The Adult Shadows in "The Sisters Grimm"

The Sisters Grimm is a series I devoured as a child. The dark world inside this nine book installment utterly engrossed me. Indeed, if a child was ever addicted to a series of books, I was hooked by the nose to this one. 

I remember spending late nights reading them, flipping pages in the otherwise silent house, blinking through tired eyes. Each time I'd get to the end the words to be continued would stare at me, blurry and inconclusive, leaving me hungry for more. 

Never before had I found a series that ended with such twists: with dark faces staring at one from the dark, leaving one at the climax with the epitome of a horrible betrayal, enough to make one's heart twist up inside. Sometimes strange monsters lured one into secret places, offering secrets of the plot. The desire to follow them into the next chapter and so the next book would be maddening.

But, everything is better when you are a child, after all, and so, for a long time, I was hesitant to return to this grim world I once so devoured, fearful that my adult mind would find too many faults within its pages. 

As an adult, it is often hard to be anything more than charmed by the emotions of a protagonist meant to appeal mainly to children.

I was afraid that meeting some of my favorite fictional characters in this adult form of mine would disillusion me. They would become shallow versions of themselves. I would see through their sorrow, neglect to fear or be disturbed by their ugly and heinous ways, and find the once glorious humour bland and childish.   

Little did I know that The Sisters Grimm is an adult's tale full of the vengeful, the cruel, the broken, the abused, and the murderous. The most colourful characters are the children. Puck alone can stand for this. But the most interesting personalities were undoubtedly the adults. There was Mr. Canis with his dark inner demon; Uncle Jake with his own personal addictions and grievances. Even Prince Charming, a character that is usually two dimensional, often utterely annoying, was complex and deeply complicated. 

This, of course, is all obscured by its imaginative story, fully stuffed with fairy tale characters, all beloved and hated in their own way. Still, hidden under its child protagonist's noses are themes of grief, addiction, anger, and intense mental illness, all seen by their innocent eyes, the depth of them always misunderstood, left in the shadows. 

 

The first character we meet that struggles with a dark secret is Mr. Canis, an old man with a monster living in his head. Throughout the series, we watch Mr. Canis suffer under this perpetrators strains as slowly the old man loses himself to the monster inside of him, the Big Bad Wolf. 

Eventually, Mr. Canis is cruelly locked up for his questionable criminality. Yet, while we know that Mr. Canis is not evil, we also know that he is a danger, and so, the issue is, to say the least, complicated. Sabrina, the stories protagonist, is kept up at night worrying about the possibility of what might happen should the Wolf be set free, knowing full well that, according to the popular fairy tale, the has Wolf has eaten someone's grandmother before.

In Mr. Canis' his big watery eyes we see a man in pain. But in the man's shadow the children catch glimpses of a corrupt past that even the love and support of the Grimm's cannot mend.

 

It is often in their descriptions that the narrator cues us into the fact that there is more going on than meets the eye. I remember vividly the way the narrator describes Mr. Canis to the reader: his constant weariness; his frail, weak form and his thin grey skin. More often than not, he retreats to his rooms under presumptions of a headache or a bad nights sleep. Of course, this is not what is really going on.

Yet, while other stories would cast this man into a vile role, perhaps the evil villain's main monstrosity or a cruel schoolmaster with a hidden mental illness, in The Sisters Grimm this is the face of the Grimm Sisters sole protector, a man with a dark past and deep bedded flaws, but a man who would give anything of himself to protect them. 

 

 

Throughout the tale, we see many characters turn to the Scarlet Hand, an evil conspiracy the master of which, for much of the series, remains a mystery. Yet few (if any) of these characters become a part of the conspiracy because they are simply evil. Often, it is much more complicated than that. Time and time again, this series breaks these traditional stories apart, splitting them open with sharp realities, taking fairy tale villains and redeeming them just as it uses once good characters for evil. 

 

So, it is not the story itself that is complicated, but the people.

Evil stepmothers, power greedy princes, even monstrous beings are, in the end, just people in pain. 

When we finally do learn who the master of the Scarlet Hand is it is not the shock that lingers.

