Primary
National Strategy
This is an interactive fiction text.
VIEW this SLIDE SHOW to activate.
It is not a game to play. It is a story to read.
But there are many different ways to read it.
You must find YOUR way.
instructions
begin
Trails
through the
Forest
the brother’s trail
Our tales are trails
on the forest floor.
Do they lead us home
or lose us more?
the sister’s trail
the brother’s trail
the sister’s trail
It was being so hungry that started it all. In fact hunger was often the
thing that moved our story on. You could say we were eaten more than
we ate – or almost so.
I think I would call that night the beginning; that night when hunger would
not let me rest. Real hunger rolls about in your stomach like rocks. It
cramps you up in a sort of weary agony. Little wonder my straw pallet in
the cottage corner held no sleep. So, being awake, I heard them talk. I
heard that woman twist my father with her words; wring out his will like a
dishcloth until she had him convinced there was not bread enough in our
poor lives for four, that he should take my sister and I and leave us, be rid
of us for ever, abandon us just like unwanted pets. I shall never forget his
drained assent. Later those words lay like stones in my soul, heavier that
the ones in my belly. But then my thought was only for my sister, my
sweet sister. She needed me to save her. And I did save her, in a way –
at at least we saved each other. But in the end we only changed one
hunger for another.
B/S
Q
My clever idea worked; it worked like a dream. And we were home again.
My sister was home. I watched her face as she ran into our father’s arms.
And I watched his face too. There was joy on both. But only one was
unclouded.
When I heard of that first plan to leave us, lose us, I had crept outside
and gathered flint-white stones. When the woman said goodbye, handing
us bread with a smile of loving sacrifice I knew for malice, I had to pass it
to my sister, for my pockets were already full. And as we walked with
father, talking of trees and birds and comfortable, familiar things that
stuck in my throat, I dropped the stones to leave a trail. Long after he had
left us, once the moon came out, they were easy to follow home. But as
my sister rushed to father’s arms, it was the woman’s look that greeted
me. I knew at once that she would try again, and would not let me best
her next time. Back then, I rose to the challenge. Now, I know that she
had won already. Or rather that we had already lost.
B/S
Q
It was a good idea, that trail of stones, a canny one. But it made me too
cocksure, too confident by half. I thought I could repeat the same trick
with a clever twist. But I was wrong. So I lost us both in the deep forest,
with the stones back in our bellies, and our only bread in the stomachs of
birds. For my own part I think I could have borne it, even considered it a
fair price for escape – not just from that woman, but from both of them.
But it was for my sweet ‘Tel I wept, shivering against me on that poor bed
of pine must. I knew her fear, her pain, her hunger, far worse than my
own.
When that woman talked him into leaving us again, as I knew full well she
would, I more than half expected the locked door that kept me from the
stones. I thought our sacrifice of bread, more genuine than hers in giving
it, would save us cunningly. I thought a crumb trail would bring us home
again as well as the stones had done. But there were others in the forest
as hungry as we were, others for whom the crumbs were easy pickings.
We were easy pickings too!
B/S
Q
It was I who had failed to get us home that second time. So I did not
blame my sister for eating what was so readily available. That I was to be
eaten by the crone in return for the bread my sister stole, I did not resent.
If I had known the price beforehand, I would have paid it willingly.
And yet as I crouched day after day in that cage, my belly more full than it
had been all my short life, a greater fear than my own end gnawed away
at me. I understood full well the witch was fattening me for her own oven.
I knew that my full belly and plumping limbs were as much a threat to my
life as the churning hunger had been. But I had none left to cherish but
my sister. I would have made the witch a meal or two, and gladly, would it
save her, would it buy her back what we had both lost. But I feared that
would not be. If I were the witch’s dinner, who would be desert? And so I
saved the chicken bone, and stuck it through the bars when the crone
came to test my finger for fattening. It bought me time, time to find a way
to save my sister. I had to be strong for her.
B/S
Q
Now that it is all over I can see that there were two witches in our story –
and both of them tried to kill us. One wanted to eat us, but perhaps had
no reason to love us in the first place. The other was worse. She sent us
to be eaten, when she should have cared for us. Now they are both gone,
and good riddance I say.
