-King took our legs from the knee downward and left us to hobble on stubs in the darkest depths of the cold forest keep. And he returned to the Man-King’s hillside castle and stole back the weeping boy, dragging him through a pall of tears to the stones by our side.

“Look here,” he said to the boy, pointing, “for there is your rescuer. And now your rescuer shall become the instrument of your demise.”

And he made us rip the boy limb from limb with our sharp claws and our rat-like teeth until there was nothing left but a skein of wheat-field hair, a hash of gnawed bone, and two dark Danube eyes like peeled grapes upon the mildewed floor.

He left us in the darkness for eleventy-one days and nights, with nothing to eat but the poor boy’s remains, and no one for company but the ghoul-souls of the dead. And we learned that there are worse things in the shadows than can be dreamt of by any mortal, things that crawl and squirm and whisper, but never do you see them or feel them, only you know that they are there, for you can sense it. And they creep into your head at night, and you are never the same again.

(They say that on moonlit nights, you can still hear the old Man-King crawling through the forest, crying for his lost son in a tone like a dying panther. But we would not know. We do not go into the dark anymore.)

We are changed and we are not. We are the Erl-King’s grimmlings. We are his minions, and his fondest slaves, and we serve him gladly, for to serve is our lot.

But sometimes we watch the winged ones in their unfettered flight and wish, just now and again, that we could join them.