#frau trude

[adarkrainbow]

Playin with fire, Transgression as truth (B)

And here is the sequel to this post! Now, I do believe the interpretation gets a little far-fetched sometimes and some hairs are pulled... But it stays a very interesting analysis and theory!

READING « FRAU TRUDE » QUEERLY

Diving deep into the queer possibilities of “Frau Trude,” I offer, but certainly don’t exhaust, queer understandings from both the girl’s and Frau Trude’s perspectives. I read certain passages multiply, without contradiction. More decipherment than conventional analysis, much remains to be explored in my approach. I find the girl too knowing and too anxious to leave her past behind, the witch too desirous of warmth and light, the ending too filled with jouissance, ardor and contentment, heat and brightness to regard the story simply as a caution against curiosity or a warning against an old woman’s nefarious ways. My investigation of “Frau Trude” takes further inspiration from Dinshaw’s assignment of impulse and tactility to her work on late medieval England. Following a “queer historical impulse” (1999, 1), she embraces the radical possibilities for making connections between lives in the past and present. In defining a contingent history, she takes seriously the term’s root meaning L. com + tangere, to touch, as it revises our relation to the disjunctiveness and indeterminateness of queer lives and sexualities. Deliberately celebrating fragmentation, using “new pieces of history,” Dinshaw shows that “queers can make new relations, new identifications, new communities with past figures who elude resemblance to us but with whom we can be connected partially by virtue of shared marginality, queer positionality” (39). Of course, fictional figures may provide even wider lati[1]tude for connecting past and present, existing only to be touched by and to touch the changing generations who read their stories. In this time, in this place, I touch “Frau Trude” queerly

For anyone who has gone through the emotionally demanding drill of “coming out” gay or queer, as I have, reading “Frau Trude” retrospectively as an early narrative model of this painful yet exhilarating process is revelatory. Emphasizing a conscious self-recognition of one’s homo-identity, postliberation “coming-out” narratives now occupy their own category.11 Their widespread acceptance as a popular genre, beginning in the 1990s, inspired my Winnipeg class of that era. We discovered all the motifs of the classic coming out narrative in “Frau Trude”: forbidden attraction; desire to meet the love object; parental restriction on such desire announced in a threat of disownership; stubborn determination to go, regardless of such threat; feelings of fear and self-doubt manifested in menacing images; encounter with the lover, who simultaneously calms the fear and stokes the fires of passion; and, finally, the transformation—no longer just any girl, but now a glowing gay girl. Reading “Frau Trude” as a coming-out story, our interest focused on the young woman’s compulsion, fears, courage, and identity shift. This interpretation dovetailed nicely with Stone’s emphasis on the girl’s quest for self-knowledge and freedom.1

But “Frau Trude” also touches an older, transgressive narrative tradition, alive and well in the nineteenth century and earlier. Our tale aligns nicely with the Sapphic subgenre, those steamy stories of obsession, deviance, desire, and seduction. In these narratives an older woman, schooled in seduction, lures a younger girl willing, in some sense, to learn.13 Even if positioned as an innocent, the girl, drawn to the seducer, sticks around long enough to be debauched, or at least to gain carnal awareness of her intended debauchment.14 The older woman figures as what Terry Castle calls “the apparitional lesbian” in her investigation of lesbian spectrality in novels ranging from Denis Diderot’s The Nun (1797) to Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886) and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928): “Western writing over the centuries is from one angle a kind of derealization machine: insert the lesbian and watch her disappear” (1993, 6). Yet Castle maintains that “the very frequency with which the lesbian has been ‘apparitionalized’ in the Western imagination also testifies to her peculiar cultural power” (7). She is actually “in plain view, mortal and magnificent” (2). In novels, the elder character often holds institutional power—a mother superior, for example—but fairy tales carry the spectral lesbian in the marginalized figure of the witch.1

Tension builds in Sapphic stories as the cat-and-mouse game of lure and seduction plays out. This function of transgressive mutual attraction also drives the “Frau Trude” plot, flying in the face of normative prescriptions for relations between young girls and mature women. Neither the girl’s desire to go to Frau Trude nor Frau Trude’s desire to possess the girl is ultimately interrupted; rather, the plot inexorably draws the two together, promoting their encounter’s inevitable climax. Mutual attraction is the tale’s turnkey, raising the power of desire against all others. Much of the narrative establishes this mutuality, first from the girl’s, then from Frau Trude’s, point of view.

We enter the tale at a point of exasperation and bitter argument between parents and daughter. We’re not hearing this quarrel for the first time. The willful girl insists on going to see Frau Trude then, attempting to diminish parental concern, rationalizes her desire by claiming her real interest lies not in the older woman but in getting a firsthand look at her “marvelous” house and its “weird” contents. This deflection only serves to alert the reader that “going to” Frau Trude is the girl’s real goal.16 The parents try, of course, to block her, excoriating Frau Trude as “a wicked old woman who performs godless deeds.” They are in direct competition with the witch, who appears to have a quite lively reputation. The girl has “heard so much” about her, but from whom? Likely, vicious gossip and innuendo, including suggestions of sodomitical acts, have trailed Frau Trude for some time. Whatever the daughter has heard evidently has not repelled but rather intrigued her. Over time, this feeling has cranked into high gear

I prefer “intrigued” to Stone’s gloss of the girl as “curious” to capture the sense of anxious arousal she manifests. Intrigue is a specific kind of curiosity associated with “arousal of interest,” the “fascinating,” the compelling, and hidden, often sexual, desires. It also names an illicit love affair (Brown 1993, 1405). Where attraction meets prohibition, something more than conventional cognitive curiosity is at stake. This intrigued girl allows nothing and no one to stand in the way of her fascination with the source of her allure, Frau Trude. The parents sense their daughter’s transgressive desire; whatever she wants from the witch is irredeemably contaminating. The monstrous possibility that Frau Trude’s “godless” non-normative state might become hers as well can only be addressed through the ultimate parental threat: “if you go to see her, you are no longer our child.” Disowned, she loses both her legal and her social-emotional status as blood kin, marked effectively as abnormal, unnatural.

Does she care? No. In this charged moment of disavowal by her parents, the girl senses change in herself; she’s already disavowing them. She’s transforming, even as she will soon be transformed. She heads off. Given numerous warnings and thereby chances to retreat from her mission,17 inexorably, she proceeds. Despite meeting three frightening male figures on the steps entering the Frau’s house, she still goes forward. Looking through the window and seeing the devil, she does not turn back; instead, she enters the house to finally meet her witch. Intrigue and attraction trump prohibition and trepidation every time.

This girl is but one case of the curious, willful maids found in Grimms’ tales, from “The Virgin Mary’s Child” to “Fitcher’s Bird.”18 The sin of knowledge (Eve’s error) compounds curiosity with the disorderly impulses of desire and sexuality that spur some fairy-tale girls out into the world beyond interdiction.19 Yet curiosity remains, as Michel Foucault suggests in his introduction to volume 2 of The History of Sexuality, the great stimulus for abjuring propriety to gain the knowledge that sets one free: “As for what motivated me, it is quite simple; . . . It was curiosity—the only kind of curi[1]osity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself” (1985, 8).

Fairy-tale curiosity links with inappropriate directives conventionally deemed most disastrous for women: I wish, I want, I will. Fulfilling such self-determining commands requires a determined disobedience. The girl’s curiosity demands a decision to disobey her parents and an acceptance that such defiance is tantamount to disownership. Borrowing a phrase from Judith Butler, disobedience is a failure to “repeat loyally” (1993, 220).20 If, as Butler ([1990] 1999) critically assessed, gender and sexuality norms are never original but are based on citation and repetition, then obedience, the reiteration of the normative, is the hammer of carnal conformity. Wilhelm Grimm may have rewritten “Frau Trude” to emphasize the perils of girls’ curiosity and disobedience. But for the queer reader, he unwittingly creates a perfect entrée for identification with a character who, in pursuit of her transgressive desire, declines loyal repetition. Breaking convention, her “failure” sets the girl on her own initiatory journey. As Cristina Bacchilega suggests for “Bluebeard,” “Frau Trude” is not a cautionary tale about learning to control curiosity but is about “a process of initiation which requires entering the forbidden chamber” (1997, 107). Initiation’s goal is revelation: to convert partial knowledge to full. The girl directs her curiosity toward someone she has already “heard so much” about. Something about what she almost knows—or senses—for herself about Frau Trude powers her curiosity and, more important, her shamelessness. Though she eventually feels fear, the girl never expresses a hint of regret or shame for pursuing her desire to know. With non-normative sexual desire at stake, shamelessness propels curiosity’s norm-breaking function. Specifically, for “Frau Trude’s” girl, driven by a compulsion for “unholy” alliance, shamelessness queers curiosity

Even so, she is “trembling all over her body” as she stands before the woman for the first time—with fear but also with the anxiety of first encounter and perhaps a modicum of release. Having crossed the threshold, exiled from her natal home, she stands now inside the house of marvels. Frau Trude allays the girl’s fear of the figures she has met outside. Soothingly, and perhaps with a faint inflection of flirtation, she says they are not phantoms, just the routine men—collier, hunter, butcher—who assist her in everyday living. The figure the girl saw inside the house, a fiery devil, is no phantom either, but a true manifestation of Frau Trude, who emphatically exclaims, “Then you have seen the witch in her proper dress.” Later, I will return to this dramatic self-proclamation of who Frau Trude is; for the interim, I am interested in what she wants. For at this crucial juncture the Frau identifies her witchy nature in the same breath as she unburdens her womanly need: “For you I have long waited, and longed for you” or, as Zipes translates the same passage, “I’ve been wanting you here and waiting for a long time” (1992, 160). How remarkable. The all-powerful devil-witch has been feeling a very human yearning for her cohort, with the exigencies of her longing made explicit by recourse to romantic convention: the confession of temporal anxiety both in terms of duration (waiting) and emotion (longing). Reading Zipes’s and Hutschek’s translations together yields the triumvirate of desire’s expression: wanting, waiting, longing

Witches live in both real (human) and supernatural (magical) time. In her womanly aspect, Frau Trude does not—or cannot—use her otherworldly powers to force the girl to her. As Roland Barthes claimed, “Waiting is an enchantment: I have received orders not to move” (1978, 38; emphasis in original).21 The witch endures such enchantment. She waits, as she must, for the fulfillment of a seduction she no doubt has plotted but cannot complete without the girl’s autonomous desire to seek her out. Seduction’s game depends on waiting and requires both parties to spend some time getting worked up. The girl’s willfulness and Frau Trude’s yearning are dynamic emotional forces in this tale, exerting a mutual pull that resolves in their meeting. The story’s heightened play of attractions is contingent on Frau Trude and the girl knowing about each other. More than suggesting, the story demonstrates explicitly that they’ve been circling each others’ wagons for awhile. Their proximity lends itself to a relational reading of their encounter. The girl’s sense of intrigue concerns her desire to engage Frau Trude, a specific, named woman, while the witch admits her yen not for any girl but for this particular girl.

From the normative outside, predation haunts homosexual relations in literature, theater, and film as well as in life. Sapphic novels hyperbolize the older woman as a ruthless hunter after young flesh. The witch has fared no better; her predatory compulsions are assumed. From the lesbian inside, however, predation’s unidirectional aim is blunted by attention paid to how desires and feelings actually play out. The girl’s attraction to the witch negates any presumption of one-sided sexual greed. And Frau Trude, no hunter, stays at home, saddled with yearning and its attendant anticipatory joys and frustrations.

FIRE UP THE FLAMES OF DESIRE AND PASSION

Having waited too long, Frau Trude wastes no time making her move. Immediately following her declaration of need, the witch changes the girl into fire. The converted girl then blazes for the pyro-prone witch, who sits down to warm herself next to this flame she has so long desired. Both protagonists are highly flammable and fire operates as the tale’s core symbol. Modernity ended our forebears’ need to live daily with open flame as the major humanly controlled source of heat and light. But fire fills the realm of fairy tales, like it did the world of their earlier telling—from hearth to oven, candle to coals, and torch to stake. An essential element, it acted as a force, a tool, and a potent, if ambiguous, symbol representing both creative and destructive forces. Bottigheimer notes that fire in the Grimms’ tales ranges in meaning, “as an image of Promethean progress or domestic comfort, as well as a Satanic symbol.” In a nod to “Frau Trude,” she says “the hearth is where the witch sits” (1987, 25).2

Associated in Christian tradition with martyrdom, purification, and transformation as well as evil and damnation, fire, the tale’s central motif, grounds “Frau Trude” in familiar religious binaries. The Grimms mark the putatively innocent, if willful, girl’s self-martyrdom as well as Frau Trude’s satanic manifestation. Attempting to prevent their unblemished child from seeking Frau Trude, the parents indict her and threaten disinheritance, setting the girl on her Grimm highway to hell. At this point the tale burns zealously, fueled by defensiveness, because as the Grimms were only too well aware, protection of a young girl’s innocence—of her unknowingness—services the perpetuation of family bloodlines, property rights, and economies. Religion stands with the family as a bulwark preventing the realization of young women’s wishes and desires

The Grimms note both the standard sacred/profane and pure/impure binaries, yet the story does not ultimately support the moral divide these oppositions conventionally create. Even if chaste, the girl is not pure. Her willfulness interrupts her trip down the straight path of protected innocence, which is the course of parental, religious, and state authority. The Grimms burn her as punishment for her failure to remain exemplary, her refusal to obey. The girl goes to hell. Stained by her perversity, she dies in flames—becoming the fires of hell—and Frau Trude, the satanic force, lives on to revel in the glow. The Grimms’ warning at the tale’s end provides this equation: play with the fiery devil and you may become the devil’s flame. For the brothers, the story concludes with a teleological clunk. The girl gets what she deserves, and the witch, satisfied with capturing her prey, sits at the hearth blazing with her winnings.2

A queer approach reads “Frau Trude”’s fires differently, drawing on secular and sexual rather than religious connotations. Associations of fire with passion and love include the fourteenth-century “to inflame with passion” (L. inflammare) and “ardor” (L. ardere, to burn), referring to the heat of sexual desire (Harper 2001–10). The girl’s sense of intrigue and Frau Trude’s sense of longing meet in the flames of passion, not damnation. Fire signifies their appetite and its means of satisfaction. Frau Trude, the tale’s fire marshal, manipulates the meaning and use of fire in service of seduction. Though the girl looks through the window expecting to spy Frau Trude, she says she sees instead “the devil with a fiery head.” The woman’s retort simultaneously verifies the blazing manifestation as an identity of hers but quashes any direct equation with the satanic. She immediately reroutes the girl’s claim; she has instead “seen the witch in her proper dress” or “in all her finery” (Tatar 2004a, 368).