But there is another in our tale whose behaviour was worse. He did love
us, and still sent us. It comes hard to know that your father is a weak
man. For my part I would not have come home this second time. My
pockets were bulging with the witch’s gold, and it might have bought us
happiness anywhere. We came back once before. We should not have
made the same mistake again. Yet it was not for my sake that I came. It
was for my sister. First she tricked the witch into leaving us - perhaps
one of these days she will tell me how – and then my sweet, gentle sister
brought us home with forgiveness shining in her eyes. I hope it is enough
for both of us.
B/S
Q
When my dear mother died, she left me still hungry for her love. The lack of it
churned in my stomach like a physical pain. So when my father married again
and brought that woman to live with us in our little cottage, I tried and tried
to be nice to her. I tried to make her love me. In my father’s presence she
smiled back, cared for the cottage, seemed to care for us. But behind his back
I caught a sneer of contempt on her lips, and a glint of triumph in her eyes.
Still I tried for my father’s sake, for my father’s love. I thought he would
love me for loving her, and his love was better than none.
But I can see now that it only played into her hands. It made me weak in
needing love and her strong in denying it. So when my poor father took us
that day deep into the woods and asked us to wait for him, turning from us
with watery eyes, I knew he would not return. I knew she would not let him.
She hungered for him herself, and he was a meal she would not share.
B/S
Q
I was not surprised when, left in the forest that second time, my brother lost
us. I was not surprised that his oh-so-clever plan did not work like the one
before. But I said nothing. He needed to think that he was looking after
both of us, that he was looking after me.I shivered and cried as we lay in
darkness beneath the pines, I snuggled against him, so that he could play the
man, protect me. But I always knew that in the end he could not save us. I
always knew it would be up to me. I saw where the blame lay, and it was
not with my father, nor my brother.
What I did resent was the loss of the bread - and perhaps his misplaced selfbelief. Even as I watched, silent, without reproach, and as he threw down
crumb after crumb of our only food, I could picture the scuttering creatures,
the swooping birds, filling their bellies instead of ours. And by then hunger
was churning and churning inside me. I could have eaten stones.
B/S
Q
With the crumb trail gone, we wandered in that forest for a long time. Our
hunger ate into us, and tiredness drained us. So we were walking almost in a
trance when we came to the little cottage in a clearing. It felt strangely
familiar, in a way I didn’t understand. I was drawn to it. But a soon as I
approached it, smelled it, touched it, found it was made of bread and cake,
there was no thought in my being but to eat. I tore lumps of bread from the
walls and swallowed them voraciously. Knowing it was not mine to take, I
ate it anyway, and tried to share both bread and guilt with Hans.
Then she came out, the old witch who owned it. The moment I saw the look
in her eyes, I knew she meant us harm. I knew what I had done, too. My
weakness, my hunger, had played into her hands. I had eaten her house,
stolen her bread. Now she could demand pay-back. Now she could take what
was mine and eat it. And what I had brought her was my bother.
B/S
Q
She locked my brother in a cage, that crone. But she made to look after me
and care for me. She fed me and taught me to bake. And all the while she was
fattening my brother for the oven. She would eat him, take him from me.
Behind her smile she could not hide the glint of triumph in her eyes.
Somewhere inside I knew that she had done all this before, and I had let her.
I would not make the same mistake again.
The day her patience ran out and I knew that she would eat him, fat or no,
she asked me to check the oven. ‘See if it’s hot enough, girl, for my bread.’
Bread! I feigned stupidity, asked her to check herself, to show me how. The
heat surged out as I opened the oven door, and when the crone peered in I
pushed, and slammed it shut again. I told my brother only that she had gone.
He was so distracted with the piles of gold we found in her cupboards, that
he never asked where, or when or why- and I shall never tell him.
B/S
Q
And so in the end we are back in our cottage where it all started. But are we
home? More than time has moved on. The gold we brought back means there
will always be bread baking in our little kitchen. And we returned, of
course, to find our stepmother gone. Gone for good, my father said. I have
never asked where, or when, or why. I do not need to ask, or want to.
And the people? Have they changed? Two, I think, have not. But I can
forgive my father the weak love in his watery eyes. I can live with my
brother’s resentment too. It is enough that, at last, I am here with the two
men in my life. My father. My brother. I know them so well - but I am glad
they no longer know me. One calls me ‘ sweet child’, one ‘gentle sister’. Only I
remember the sharp, fierce heat on my face as I opened the oven door, and the
sweet, gentle joy in my heart as I closed it.
B/S
Q
go back in time
go forward in time
make a choice
B/S
switch brother / sister
begin again
Q
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