I remember the surprise of it all, but in retrospect, I also realized the clues had been there all along. In the end, what made it so effective wasn't just the fact that I, and others who read the series along side me, didn't see it coming, but that we didn't even consider it. Not only did we totally miss the signs, we neglected even to recognize the character as capable of such deep driven pain, and so, the distraught core of their being is the real shock; that, and the total neglect and disregard to the character's suffering which no one, not even the reader, had seen. 

Thus, the twist and betrayal of the master's big reveal didn't sting nearly as hard the fact that I, the reader, had never thought that enough hurt could drive anyone, even the most beloved characters, to such evil intent. The real horrible truth is that we cannot really blame them. When the evil master tells their story, we cannot deny that they are right: we really didn't see their hurt. 

Ultimately, it is a revelation to break your heart. 

 

 

I cannot think of any other children's story in which love interests are killed off and beloved side characters left to grieve them. I cannot think of any children's story in which, looking back, I see drunkenness in the eyes of a man once full of spirit; no where else do I look back and recognize between the lines of the narrative the mark of bitterness in the frail face of an old man who made too many mistakes in his youth.

I do not know of another tale where abused children are disguised as psychopathic villains only to be eventually redeemed and restored to childishness; or where close friends, often enough neglected, eventually turn on you; where good people sometimes do evil for fear of losing those they love. 

I implore you, parents, do not hide books like these away from your children. It would be foolish to think that they do not pick up on these things in the real world, that they do not see snippets of these adult shadows already. Since you cannot hide away the bad realities, please, do not try to refuse them their fictional echoes.

Let them see some snippet-trauma and some fragmented-grief in books like these. It is easier to digest when there is also some magic and wonder in it. 

 

Perhaps some day when they are older, they will return to books like these in their adult form and realize that they let them understand the world a little better: that seeing these things incorporated into a story woven out of fairy tales took away some of the shock of it later. Please, let us give it to them softly. 

Most importantly, let them see that bad people are also hurt people; let them see that wounded children don't always look like weak hurt things. More often, they look like bullies themselves.

 

The world would be a far better place if more people, children and adult alike, realized that there is always more to people than meets the eye. There is always more hurt in the shadows, and people do terrible things when they are not seen. In this real world, there is nothing worse than unseen suffering.

 

Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is see them. I can truthfully say, The Sisters Grimm helped me learn how.

The Tail of Despereaux (And Why He Had to Lose It)

A Look at the Heroic Critters in Literature, Who (more often than not) Lose Their Tails

 

Ever since I wrote my post Why Mr. Fox Had to Lose His Tail a few months ago, another heroic critter has been coming in and out of mind. 

It occurred to me shortly after I shared the post here that Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn't the only fictional critter I knew of who had lost his tail. Despereaux, the heroic mouse in Kate Dicamillo's The Tale of Despereaux also loses his tail most gruesomely when Miggory Sow chops it off with a cleaver, so sparing his life by a hair, and yet, taking his tail nonetheless. 

 

Reepicheep in C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian also loses his tail in a battle against the Telmarines.

 

I thought that surely there must be a mutual string here in these stories. I might not have noticed it otherwise were it not for the trail left by a violently lost tail.

 

Throughout the weeks that followed my first touch on this topic in June, I thought from time to time about Despereaux, wondering occasionally if I could figure out what this symbolism meant, if anything.

Yet I was uncertain whether there was enough in this differential between the loss of tail. It was evident to me that these two stories (Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Tale of Despereaux) did not otherwise have much in common; one being rather grotesque, while the other, though somewhat violent at times, reads much like fairy tale. 

Then, less than a week after I started to ponder Despereaux and his poor cleaved tail, a little chipmunk began to help himself to the food in my bird feeder just outside my living room window. 

Ironically, the little bandit had lost his tail. 

I decided then that it was time to revisit The Tale of Despereuax in an attempt to unravel this mystery. This post is the result of what I have discovered in my lengthy investigation.

We learn from the mouse Reepicheep that the loss of a tail is a heavy burden to bear for any small critter; and so, naturally, Reepicheep was not forgotten in my thoughts as I considered this conundrum. 

In C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Reepicheep also loses his tail. Thereafter his mice followers decide to chop off their own tails, saying that it would be better to go without it than to bear the shame of wearing an honour denied to their chief.

 

Fortunatetly, the world Reepicheep lives in is one of healing and redemption, and by the power of Aslan his tail is quickly restored and thus no more tails are chopped off.  