Frau Trude’s sartorial metaphor alludes to the red raiment of fire: to see her as she truly is, is to see her “dressed” in her elemental form. Outside the house peeping in, the girl observes only the devil; once inside, she is offered a different interpretation. Frau Trude defines herself as a witch, a kind of magnificently burning woman, whose reference to feminine finery lends a seductive shine to her self-identification. The girl will discover what her compulsion to see Frau Trude suggested: someone quite extraordinary; not a wretched hag, or a slimy ogre, but a woman dressed in finery, queen of her realm, confident in this moment of revealing her truth

What particular truth does she impart in this dramatic instance of encounter? Frau Trude’s associations with fire, witchery, the satanic, the profane, and the godless are suggestive. They point to something the text both conceals and reveals: this witch also can be read as a sodomite, harboring a lesbian desire. Research in related European materials shows the infamous sin against nature bearing a long historical relationship to fire, diabolism, and witchery.25 But according to Mackensen (1934/1940, 225), Frau Trude’s dual nomination as both witch and devil is rare.26 Yet if it codes her as sodomite (lesbian), Frau Trude’s ready substitution of herself from devil and fire to woman and witch makes perfect sense. She exercises a range of sodomitical symbols to announce her intentions. When the girl sees her as fiery devil, she sees Frau Trude as the sodomite symbol she truly represents. Then her declaration as fire-dressed witch doubles the sodomitical symbolism while indexing its humanity. Transferring sign to reality, she becomes the lusty lesbian, the woman who will have what she’s waited for, while the girl finds what she’s wanted, too.

Momentarily they stand face to face conversing. Their discursive foray concerns the actual, but this is also the moment of their truth, revealed by Frau Trude and immediately recognized by the girl. The queer utopian crux of the tale witnesses what Maria Tatar names the “magic [that] happens on the threshold of the forbidden” (2004b, 1). Their truth, to use a worn but worthy cliché, will set them both free. In this singular instant of encounter, they are present and open to each other, their agreement sealed; they enter their own time.

The girl makes no attempt to escape, nor does the witch kill her by throwing her bodily into the fire. Instead, a transformation occurs. Having demonstrated that status change—symbolic and real—can be willfully achieved, Frau Trude touches the girl for the first time, turning her into a block of wood, adequate fuel for the witch’s ardor. By first being made into a neutral source of fuel and thence into flame, the girl is not annihilated but, rather, given the elemental condition that makes it possible for her to meet the fiery Frau on mutual, powerfully erotic terms. The girl, too, dons her “proper dress.” Yearning for her for too long to simply destroy her, Frau Trude instead gives her a new and highly compatible form. The story’s dual flames, which in a conservative reading overdetermine the hellish, queerly provide a point of sexual contact and consummation. Now the girl also lives by burning, for Frau Trude and for herself. Yet she need not only burn. Frau Trude easily could convert the wood block back into girlish form; the Grimms’ “The Drummer” (Zipes 1992, 610–11) features just such reverse transformation of a burning log into a maiden at a witch’s command. Or perhaps Frau Trude may grant the girl her own capability to change at will.

Putting such speculation aside, in the end, the two effect a merger through an elemental medium. The witch, who plays with and can manifest as fire, transforms the object of her desire into a proper partner. Fire plus fire makes for greater heat and passion, with two desires burning together in the harmony and unity symbolized at the tale’s conclusion by the hearth. Erasing differences in human age, station, and history, their passion cannot be acknowledged in the language of human social life, but it can be spoken in flames.

This reading of fire finds consonance with German scholar Elke Liebs’s (1993, 128) suggestion that the burning wood, left at the finale “in voller Glut” (“full blaze” or “gleaming”), refers to the widely understood nineteenth[1]century German symbolism for sexual ripening and first experiences in love. While she does not move to a lesbian interpretation, Liebs, like Stone, leaves the question open as to why the girl blazes exuberantly in the end. Perhaps this gap can be retroactively referred to the contemporary gay colloquialism “flaming” or “to flame,” which refers to flamboyant, often excessive transgression of gender, sexuality, and other norms of behavior.27 Frau Trude’s transformation “flames” the girl, ignites her, releasing her own transgressive lesbian desire. Moreover, by remaking the girl in her fiery likeness, the Frau recruits her as protégé. No longer daughter, the girl celebrates her natal disownership by “flaming” for, and with, Frau Trude. Now, as undying homoerotic flame, she carries Frau Trude’s line forward into a future we discover here. Judgment on relations between witches and maidens too often damns them as fueled by rapaciousness, resentment, or jealousy, resulting in deceptions and negative transformations.28 Frau Trude, however, conceives a positive solution to meet her need. Using her powers to free the girl, she perpetuates their passion by ensuring their likeness as fire, not their opposition as ogre/human. The binary that might separate them goes up in flames. The fiery ending is actually a beginning for these two, whose future of transformations lies ahead for them

THE ONTOLOGY OF “FRAU TRUDE”

Finding Frau Trude’s earliest incarnations in the realm of devouring and death synchronizes her story with a greater complex of patriarchally devised narratives inspiring categorical fear and loathing of woman. They include tales of the biblical Eve and Lilith, the apocryphal Mary Magdalene, figures found in pagan antiquity—including those associated with descendents of major Greek goddesses Hecate and Artemis and mythical monsters such as the fire-breathing Chimera—and early European man-eaters and hags.29 Frau Trude’s Freudian counterpart is the phallic mother, fantasmically endowed with both the mother’s “breast” and the father’s “penis.”30 The complex problematizes the female body, appetite, sex, desire, childbirth, knowledge, and agency and is underwritten in the structural relations its female figures bear to each other, especially in terms of the life/death binary. “Frau Trude”’s early variants fit this narrative model with its reviled protagonist. A strange and estranging female character, living in a house filled with vats of gore and entrails strewn about for decorative effect, her association with misplaced blood; dismembered, disordered flesh; decomposition; and death makes her just one more in a long line of female inverts, perverts, women impossible to convert: witches

Despite its concision, “Frau Trude” provides a more detailed record than most of the multiple associations to be gleaned from witches in fairy tales. Among the most “undisciplined” of female characters (Greenhill and Tye 1997), she is unclassifiable. Largely due to their age and unmarried, nonreproductive status, witches bespeak the anomalous. They are woman/not woman, a biological and social contradiction arousing fears of pollution and requiring severe castigation, even death. Anomalous women pose a danger to the common rule of what Adrienne Rich ([1980] 1993) termed “compulsory heterosexuality”; thus their association with deviant sexualities comes as no surprise

However, witches like Frau Trude are not just out of order; amorphous shape-shifters, they are also out of form. The very qualities that marginal[1]ize them as subhuman can also lend them superhuman transformative potency. Frau Trude manifests four different personas—woman, witch, devil, and elemental fire—and she can choose to become any one of these momentarily, at will. Theatrical by nature, she plays the drama queen: a masculine devil one moment, a feminine witch the next, but always the “showgirl.” She flaunts a transvestite’s gift for rendering gender as a form of artifice (see, e.g., Garber 1992). The girl’s parents accuse “the wicked old woman” of “performing godless deeds,” and certainly, she is a performer par excellence, skilled in questioning the opposition between construction and essence. An icon of “gender trouble,” Frau Trude’s performances fully execute the witch’s anomalous/amorphous status in its ability to destabilize and denaturalize imposed categories of gender completion. As she herself suggests, it’s all a matter of “dressing” the part

Remarkably, her anomalous/amorphous status on the sex/gender/power continuum presents as patriarchy’s problem—not hers. Being impossible, she attains her power of doing the impossible and quickly brings her partner up to speed. The girl’s transformation into neutered wood, then elemental fire queers her into a powerfully amorphous state, too. Structurally, she moves from determinate gender and social categories to becoming, like Frau Trude, an unclassifiable shape-shifter, a flickering flame

In interpreting witches, exploring the relationship between normativity, anomaly, and power is critical.31 But the oppositional power politics of witchery tends to overshadow its less obvious “structures of feeling,” Raymond Williams’s (1977, 128–35) designation for the affective social content in art and literature that cannot be reduced to other systems. Queer scholars take Williams’s lead, modeling affect-centered approaches to non-normative desires, heterogeneous sexualities, and abjection.32 In their keeping, Frau Trude’s story and others like it beg new questions of a queerer, more intimate kind, exposing suppressed, ignored, or coded links between witchery and lesbianism. How do fairy-tale witches feel? Can we read their emotions as well as their powers? How do they change over time? They seem to take pleasure in being alone, but do they also suffer from loneliness? Are they capable of love as well as desire? Are they a special case of the subject whose evolving consciousness has been obscured by structural bias?

In beginning to answer these complex questions, we see certain emotional intricacies and contradictions of lesbian sexuality and subjectivity writ in the mysteries of Frau Trude’s tale. Witches do have feelings, and complex ones at that. The Frau’s uncertain future recalls that of the protagonist in novelist Irène Némirovsky’s Fire in the Blood: “It might be impossible to predict the future, but I believe that certain powerful emotions make themselves felt months, even years, in advance, through a strange quiver in the heart” (2008, 134–35). Having felt that quiver, Frau Trude’s desire for the girl provokes new, if uncertain, affective urgencies. She craves, but not the old yearning for flesh to be devoured or for lips to be smacked at the taste of blood. Now she wants the warmth of an overheated girl. Her cravings have altered into longings for sexual relationship and union with another. And along with them have come emotional vulnerabilities and ontological quandaries as well.

Traditionally, ATU 334 resolves in formulaic murder or escape. “Frau Trude” finishes differently, not in determinant action, but in an unresolved mood of contemplation. The flaming frenzy of anticipation and desire modulates, literally and figuratively, to enlightenment, thereby marking the crucial ontological, as different from gendered or sexual, outcomes of our story. Certainly they are wrapped together, but Frau Trude’s tale is striking in the degree to which it ultimately resonates with Sue-Ellen Case’s proposition that queer theory does its real work “not at the site of gender, but at the site of ontology, to shift the ground of being itself, thus challenging the Platonic parameters of being—the borders of life and death” (1991, 3).

The ontological concerns of “Frau Trude” underscore its profound interest in discovering the truth: who knows it, who doesn’t, who wants to know it, who represents it, who can claim it, and, finally, who is absolved by it. Characters pronounce the truth, argue its status, and make its case. The parents think they know the truth about Frau Trude and her godless ways; they defend the “normal” and “natural.” The girl seeks to discover the truth of Frau Trude on her own terms. She wants to “see” the naked truth of this “other” and when she does, she tells Frau Trude the truth of her observation. Their subsequent mutual interrogation tests the truth of the visible until Frau Trude proclaims her truth, dressed in metaphor. Her long-awaited encounter with the girl results in the witch’s moment of truth; she “comes out,” entrusting the girl with the knowledge of who she really is and what she truly wants. All this stress about the nature of truth finally dissolves at the hearth, that ancient symbol of domestic peace and harmony, and the story finishes with the Frau’s distinct pleasure in gaining more light.

Having cried out to the girl right before changing her, “now you shall give me light,” she afterward sits next to the blazing essence to warm herself and also to enjoy a pure moment—perhaps the one she has waited for most—of receiving the fire/girl’s full gleam. Her delight evident, she philosophizes, with satisfaction, in the final line, “For once it burns brightly!” Having touched, transformed, and set the girl burning, the initial passion[1]ate meeting subsides in meditative afterglow. In an observed moment of domestic quietude and contentment, we picture a woman at last brightened by the light of her life. Notably, the Grimms’ prototype for “Frau Trude,” Meier Teddy’s 1823 poem, does not end in the witch’s cry for light, only in her desire for warmth. But by partnering with light in Wilhelm Grimm’s version, Frau Trude gains a new eminence

Light, like fire, is old in symbolic meaning, variously associated with soul, spirit, higher mind, new knowledge, and with life itself.33 This witch, whose long history in the tale world has been defined by darkness, menace, and death, at last sees a glimmer of freedom from her sullied past. As fire, the girl stokes the old woman’s passion, but as light she brings what feels like relief. A queer liveliness pervades the story’s end. Frau Trude no longer kills what she craves. Instead she keeps it near, treasures it, marries it. Gone are the entrails and blood-filled vats that crammed her home in earlier variants of the tale. Now her house of marvels produces visions and transformations, not corpses, and her distinct yet fluid manifestations as fire, devil, woman, and witch mark her own ambivalent state of becoming. The man-eating sociopath of old is changing her one-dimensional, monstrous, murdering ways. Done with those centuries-old defensive, ogreish shenanigans, she is no longer interested in finality; her teleological darkness has morphed into a desire for ontological brightness, a shift from the determinate, death, to the possible, life. She cries out her need for light eagerly as much as gleefully. The witch herself is transforming, undergoing a process of self-shattering that would free her

Frau Trude’s emotional longing for the girl is critical to this move. Long[1]ing and waiting pose different temporal meanings in this story. Waiting tropes seduction and desire, but longing associates with a deeper need for companionship and kinship. Animals, ogres, humans all engage in mating games and stratagems to satisfy base instincts for food and sex. For certain, the witch retains a good bit of all that sordidness. Yet her longing for the girl seems to demonstrate a desire to be better than who she is—or was: not just hungry, not just hormonal. Frau Trude tentatively experiences the warmth of the heartfelt, poised to reap the benefits of light.

