Works/The Juniper Tree

Once upon a time, there lived a man and a woman in quiet matrimony.

They were fairly prosperous and in good health, and they loved each other very much, and their marriage would have been a happy one, save for one thing: they had no children. Day and night the wife prayed for a child, but still none came.

In front of their house stood a juniper tree. One winter day the wife stood in front of it, peeling an apple, and cut her finger with the knife. A few drops of blood fell onto the snow.

"Oh," she said, with a sigh, "if only I had a child as red as blood and as white as snow!" And upon saying that, she became cheerful, for she had a sudden feeling that something might come of this wish. So she went inside with a light heart.

A month went by and the snow was gone; in two months everything was green; in three months the flowers sprouted. After four months the trees in the forest grew thickly, their limbs intertwined; the birds sang, and their song echoed through the woods. The fifth month came and went, and when the wife stood under the juniper tree, it smelled so sweet that her heart leapt and she fell to her knees from sheer joy. In the sixth month the fruit was large and firm, and in the seventh month she picked the juniper berries and ate them so greedily that she became sick. At the end of the eighth month, still in ill health, she called her husband to her and said:

"If I die, bury me beneath the juniper tree."

And having said that, she was at peace and remained content until the ninth month had passed. Then she had a baby boy, as red as blood and as white as snow. When she saw the child, she was so delighted that her heart stood still and she died.

Her husband buried her beneath the juniper tree and did very little for some time except weep. Eventually, though, he began to mend, and some time thereafter he had recovered enough to take another wife.

His second wife bore him a daughter, which they called Marlaina. His wife adored her daughter, but whenever she looked at the son, her hatred stabbed her like a knife. She could never forget that this child, not of her flesh, would always stand in her way and prevent her daughter from inheriting everything. Such was her way of seeing the world.

As time passed, she became openly cruel to the boy; she pushed him from one place to the next, slapped him and scolded him, so that the poor child lived in constant fear and knew no peace at all.

One day the girl asked her mother for an apple. "Of course, my child," the woman replied, and gave her one.

"Shouldn't my brother get one too?" asked the child.

This remark irritated the mother, but she said, "Yes, as soon as he comes home from school." And, indeed, as she looked out the window she saw the boy coming. An evil thought took possession of her then, and she snatched the apple back from her daughter, saying:

"You shan't have one before your brother does." And she sent the girl outside to play.

She put the apple into an iron-bound chest which stood in a corner, a very large and sturdy chest with a heavy lid.

When the boy arrived, she tried to smile sweetly. "Would you like an apple, my son?"

The boy was suspicious of her eyes, which remained ferocious despite her smile. But he said that, yes, he would like an apple. "There is an apple for you in that chest," she said. "Open it and get it."

As the boy leaned into the chest - crash! - she slammed the lid down so hard onto his neck that his head flew off and fell into the chest.

Now the fit had passed and the woman was seized with fear. "There must be some way," she thought, "to conceal what I have done."

She went to her room and came back with a white kerchief. She took the boy's body and placed it in a chair just outside the front door, as if he were sitting in the sunshine. She took his head from the trunk and arranged it back on top of his neck, then tied the kerchief around his neck so that nothing could be seen. Then she placed the apple in his open hand.

Not too much later, Marlaina came back into the yard and saw him. She went into the kitchen to her mother, who was stirring a pot of nothing but hot water.

"Mother," she said, "my brother's sitting by the door and he's very pale. He's got an apple in his hand and I asked him if it was for me, but he didn't say anything, and I'm scared."

"He's just being difficult," said the mother. "Go ask him for it again, and if he won't say anything to you, slap him on the ear with my blessing."

Marlaina went back outside and asked her brother again about the apple. He said nothing, of course. So, timidly, she gave him a quick cuff on the ear, and his head fell off. The little girl was so stunned and frightened that all she could do for a moment was stand and stare. Then she began to cry and ran inside shouting, "Mother, Mother! I've knocked my brother's head off!"

"Oh, Marlaina, what have you done?" said her mother. "We can't let anyone know about this, and besides there's nothing we can do about it now. So we'll make a stew out of him and no one will be the wiser."

The mother brought the boy's remains inside and chopped thim into little pieces. Then she put them in the pot and made them into a stew. While she did this, Marlaina could not stop crying. She stood by the pot, watching her mother and weeping, and so many of her tears fell into the pot that the stew needed no salt when it was done.

When the father came home, he sat down at the table and asked where his son was. "He's gone to stay with his great-uncle for a while," said his wife, serving him a huge portion of stew.

"What's he going to do there? He didn't ask me about any such thing," said the puzzled father.

"Well, he wanted to go very badly, so I gave him permission," she said. "He'll only be gone a few weeks. I'm sure they'll take good care of him."

"He should have at least said good-bye to me," grumbled the father, but he began to eat his dinner nonetheless. Then he began to eat more quickly, When his bowl was empty he looked up and exclaimed, "This is delicious! Give me more!"