Because of this, I will not be talking much about the wonder that is Reepicheep the mouse and his blessed tail, only say that the reaction of his people shows that the loss of a tail is not to be taken too lightly.

Indeed, I myself would  have been unsettled by such a sight as a group of mice slicing off their own tails with the sharp end of a blade. Surely, Narnia would have to be a more savage place than I remember if that is how the story had gone and we were left to look at the bloodied rumps of these pure creatures. 

 

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post regarding this subject, I find Mr. Fox's own bloodied stump of a tail unsettling, for it represents to me the severity of death in an animal's world and just how near it lives to an animal's rump. A slip down a hole may not be enough to give Death the slip. But if, like Mr. Fox, the critter is lucky, it may miss them by a tail's length. 

 

Despereaux himself is spared from the meat cleaver, and, like Mr. Fox, he must live with this reminder for the rest of his life. Death nearly got him then. But it was not luck that spared him. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a lucky creature, this we cannot deny, for every tight spot he ever gets into he evades with a combination of luck and his own personal cunning. 

Despereaux is not cunning, and indeed, he is often unlucky. 

So, what spared him then?

In the weeks that followed, Despereaux popped often into my mind trailed by this simple question. But the more I thought about these tailless creatures and the argument I had made for Mr. Fox's stump the less it seemed to apply to Despereaux. While it is true that he lives in an often harsh world, death does not dwell nearly so close in Despereaux's castle. Indeed, with an air of destiny, Despereaux evades death the moment he is born, for none of the other mice in his litter survive. He is born along with dead brothers and dead sisters, and though his father claims that he cannot possibly live, the narrator immediately assures us that he does, for this is, after all, his story. 

Thus, Despereaux survives, defying death with his birth alone. One might say it was his destiny that pulled him through. 

 

There is no destiny for Mr. Fox. Indeed, the word is not once uttered. One must remember that the events of the story itself are brought about by the consequences of Mr. Fox's own actions. They are the direct result of his animalistic instincts, to thieve, to eat, to snap chicken necks and crunch on bird bones. 

 

Despereaux, however, is never good at following his mouse instincts. Anyone assigned the task of teaching Despereaux the ways of being a mouse quickly gives up, and so Despereaux is left alone, free to spend his time as he wishes. 

Mostly, Despereaux wishes to daydream.

This simple activity in itself may not seem like a big deal, until one considers that Despereaux is doing things that are beyond even the Fantastic Mr. Fox. After all, despite his fantasticality, Mr. Fox's desires remain largly animalistic. He desires to eat good food, to protect his mate and his offspring, to have good game, and to be tricksy. 

Any fox we might otherwise observe will surely share in these desires: to hunt, to live, to expand the size of his den and further his own line.

 

Despereaux though, as we already discussed, is not just any mouse. He desires to transcend his own mousehood. He has little desire for food. When his sister tells him to eat the crispy pages of a book, Despereaux is perplexed. He would rather read it. While his siblings hunt for crumbs, Despereaux watches the light and he listens to the far off sound of music.

The music, we are told, is enough to make him forget the few mouse instincts he possesses, and so, Despereaux is led by his fate away from his siblings and right to the foot of the human king. 

 

We can all imagine what would happen to Mr. Fox had he forgotten his foxness so: he'd have been shot. His fur would likely have been turned into a hat, and his tail would have prematurely acted as a trophy. 

Despereaux's world is kinder. Indeed, I will tell you that the story ends with Despereaux sharing a table with the King and his daughter, an altogether whimsical image that can only be the stuff of fairytales.

 

Thus, the differential between the two worlds becomes once again evident. The world Dicamillo creates in this narrative is altogether lighter and more dreamy than that of any Roald Dahl book I've ever read, for in this world the gap between humanity and animality can be crossed with compassion and a willingness to change. 

These things are not available to the heroic creatures I mentioned in my last post. For Mr. Fox, for Hazel and Fiver, and for Peter Rabbit there is no crossing this gorge, for death stands in that valley. It is a law not to be breached; a disparity left agape with the curcuial disability of a limited language and an ultimate failure to see the life and possibility in the other. Be it the shortcoming of the beast or the man, these worlds are split apart, and in life they cannot be united. 