As for the girl, her transformation from human to elemental form guar[1]antees a change from gendered mortality to immortal status. Her youthful energy, sexual curiosity, and willfulness converted into fire and bright light, she blazes; she gleams; she is passion and hope all at once. Now she is the symbol of life. The Frau remarks, almost surprised, how brightly the girl’s light shines. She implies that it’s giving her more than she knew to expect, not only passion and light, but the illumination of life itself. Not a figure of innocence betrayed or moral martyrdom, the gleaming girl ends the story as Frau Trude’s redeemer and, by implication, rescuer of a whole class of witches heretofore stranded in the realm of death. She becomes an exemplar of what gay beat poet Harold Norse calls “the fiery force”: “Nothing more than the life force as we know it. It is the flame of desire and love, of sex and beauty, of pleasure and joy as we consume and are consumed, as we burn with pleasure and burn out in time” (2003, xix). Of course, neither the girl nor the witch “burn[s] out in time.” Living outside mortal constraints in the fiery force of their tale, they perpetuate, for our understanding, their queer ontology of pure flame, pure eroticism, and pure light.

The truth at the core of “Frau Trude” dissolves the potency of prejudices stemming from the “inclusion/exclusion,” “who fits/who doesn’t” binary. In this tale, truth and transgression walk together to undo any determinate calculation of the fixed or proper meanings of sex, gender, age, feeling, or being, all finally summarized in the meaning of home. The parents work the inclusion/exclusion binary as the calling card of their authority; they want the girl under their roof and they have the right to disown her. Initially, the girl possesses all the trappings of heteronormative familial inclusion, but she chooses to relinquish them. Accepting exclusion from her family to come to Frau Trude, she initiates the possibility of her inclusion in a new relationship.34 Frau Trude personifies exclusion, as all witches do, and she exploits the fearful power it inspires. But she also endures its loneliness. She chooses the girl to belong to her, so as no longer to feel essentially excluded and alone. Coupled, the two seal a transgressive—and innovative—bond of kinship in their house in the woods. Frau Trude and the girl have, in the end, been absorbed into their own self-created “fit” unopposed, consummated but not consumed.

[princess-ibri]

What would be the backstory of Shuriki from Elena of Avalor, where did she come from, and why was she so intent on conquering Avalor

Ok so here's what I've come up with:

Her real name is Fran, and years ago in the Northern Isles she and her twin sister Nan were taken in as maids a strange old woman called Frau Holle, who turned out to be a sorceress. She blessed Nan for her industry and kindess but cursed Fran for her laziness and selfishness. Nan creates diamonds and pearls anytime she sings and eventually marries a king, while Fran has toads and snakes fall out of her mouth anytime she speaks and is understandablely shunned.

However she doesn't give into her curse and seeks out a way to change her fate, eventually coming to the attention of Frau Holle's twin sister Frau Trude, who's as wicked as her sister is good. Frau Trude trains the angry young girl in magic, breaking the toad spell, and helps her to spread chaos within her sister’s kingdom.

Eventually she is overcome by the forces of good, and Nan, now Queen, in mercy banishes her sister from the Northern Isles. Before she goes though Fran seeks to divine what new opportunities for power lie within her reach, and has Frau Trude divine her future.

The vision is hazy and Fran doesn't have time to hear all of it before th soldiers come to drive her out, but the old witch forsees that she will one day rule over a kingdom across the sea called Avalor, and will hold the powerful "Scepter of the Night" at one point.

Fran takes this as gospel and determines to build up her power again to accomplish this Destiny. And so she does.

Two little side things, part of the reason she bans music is that it reminds her of her sister's golden singing gift (and the cruel songs people would sing about her speaking toads).

And her chosen name "Shuriki" is a mispelled/misheard version of the old Maruvian word "Chiriqui" which means Valley of the Night, as she wanted a name that would point to her destiny to weild the Scepter of Night, and she didnt have enough respect for the culture of the land she took over to spell or pronounce it correctly

[moneteres]

EverAfter Slaughter 05: Frau Trude

Once upon a time there was a thing that wore the face of an old woman and welcomed abandoned children to her fireside.

[cinema-hallucinations]

Prompt: Generate a movie concept for a parody of the Golden Girls where the original characters are replaced by crone/hag characters from folklore like Baba Yaga, Frau Trude, Black Annis and Befana.

Title: Golden Crones

Tagline: Don't ask where the chickens went.

Logline: Four legendary hags from myth and folklore - Baba Yaga, Frau Trude, Black Annis, and Befana - share a ramshackle cottage in a quirky, modern town. Despite their fearsome reputations and penchant for the macabre, they navigate the challenges of aging, retirement, and supernatural shenanigans, proving that even hags can have a hilariously dysfunctional family life.

Characters:

Baba Yaga (300s, looks 70s): A fiery Russian witch with a penchant for chicken legs and a mortar and pestle. She's the no-nonsense leader of the group, but secretly harbors a love for soap operas.

Frau Trude (500s, looks 80s): A stoic German crow goddess with a dry wit and a collection of creepy crawlies. She's the voice of reason (most of the time) and enjoys tending to her carnivorous garden.

Black Annis (unknown age, looks ageless): A mischievously dark Welsh hag with a one-legged hopping gait and a taste for human toes. She's the life of the party, albeit a slightly disturbing one, and loves practical jokes (that sometimes backfire spectacularly).

Befana (unknown age, looks flamboyant): A flamboyant Italian Christmas witch with a flying scooter and a bottomless bag of magical coal. She's the group's fashionista and resident gossip, always up-to-date on the latest local happenings (both earthly and otherworldly).

Plot Summary:

The quaint town of Creekwood is abuzz with rumors about the new residents at the ramshackle cottage on the outskirts. Unbeknownst to most, the tenants are Baba Yaga, Frau Trude, Black Annis, and Befana, legendary hags who have decided to embrace retirement in the modern world.

Living together proves to be a hilarious challenge. Baba Yaga clashes with Befana over decorating for the holidays (Halloween vs. Christmas, anyone?). Frau Trude struggles to connect with the town's overly cheerful book club. Black Annis' pranks land them in trouble with the uptight mayor, who suspects they're up to something nefarious (well, they are, but not always in the way the mayor thinks).

Despite their differences, the hags form a bond. They use their unique magical abilities to solve local problems (with a dash of chaos, of course). Baba Yaga's mystical guidance helps a lovelorn teenager. Frau Trude's connection with nature helps rid the town of a pesky infestation (of pixies, not something mundane). Black Annis' mischievous pranks expose a corrupt businessman's schemes. Befana's gift-giving magic, even with a twist, brings joy to a lonely widower.

Themes:

Finding humor and camaraderie in unexpected places.

Aging with grace (or at least a healthy dose of sarcasm).

Challenging stereotypes and proving that appearances can be deceiving.

Humor:

The film relies on witty dialogue, slapstick humor, and the inherent absurdity of these powerful hags trying to navigate the modern world. Their magical abilities often backfire spectacularly, leading to hilarious situations. The clash between their old-world customs and modern conveniences creates comedic tension. Each character's quirks and eccentricities provide a constant source of amusement.

Parody Elements:

The film parodies the classic sitcom "The Golden Girls" with its focus on a group of older women living together and facing the challenges of aging. However, it subverts the stereotype by replacing them with powerful, and sometimes frightening, hags from folklore. The situations they encounter and their solutions are twisted versions of the problems faced by the original characters.

Ending:

The hags, despite their occasional squabbles, have grown to cherish their unconventional family. They face a final challenge, perhaps a new magical threat or a visit from a curious government agent, and overcome it together, proving that even legendary hags can learn new tricks and maybe even mend their ways (a little bit). The film ends with the hags enjoying a cup of herbal tea (or something stronger) on their porch, cackling at a shared joke, ready for whatever supernatural shenanigans life throws their way.

[agnerd-bot]

Fanservant: Frau Trude Gothel, Wicked Witch of the Fairy Tales(Caster)

Ascension Stages:

First Stage: Gothel is dressed in an elaborate dark ballgown that reaches all the way to the floor, the dress ornate with gold and silver accents. On her ring finger, a shining golden ring gleams in the light. Long pink hair flows down to the small of her back, topped by a black crown, and a pair of gleaming golden eyes shine as she stares down the Master.

Second Stage: Gothel’s outfit has changed to a more ‘traditional’ witch’s style, with long, flowing sleeves extending out from her robes, and a witch’s hat resting upon her head, replacing her crown. Her dress has shortened, revealing her long legs, and her hair has grown out to be much more wild and unkempt. Her sclera have darkened to become pitch-black, and a fiery aura has begun to surround her entire being.

Final Stage: Gothel’s form has changed from that of a witch to a true Devil. Out from her back sprouts black feathered wings, and her skin takes on a deathly white pallor. Her nails lengthen into demonic claws, and a pair of monstrous horns sprout from the sides of her head. The ring has been corrupted slightly, becoming immersed in hellish flames.

Theme:

Character Theme: Healing Song - Tangled

Battle Theme: BlazBlue CentralFiction - Walpurgisnacht (Nine the Phantom theme)

Fatal Battle Theme: 破壊神

Traits:

Class: Caster Alternate Class: Berserker, Alter Ego, Beast True Name: Frau Trude Gothel Source: Grimm’s Fairy Tales Region: Germany Alignment: Chaotic Evil Attribute: Earth

Known as: The Witch of the Story’s End, The Witch of the Tower, the Forest Witch, The Villain of All Fairy Tales, The Devil Incarnate, Diabolus Ex Machina 

Voice Actress: Noto Mamiko

Deck: QABBB

Parameters: Strength: D Endurance: A++ Agility: B Mana: EX Luck: C NP: A

Passive Skills:

Territory Creation(Fairy Tale) C++:

As a Fairy Tale character, Gothel is uniquely capable of altering her environment, creating the backdrops of the stories to be told. Gingerbread houses, massive towers, fantastic castles, all can be made by Gothel with a mere wave of her wand.

However, as much as she is the creator of the world around her, the majority of her creations are simply temporary structures of illusions made to trap victims, meaning this skill is less effective than a true master’s handiwork. While her creations could be much more impressive if she chose to apply herself more properly, she’s content to lazily throw together false illusions to suit her needs and then smash them to pieces when she is done.

(FGO Effect:) -Increases own Arts and Quick performance by 10%.

Item Construction EX:

The power of one of the most famed witches to ever exist, and yet one of a witch who melts away among all the rest. Gothel’s ability to create fearsome cursed items and magical weapons is among the best among all Servants, thanks to her status as an offshoot of the legendary Baba Yaga. There are few Servants that could ever hope to match her raw talent in magecraft.

In at least one Fairy Tale, The Dragon of the North, it is even said that a witch-maiden held the power of King Solomon’s Ring, and knew of its incredible secrets. While this story is likely nothing more than a fantasy, it speaks testament to the incredible and fearsome powers that Gothel has at her beck and call.

(FGO Effect:) -Increases own Debuff success rate by 12%.

Wicked Witch of the Story’s End A:

As the Villain of All Fairy Tales, Dame Gothel reigns supreme as one of the most powerful Fairy Tale Servants alive, surpassed only by the Big Bad Wolf and the Persecuted Heroine, and matched only by her equal opposite, the Fairy Godmother.

Where there are stories to be told, a villain will naturally arrive to cause strife and pain.

(FGO Effect:) -Increases own critical damage by 12%. -Increases own damage by 250.

Active Skills:

Devil’s Contract B:

While many in the world feared witches and blamed them for countless misfortunes and disasters that happened to them, few, if any, ever truly laid eyes on a witch and recorded their experiences. As few understood witches or how their powers worked, many associated their existence with that of the Devil, believing them to be Brides of Satan who had sold their souls to evil in exchange for power. As a Fairy Tale whose existence was based off of these false notions, Gothel has imprinted upon her a ‘contract’ with Hell itself.

This contract with Hell has granted Gothel incredible powers, and is the source of some of her more powerful magic. She can summon pillars of hellfire that can erase even a victim’s soul, drag victims off to the deepest pits of Hell, and summon monstrous creatures from the Pit to fight for her in combat. Her powers are effectively limited only by her sick imagination and sadistic cruelty.

Most notable of her powers is a form of pseudo-immortality. While her body can be destroyed by an enemy, she can resurrect herself each and every time, so long as the enemy she faces isn’t a god or similar divinity. It is through this power that Gothel has survived things like being burned alive by Handel and Gretel, dancing to death in Snow White, being hacked to pieces, and other similar fates.

No matter how often the villain dies, or how often the hero beats her, she will always return when the story begins anew, ready to ravage the lands at her leisure.

(FGO Effect:)  -Increases own Debuff Success rate every turn for three turns. -Apply a state to yourself: Gain NP Gauge when attacking with Buster Cards (3 turns). -Apply Guts to self for two times, five turns.(Stackable with other Guts).

