My Original Retelling of a Classic Folktale
Collected in Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1849) by James Orchard Halliwell
Winter had its own character here: maternal violence — or so she'd heard from a traveler when she ran a bed and breakfast. But what could be more peaceful than those long nights after the sun sank below the evergreens, and the moon played its glow across the silver-white banks? Then again, Agatha was not an ordinary woman.
She knew this because nobody sat near her at church, and by whispers overheard from children at play when she strolled through the little town. Perhaps because of her insular nature, she had earned the reputation of a cranky and mysterious spinster: the sort who frightens children by merely existing in her teeny-tiny old house. In her younger days, it would have cut her to think of it; now, she had thicker skin.
Her stomach was not so resilient. Lacking friends, she relied almost entirely on the teeny-tiny inheritance from her late husband, along with what she managed to pickle and preserve from her garden. As a result, many a night she went to bed on the scarcest of suppers.
One night in January, her rumbling stomach distracted her from sleep. She tried slow breathing, every position possible, counting teeny-tiny sheep, and even imagining that her stomach was actually so full that it hurt. With an exasperated sigh, she finally arose past midnight and pulled on her warmest clothes.
Where did she plan to go, so late at night? Nowhere in particular. Agatha simply felt that it would soothe her restlessness to stroll. She donned thick stockings, a woolen dress and coat, sturdy boots, leather gloves, a long scarf, and a cozy hat. Then she opened the front door.
She had expected a rush of wind, but the world lay absolutely still. The pine trees glistened in their lace of snow, and the barest whisper of flakes continued to fall. Smoke only rose from a handful of chimneys. How asleep, utterly asleep, was the world! She felt a wonderful kind of alone.
She took off down one of the paths cleared by many feet, knowing where it led but not thinking about it. It was so very cold. Soon she was rubbing her fingers inside her gloves and covering her mouth and nose with her scarf. Yet the silent forms of these houses, like resting beasts, made it worthwhile.
Through the main street she went, then up a hill beyond the town. She paused at the top, where her breath turned to wet against the wool of the scarf while she looked out across the wide, white world. There sat her dim house, and beyond, a winding path into the forest, which became lost in the falling snow.
She hurried on. She realized now that she was heading to the churchyard. Still cold in the extremities, she found herself warming with the exertion of the walk, and was even slightly out of breath upon touching the elaborate steel gate. She pushed it open -- it whined, disrupting the silence.
She stepped into the tiny churchyard. How could it be so small, yet so old? Many of the gravestones were crumbling. She let her boots sink, one by one, into the unmarred snow. She walked between the stones, sometimes brushing them with the fingertips of her gloves. But look! something peeped out of the snow over one grave, just barely showing its back.
She pulled it out: a teeny-tiny femur. "I can make some soup with this..." she mumbled, and tucked the bone into her pocket. As she did so, a gust of wind took up and rushed over her, making her catch and rewind her scarf.
She suddenly became aware of how very dark and cold it was, here in the graveyard. She looked beyond the fence into the looming woods, and felt afraid.
Agatha turned with a jolt and ran all the way past the gate, down the hill, through the town, and safe to her own teeny-tiny home. Slam! went the door.
She placed the bone in her cupboard for the next day. Then she changed into her bedclothes and slipped into her thickly-quilted bed. She sighed. Yes, now she could sleep. The images of the white-dark outdoors flashed and drifted through her mind as her consciousness slowly fell away. But an instant before sleep took her, she thought she heard a teeny-tiny voice.
"Give me my bone," it whispered.
She bolted up and peered around. "Who's there?"
No reply. Just my mind playing tricks on me. She snuggled back down.
But it was not long before the teeny-tiny voice came again, more loudly. "Give me my bone!"
Again Agatha sat up with a start, and again saw no one. Trembling slightly, she nestled deeper under the covers. It's all in my mind, she reassured herself, but her pinched lips and darting eyes proved that she did not believe it.
Was somebody in her house? If so, where were they?
"Give me my BONE!"
"Who's there? Show yourself!" She darted out of her tiny bed, lit a candle, and thoroughly explored her teeny-tiny house. She even looked out the windows to see if someone was outside. But all was empty and still.
"There," she told herself, "It was nothing at all." And once more she extinguished the candle, climbed into bed, and began to fall asleep.
She pictured a white horse she had wanted as a child, white as winter with a gray mane and soft brown eyes. She had been permitted to feed it from her palm, but her parents couldn't possibly afford it, had they even been so inclined. Yet she never fully forgot the beautiful, gentle, young horse, not even now seventy ye—
"GIVE ME MY BONE!"
The teeny-tiny woman jumped out of bed, flung open the cupboard, and shrieked, "TAKE IT!"