 

 

When I said that death does not live close in Despereaux's castle, I meant that death is by no means his next door neighbor. Even so, we find out very quickly exactly where death lives: in its most threatening form it lives in the dungeon, down a long winding staircase and many floors beneath Despereaux's own little feet. Yet, before we even know why, we are told that Despereaux is destined to go there. 

Indeed, the narrator herself tells us that it is fate that sends him there. With the sound of drumming and the smell of celery breath, bound to by a red thread, Despereaux is sent forth to meet death again. 

No mouse, we are told, has ever come back from the dungeons.

 

Despereaux does come back. He goes down the dark winding stair down which mice are sent to die, and he comes back up them again. 

In fact, he does so quite easily. He does not even do so himself. He is carried up on a tray, borne up by a girl named Miggery Sow, who, as I've already told you, will be the one to chop off his tail.

 

It is notable that the first thing Despereaux does when he comes to in the dungeon is to reach for his tail. Throughout the story so far, he has reached for tails often, sometimes his own, sometimes those of others, such as those of his older siblings. But there, with no other tail to cling to, Despereaux searches for his own and is frightened by how long it takes him to find it in the pitch black darkness. 

There in the black, with death circling around him, nearing him with sound of rat claws and long rat tails slithering, his own tail is the only comfort he can cling to.

 

It is also there that Despereaux utters the phrase "I need to live... I can't die," into the ear of the one who will save him.

It is also notable that Despereaux loses his tail the moment he leaves the dungeons. Just as he is recalled to the light and the life that it holds, Despereaux is greeted by a blinding flash as the cleaver comes down. 

So, Despereaux loses his tail. What do you think saved him?

If you want the techincal answer, Migger Sow did. She saved him when she saw more than just a filthy mouse, and so, as cook shouted the implacable words "kill him even if he's already dead", Miggory Sow missed him by a hair, and so Despereaux scurried away; he scurried like an actual professional mouse, the story tells us; for in this moment he is, after all, just an animal who has lost his tail and is running for his life. 

If you want the fairy tale answer, Despereaux's destiny saved him too. For Despereaux, we are told, is destined to save the princess, and thus, to eat soup at the table of the King.

 

That leaves us with one final question. Why did Despereaux have to lose his tail?

 

We are told by the people of Reepicheep that to wear a tail is an honour. 

Honour is a word often uttered by Despereaux throughout the course of his story. It is spoken by him to the princess when he first gives his heart to her. ("I honor you," he whispered with his paw on his heart.)

It is whispered by him in the face of danger and death when the princess is nowhere near, for it makes him feel braver to think of honouring her. 

 

So, one might say, Despereaux does honour her. He loses his tail for her, and so he honours her in the greatest way a little mouse can. Maybe even more.

 

I have, however, come to think that it is not quite that simple. After all, what does Despereaux's and Reepicheep's honour have to do with Mr. Fox's consequential world? The only mutual thread between the bullet, the cleaver, and the heat of battle is that they all have death in them. Yet, none of these critters ultimately dies within their story.

If we are to accept that the losing of a tail is a symbol for death, then we can be certain that these critters have all faced it.

So, why did they have to lose their tails at all?

Probably because only animals have tails; and because Despereaux, in order to transcend his animalness, had to lose a little. In order to unite animality with humanity, he had to give something up. 

 

As for Mr. Fox, he will never cross the breach between animality and humanity in this life. These two worlds cannot be united while they are living. 

Despereaux himself dies by all accounts but actuality: he is sent to the pit of no return, and comes back caked in blood and flour, looking altogether like a ghost. 

 

His story ends with a heavenly image as the author asks us to imagine a mouse and a rat at the table of a king, eating soup and being joyous. It is indeed the stuff of fairy tales. But by the light of this image, I see a heavenly twinge. 

 

 

 

In Despereaux's world death looks like a dark dungeon. Fortunately, it does not look so in mine. To me it looks a bit like the image Dicamillo leaves us with: of animal and humankind eating together at a table. To me, there is light even on the other side of death.

So, as I draw this mystery to a close at last, Reepicheep comes once again into my mind. I am not, however, thinking about his tail. 

I am thinking that Reepicheep is the only critter among all those I've mentioned that doesn't die, who will never die; not by the cleaver, or by the hunter, not in battle, not even by time.