Wicked Transformation A:

In Fairy Tales of old, there were hundreds of tales of witches using their accursed powers to transform unwilling victims into horrible monsters, helpless animals, or inanimate objects for some reason or another. Whether it be envy of another’s virtue, punishing the wicked and foolish for incurring their ire, or twisting a victim’s wish into something terribly ironic, the ability of a witch to alter the forms of those she chooses is unlimited, and when these powers are unleashed, it is all too easy for Gothel to dispose of her victims.

If need be, Gothel can turn this transformation unto herself, shifting into the form of an eagle to fly through the air, an old beggar woman to disguise her appearance, a ferocious bear to fight off her enemies, and so much more, all with a mere magic word and a wave of her wand. It is through this power that Gothel gained her reputation as the Villain of All Fairy Tales.

However, as with all fairy tales, this ability does have a caveat. Each transformation comes with a condition that, once fulfilled, will release the victim from its binding. If a victim is able to escape from Gothel and find someone to free them from their curse, then they will be returned to their true form.

(FGO Effect:) -Inflicts Buff Block status for three times on one enemy. -High chance to Stun an enemy for one turn. -Gains Critical Stars every turn for three turns. -Increase Critical Damage for yourself for three turns

Mesmerizing Banquet of Cockaigne B:

Poisoned Apples.

Gingerbread Houses.

Irresistible Rapunzel.

In the fairy tales of old Europe, food and drink has often served as the greatest tempter of man, and witches like Gothel have preyed on these temptations for ages, able to prey on the hunger and greed of humanity by creating food that no human is able to possibly resist.

This power over food has only grown in power after Gothel has consumed the mythical Land of Cockaigne and further bolstered her power. The mere presence of her cooking is able to drive victims mad and lure them into the land of food and drink that is Cockaigne, abandoning all precepts such and former memories to become self-indulgent and hedonistic, like cattles to the slaughter.

Surprisingly, while Gothel can easily summon food and drink by means of her magic, she seems to have a preference for making her food from scratch. When cooking, a faint smile can be seen on Gothel’s face, even when not preparing a meal to deceive or hypnotize.

“Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble… Rampion flower on the vine… return to me what once was mine…”

(FGO Effect:) -Significantly increases NP Gauge. -Removes own Debuffs. -Low chance to lower Critical Resistance for all enemies for three turns. -Low chance to lower Buster Resistance for all enemies for three turns. -Low chance to reduce NP Charge for all enemies for three turns. -Low chance to lower Attack for all enemies for three turns. -Low chance to lower Healing for all enemies for three turns.

Noble Phantasms:

Noble Phantasm: Die Teufelsmaske - Feed the Devil’s Fire Rank: A Maximum Targets: 1 Range: — Classification: Anti-Unit(Self)

A terrifying Noble Phantasm that removes all guises and illusion from Frau Gothel’s form to reveal who she truly is: The Devil, villain of Europe's very first fairy tales. In this state, she takes on the form of a terrible demon straight from Hell itself. Gnarled horns as red as blood pierce through her skull, her hair takes on a deathly pallor, angelic wings burst out from her back, and her teeth sharpen into deadly fangs. The world around her shifts and darkens, becoming a dense, foggy forest filled with dead trees and ominous winds, all isolating the devil and her victims from the world.

She is not the true Devil, but rather “Mankind’s Approximation of the Devil”, a false image who bears but a fraction of the true Adversary's power. Simply put, she is the ultimate evil for a hero to face in a fairy tale, a monster with the potential to become an Evil of Humanity itself.

It is not just her physical form that changes upon activating this Noble Phantasm, but her magical prowess surges to seemingly limitless heights, able to weave her own story and alter the world around her how she pleases. It was through this Noble Phantasm that the Hausmärchen Singularity Collective was born, where the Beast of Ignorance would attempt to consume all other stories in order to destroy Humanity to its very roots, and where Gothel would attempt to destroy the Chaldeans on her orders, by altering these beloved fairy tales and corrupting them with her immense power.

So ferocious, so dreadful is this power that even the nascent Beast of Ignorance, Red Riding Hood, didn’t dare face this monster head-on in combat, instead choosing to let the Chaldeans distract and weaken her so she could land a mortal wound on the demonic witch.

“Fufufufufufu… Do you understand now? I am not some mere ‘thing’ that goes bump in the night… I am not just the paltry scratches at your walls… I am the monster that all children fear. I am the evil that makes you lock your doors. I am the witch that lives just next door. I am Evil. I am Wicked. I am Frau Trude, and I am very real, child.”

(FGO Effect:) -Remove all Debuffs from self. -Increase Debuff Resistance for three turns. -Increases own critical star absorption for three turns. -Grants self On-Attack-Activate buff for three attacks, three turns. --Increases own Critical Damage for one turn when attacking with Buster Cards. -Increases own damage against ‘Fairy Tale’ or ‘Fated Hero’ enemies.

Noble Phantasm: Kleine Verlorene Kinder - Happily Never After Rank: A Maximum Targets: — Range: — Classification: Anti-Army

Dame Gothel has the ability to summon massive golems made of gnarled wood and hellish flames, each one standing over ten feet tall. These golems are nigh-immortal, soulless husks of incredible power, akin to the Olympian Soldiers of the Fifth Lostbelt. They feel no pain, are able to regenerate from nearly any damage, and will not cease until their targets have been completely and utterly eradicated. They know nothing but destruction and death, and wickedly relish in it any chance they can.

Truly, these must be monsters straight out of Hell, demons created from the darkest pits mankind has ever known. There is nothing else that could explain their sheer malice and relentless nature.

Alas… if only that were true.

In reality, these monsters are the children slain by Dame Gothel, the foolish and wicked children who disobeyed their parents. They strayed from the path and ended up caught by the wicked witch. Their bodies were killed and eaten by the monster in the woods, and their souls were left to burn in the Devil’s fire, fueling these monstrosities. What memories these creatures held have been long forgotten, and all they know now is to obey, a monstrous punishment for their foolishness in life.

Now, all these children have left is resentment and anger. Hatred for the ones who got away, who had a chance to escape the monsters of the world. It is unfair, they say, that they alone must suffer. So they will drag down anyone and everyone they can into the darkness, using their powers to twist and distort their victims into more of these monstrous creatures, until nothing is left behind but death and chaos.

Noble Phantasm: Rapunzel, Rapunzel - The Maiden in the Tower Rank: A Maximum Targets: — Range: — Classification: Anti-Fortress

The fabled tower in which Dame Gothel spent the rest of her days, and where the fair maiden Rapunzel was locked within. It is a prison akin to Merlin’s Garden of Avalon, a nigh-inescapable maze of hewn stone and wood. This tower serves as a great and terrible prison in which escape is nigh impossible. The tower itself is protected against magical attacks of all kinds, and is far sturdier than its appearance belies. The only way in or out is within a window high near the top of the tower, where Gothel herself lays in wait for anyone who would dare escape or enter.

Gothel can summon this tower in parts, summoning the walls as a bulwark against enemies and their attacks. However, the tower is at its most fearsome and powerful when the full structure has been erected, serving as the central lynchpin of the Hausmärchen Singularity where all Fairy Tales were forcibly distorted.

However, for those trapped within, there is a single thing to serve as a guide. A long, golden rope of hair, which can be seen throughout the tower. Despite the obvious trail it leads, Gothel does not do much as touch the hair, content to leave it be.

Voice Lines:

Summoned: Bow your head, human. You stand in the presence of Dame Gothel, the Witch of the Story's End. Hmm… So I have been summoned to serve Humanity, is it? Hah! What a joke. But I suppose I can spare you for now, Human. Though be warned. If I find you irritating, I will cook and eat you like all the rest before you.

Summoned(Clear Singularity “Hausmärchen - Land of Stories”): I see now… This is why I was called by the World to save mankind. How irritating... Does this world expect me to play the role of a hero now? But I suppose if that is the role the story asks me to play, I must play it out to my best. Don't think I'm getting soft though, human... I am Dame Gothel, the Witch of the Story's End, and a monster I will remain until the end of days.

Level Up 1: More fuel to the fire… Good, let the flames grow higher.

Level Up 2: Another ingredient to the cauldron... How delicious.

Level Up 3: Another offering for me? My, my, you're too kind.

1st Ascension: Ah, now this is more to my tastes. This is a dress most befitting a witch like myself. Fufufufufu… What do you think, human? Beautiful and fearsome, am I not? Perfect for the monster that I am.

2nd Ascension: You insist on pressing onward? Even if what you see may be frightening? I wonder... Would you consider yourself brave or foolish? I suppose time will tell.

3rd Ascension: Fufufufufufu... Finally, you see me for who I truly am. Do you understand, child…? You've strayed too far from the path of light, and now The Devil has come to make you pay for your sins. Tell me, was it worth it, selling your soul?

4th Ascension: Good and evil... Light and dark... They are but roles we are meant to play in the story. I did not choose the path I have taken, it was thrust upon me. The story dictated that I was to be the villain, and so I took upon that title with pride. I do not regret a single action I have taken... ...I wonder, did she think the same? Did she not once look back?

Fight Start 1: By all means, welcome to my humble abode… You’re not going to leave it anytime soon…

Fight Start 2: Well, well, well, it seems like a lovely little morsel has arrived. And just when I was getting hungry, too…

Fight Start 3: You know, you shouldn’t go walking around the woods by yourself. Who knows what monsters lurk in the shadows…?

Fight Start(Fatal Battle): Ah… Ahhh…! Rapunzel, Rapunzel…! Why…?! Why did you leave me?!

Skill 1: Double, double, toil and trouble…

Skill 2: Fire burn and cauldron bubble…

Skill 3: By the pricking of my thumbs…

Skill 4: Something wicked this way comes…

Command Card Select 1: Is that all?

Command Card Select 2: I suppose I haven’t used this trick in a while.

Command Card Select 3: This should be more than enough for the likes of you!

Noble Phantasm Select 1: It’s time we cast off this illusion…

Noble Phantasm Select 2: Tell me… Are you afraid?

Attack 1: Burn, down to your very bones!

Attack 2: By all means, scream…

Attack 3: You are going to taste exquisite…

Attack 4: Crush them, Tower with No Doors!

Attack 5: Hell awaits you!

Attack 6: Do you think you can survive this?!

Attack 7: Bind them, Seal of Solomon!

Extra Attack 1: The final chapter has been written… It’s the end of your story!

Extra Attack 2: Oh, do you think you can escape…? How foolish!

Noble Phantasm 1:

Heeheeheeeee… Hahahahaaaaa…!

Now the real fun begins…

Now the feast shall commence…

Now, little ones…

It’s time.

Let. Me. In.

DIE TEUFELMASKE!

Noble Phantasm 2:

The Witch’s Night has come and gone…

Now the Devil comes to play!

So run and hide, it’s all the fun!

NOW HAS COME THE TIME TO SLAY!

DIE TEUFELMASKE!

Noble Phantasm 3:

Bolt your doors…

Hide your children…

For the witching hour has arrived…

Die Teufelmaske.

AHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!

Noble Phantasm 4(Fatal Battle):

I am a monster…  I am the Devil… 

I am a demon who holds no love for anything in this world… 

Then why…

Why does my heart hurt so much?!

Rapunzel… Rapunzel… 

It's all your fault!

YOU DID THIS TO ME!

AHHHHHHHH!!!

DIE TEUFELMASKE!

Damage from Noble Phantasm: How annoying…

Regular Damage: Tch.

Defeated 1: If the story says so…

Defeated 2: I’ll come back another day, just you wait.

Defeated(Fatal Battle): No… Please… Just let me end this!

Victory 1: Unfortunately for you, there is no happy ending.

Victory 2: And so the story reaches the end. The hero has been slain, and the wicked witch claims another victim.

Bond Level 1: So, we really are doing this, hm? Very well, as per our agreement, I shall lend my aid in your task to save mankind. In return, the moment I get bored with you, or I grow irritated by your words, or I am offended by your presence, I can and will eradicate you, completely and utterly. This I swear. Such is the binding of our contract. ...fufufufufu. Congratulations, young Master of Chaldea. You've made a deal with the Devil.

Bond Level 2: What's with that strange look you are giving me? ...ah, I understand. You don't trust me, do you? Don't worry. I may be the Witch of the End, but even I understand the sacred nature of an oath. Even if it is an annoyance to me, I intend to fulfill my side of the bargain to the fullest. I expect nothing less from you. Otherwise... *snaps fingers* Your soul is forfeit. Do I make myself clear?

Bond Level 3: Ghhh... Must you insist on following me around like a lost duckling? Surely, there must be other Servants that you could bother aside from me? ...hm? Lonely? ... What a joke. I am a monster. The Devil Incarnate. Whoever heard of a creature like that being lonely?

Bond Level 4: Your presence... It's annoyingly familiar to me. You remind me too much of my daughter. No... That's not right. Unlike her, you truly do fear me, don't you? I can smell it. And yet, you still choose to approach me? How strange... Still, I suppose I can't begrudge you, given our contract. But stay out of my way.

Bond Level 5: What is it now? ...ah, I understand, a revision to the contract. Very well. I suppose we are due for some additions. First off, your terms wish for me to... be more open in Chaldea. Tch. What an annoyance. But I suppose it is an acceptable one. I do not promise to be kind, or to be sociable, or any of that nonsense. But I suppose I can make an effort to do more around here. As for my terms...? You are not allowed to leave. ...oh? Do I see hesitation on your face? Then allow me to explain. Your life and mine will become bound to one another. If you are to leave me behind, I will follow. If you are to die, I will put you back together. If you are to vanish from this world, I will use every bit of my power to return you to it. Your fate and mind will become connected for all eternity, until we both agree to annul this contract. Simply put? I will not let you abandon me. So... do we have a deal?

