“There was some children once that I knew,” Sasha began her tale. “They were the brother and sister of one of my friends. We weren’t supposed to ever hang out though, because my friend was very poor. It didn’t look good for my parents to let me hang out with poor people for some reason. Well my friend and I never listened to my parents and we would see each other. Because she was friends with me, she was pretty well fed. I wasn’t going to let my friend starve around me.
Her family had 8 children, she was the oldest and the most loved. We were freshmen in high school when her parents decided they couldn’t afford to keep all their children. One day when my friend, Nina was her name, got home her youngest two siblings were gone. They only had 6 children now. The mother said they went somewhere they would be able to eat better. The father said it was for the best. The child that was now the youngest of them all, told Nina that their father had told them to go out and find food for us all. That they weren’t allowed to come back until that happened. Nina never saw them again that I know of.
A few months later, Nina’s family was again having problems with feeding everyone because their mom had been fired from her job. So when Nina came home again from school one day, the three youngest siblings were gone. The mother said they went somewhere they would be able to eat better. The father said it was for the best. The child that was now the youngest of them all, told Nina that their father had told them to go out and find food for us all. That they weren’t allowed to come back until that happened. One of her siblings came back this time. Nina’s brother came back with a tale that was very strange indeed. Nina told it to me the very day she heard it. She was practically in tears as she told me.
The children were given a basket that they were told to fill with food before they came back, the brother had told Nina. So they went out into the woods that was outside their house on the outskirts of town. They were going to pick the biggest cherries and blueberries they could find. To find their way back, they had laid down a trail of walnuts that they had found, planning on picking them up later. As the three traveled deeper into the woods they had noticed that there was something different about the path they were on. It was getting darker, there weren’t anymore leaves on the trail. When they had looked behind them, there was a squirrel that had been following them picking up the walnuts along the way.
They didn’t think anything of it though. The children had continued walking, figuring they would worry about finding their way back later. Eventually they had found a real path in the woods, made out of stones. Following it, it had led them to this little cottage that appeared to be made of food. They were so hungry after walking for so long, that they had been overjoyed to find food and had run towards the cottage. Right as they were about to see if it was indeed actually food, the door of the cottage had opened. This cranky looking old lady had stepped out of the cottage. It looked like she was about to yell at them, when she just smiled and motioned for them to come inside.
‘I see you followed your siblings here,’ the cranky old lady had smiled at the children as they walked into the house. ‘You must be awfully hungry, just like they were. How about you go and say hello to your siblings and I will make us something to eat?’ She showed them to the basement doors and sent them down the stairs, following slowly after. When they had reached the bottom of the stairs, they saw that it was a cellar fully of food on one wall and on another there were these huge cages. The old lady had opened one of the cages and pushed the children in before they could do anything else.
‘Enjoy.’ The old lady crackled and had climbed back up the stairs. The rest of Nina’s younger siblings had come out of the shadows, tears in their eyes, and had hugged their siblings. The ones that had been there for longer, had explained that whenever they were hungry, they could just ring the bell at the entrance to the cage. The old lady would bring down some warm stew for them to eat and then would vanish back upstairs. The stew was really quite good, the youngest had informed them, just as long as they were careful about not eating the bones of the meat.
So the siblings had rang the bell, because of course they were hungry. Within a few moments the old lady had come skipping down the stairs. ‘My dear children,’ she had sung to them. ‘It appears we are out of stew. Who wants to help me with the ingredients to make more?’ The youngest of Nina’s siblings had walked forward to help her. That was the last anyone ever saw of him.
As the oldest of the siblings that were locked in the house, the brother realized very quickly that they weren’t eating just any type of meat. He had found fingernails in the stew this time. There were some long hairs there also. He had noticed a ring in the stew also. It was his youngest sister’s friendship ring. So he had hatched a plan to get out of the cottage. There was no way to take his siblings with him on the day that he had decided to escape though. The old lady was too quick for that.
It was almost a month before she had come back down asking who wanted to help with the ingredients again. This time, the brother had gone up. Not realizing that the brother knew what the old lady had been doing, she had tried to show him to the kitchen. He had run straight out the door though and had just kept running until he came out of the woods, collapsing in exhaustion outside of his old home. Nina had found him later that day, right on the edge of the woods. When he woke up, he told Nina the story about the wicked old lady.
Nina told me that even if someone offers me food if I enter their basement, I should never do it. That is something I have followed since the day that my parents threw me into exile. Being alive was more important than being well fed.
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