I am thinking about Reepicheep in his little boat, sailing over the sweet waves into Aslan's country, there to depart from death forever. 

I cannot think of another place in literature where man and animal can live and dwell so well together, walk together, fight together, even die together, and then spend eternity together after all else is done.

 

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."  (Isiah 11:6-9)

Papa Bear Goes for a Stroll

Papa Bear went for a stroll that night, thinking bearish thoughts about literature and life, and the poem he had read the night before by the fire after baby bear was snoring softly. 

 

It was such a nice night for a walk, he thought. 

 

He walked for quite some time, till his thoughts were less thoughtly, and more musings, till he barely noticed he was walking at all. He walked till long after dark, till the edge of the wood, the edge of the page even. 

 

And so it was that Papa Bear walked right out of the book of fairy tales where he lived with Mama Bear and Baby Bear and into the forest I happened to be painting.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I see a work of art on the internet and I just want to paint someone into it. So it was with this one when I saw a painting of a cluster of trees and couldn't help but feel that they looked lonely and unappreciated. 

 

I once again started by staining my paper with tea. I find that staining it first (even if you cannot see it once I've added the foreground) makes it seem as if I am painting an illustration in an old storybook. 

 

 

So bit by bit the stained back ground was covered, as a forest appeared on the edge of my brush. As I worked on this one on and off for the following weeks, I thought a great deal about who would come walking through this painting. Eventually, Papa Bear appeared. 

First, They Must Lose Their Parents

Why Kids Love Stories that Make Them Spook and Squirm

 

 Sabrina sees her parents in the mirror: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

 

I have often noticed that there is an uncanny pattern to be traced throughout the course of children's literature: the most popular children's tales are the dark ones. 

  

Even if they do frighten them, it really does seem that children like to read them. There is something about spooky stories that fascinates them. Stories like these are far darker than the fairy tale versions we'd like to imagine. Some adults even go so far as to forbid their children from reading them. Whether or not there is any real danger to stories about monsters and evil is yet to be proven. What is revealed here instead is that adults seem to fear these literary monstrosities more than their children. Evidently, these are not the books they'd have their child read for fear of what lies inside of them. Doubtlessly, in their mind children's books should be far lighter and fluffier than they are in reality. One might say this is a fairy tale version of the truth.

 

The irony in all this is, of course, that fairy tales have always been dark. Some of us have just forgotten.

 

 The Wolf Shows its Face: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

This phenomenon goes back to the wildly popular fairy tales once collected by the Brothers Grimm. Yet modern children's literature continues to follow in these dark footsteps. A Series of Unfortunate Events will not stop reminding us that it is a sinister and unhappy tale; Roald Dahl, the most popular children's author of all time, is full of the macabre and the disconcerting. But it doesn't end there. Stories like Neil Gaiman's Coraline are horrific enough to alarm adults. Gaiman himself claimed that it is the "strangest thing" he had ever written. He wrote that,

"It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares."

 

An adult may puzzle over this. Indeed, a strange change comes over the mind of the practical adult when they find out that most children prefer tales about monsters and evil as opposed to books containing more comfortable and childlike ideas. I myself read these dark tales as a child, and I read them still, for they fascinate me to no end. Though the things that interest me about them now are not the things I liked about them as a child. Indeed, I never realized them then. I loved them because they were about adventure, because they thrilled me, and sometimes made me squirm. 

 

 

 The Jabberwocky: The Problem Child.

 

I believe it was in part these books that inspired in me a desire to free myself of my parents. It seems like a harsh or even humorous thing to say. Yet just how far a child dares go when they run away from home varies (it usually is a matter of blocks, but some are bolder than others). The steps halt and the tears come when a child runs to the extent of their desire to be parent-less and realizes that the big, frightful and altogether unfamiliar world is somewhere outside their door.

But, of course, this never happens to the children in the stories. Red Riding Hood does not turn around when she runs into the wolf, and despite what the rational adult would have her do, none can deny that at least Red Riding Hoods exertion into the deep dark woods and away from her mother made for a good story.