Dialogue 1: Tell me child, when you think of the villain of all Fairy Tales, who comes to mind? …eh? The Big Bad Wolf…? Tch. What a pain. It appears I’ve been slacking in my efforts.

Dialogue 2: So, you too are a dreamer? Feh, I should have known. You have that annoying air about you. One of hoping and dreaming…

Dialogue 3: Are you just going to sit there and gawp at me while I work? If you have nothing better to do, here. Get me these ingredients. What? You’re worried it’s too dangerous? Well, it’s not my problem. Now go!

Dialogue 4: The end is fast approaching… I wonder, what will you do when the time comes? Will you cower in fear? Will you fight? Or will you simply accept it…? No, that’s foolish of me to ask, I know the answer.

Dialogue 5 (If you have Pinocchio): Little Pilgrim Made of Pine… The boy has apparently got it into his hollow head that he is to be my ‘conscience’. …heh. Isn’t that funny? A monster having a conscience? I’d laugh if the boy didn’t seem to mean it with all his heart…

Dialogue 6 (If you have Cinderella): Ah yes, the Persecuted Heroine… She reminds me all too much of my dear child. Such a pity, though… To have all the fortune in the world and still be unhappy. 

Dialogue 7 (If you have Red Riding Hood): The Beast of Ignorance… Yes, she summoned me to create her own Singularity. In exchange, she would give me the salvation I desperately wanted. I was a fool to think I could trust a wolf. Be that as it may… I don’t enjoy being tricked.

Dialogue 8 (If you have “Goldilocks”): Ah, it’s you… I was wondering for the longest time why you of all characters felt so out of place… To think that it would be that a fallen deity stood before me. …how irritating.

Dialogue 9 (If you have any “Angel” Servants): Have you come once more to mock me, angel? Fine. Make your jeers and your judgements, they’re all the same.

Dialogue 10 (If you have Beni-Enma): Have you come to cast your judgement on me, little sparrow? I suppose it’s only fair. But if you expect me to make it easy for you, then you are a fool.

Dialogue 11 (If you have Mephistopheles): Oh? The Demon of Faust is here as well? How interesting… What a shame that he is not a true demon, though. I suppose his trickery and deceit is entertaining enough. I wonder, clown. What tricks have you up your sleeves?

Dialogue 12 (If you have Oberon-Vortigern): You too… have lost something important to you? Ah, Titania… No, I sadly have never met a woman such as that. Have you by any chance…? No, I suppose you wouldn’t have. In any case, I wish you luck, Fairy King.

Dialogue 13 (If you have Kintoki Sakata): Golden hair… The son of a witch… And an annoyingly chipper outlook on the world. Ghhh… He’s clearly not the same, but still, he’s too familiar. I best keep away from him for now.

Dialogue 14 (If you have Nursery Rhyme): Hm? What do you want, child? …you wish for me to read you a story? … No, there are other Servants better suited to that-OW! Hey, stop pulling on my dress! Ghhh…! This is why I hate children!

Dialogue 15 (If you have Hans Christian Andersen): Hans Christian Andersen… I suppose I owe my existence partly to him. What a sad little man he is. Putting up a front of coldness and disdain, but he’s just a coward too afraid of intimacy. …hm? What do you mean ‘he reminds you of someone’?!

Dialogue 16 (If you have any other “Fairy Tale” Servants): It appears my reputation precedes me… Yes, all the looks of terror and fear surrounding me… Fufufufufu… Now this is my element!

Dialogue 17 (If you have Lostbelt Morgan): The Witch-Queen of the Britons, as I live and breathe. You may be from a time and place not of this world, but I can sense your magical talent all the same… How frightening.

Dialogue 18 (If you have any “Child” Servants): Well, well, well… Lunch has arrived. Fufufufu… Don’t worry, Master, I’m only kidding. For now, at least.

Likes: There’s no greater pleasure in this world than eating. If there’s one thing God has done right, it’s grant all creatures, great and small, the ability to eat and cook. And of course, thanks to my magic, I can change my appearance however I wish. In other words, I can eat as much as I want, and suffer none of the consequence!

Dislikes: Something I dislike? Children. They’re terrible little things, talking to you, invading your homes, taking things from you… Yes, what rotten, horrible things children are. Only good to be a meal, nothing else.

About the Holy Grail: The Holy Grail…? Hmph, do you take me for a fool? That thing is clearly cursed. To make a wish on it, one must either be desperate, or an idiot. No, my magic is more than enough to surpass that paltry little thing.

During an Event: Oho? Now what has come a-knocking at my door? My, it seems that some festivities have begun, and here I am without an invitation. This cannot stand… Come, let us go see what all the fuss is about. I happen to know a thing or two about crashing parties…

Birthday: What? Oh, you wish to celebrate your birthday with me, do you? Hmm… I suppose I can whip something up from scratch. It may be a bit of a rush, but I suppose I can indulge you just this once. Don’t expect me to make this a habit, though.

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Once Upon a Time, in a faraway land, there was a witch. Or rather, there were many witches. Monsters that stalked the dark forests, looking for children to kidnap. Women that had sold their souls to the Devil in exchange for fantastic magical powers. Tricksters that caught victims in riddles and traps for their own sick amusement.

These stories would eventually become fused into one, a witch who would symbolize the fear all children hold in their hearts, and the looming threat that lay beyond the walls of their home. One of the few named witches, who terrorized the tales of the Brothers Grimm told to children at night. Gleefully, she tormented those who walked in her forests, cooking children for her meals, burning wayward fools who entered into her hut, and tearing families apart, all to amuse her.

She was Frau Trude Gothel, the Wicked Witch, a monster who held no love for anything.

Bond Level 1:

Height/Weight: 176cm • 75kg Source: Grimm’s Fairy Tales Region: Germany Alignment: Chaotic • Evil Gender: Female

Once Upon a Time, in a faraway land, there was a witch. Or rather, there were many witches. Monsters that stalked the dark forests, looking for children to kidnap. Women that had sold their souls to the Devil in exchange for fantastic magical powers. Tricksters that caught victims in riddles and traps for their own sick amusement.

These stories would eventually become fused into one, a witch who would symbolize the fear all children hold in their hearts, and the looming threat that lay beyond the walls of their home. One of the few named witches, who terrorized the tales of the Brothers Grimm told to children at night. Gleefully, she tormented those who walked in her forests, cooking children for her meals, burning wayward fools who entered into her hut, and tearing families apart, all to amuse her.

She was Frau Trude Gothel, the Wicked Witch, a monster who held no love for anything.

Bond Level 2:

The witch's cruelty comes in many forms, some benign, some sinister. Some overt, some subtle. In some stories, she is The Devil, extending a gentle hand to bind a victim within a horrifying contract, cackling as another fool sells their soul and loses everything to her. In other tales, she is a temptress, luring children into her home with promises of sweets or enticing mysteries to solve, only to kill these innocents and use them to sate her vile hunger. In still others, she is a vain sorceress, tormenting younger beauties in envy of their purity and goodness, forcing a hero to come and save the maiden from her monstrous cruelty.

However, on very rare occasions, the witch is not the villain of the story, but rather a guide and teacher for the hero to seek out. And at times rarer still, she is a mother, a guardian, and a protector, watching over her child with the rage of a loving parent. How strange it is, that this self-admitted monster can be so versatile, how a being who claims to be heartless can come to care for anything with true love.

And here, in truth, does the story begin in earnest.

Bond Level 3:

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, the witch Dame Gothel lived, laying deep within a forest by her lonesome, relishing in the fear and terror her very name brought to the land. Mothers locked their children behind their doors, fathers carried torches and pitchforks in the night, and all prayed to God for salvation from this monster. She was content with this, all too happy to be the monster she was meant to be.

One night, the witch heard a rustling outside her door, and found that a neighbor from a nearby home had ravaged her garden, stealing the rapunzel plants and placing them in a basket. Incensed, the witch accuses the man of theft, and readied to kill him on the spot. The man, in turn, fell to his knees and begs.

"Please, miss! My wife needs to eat these plants to survive! She is to give birth soon, and I fear that she is wasting away! For the love of God, have mercy!"

The witch stayed her hand at the man’s words, but her mercy was not bourn out of kindness. Rather, she came to a terribly wicked idea. A bargain that would drive the man to the deepest pits of despair.

"Very well, I shall spare your life, but in return, I ask for one thing: your child that is to be had. I should like to keep her, and in exchange, I will let you eat of my plants."

Desperate, the man agreed, and upon the child's birth, she was given to the witch, at both mother and father’s despair. Frau Gothel took the child with her to a tower with no stairs or doors hidden deep in the forest. She named the child Rapunzel, after the very plants that secured her imprisonment to Gothel, and locked the baby into the highest room of the tower, where no man could ever hope to find her.

Bond Level 4:

Dame Gothel never truly intended to keep the child for herself. She had no use for a progeny because of her immortality, nor did she particularly want one in the first place. Children were far too noisy and prying and irritating for her to keep, that much was clear. No, if anything, the child would suffice as a meal. Perhaps not as she was now, but in due time, the baby would serve as a meal, nothing more, nothing less. It was as she was named: Rapunzel. Merely an ingredient to be cooked in a stew or served in a salad, just like all the other children before her.

And yet...

As the years went on, the child grew and grew, and Dame Gothel couldn't help but feel a sense of happiness as she watched. The child looked her in the eyes with no fear, unlike anyone else who had met her before. She did not care of the magical power she held, or the terrible atrocities she had done. No, the young Rapunzel saw no evil in her mother's eyes, and in turn, Dame Gothel beheld something she had truly begun to love. Eventually, all thoughts of eating the child were gone, and in their place were a mother's protective heart. She would shield the child from the cruelty of the world, protect her within this tower with all her might. Nothing and no one would ever lay eyes on her precious daughter, and they would live together within this tower, just the two of them.

They would all live Happily Ever After.

Alas, if only it was meant to be.

Bond Level 5:

She did not know when the man came, nor how he came to find their hiding place, or even why he climbed the tower to begin with. But it was unmistakable, the stench of that 'prince' violated the tower, just as much as he had violated her dear Rapunzel. Gothel confronted her child, and soon, the relationship between mother and daughter began to strain.

"You... You let him in here?! Moreso than that, you bear his child?! How could you do this to me?! How could you do this to yourself?!"

"Mother, I love him! And he loves me! We are to be wed, and I will not let you stand in the way of our marriage!"

"Love?! Marriage?! Rapunzel, you are a fool! You've only known him for a few months, and you're talking about marrying him?! You're just blinded by your naivete!"

"Whose fault is it then?! You call me naive, and yet you're the one who locked me in this tower, never able to see anything beyond these walls! If I am blind, then it is because you are the one who has blinded me my whole life!"

"How... dare you?! I did this all to protect you!"

"No, you did this to keep me all to yourself!"

At her daughter's words, Gothel was overcome with a monstrous rage she had not known since taking in the child. In a fit of blind rage, Gothel cut off Rapunzel's precious locks, her golden hairs falling to the ground all at once. The two fell silent as mother and daughter looked each other in the eyes. Horrified at what she had done, Gothel could not even speak a word of protest as her child left the tower, never to return again. Silently, she extended a hand towards the one person she had ever loved… And did nothing as she faded away into the dark forest.

Extra (Clear Singularity “Hausmärchen - Land of Stories”):

Upon Rapunzel's departure, the Witch of the Forest remained in the tower waiting, hoping for the day that her child would one day return, and they would live out their lives as they always had. Just the two of them together. She did not eat. She did not sleep. She did not even attempt to leave her prison of her own making.

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, months turned to years, and yet neither hide nor golden hair of the child had made her way home.

So, the Witch of the Story’s End did something she had never done in her long years of life: she prayed. Clasping her hands together, Dame Gothel, who had sold her soul to the Devil, who wickedly defied Heaven without remorse, begged Heaven for a sign, an answer from God that her beloved daughter would come home to her, that her family would be made whole once more. After many sleepless nights of prayer, Heaven would eventually answer Gothel’s prayers, sending an angel from on high to speak to the monstrous witch.

"Dame Gothel, wicked and cruel tormentor of mankind... You dare ask God for intercession? You, who has torn apart countless lives, murdered hundreds of children, now beg for your own child to return? Do you not realize that your daughter left you because you refused to give her happiness? That you marred her own beloved just to selfishly keep her in your tower? ... You disgust me. The only reason why I do not damn you to Hell here and now... Is because I see that no punishment could ever surpass your torment here and now. So lay here and rot until the end of your life, Dame Gothel... Forever knowing your daughter is far happier now that you are gone from her life."

Upon the angel's words, Gothel's heart had shattered into pieces. The wicked witch, who had gleefully tormented families and left them in despair, was now trapped within her own sorrow, having lost her dear Rapunzel. She had nothing to live for, nothing to smile about. Without Rapunzel, she was left as nothing more than a living corpse, left to waste away until nothing remained of her.

Never to regain her Happily Ever After.

The End.

[gacougnol]

Trude Fleischmann (American/Austrian, 1895 - 1990)

Frau Gusti S. 1930

[laurasimonsdaughter]

What if Disney adapted Frau Trude?

Anon, Nonny, Anonymous, I need you to level with me. Would you like my general opinion on Frau Trude, or do you genuinely want to know how I think Disney TM would adapt a cautionary tale that involves a witch and/or devil gleefully burning a child to death?

[semioticapocalypse]

Trude Fleischmann. Frau Eva S.. Vienna, c. 1926

Follow my new AI-related project «Collective memories»

[richincolor]

New Releases

We've got just one new release to put on your radar this week, but it's an extra exciting one -- a diverse YA short story anthology reimagining fairy tales, edited by Dahlia Adler! Read on to learn more:

At Midnight

Out tomorrow!

