Why the Squonk Weeps
By Jeff Chapman


There once lived a maiden,

fair and sweet, in a village at the edge of a great, dark forest. Her parents named her Joy, and she brought cheer to all, for her turquoise eyes shone with a sea of kindness that swelled her heart. With skin as pure as fresh-fallen snow and hair as golden as sun-ripened wheat, she never lacked a partner at a festival dance. Many suitors sought her good favor, and her mother held great hope for her future, but Joy set her heart on a poor, young woodcutter, a childhood friend.

“My mother and father say you are destined to remain as you are,” said Joy to the Woodcutter. “That I can do much better for myself. They warn that my devotion to you is misplaced, that I’ll end my days poor and ugly.”

“I may be a woodcutter now but I work hard, and with you to help me, we’ll clear land for a farm and buy oxen to pull the plow.”

“I’ve known you forever,” said Joy. “I can’t imagine living apart from you.”

When they wed, the Woodcutter vowed to make their dreams come true and Joy vowed her eternal loyalty. They built a cottage in a clearing at the edge of the forest. Each morning Joy went with her husband to help gather and carry the wood.

One day in autumn, when leaves covered the trails and crunched underfoot, the Woodcutter said to his bride, “I’ve a mind to go deep into the woods today. No one goes there and the gathering will be plentiful and easy.”

“For good reason no one goes,” said Joy.

“I’m not afraid of beasts or goblins. We’ll be back before night and I have my ax.”

Joy followed the Woodcutter as he left the familiar trails and trekked where none dared go. They found the gathering easy, and no beasts attacked them. The Woodcutter laughed as he talked of their future prosperity.

“Perhaps we were only fortunate today,” said Joy. “The forest is sad here. Where are the birds?”

“You’ve filled your head with silly tales,” said the Woodcutter. “Your mother didn’t want you to get lost.”

A branch buried in the leaves caught the Woodcutter’s ankle. He fell headlong and cracked his skull against a rock.

Joy hastened to his side but felt no hope. She cradled her husband’s bloody head in her lap, weeping for what she had lost. Her salty tears dripped from her cheeks like rain from a shingled roof and drenched her bodice, staining the fabric with sorrow.

From deeper in the woods, a wretched crone with skin as rough as a toad and warts as numerous as the trees heard Joy wailing. She kindled a fire beneath a great black cauldron, large enough to fit a man, and then hobbled forth to see what good thing she might find.

“What troubles you, young miss?” said the Hag.

Joy startled at the ugliness that addressed her but gathered her wits in a moment. “My dear husband has cracked his head on a stone. I dare not leave, for some wild animal will eat him. He’s too heavy for me to carry, and I fear he is dead.”

“Aye,” said the Hag, pinching the Woodcutter’s cheek. “He’s a young and tender one and you’re too young and lovely to be so troubled.”

“We’ve been married only since summer.”

“I know a bit about healing,” said the Hag. In turn she touched the Woodcutter’s forehead, neck, and chest. “He’s not dead yet. I can restore him, I believe.”

“Oh, would you? Please?”

“What will you pay me?” inquired the Hag.

“We are poor woodcutters. We have so little, but I will pay whatever you ask and work as long as it takes to make good the debt.”

“Give me your beauty.”

“My beauty? How is that possible?” asked Joy.

“Many things are possible if you know their secrets.”

Joy gazed at her husband’s cold, ashen pallor. She recalled her vow of eternal loyalty and all their unfulfilled dreams. Her beauty seemed a small price to pay. “For the life of my husband you may have my beauty.”

The Hag laid a hand on Joy’s head and another on the Woodcutter. She chanted an incantation with harsh syllables that frightened Joy as they gashed the forest’s serenity.

The Woodcutter stirred in Joy’s arms. Her unfathomed sorrow gave way to soaring elation until she saw the revulsion in his eyes. He recoiled from Joy and rolled into the raven-haired beauty that the Hag had become.

“It’s me,” Joy cried. “Your wife.” As she pleaded, she saw her hands, now paws tipped with claws, and her arms, now covered with amber fur and studded with warts. She brought her paws to her face and found her cheeks rippled with pox scars like the crests and troughs of a choppy sea.

“Who are you?” the Woodcutter asked the Hag.

“Your new wife.” The Hag helped him to his feet. “There was a horrible accident. Fortunately, I happened along before that beast consumed you as well.”

“My dear, beautiful, young wife, eaten?”

The Hag nodded.

The Woodcutter pulled his hair. “By that?” He pointed at Joy.

“A squonk,” said the Hag, “the ugliest creature alive or dead.”

“Where’s my ax? I’ll sever its ugly head from its hideous carcass.”

Joy protested the Hag’s lies, but though her mind heard her voice, her ears heard raspy cries and wails. She rose on her legs to stand but fell forward on her forelegs.

The Woodcutter found his ax in the leaves and brandished it. Joy scampered into the woods. The Woodcutter gave chase, but the Hag called him back.

“Come,” she said, “and I’ll show you our new home.”

The Woodcutter rubbed his face. “With my Joy gone there’s no reason to go back and it seems I owe you my life.”

“You do,” said the Hag. “It’s not far, and you can rest.”

“My head aches.”

The Woodcutter took the smooth, long-fingered hand that the Hag offered and complimented her beauty. “My departed wife had golden tresses and green eyes, but I think I much prefer your dark hair and black eyes.”

The Hag led the Woodcutter to her broken-down hovel with its sagging roof, where she tricked him into the cauldron that she claimed was his bath and boiled him for supper.

Magic does not always work as expected, and in the case of something so fleeting as beauty and a heart as black as the Hag’s, her new beauty shed as quickly as dead leaves in a gale. Before the Hag finished her supper, her warts had sprouted with renewed vigor.

Joy roamed the forest as a wild and fearsome beast. One day, at the edge of a clearing, she came across a pile of bones with gouges from cutting and clothes that bore her husband’s scent. In the clearing stood a cottage with a sagging roof. The Hag was scrubbing out a cauldron, leaning over the edge to reach the bottom. Joy growled. Fury drove her. She lunged toward the Hag, biting the crone’s backside and sinking her teeth through course robes and tough skin to tender flesh. The old crone bellowed and kicked, pinned over the rim of the cauldron.

As Joy clamped down harder and harder, something unexpected happened, something that neither the Hag nor Joy imagined possible. The devotion that fueled Joy’s revenge purged her body of ugliness and pushed it back into the Hag where it belonged. Joy stood up. The Hag turned squonk wheeled about to bite Joy’s leg, but this squonk had no teeth. Joy slapped its sore rump, sending the beast squealing into the forest.

A plain maiden now, her beauty usurped and wasted, Joy returned to her village much wiser. The squonk wandered the trackless forest, walking on all fours like a common beast, with no voice to utter a spell. Tears dripped from her eyes, wetting her mane as she lamented the vagaries of magic and the impotence of her bite. No one felt the least bit sorry for the wicked Hag turned squonk.

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