 

 The Deep Dark Wood: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

  Little Red Riding Hood meets the Wolf: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

It remains a rather obvious truth that even children's tales without monsters are usually about orphans, and, if they are not orphans, the protagonist's parents have been lost somehow. This tradition began with our first tales about children; classics like David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn all feature children that are somehow parent-less, whether their parents are deceased or simply too incompetent to provide care. 

But, though the villain's face may change from one tale to another, as does the perpetrator that took their parents away, when it comes to children's stories, the adventure almost always begins the same way: First, the child must lose their parents, then the journey begins. 

 

 

Orphans: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

Alone in the World: The Wide Window.

 

By removing the children's guardian, they are cut loose into the world, sent adrift into trial and adversary, sometimes even into horror, all of which they will have to deal with on their own. Thus, Alice's mother does not seek her in the Looking Glass, Red Riding Hood goes into the woods alone, Coraline's parents do not crawl through the little door after her. 

Of course, no child would adamantly wish this fate upon themselves (I hope). Nevertheless, orphan-hood is romanticized, not so much because it is desired, but because it makes for a good story. If the child is parent-less, they must make their own way, find their own place. If there are monsters under their bed, there are no parents to check for them; they must take a peak themselves. If a scoundrel is after their fortune, they must outsmart him alone. If their house is being invaded by monsters, they must fight them off without adult aid. 

Thus, adventure becomes inevitable. 

Herein lies, I believe, the true appeal to the mind of a child. It lies between the motherless child and the monster, for it is here that the book reveals in full the idea that resonates so with the young mind that reads it: it reveals that the child can be capable, courageous, even heroic.

Inevitably, it was in books like these that I myself met many villains and faced many monsters. Yet, though I admit I was not always a particularly brave child, they never frightened me. Indeed, the only time these books kept me up at night was when I was busy reading them. 

Thinking back now, the only time the dark of my childhood bedroom ever scared me was when the book lay on my nightstand, still unfinished. It was then that the dark felt like the unknown pages of a still unread book, a book left stagnant amidst trial, still without an ending. It was questions like will May Bird ever make it back to the world of the living that kept me awake at night. 

 The Dark Unknown Pond: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

Ironically, my parents didn't let me finish that book, and I regret it still. I wonder sometimes how that book ends, for I never finished it. My parents forbidding was more frightening than the book itself, for it had not yet occurred to me that the ideas within a book could be dangerous, and the unknown sources of that danger scared me more than any book ever could.

At the end of the day, the truth is that any fear I might have felt was conquered when the children I was reading about conquered their monsters, be it the Other Mother, or the boogeyman.

 The Other Mother's Face: Coraline.

 

Much could be said about how adults and children experience horror differently. Even more could be written about how adults and children experience books differently. (I myself have written a great deal on this topic here on this blog.)

Yet perhaps the most fundamental question is this: What makes these creepy children's books so popular with kids? Why do kiddies like to squirm?

 

I believe, at its core, this question has a simple explanation.

 

Kids like books that are frightful because the world to them is frightful. Not only this, books like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Coraline put its child characters in the face of the frightful and yet they still feature them as heroes. Even when misfortune strikes or the monsters come knocking, these books suggest that the children stand a fighting chance. 

 

 Snatched: The Inside Story.

I have seen the following quotation attributed to many writers. But I know Gaiman was at least paraphrasing one of them (probably Chesterton) when he wrote that:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

 

The same is true for monsters, for Other-Mothers, and for sinister and selfish adults.

Every child will at one point face the real adversaries and true horrors around them (hopefully not to the same dramatic extent as these fictional children). 

But be it Gaiman, Chesterton, or Lewis to whom we attribute this idea, at one point or another, they all may have spoken truly when they said that there is a fundamental truth to fairy tales; not just because they teach that monsters (or dragons) can be beaten, but because they teach that the world is dark and full of evil. Brace yourself child, there are monsters out there, these tales say.

 

 The Tyrannical Editor: The Inside Story.

Yet, at the end of the day, that is not why I believe children read them. As much as monsters fascinate and entice the minds of children, the idea that truly captures their imagination is the image these books give them of themselves. This is their most important message: that, though the world is evil, they don't have to be. Thus, our child-heroes face cruelty and trial with courage, kindness, and a good heart.

As to why this scares the adult mind more than the child's... Well, the simple answer is this: The world is big and frightful, and there are monsters in it.