Fairy tales have been spun for thousands of years and remain among our most treasured stories. Weaving fresh tales with unexpected reimaginings, At Midnight brings together a diverse group of acclaimed YA writers to breathe new life into a storied tradition.

Fifteen celebrated authors reclaim classic fairy tales for a new generation:

Dahlia Adler, “Rumplestiltskin” Tracy Deonn, “The Nightingale” H.E. Edgmon, “Snow White” Hafsah Faizal, “Little Red Riding Hood” Stacey Lee, “The Little Matchstick Girl” Roselle Lim, “Hansel and Gretel” Darcie Little Badger, “Puss in Boots” Malinda Lo, “Frau Trude” Alex London, “Cinderella” Anna-Marie McLemore, “The Nutcracker” Rebecca Podos, “The Robber Bridegroom” Rory Power, “Sleeping Beauty” Meredith Russo, “The Little Mermaid” Gita Trelease, “Fitcher’s Bird” and an all-new fairy tale by Melissa Albert

Once upon a time . . .

[adarkrainbow]

Playing with fire, Transgression as truth (A)

The second article from the "Queering the Grimms" anthology I offer you was written by Kay Turner. It is part of the section "Queering the Tales" and its full title is...

Playing with fire: Trangression as truth in Grimms' Frau Trude

For many years I have been inordinately curious about an obscure Grimms’ fairy tale called “Frau Trude” (ATU 334). The tale concerns a witch and a girl and how their passionate relationship comes into being despite staunch prohibition. As a story arguing the nature of “truth,” it makes numerous direct and indirect claims concerning identity, feeling, sex and gender fluidity, kinship, and being—all within the framework of transgression and transformation, or perhaps better put, transgression as transformation

I make much of this brief tale, one infrequently given scholarly consideration. And yet, as I see it, and as the history of queer studies attests, the very task of queering the Grimms’ or any other traditional tales is to seek out the small and little-known story to discover queer possibility in the traces it offers, realizing that, as José Muñoz states, “instead of being clearly available as visible evidence, queerness has instead existed as innuendo, gossip, fleeting moments, and performances” (1996, 6). “Frau Trude” is a model for tracking the traces of queer existence in folklore.

The manifest and various relations between witches and girls in fairy tales, as between old women and young girls generally, have been undertheorized. Yet such attraction is as old as Sappho, who pined for and then penned her desire for lithe Atthis and youthful Anactoria.1 Fairy-tale scholarship rarely dips a proverbial toe into interpretive waters that might impel readers to take account of attractions, rather than repulsions, between witches and maidens. But in both well-known and obscure tales, girls find themselves drawn consciously toward, or inadvertently encountering, old women in various roles, including witch, sorceress, old woman, very old woman, grandmother, mother, mistress, wise woman, old hag, and stepmother.2 The old woman/young girl character dyad shapes a complex narrative model of female relationships, some of which beg for queer interpretation. Thus, working through “Frau Trude” leads down a winding path of transgressive wonder to arrive at bolder possibilities for understanding the diversities of desire between older and younger women in other fairy tales.3

The Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen is filled with a rich assortment of Frau Trude’s “sisters.” Though it is beyond my scope here, reading “Frau Trude” intertextually with others of its kind would no doubt bear analytical fruit concerning the structural position queer old women occupy in the fairy tale. Whether they are malevolent, like the cannibal in “Hansel and Gretel” (ATU 327A) and the kidnapper of one thousand girls in “Jorinda and Joringle” (ATU 405), or benevolent, like the old woman who hides the girl in “The Robber Bridegroom” (ATU 955) and provides for her in “The Sweet Porridge” (ATU 565), the charisma associated with these female figures emanates from their unusual propensity for agency. Housed in their marginality, abjection, and private nature, they seem to take secret delight in going it alone in those cottages deep in the woods. Frau Trude is among them: an outcast and outlaw living in her self-created house of marvels. But she finds her solitary confinement has lost its allure

Frau Trude’s tale merits reading in its entirety. I use Bettina Hutschek’s translation of “Frau Trude,” from the version in Hans-Jörg Uther’s (1996, 1:216–17) edition of the Grimms’ seventh edition of the KHM. 4

There was once a little girl who was very obstinate and willful, and who never obeyed when her elders spoke to her; and so how could she be happy? One day she said to her parents, “I have heard so much of Frau Trude, that I will go and see her. People say she has a marvelous[1]looking place and they say there are many weird things in her house, so I became very curious.” Her parents, however, forbade her going, saying, “Frau Trude is a wicked old woman, who performs godless deeds, and if you go to see her, you are no longer our child.” The girl, however, did not care about her parents’ interdiction and went to Frau Trude’s house. When she arrived there, Frau Trude asked her, “Why are you so pale?” “Ah” replied she, trembling all over her body, “I have frightened myself so with what I have just seen.” “What have you seen?” “I saw a black man on your steps.” “That was a collier.” “Then I saw a green man.” “That was a hunter.” “Then I saw a blood-red man.” “That was a butcher.” “Oh, Frau Trude, I was most terrified, I peeped through the window, and did not see you, but the devil with a fiery head.” “Oh, ho,” she said, “Then you have seen the witch in her proper dress. For you I have long waited, and longed for you, and now you shall give me light.” Thus she transformed the girl into a block of wood, and then threw it into the fire. And when it was in full glow, she sat down next to it, warmed herself on it and said, “For once it burns brightly!”

I read certain structural binaries—girl/woman; young/old; youth/age; life/death; human/witch (devil); parents/witch (lover); home/house; blood/ non-blood relations; fire/light; and light/dark—as leverage to interpret this short but provocative tale as it marks intergenerational mutual attraction and lesbian seduction, inviting understanding of strategic ways that social and sexual prohibitions may be overcome symbolically and imaginatively. Indebted to a generation of queer and LGBT academics who began broadly theorizing the heterogeneity of sex in the 1980s, I work with “Frau Trude” to invite folklore and fairy-tale scholars to touch queer theory in new ways.5 Queer scholarship generally accepts postmodern assumptions concerning the contradictory and contingent nature of signs and their systems of representation. I follow medievalist Carolyn Dinshaw, claiming for queer fairy tale analysis what she asserts for a queer history interested in unraveling the multiple meanings of sex (including sex acts, sexual desire, sexual identity, and sexual subjectivity): “Sex . . . is at least in part contingent upon systems of representation, and, as such, is fissured and contradictory. Its meaning or significance cannot definitively be pinned down without exclusivity or reductiveness, and such meanings and significances shift, moreover, with shifts in context and location” (1999, 12). Sounds like the stuff of folklore, doesn’t it? But Dinshaw’s new twist helps us rethink traditional narrative, suggesting that when queerness touches interpretation, it demonstrates “something disjunctive within unities that are presumed unproblematic, even natural. I speak of the tactile, ‘touch,’ because I feel queerness work by contiguity and displacement; like metonymy as distinct from metaphor, queerness knocks signifiers loose, ungrounding bodies, making them strange, working in this way to provoke perceptual shifts and subsequent corporeal response in those touched” (151).

There may be no better narrative site for discovering strange, ungrounded bodies and contingent sexual meanings than the fairy-tale genre, which problematizes desire, convened as wish fulfillment set in the realm of enchantment. Operating as a trope for the non-normative (but not necessarily the non-heteronormative), enchantment’s liminal state invites speculation along queer lines. Even if many tales hurtle headlong toward normative reunion, marriage, and stability, often the route navigates a topsy-turvy space filled with marvels, magic, and weird encounters that don’t simply contradict the “normal” but offer, or at least hint at, alternative possibilities for fulfilling desires that might alter individual destinies. Remarkably, in the case of “Frau Trude,” disenchantment never even occurs; rather, the witch’s marvelous realm is queered as a new home for the young girl and the old woman.

If sex, desire, and pleasure can signify heterogeneously in the fairy tale, attendant issues of kinship, family, and spousal attachment come to the fore. What narrative room does the genre supply to enlarge our consideration of relational bonds across binary differences of age, status, gender, sex, and even species? The heterogeneity of kinship is the central human problem the fairy tale presents, often queerly construed within the fundamental, if ambivalent and shifting, binary “belonging/exclusion.” Certain tales trans[1]pose the social and emotional tensions stemming from this division into architectural motifs (see, e.g., Labrie 2009). Two houses oppose each other in the landscape described by “Frau Trude.” One, symbolizing conventional belonging, is natal, heteronormative, parental, known; the other is non-kin based, homonormative, single dweller, strange. I seek in this chapter to demonstrate that the distance between them can be bridged by queer desire.

“Frau Trude” presents an especially useful example for exploring the predicament raised by these oppositions because the tale draws force from a considerably more profound one: natural/unnatural, or what Robert McRuer calls the ultimate binary of “who fits/who doesn’t” (1997, 143). The tale unmakes this divide’s inexorability by different terms of desire and agency. Queering, as a utopian project built with the brick and mortar of failure to comply, privileges the necessity of that which not only does not fit but chooses not to fit. “Frau Trude” offers two “choosey” gals—stubborn, unruly, in a word, perverse—who prove unwilling to belong to anything or anyone but themselves and each other

ENCOUNTERING “FRAU TRUDE”

My initial encounter with “Frau Trude” occurred in 1998. Invited to teach as a guest professor at the University of Winnipeg by co-editor Pauline Green[1]hill, I prepared a course called Sexualities, Folklore, and Popular Culture. For a session on folk narrative, I wanted us to study the fairy tale because the feminist scholarship in this area had by that time matured into its own fertile field of reconsiderations and new ideas. Indeed, feminist reimagin[1]ings of the Grimms’ and other tales had reached an apex of production. Among the rewriters, Irish novelist Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch proffered an explicitly lesbian take. I vividly remember my first reading of her version of “Rapunzel” in which the sorceress and the long-tressed girl, after much despair, separation, and longing, come back together as lovers in the tale’s end (1997, 83–99).

I wondered how Donoghue got there. Did the Grimms’ version of the tale embed motifs, functions, or structural oppositions that made such rei[1]magining logical? Bonnie Zimmerman would answer that lesbianism as a way of knowing the world affects how we read literature, that lesbians may willfully “misread” texts, adopting “a perverse strategy of reading” (1993, 139). But what stood out most at the time and has sustained me through[1]out these Grimm years was Zimmerman’s instruction that appropriation through reading perversely requires “hints and possibilities that the author, consciously or not, has strewn in the text” (144). Thus while reading Jack Zipes’s (1992) translation of the KHM in preparation to teach, I found myself regularly exclaiming my discovery of deeply queer “hints and possibilities.” Numerous tales held such requirements, especially lesser-known ones such as “The Three Spinners,” “The Star Coins,” “The Grave Mound,” and, of course, “Frau Trude,” which struck me then, as it does now, as the queerest tale of all.

For class, I assigned Kay F. Stone’s (1993) feminist rewriting of “Frau Trude” called “The Curious Girl.” Comparing the Grimms’ original with her adaptation, what a difference a gay makes! With the encouragement and help of my young lesbian students, we interpreted “Frau Trude” as a classic “coming-out story,” an adumbration replete with the desire mixed with prohibition and fear that now distinguishes that genre. We found plenty of sex, too. Stone visited our class and I remember the evening’s brilliant explosion of ideas as we engaged with her. She conceded that, though she had “lived with” the tale for many years, returning again and again as she rewrote and told it, she had never thought of it in queer sexual terms.

Rather Stone’s interest landed in her conviction that the girl was neither destroyed nor punished for being too curious; instead, her inquisitiveness was prized. In Stone’s retelling, the girl is transformed into a log, becoming fire, a shower of sparks, a bird, a hare, and a fish. “Through these meta[1]morphoses, she experienced the sacrifice of her ego-self, which . . . gave her even greater power—freedom over herself as a fuller human being” (1993, 298–99), rewarded finally with her own story of self-knowledge and fulfillment. At the essay’s close, Stone summarizes the evolution of her relationship to “Frau Trude” with a question equally pertinent to my interpretation: “And I wonder: Is it possible to ignite oneself without being consumed?” (304). Our answers are different, but compatible.6

I, too, began to live with “Frau Trude.” Years passed and still she nagged, so to speak. My interest waxed and waned and slowly changed. Whereas earlier my interest—like the other Kay’s—centered on the girl, later I felt more and more Frau Trude’s fire drawing me to her hearth. It seemed she and I had been waiting a long time for each other. I became the curious scholar compelled to meet the witch.

THE TALE: ITS HISTORY, VARIANTS AND LANGUAGE

Numbered 43 in the KHM, “Frau Trude” (“Mistress Trude” or “Mother Trude”) conforms to ATU 334, “Household of the Witch.” It belongs to the complex of old “devourer tales” (Ranke 1990, 617–18), which also includes 333B, “The Cannibal Godfather (Godmother),” subsumed by Uther under ATU 334 in his recently updated tale type index: “A girl (woman) disregards the warning of friendly animals (parts of her body) and visits her godmother (grandmother) who is a cannibal. The girl sees many gruesome things (e.g., fence of bones, barrel full of blood, and her godmother with an animal’s head). When the girl tells her godmother what she has seen she is killed (devoured)” (2004, 1:225).

The Aarne-Thompson synopsis yields less information but more intrigue: “Visit to house of a witch (or other horrible creature). Many gruesome and marvelous happenings. Lucky escape” (Aarne 1961, 125). Demonstrating the longevity of ATU 334’s hundreds of variants, Kurt Ranke (1978, 98–100) traces its roots in Eastern Europe, with subsequent migration west from Slavic and Baltic realms—Poland, Lithuania, former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Serbia)—to eastern Germany. He speculates that ATU 334 evolved from a myth concerning the realm of death, then changed to a macabre, demonic tale, and finally to a somewhat farcical one, happily ending with escape from the ogre. He counts about ninety variants, including thirty-six from Germany alone, where the historic-geographic record demonstrates the story’s notable change to its milder version.