The more she served him, the more he wanted. "Give it all to me," he said. "You shall have none of it. Somehow I feel as if this were all mine." And so he cleaned out the pot, throwing the bones under the table as he ate.

Meanwhile, Marlaina went to her room and took out her best silk kerchief. When her father had risen from the table, she crept in and gathered all the bones, tying them up in the kerchief. Weeping bitterly, she knelt and laid the bundle beneath the juniper tree.

As soon as she had done this, she felt comforted for some reason, and she was able to stop crying. Then she looked up and saw that the tree was beginning to move; the branches moved apart and together again as if they were clapping their hands. At the same time smoke began to pour from the trunk, and in the middle of the cloud of smoke it seemed like a flame was burning among the branches.

Suddenly a beautiful bird flew out of the smoke, singing magnificently. It flew away, and the juniper tree was exactly as it had been before, except that the kerchief and bones were gone. Marlaina felt then as if her brother were still alive, happy in her heart, and she went back into the house to get her supper.

Meanwhile the bird flew over the roofs of the town, and came to land on the house of a goldsmith. From the window sill it began to sing:

The goldsmith was sitting in his workshop when he heard this, making a golden chain, and was so fascinated by the song that when he walked across to the window he lost one of his slippers and didn't even notice. Still holding the chain and his tongs, he opened the window and said, "How very interesting. Could I ask you sing it again?"

"I never sing twice for nothing," said the bird. "But if you give me that gold chain, I'll sing it again."

"Very well," said the goldsmith. The bird clutched the chain in its left claw and began to sing again, flying away as it did so:

It flew to the house of a shoemaker nearby, who had heard the song as it approached and was just as fascinated as the goldsmith had been. The shoemaker called his wife and children out to see the bird with the intriguing song and the sparkling plumage.

"That was beautiful!" the shoemaker said. "Sing it again!"

"I never sing twice for nothing," said the bird. "You'll have to give me a present."

"Wife," said the shoemaker, "there's a pair of red shoes inside on the top shelf. Fetch them for me." And she brought the shoes out, and the bird clutched the shoes in its right claw and began the song again, flying away.

The bird flew to the outskirts of the town, where the mill stream ran. The miller and his men were outside the mill, hewing a new millstone with their chisels. The bird landed nearby and sang its song, and as it sang, one by one the men put down their chisels and listened.

Then the miller said, "Bird, sing that again for us," and the men nodded.

"I never sing twice for nothing," said the bird. "But give me that millstone, and I'll sing it again."

"Well, I would," said the miller, "but these men have been working on it all day too; I can't just give it away without their consent."

"If the bird will sing again," said the others, "the bird can have it."

The miller and all his men took beams and and slowly levered up the stone until it rested on its edge. "Heave-ho!" Then the bird flew over and stuck its neck through the stone, wearing it like a collar, and flew up into the air with it as if it weighed nothing. And as the bird flew off, it sang the song again.

Meanwhile, the father, mother, and Marlaina were sitting around the fireplace. The father exclaimed, "Oh, how happy I am! I feel as though something good is about to happen."

"Not me," said the mother nervously. "I feel as if a storm were about to erupt." Marlaina said nothing.

At this point the bird returned, and perched in the juniper tree and began to sing its song.

The mother squeezed her eyes closed and tried to cover her ears, but there was a roaring in her head like thunder and her eyes burned.

"I'm going outside," said the father, standing. "I have to see this bird!"

"Don't go!" said his wife. "Nothing good can come of this! I feel like the whole house is shaking!"

Nevertheless the man went outside.

As he stepped under the juniper tree, the bird let go of the golden chain and it fell around the man's neck exactly so, as it fitted him perfectly.

The man went inside and said, "What a wonderful bird! Not only does it sing that lovely song, but look at this beautiful golden chain it gave me!"

But the woman was petrified with fear and only shook.

"Oh, I wish I were a thousand feet beneath the earth so I wouldn't have to hear this!"

Marlaina stood up. "I want to go outside too and see if the bird will give me something."

She went out to the tree and the bird let go of the red shoes. They fell into Marlaina's hands.

"Look!" she said, skipping back inside with the shoes on her feet. "What a wonderful bird it is!"

The mother shuddered. She felt as if her scalp was aflame and her eyes were smouldering coals. "I think the world must be coming to an end."

"Maybe you should go have a look at the bird as well," said the father. "It will make you feel better."

"I doubt it," said the mother, but she also felt as if she was going to choke in the indoor air, sitting there, so she stood up and stepped out the door.

And the bird lowered its head and let the millstone slip from its neck, and it fell upon the woman and crushed her. As the father and Marlaina rushed outside, they saw that smoke and flames were rising from the spot. When it had all subsided, the brother was standing there, with no trace of the evil mother to be seen.

He took his father and Marlaina by the hand, and the three of them went back inside, and were happy, and all was well.

Copyright © November 2001. Do not distribute or reproduce.