Forgotten Fairy Tales

Tontlawald

'A Tale of the Tontlawald' is an Estonian fairy tale that appeared in 'The Violet Fairy Book' by Andrew Lang. What follows is my retelling of it. Art for this section is 'Girl in Traditional Dress with Strawberries' by Meyer von Bremen, 1886.

***

Elsa tried to ignore the shouting from the cottage. It wasn't difficult; she had had a lot of practice since Monika had married her father two years ago. She was twice Elsa's age but only half her father's, and everyone said he was lucky to have her - Monika loudest of all. Now Elsa was ten years old, although she was so weighed down with troubles that she felt as though she ought to be older.

"Elsa!" 

There it was. Elsa shuffled to the doorway, trying not to limp although the bruises on her thigh from the last beating screamed to be favored. It made Monika angry to be reminded of the pain her 'discipline' caused - and Elsa didn't want her any angrier than she was already.

"Hurry up, child!" Monika stood by the door, hands on her hips, a scowl marring the symmetry of her beautiful face. The men in the village compared her dark eyes to a doe's - Elsa thought of them instead as snake's eyes, and she watched them now to see when the viper would strike. "Britta's boy Karl has found a patch of strawberries. Go and fetch some, and do not eat half of them before you get back as I know you did the last time!" She swung her hand back and slapped Elsa on the cheek, hard.

Elsa gasped and blinked back tears. She must not cry. Monika hated crying more than almost anything else. It would be no use to tell Monika that she had brought back every berry she had found, that there had been no more - it had not saved her a beating last time and it would only earn her another one now. "Yes, ma'am," she managed, extending her hand for the basket Monika carried. She refused to call that woman mother, and fortunately, Monika seemed to prefer it that way. It was the one thing they agreed on.

Her father moved across the doorway behind Monika. He refused to look her in the eye, and immediately turned away, red shame suffusing his face. Elsa would not turn away. Let him feel his shame. He deserved it. Once there had been a time when she had sobbed, had begged her father to protect her from his new wife. Day after day he refused, turning away, pretending he did not see, did not hear. He was no true father to her.

Basket in hand, Elsa went to join the trickle of children setting out for the woods. Her face throbbed but her heart was light; for a time she was free of the quarrelling and oppression that overshadowed the cottage. Hilda, a girl Elsa's age who had been her friend before Monika came, slipped out to join them. Her mother called after her from the doorway. "And stay away from the Tontlawald!"

"The Tontlawald," Elsa scoffed, hoping it would begin the stories.

It worked. "My mother says it's haunted," Karl volunteered. "She says that most who enter never return. My uncle went to the edge of it, once, and he saw a ruined house surrounded by savages without any clothes on. He said they were dancing around a fire that shrieked like owls when they stirred it."

"My mother says a man lives there," Hilda said, "with a long beard. He carries a sack bigger than he is, and the wild women wail and try to take it from him, but they never succeed. No one knows what is in it or where he takes it."

"I heard there lives a cat there," another child said. "A black cat as big as a foal, with claws and teeth as sharp as knives."

"Father says that the King ordered it cut down," one boy added, "but no one had the courage. Only one man even tried, but when he struck the tree it screamed like a woman, and blood flowed from the wound." 

The children shivered in the shared delight of the spooky tales, but they were not much worried as they walked on together to the strawberry patch. It was a big, fine patch of strawberries, at the edge of the trees. The bright red berries blanketed the ground and peeked out from under the broad green leave, almost as far as they could see. The delighted children began eating the juicy berries as fast as they could stuff them in their mouths. Once their appetite was somewhat satisfied, they allowed a few to collect in their baskets.