But perhaps it takes a child's imagination to believe and know that they could have what it takes to conquer it, or, at the least, not to let it conquer them.

      Into the Unknown World: The Bad Beginning.

If the world has you feeling anxious or even a bit frightened, I dare you to read a children's book. Revisit Narnia or Wonderland, crawl through the little door, run from the man with a uni-brow, unravel the conspiracy of the Scarlet Hand, rescue your kidnapped parents. If you're like me and you've read these books before, you already know what you'll find there. The unknown can no longer frighten you. 

Indeed, you will find that these books have something new to tell you, something that you probably never fully realized when you were a child: Nothing inspires bravery in such a fundamentally simple way as a book written for children.

As C.S. Lewis said,

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” 

~C.S. Lewis

The Story of a House

A Brief Foreward:  As a writer, I have always strived to take something ordinary and mundane and bestow it with somewhat of an enchantment. It really doesn't take much to see the extrordinary within the average if you have a little imagination.
But it occured to me the other day that in some ways I am not a writer at all; I am neither a creator or a storyteller, but a listener. 
I discovered a long time ago that there are stories all around me, camuflouged as the mundane and the ordinary, shrouded by the dusts of reality. But beneath all that incoherent noise, the flustered chaos and realities timelapses, there is always a story. One must only learn to listen.


Well, that is exactly what I did when this last spring I wrote a piece for publication: I listened! So, without further adue, here is The Story of a House. (For, believe it or not, sometimes houses tell stories too.)

The Story of a House

There was once a house which stood in the woods down the road. It had been a wise old house. A house whose floors creaked with age. A house whose walls were filled with knowledge and dusty precarious corners. The house had been a home to many, but mostly it had been home to time. Time, which like ever pattering footsteps wandered through the silence. The house whispered of time when the wind howled through its drafts and hollows. It groaned of time, like old bones that creak when it storms; and, when the sun shone onto its old wooden floors, you could see every withered wrinkle.
Within this house time had stored its riches, like a vast trove of treasures. The house remembered them all, every memory, big and small; every life which had lived under its ancient roof.  

It remembered the retired professor who lived there once, long ago, after the war. He had a strong sturdy voice and walked with a cane. He had been a storyteller at heart. He filled the house with tales of war and memories of friends deceased, like faded photographs hung along the walls. He filled the house with tales of battles, not those fought on the fields, but the battles that time invokes on the soul; the battles of a boy that does not wish to grow old. 
The old man had died there in that house, old and weary. The house was younger then, but even so, the weariness, which was once the old man's, lived in the house even after he was gone.

The house remembered the young man who lived there after. He had dark hair and bright brilliant eyes. He had been a man of great ambition. And, when he moved into the house, he had brought with him a lifetime of potential. 
The young man had tried to be a lot of things throughout his lifetime. He had tried to be a writer and a painter, an explorer and an adventurer. Unfortunately, the young man's ambitions outdid him. He fell ill at quite a young age. He left the house one winter's night, coughing and hacking. He never came home. His unfulfilled potential wandered the house for a long time after he left, like a ghost stuck in his routine, making coffee in the morning and shuffling around in his slippers and housecoat in the evening. And, sometimes, late at night, you could still see his desk lamp burning and the thin silhouette, like a distant memory, of a young man of great ambition sitting hunched over his typewriter, the rhythm of ideas churning and working, coming to life as he writes tales of unfulfilled potential. 

After the man of ambition there came a young woman. She inherited the old house, and the house remembered her too. She might have been the young man's niece, but that is not what the house remembered. The house remembered her face, reflected in the windows as she looks out at the sun and at the rain. The house remembered her silent footsteps, wandering the house through her sleepless nights. Most of all, the house remembered her laughter, clear and full of wonder. 
The young girl married in the backyard of that house, under the great oak tree that stood beside it, its ancient companion standing by it through the turnings of time. The girl had two children in that house, and the house remembered their laughter too. It remembered her midnight wanderings and nighttime kisses, and the sound of her voice singing lullabies. 
The girl's husband died ten years after their wedding day. After that the girl no longer laughed as often as she cried, a silent weeping in the night, a stifled sobbing that no one ever heard. Over time the children grew, and, eventually, they left her. 
But the house had stayed. The girl stayed also. 
She wandered the house often at night, and she stared out the window, murmuring lullabies to the moon. Her laughter was a sound that became unfamiliar, forgotten by all but the reminiscence of the house. She rarely cried then, but there was sorrow in her step and pain in her silence. 
She too died in that house.