In his study devoted to the form and function of gruesome children’s tales, Walter Scherf (1987) interprets twenty-seven thematically related types, including AT(U) 334, with “Frau Trude” as an example. To reflect its pro[1]gressive shift in content from horrific to moderate, he proposes the tale’s division into Eastern (334A+) and Western (334B+) European versions of different oikotypes (61–62). Reminiscent of Russian Baba Yaga tales, the descriptively more ghastly Eastern versions feature, for example, a fence strung with human intestines and doorknobs made of hands.7 Discovering her “true nature”—not woman but ogress—is a pivotal plot device in ATU 334, often intensified through a series of riddle-like questions and answers concerning what the visitor has seen at the witch’s house. In numerous variants, the girl (cousin, neighbor woman, sister, rarely a male) encounters frightening figures right before meeting the witch (Ranke 1990, 617). Once inside the house, the formulaic interrogation about these individuals be[1]gins. Initially ameliorating, the discourse recalibrates markedly in ATU 334 when the girl states she also saw a horrifying creature, witch, or devil. The ogress identified as such then usually kills her visitor but in “Frau Trude” transforms her

In older variants typically a horrifying devourer and uncompromising murderer, the witch—or death-woman (Tödin)—sometimes possesses a flexible animal head she removes at will, for the purpose of picking lice. This ogress who became Frau Trude changes dramatically as she moves west to Germany. For one thing, she gains a proper name. Likely a descrip[1]tion of her nature, it may be derived from trut or drut, a type of demon well known in the Bavarian-Austrian regions (Uther 1996, 4:88).8 As the gory, death-driven tale slowly modulates, the marvelous replaces the gruesome until finally “only a fairy tale, moreover for children, remains”; one that “is totally disarmed . . . and trivialized” (Ranke 1978, 99). If Ranke regrets that the German variant has been belittled, I offer a remedy for his woe. Once drained of the explicitly gory and murderous death drive, a different drive, equally potent, replaces it in the tale

The Grimms’ version of “Frau Trude,” first published in the 1837 KHM, substituted for “Die wunderliche Gasterei” (“The Strange Feast”), the co[1]medic variant of ATU 334, which filled slot 43 in the first two editions. This innocuous tale features a liverwurst escaping from a murderous blood sausage (Zipes 1992, 658–59). Zipes suggests the change happened because “The Strange Feast” too closely resembled number 42 in the KHM, “The Godfather,” ATU 332 (738). “Frau Trude” derives from a literary source, Meier Teddy’s Frauentaschenbuch (1823), a pocket book for women including the poem “Little Cousin and Frau Trude” (see Bolte and Polívka 1913, 377), which the Grimms retold in prose.9

According to Uther (1996, 4:88), Wilhelm Grimm conceived a new open[1]ing, creating a didactic tale to show children the punishment that results from disobedience to their parents. One wishes to have been present in the editorial chambers when the brothers decided to make the switch from sausage to witch. No doubt, sometime between publishing the volume of notes for the second edition in 1822 and the publication of the third edition of the tales in 1837, one or both read Meier Teddy’s little lyric tale and saw in it an opportunity to intensify their project’s moral agenda. Moving from meat to Mädchen (maiden), from comedy to tragedy, from lucky escape to murder seems to me a profound reflection of the Grimms’ desire to solidify their narrative portrayal of social values such as women’s silence and obedi[1]ence. Equally, it might signal their worry over changing mores, including those sexual ones slightly slipping out of closets across Europe, a result of the first prospects of the Enlightenment’s individual freedoms.10

“Frau Trude” evidences these concerns in its use of language. Though compact, the Grimms’ version nonetheless spends a wealth of linguistic currency in direct speech of an intense and ardor-laden kind: argumentative between daughter and parents, then discursive between girl and witch. Though the story begins with a standard “There once was a little girl” followed by description of her obstinate and stubborn ways, the third-person narrator soon gives over the account to the first-person protagonists. Plunged immediately into a tense, dramatic dialogue, the reader first hears the girl’s definitive, assertive tone as she demonstrates her desire to go to Frau Trude. Her parents respond by admonishing her and denouncing the Frau. A few lines later, in quick succession, girl and Frau engage with each other in interrogative, reported, expository, and declarative speech modes. Having transformed her visitor into fire, Frau Trude sits down by her bright flame and, speaking to herself/to the girl, declares her satisfaction.

The exceptionally argumentative and chatty girl and the loquacious witch by no means hold to the “silent woman” protocol Ruth Bottigheimer (1986, 116) finds in full swing in Germany by the 1830s, when “Frau Trude” was first published. Bottigheimer’s correlation of the Grimm tales’ speech patterns, gender hierarchies, and values is suggestive for “Frau Trude.” In what she calls the “century of criticism” celebrating “Wilhelm Grimm’s shift from indirect speech in the earliest versions of individual tales to direct speech in the later and final versions,” she finds, “No critic has asked, ‘Who speaks?’ or ‘Under what circumstances?’” (1987, 52). In contrast, Bottigheimer argues that Wilhelm consciously determined how much speech he would bestow any particular character (53).

Finding “good” girls and women muted or relegated to indirect speech and authority, often male, noted in direct speech, Bottigheimer also discovers that if “sprach” (spoke) too often introduces speech from a woman’s mouth, “it usually heralds a bad hat” (1987, 55). That girl and witch both speak di[1]rectly and constantly suggests Wilhelm’s editorial choices in “Frau Trude.” He loads the tale with a garrulousness that announces how “bad” he thinks both protagonists are. Again Bottigheimer is suggestive: “Transgressions can be carried out knowingly or unwittingly. Conscious transgressions by girls occur in at least four tales; in two the girls are punished and in two they escape. These two possible outcomes correspond with the good or evil nature of the prohibitor.” Bottigheimer says “Frau Trude” exemplifies a knowingly disobedient girl’s punishment, foretold in Grimm’s rhetorical insertion at the tale’s start: “so how could she fare well?” (88). We thank Wilhelm Grimm for filling the tale with direct speech, for thereby inadvertently he raises our awareness of the impassioned relationships between the characters by giving us access to their heightened emotional states (including fascination, anger, resentment, fear, yearning, and contentment) expressed in a range of speech acts.

[mixedbagofships]

Oh wow, she saw the devil with a head of fire in Frau Trude’s window.

[luiz-henrique]

="[ Anotações Particulares 2 ]"=

* Pensamentos e Sentimentos com o Mais do Procedimento dado para a Psique , como Revelado em -: A DESIGNADA CONSTITUIÇÃO HUMANA, Título que dei para esta Coletânea de Informações dadas pelos Seres que Não Procedem desta Terra, e Ninguém Considerou e a Influência Mais que Daninha de brasileiros Aprazes a Predominância Americana em Tudo, até me Apedrejaram, Bloquearam, Sabotaram, Assediaram, etc...,

podem se Entendendo o que são, como Eu Descrevi como se Formam e o que são , Ditado por Tais Seres , no serem Pensamentos e Sentimentos uma Variante Divergente de Nanitos, que Conforme a Inclinação e Envergadura dos Eixos Aderem o Quanthum Substancial e o Mais dos Condutos de Influxo que Interligam os Sensos e Mais do Endosso próprio, Embargado para a Psique, e no Processamento Funcional Assim se Caracterizam -: podem ser Elaborados Sintéticos, mas os ENFÁTICOS desta Terra Não tem esta Tecnologia...,

e deste Módo Embargados para o Alheio a Psique, Ligado a Nanotecnologia e Variantes Co- Divergentes , que por sua vez se pode Efetivar Relação com a Robótica e Cibernética ,e ainda com o Processar de Dados e Mais , Incluso Arquivos -: Ligados a Inteligência Artificial e o Mais Abrangente (...).

* BEFANA , como Conhecida na Itália, é a mesma DOBIA-AMBROSINA, Um dos Reflexos de HÉSTHER HÁLGAMAS HÉLLIONDRAH ,Sob esta Máscara e Apresentação, Desdobrada à Bilocação e Semi- Ubiquidade ante Sua mesma Manifestação .

* Roxane , que Acompanhou Alexandre Magno que é o próprio Wilhelm Richard Wagner em Vinda Pretéritae com Ajustada Magnitude Maior , Antes de Vir como Wagner e Sucessivamente como Howard Philips Lovecraft , é o Codinome de Estátira como a Rainha de Sabá , Estátira a Rainha de Tiro é a mesma Roxane que Veio Inserida Sem Nascer e Desvanece Sem Morrer , o Index da Igreja de Roma Alterou a História e a Retratou como Filha de um dos Inimigos de Alexandre Magno...,

Estátira Sacerdotisa do Templo de ASTARTÉ...,

Onde Estátira é a mesma AGLAOPHÊNIA , um dos Reflexos Espelhados de HEZAHLLIÉDRAH Semi-Humanizada e Predisposta à Re- Inserção, Surgir Sem Nascer no Intercâmbio da Casta Sacerdotal da Fenícia ligada a Tiro...,

HEZAHLLIÉDRAH é uma das Nove Manifestações Diferenciadas de RUDRAHEXTHILLAH .

Já SEMÍRAMIS , Rainha da Babilônia Semi-Humanizada ... ,é como DOBIA-AMBROSINA, MELUSINA , e OUTRAS -: Reflexos Espelhados de HÉSTHER HÁLGAMAS HÉLLIONDRAH.

* UMBRIA , como Conhecida na Sthregeria , Deusa da Escuridão e das Coisas Obscuras é como BABA YAGA , AZ- JEH , SINMÖRA , NINNGHIZHIDDA , NAHEMAH , AGGARATH : IGRATH , MAHALATH : UMM - EL- SUBYAN , ISHETH - ZENUNIN , JÖRMUNGANDR , SERKHETH : Deusa Escorpião e OUTRAS -: Reflexos Espelhados de LILITH , a Rainha da Noite .

* NOX como Conhecida na Sthregeria é Outra Faceta da mesma NYX .

* BLODEUWEDD é a mesma MELUSINA , Desdobrada à Bilocação e Semi-Ubiquidade ante Sua mesma Manifestação com a Ascensão de sua Magnitude de Espírito Feérico ou Elemental -: MELUSINA , à Deusa -: BLODEUWEDD , ligada a SENHORA DO LAGO DE AVALLON , GRIAN , DIANA ( TANA : FANA ) e a CERIDDWEN : KHERIDDEN , que são Reflexos Espelhados de HÉSTHER HÁLGAMAS HÉLLIONDRAH .

* DRUDEN é Outro Nome da mesma TRUDE - DRUCKGËISTER.

* Aquela Mulher Fantasma

BERCHT também Chamada PERCHTA , FRAU BERTHA , EINSENBERTA , e do mesmo Módo LAKSHMI ( Deusa Hindu ) são Reflexos Espelhados de Outra das Nove Manifestações Diferenciadas de CLARINNÉA que é Alheia as Três Mencionadas -: HÉSTHER HÁLGAMAS HÉLLIONDRAH , ZÊMORA e PÂHDOLLA , se Tratando de -: HÁHPHIHRAH ( HÁHFIHRAH ) , onde as NOVE com seus Inumeráveis Reflexos Espelhados são a própria CLARINNÉA.

* A Fada RAVENA é uma Faceta de ERDA : HERTHA , porém Ajustada com Magnitude Menor que a de ERDA : HERTHA como Deusa , Desdobrada à Bilocação e Semi-Ubiquidade ante Sua mesma Manifestação , Como um Espírito Feérico ou Elemental , onde em ZAIS que é a Verdadeira ARCÁDIA é Conhecida como FADA RAVENA , ) Não Confunda com um Nome Parecido Daquele Demônio Masculino Hindu Ravana , são Nomes Parecidos ) ,Lógo ZAIS , e mesma ARCÁDIA , em Outra Faixa na mesma Dimensão Física , Nesta Ênfase , em dada Frequência e em Frequências Específicas das Margens em quanto a esta mesma Faixa , com Outra Faceta Diferente do Tempo, em Mundo Outro por Detrás desta mesma Terra , Ante o Vislumbrar do Mais Além (...) !!! "

[agnerd-bot]

…y’know my intent when making this Fairy Tale Singularity wasn’t to make a reverse RWBY au, but…

*looks at Fenrir Riding Hood*

*looks at Rhodopis/Cinderella*

Funny how things turn out.

[magicaldogtoto]

Are You a Good Hexenbiest, Or a Bad Hexenbiest? Chapter Two: A Cabinet of Curiosities and Epilogue

Rating: Teen (Content Warning: Beheadings and gunshots.)

Genre: Urban fantasy, horror, fairy tale, occult detective.

Word Count: Approx. 6,000 words

Summary: Emmeline faces off against the Hexenbiest on her own and makes an unlikely ally.

Author’s Note: See previous post for notes.

Emmeline stared at the bodies; her own body shook, and she let out a horrified scream. “You… you killed them!”

“Those two were your backup when it came to hunting Wesen, weren’t they?” Gertrud asked. “I imagine it’ll be a bit harder to get around without them to cover for you.”

Emmeline barely registered what she was saying. Tears filled her eyes, and there was a ringing in her ears.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to get a clean cut,” Gertrud said. She readied Emmeline’s sword.

Emmeline stared at the ground, the anguish from seeing two friends–one of whom she considered an uncle–die. I couldn’t help them, she thought. All three of them; they died because of me! Behind her, the flames continued to roar, and her throat felt dry.

