I Would Help You, Too

I Would Help You, Too

       By Feel-good Reimer

Trust a blind man to tell you about light.

How can so light a foot wear out the everlasting flint.

A girl was on her way through the forest to grandmother’s house. Something made her uneasy. When she got there, having met no one on the walk, she breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door. The moment she did so, a hairy snout appeared and furry paws pounced on her, bearing her down. She struggled and she screamed but, encumbered by the basket she carried, heavy as it was with breads, cheese and jars of preserves and jams, she could not manage more than a bite on the animal’s leg and a jab at its behind with the breadknife.

       When she came to, she lay in darkness so dank and foul she thought a rainy night had come. “Hello,” she called, to no avail. And again, “Hello. Is anyone there?” But no one answered. She moved a little, since she felt the tightness of her circumstances. Her legs seemed stuck in a hole, her arms and hands sloped upward toward a narrowing of some tube, and her torso sagged upon some wet, rubbery netting.

       “Gosh! Where on earth am I?” she whispered to no one. She punched and screamed of a sudden with what force she could muster. All muffled. All mute. Nothing achieved. Little force effected! Oh! What misery, to be cast upon and covered and then left for dead inside a watery bag! The girl began to cry. She allowed tears seldom, but on this occasion the thought of her unfair treatment more even than her bodily discomfort brought them to her eyes and heaving to her chest.

       “I am only twelve,” she thought, and much too young to die! I wish to travel, to see India and Sansiban. I wish to be kissed for the first time by a lover (and here she wept as if her heart would break). And I need so much once in my life to live in my own room, unshared by sister or brother!” Having articulated to herself these great sadnesses, the small one let go of her self control altogether and wailed till the heavens themselves began to shush her, though she heard the angels not.  

       Nearby, in the deep and heavy woods, a brave, strong axman wielded his blade at his lonely labors. He whistled and sang, for he loved his life, as solitary, quiet, productive and slaking as it was. He came with sharpened ax each morning and honed it back to a bright edge at night when wood had made it pay its daily price. About to cut into a large birch, this young man heard the tree call out for help. He stopped his blade in the nick of time and stood entranced. He listened. He asked the tree if it was sensate, but it answered him not. He waited, sure that he had heard something, and then, to his astonishment, he heard the muffled call again.

       “Help, help, help, help,” came to him, quietly, as if from far away. Surely, somewhere nearby (he gathered this from the timbre and pitch of the notes) some unfortunate soul must be languishing and in pain! He set down his ax and cupped his hands, calling in return.

“Where are you? Are you hurt? Do you need my assistance?” He paused. The calling had stopped. Then it arose again with renewed urgency.

       “I am here! Inside something!” a small, thin voice answered, as if from the ground itself. He shivered. What if a wraith? What if ghosts? He bit back his fears.

       The voice resumed. “I am hurt, yes. My abdomen seems to have taken some injury and bleeds. My shoulder on the left hand side lies useless and I have a feeling that my face is frightfully lacerated! Other locations of my wounds--and they, too, are fearsome--I decline to enumerate or locate!”

       The woodcutter stood, enchanted. The voice soothed him, if it made him pity its proprietor. The white birch by his side seemed as bent on hearing each syllable as he, and it leaned in the direction of the gentle notes.

       “Do you need my help?” he called in his loudest tones. He knew the answer and leapt into action even before the other could respond. He beat the bushes about him and soon discovered, lying there in the gorse behind some shrubbery, smiling, smug with sleep, at peace with himself now that his stomach no longer growled, a monstrous wolf of huge, grey proportions. With every breath it growled in its sleep, with what a sort of awful snore-growling.

       “I hear your approach!” the distant voice spoke. “Your footsteps resound here. You must be near to hand!”

       Then the woodcutter knew, and in a flash he had cut the head from the body of the beast. He reached down its gullet, blood and gore rinsing his fumbling fingers. He felt a foot! Success! He knew he had found the girl, for girl he had come to think she must be. He squeezed in his arm until he found some purchase and then, with his huge, strong hand firmly grasping whatever it was that let him hold on, he slowly extracted the girl till she lay before him gasping for air and overcome by sensations of light and air.

       “Thank-you, sir!” she whispered, when she could breathe again, exhausted by her ordeal and transport through narrow passages. “Thank-you, thank-you! It was a wolf I was inside, then? It was, was it not!” The woodsman gave no answer, struck dumb as he was by her beauty and sweetness of person. She seemed to him out of place here in these wildnesses, in this forest so far from human concourse and habitation. “If ever you were eaten by such a villian,” she added, having paused to give him room to speak, and without stopping to think what she said, “I would do the same for you. I would not hesitate to slay him, and cut him, and free you from his disgusting digestion!” She declared her feelings with vehemence of such a strength and conviction that the axman could do naught but marvel and nod.

       Having spoken all she could think to say, and having each time waited for her rescuer’s response, which never came, the dainty one picked up her skirts, waved to the happy fellow and tripped on lightsome foot home to her supper.