The house stood empty for a long time after that. Its only inhabitant was the ever-persistent ticking of time which, bit by bit, took its toll of the house. 
Houses do not age like people do. But even so, the house grew weary, for it knew the weariness of old men when life runs thin. For a long time, the house had ceased to be a home; it knew the bitterness of unfulfilled potential and the frustration of crippled ambition. The house became stale and numb, undusted and uncared for. And the house was filled with sorrow. It knew that best of all. 
What the house had not known yet was what came after. What came after would undo the house. For neither heartache nor affliction can cripple quite like addiction. What came after was anger.

Many years later a car pulled up to the house and a man dressed in black stepped out. He had lived there once as a boy. He had grown up in this house. He had played in its yard and climbed the great oak tree which stands beside it. He learned to ride his bike in its driveway and looked out the little round window in the attic where he had slept all throughout his childhood. He had cried in that room when his father had died. He had whimpered into the pillow so that no one would hear him. 
The house had heard him. 
The man moved back into the house. He knocked down some walls and fixed the roof. He filled it with anger and lined shelves with bitterness, empty bottles and half-drunken ones. He rarely cried now, but he screamed. He screamed at his children and he screamed at his wife. He puts dents in the walls and so, bit by bit, the man broke his family apart. 
Eventually, the children moved out. Neither said goodbye to their father when they left, and they rarely came home except when their father was not home. His wife stayed by him though; his tender wife, who cried when he screamed, who hid her bruises and covered her pain. His wife who whispered her unnumbered excuses into the night when he slept beside her. 
And the house, well, the house became frail and silent; the homely presence which once inhabited it almost gone. 
Then, one stormy night, the couple's screaming continued. They screamed, and they screamed, and when they could no longer scream, they started to cry. They cried about the lives they had ruined. They cried about the life they might have had. They cried about the anger and the weariness and the pain. And, when finally they stopped crying, the man's wife got her things and she left him. She got into her car and drove off into the loneliness of the night.
The house was silent for a long time. So silent one might almost have thought it empty. But the house listened intently, and in the silence, it heard the quietest of weeping. The drunken man wept like he wept when his father died. He wept like a child whose mother neglects him. He wept like an infant whose family forgets him. 
No one would have heard the man weep had the house not been listening. The house that knew weariness, sorrow, and pain, it knew his pain also.
But the man died not know the things that houses know. So, the man got another drink and eventually he fell asleep on the floor. And when the smoke started to stir on the ceiling, and the fire cracked and seared, the man was sleeping still. 
The man died in that house.

...

There is a yard with an old crippled oak tree, blackened by flame. It is leafless in summer and hollow in winter. It died long ago. A girl got married under this oak tree once, many years ago when the tree was far younger and its life full of potential. 

The yard is empty, but a house stood here once. A great big house filled with silent wisdoms and many lifetimes of stories.

A young boy drives up one day to this empty yard. He hasn't been here since his father died. He takes a deep breath and gets out of the car. 

He walks the yard for a while, contemplating about sorrow and unfulfilled potential and how addiction can cripple a man. After much wandering, he finds himself standing where the front used to be. The fire has left a black scar on the earth. It has healed since he was here last. New grass is just starting to grow.

Though the yard is empty now, there was a home here once. Somehow, though there is no house, there is a home here still.

And so, the boy builds a house. He builds a new home, and this house still remembers the things that the old house once knew; the things that those who had once lived here seemed to have forgotten.

      Life is a little like a house, is it not? It is furnished and lined with the days which we live, filled like a shelf with the stories we make. 

And so, the boy builds a house, and he fills it, not with bitterness, sickness, or pain, but with something new. The boy builds a house, and he fills it with life.

And in the shadow of this great big new house, at the foot of an old oak tree which died in a fire, sprouts something new.

Thank you Heinrich Nikel Photography for this photograph and for capturing stories not with words, but with pictures. Although the story of a house was not inspired by this photograph, it certainly could have been. I can almost hear the houses weary groan by the sag of its walls. Oh, what stories this house might have to tell!