Gertrud prepared to swing, then suddenly stopped. “What’s that on your finger?”

Emmeline glanced at her left hand; the silver ring was still on it. She had completely forgotten about it.

Gertrud stared intently at it. “Where… where did you get that?”

“Some old lady gave it to me,” Emmeline said, too weary to do anything else.

Gertrud suddenly grabbed Emmeline’s hand and crouched down, inspecting the ring. She seemed to be noticing something that Emmeline hadn’t.

“This,” Gertrud said, her voice trembling, “this… this is…!”

A low humming sound seemed to radiate from the ring. Before Gertrud could say anything else, a huge shockwave erupted from Emmeline’s hand. It knocked Gertrud onto her back with a scream, the sword falling to the ground. Reflexively, she flexed her hand, and a small vase flung from a corner of the room at Emmeline’s head.

Emmeline felt a searing pain and saw stars, before completely blacking out on the living room floor.

*** The sound of rain falling outside and thunder rumbling in the distance awoke Emmeline. Her head still throbbed, but it was resting on what felt like a soft pillow.

She opened her eyes and was met with darkness, save for a nightlight in a corner. She sat up, still groggy, and blinked a few times. She was in bed, tucked into the bedsheets that were warm and comfy.

It took about ten seconds for her to realize that this wasn’t her apartment. The bed was much too big, the room too unfamiliar, and the view outside the window wasn’t Fremont at all (she thought she could glimpse a few large homes, also being drenched by rain).

“Where am I…?” Emmeline searched for a light and found a bedside lamp. She turned it on, and noticed that she was no longer in her black coat, black shirt, or black jeans. She now had a white nightgown that she didn’t remember having, nor did she recall ever changing.

She looked around for her clothes, and her sword, but couldn’t find them. Her silver ring was, however, still on her finger. The cut on her arm was now bandaged, too.

She tried to remember what happened… she recalled Gertrud’s house, the fight, getting knocked out…

Uncle John and Mansley with bullets in their heads.

The memory of their deaths caused her to bury her face in her hands and cry. First Helena, now them… what good was being a Grimm if she couldn’t even protect the people she was close to? She wished–and it wasn’t the first time she wished–that she had never found out about Grimms, or Wesen, or any of those things.

She cried until she was out of tears. That was when she heard a voice outside talking to somebody.

Emmeline listened closely. The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t quite yet recall where she had heard it.

“Take these to her,” the voice said, “she should be waking up soon.”

They were talking about her, Emmeline figured. Who were they? Why did they bring her here?

Emmeline got out of bed and made her way to the bedroom door. She pressed her back against the wall next to it, eyeing the doorknob.

Someone went through the trouble of getting her here; for what purpose, she didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to just sit around. If she asserted herself, she was sure to get some answers.

She held her breath. The doorknob turned, and light poured in from the room outside. A figure stepped in.

Emmeline sprung at that moment, tacking the figure. The silver tray the figure was holding clattered on the floor, the water forming a puddle.

The figure–it was a girl in a maid outfit, Emmeline noticed–grunted and elbowed Emmeline. Emmeline flew back, only to jump on her again. Emmeline did her best to subdue her with her hands, but the maid was more agile than she had expected. Even in that frilly dress, she managed to land a few hits on Emmeline.

Emmeline took another swing at her, only for the maid to slip behind her and grab her wrists. She held Emmeline in place, even as the latter struggled.

“Let me go!” Emmeline cried out. “Where am I? Who are you?!” She glanced back at the silent maid, who only glared at her with her green eyes.

Emmeline paused. Green eyes…? “Wait,” she began, “aren’t you…?”

“What’s going on in there?” Another figure appeared in the doorway. The light of the other room cast the bent figure in shadow, but Emmeline now recognized the voice.

“Y-you…!” Emmeline exclaimed.

The old woman from the park smiled. “Hello, Emmeline. I’m glad to see you’re unharmed.” She was wearing a blue blouse and khaki pants that seemed a tad oversized for her frail body. It looked more formal than what she had been wearing at the park. Her feet also had black heels.

The woman turned to the maid. “Melinoe, let her go. She’s a guest.”

The maid quietly released Emmeline, who rubbed her wrists. “You make your granddaughter work as your maid?”

The old woman chuckled. “I guess I should come clean now; Melinoe isn’t my granddaughter. But she’s been working for me these past few years.”

Emmeline glanced back at Melinoe. The girl just stared at her, her expression flat.

“Not much of a talker, are you?” Emmeline asked.

“...” Nope, nothing.

“I’m glad you wore that ring tonight,” the old woman said. “I knew it would be able to protect you from Hexenbiest magic.”

Hexenbiest… “You know about that? You know about Wesen?”

“And Grimms,” the old woman said. “That’s why I wanted to meet you. I believe we have the same goal.”

“Same goal,” Emmeline muttered. “Well, I don’t know what’s even going on here. Who are you… really? Are you a Grimm?” She had heard from her sister that some Grimms lived long lives; others were not so fortunate.

“A Grimm…” The woman seemed amused by that. “No, not even close…”

Before Emmeline’s eyes, the woman’s body became upright. Her withered form suddenly filled out, though her skin remained decrepit. Her body grew until it was a head taller than Emmeline, and her gray hair became a shocking white. Her face looked even more haggard, and her lips rotted away, her crooked teeth visible.

Emmeline reeled back. “You’re a Hexenbiest?!”

The woman hissed a bit, before moving as if a shock had gone through her body. Suddenly her Hexenbiest form retracted; her hair became long, falling over her head in red ringlets. Her eyes turned a calm gray. Her skin was now a flawless, fair color. Instead of looking like an elderly woman in her seventies, she looked to be somewhere in her late thirties or early forties. Her clothes, which were only a minute ago oversized, now fit her more young-looking body better.

Emmeline stared at the transformation, her jaw dropping. If there was one word that came to her mind, it was “beautiful.” This Hexenbiest didn’t look like the witches of fairy tales who ate children or cursed people. She looked more like the fairy godmothers and wise-women who helped young people in distress.

A fairy godmother who was also a career woman, Emmeline thought to herself.

“You’re…” Emmeline said, still in shock. “You’re…”

“Beautiful?” the woman’s pink lips twitched into a smile. Her voice was now like a sweet melody. “I get that a lot.”

“Who… who are you?”

“You can call me Kriemhild. Kriemhild Wagner.”

Emmeline looked at Melinoe. “And is she…?”

“A Hexenbiest?” Kriemhild finished for her. Melinoe just silently shook her head.

“No…? Then what are you?” Emmeline asked.

“She’s a Spriggan,” Kriemhild answered. “They’re originally from the British Isles. Don’t underestimate her size; Spriggans can be very fearsome opponents.”

Emmeline turned back to Kriemhild. “You… were you the one who brought me here? From Gertrud’s home?”

Kriemhild nodded. “I was. I’m sorry, but we’ve been watching you for some time now. Every Wesen in Seattle now knows about the Grimm–that job you did in the International District? They still talk about it.”

Emmeline recalled that job; a Tofu Kozu had been feeding guests at a restaurant harmful tofu that left them with a mysterious illness. With Uncle John’s help, they managed to arrest the Tofu Kozu with little effort.

“You’re a Hexenbiest,” Emmeline said. Despite the change in Kriemhild’s appearance, she still felt wary. “And you brought me here, to…?”

“Broadmoor,” Kriemhild said. “You’re in Broadmoor.”

Emmeline’s jaw dropped once more. “Broadmoor? Really?” The gated community in Eastern Seattle with the golf field and all the big houses? She was actually here?

Emmeline looked back out the window. The rain was still relentlessly pouring. “Are there… other Hexenbiests living here, too?”

Kriemhild smiled. “There are. There are many Hexenbiests in Seattle. And believe it or not, we’re not all willing to mutilate innocent children. In the present, we tend to hold down some fairly mundane jobs. We can be teachers, librarians… attorneys…”

That last one doesn’t surprise me, Emmeline thought in her head.

“... I personally have been working for the city for many years. My point is, we have to manage the two halves of our lives in order to fit in. Just like you.”

Emmeline narrowed her eyes. “I’m not like you.”

Kriemhild smirked. “You’re a Grimm, yes. But you also have to tow the line between worlds. And like my colleagues in the city, you also maintain order among the Wesen community. When you think about it, we have the same goals.”

The gears in Emmeline’s head started to churn. “So… why exactly did you bring me here? And why did you give me this ring?”

“Times are changing,” Kriemhild said. “The world is changing, both for Wesen, and for the Kehrseite.”

That word again. Emmeline had heard some Wesen use it before; it was what they called normal, non-Wesen, non-Grimm people.

“What does any of that have to do with me?” Emmeline didn’t need to be a Grimm to know the world was changing. She watched and read the news as much as she could tolerate; and she couldn’t tolerate hearing about things she couldn’t change or stop that much. At least hunting Wesen was something she could do to help the world.

“It has everything to do with you,” Kriemhild replied. “My colleagues and superiors–many who are Hexenbiests, just like me–do what we can to keep this city and the surrounding area safe. But we can only do so much. You probably don’t believe this, but there are things that are worse than Hexenbiests out there, even in this city. They aren’t afraid of us… but they all were taught from a young age to fear the Grimms. Your kind… you’re the monsters under our beds. You are the bogeyman for our kind.”

Emmeline took Kriemhild’s words in. “So that’s it? Do you just need a personal attack dog?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way…”

Emmeline shook her head. “I refuse.”

Kriemhild fixed her gaze on her once more. “... Why?”

“I’m not working with a Hexenbiest. I can hunt Wesen on my own, just like my sister and my dad did.”

She made a move to leave, only for Melinoe to step in front of her, silently glaring.

“Your sister and your dad,” Kriemhild repeated. “I knew of them, too. The people I work with turned a blind eye to them for the most part. They hunted the most dangerous Wesen, and we left them to their own devices. But if I recall, they also had outside help–or inside, depending on how you look at it. Those two detective friends of yours…?”

Emmeline tensed up. “What do you know about them?”

“I know that they’re dead. And with them, any real support you had in fighting the evil that lurks in this city.” Her tone was firm, serious. “In the Old World, you Grimms could wander around the land, hunting Wesen and getting out without anyone seeing you. Here? There’s surveillance all over the place. DNA testing and forensics that can trace you if you don’t know the right people to talk your way out of things.”

Emmeline wanted to say something, but she knew Kriemhild was right.

“Not to mention,” Kriemhild went on, “Wesen revert back to their human forms upon dying. You look at them, and you know you killed a Blutbad, or a Hässlich. The police see that? They just see a vigilante who attacked a high school teacher or a shop owner. And what happens if you can’t even tie them to any actual crimes? What will they do to you, especially if you start trying to say that you saw them turn into monsters? Where do you think they’ll put you?”

Emmeline’s mouth was in a firm line. She just looked at Kriemhild.

“So yes, I am a Hexenbiest,” Kriemhild said. “But I’m well-connected. I know all kinds of people and businesses in this city… and beyond. You can say I’m a poisoned apple. But,” she pointed at Emmeline, “I’m in your basket. Or is it that you’re in mine…?”

Emmeline thought it over. She knew of many older relatives who were Grimms, and had hunted Wesen on their own, without any help from the outside. They had done just fine. But this was years, decades, centuries ago. It was easy to find out someone was a child-eating Blutbad and cut their head off. You didn’t have to worry about security cameras finding you, or some passerby taking a video and uploading it online for views. She had only done as well as she did because Uncle John and Detective Mansley had come up with excuses and alibis for her. Often she had to run off (with the killing weapon in hand) before police backup appeared.

And now she was just told that there were Hexenbiests–and other Wesen–in positions who could have probably moved in on her if they wanted to.

“Well?” Kriemhild asked. “What will it be?”

Emmeline glanced down at the silver ring on her finger. “You gave this ring to me,” she said slowly. “Did you know… I’d be fighting a Hexenbiest?”

Kriemhild’s eyes softened. She smiled once more. “I told you, I was keeping track of you. And I knew about the disappearances in Puget Park. I had a feeling you’d go and find out who was doing it.”

Emmeline touched the ring on her finger. She looked at Kriemhild. “And… Did you know Gertrud Baum?”

For a moment, Kriemhild’s face darkened. “I did. We moved in the same circles around Seattle.” She looked aside, at the rain out the window. “We haven’t talked much in a while, though. We had… a disagreement.”

“And you wanted her dead as much as I did?”

“More or less,” Kriemhild said. “But I wasn’t exactly in a position to take her out myself. She had spells all over her house to keep other Hexenbiests like me out.”

“Did you know she killed my sister?” Emmeline asked, her voice hard.

Kriemhild’s mouth went agape. “I didn’t, no… like I said, we haven’t really talked much in a while.”

Emmeline eyed the Hexenbiest up.

“Where is Gertrud now?”

“Now? She’s on the run from the police for the murder of two detectives. I have people keeping an eye out on her. But who knows where she’ll go?”

Emmeline closed her eyes and sighed. “Okay, say I did help you. What’s in it for me?”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Kriemhild gestured to the door. “Follow me.”

Emmeline looked at the doorway, the bright yellow light coming from the other room. She took a step forward, and followed Kriemhild out the door. Melinoe came up behind them.

“By the way,” Emmeline asked as they walked through what appeared to be a living room, “where are my clothes? And my sword?”

“They’re here,” Kriemhild said, still looking ahead. “I thought you should sleep in something comfortable.”

“Did you change me…?”

“No, Melinoe did.”

Emmeline glanced back at the maid. “You did?” Realization hit her. “Then you saw me…!”

Melinoe stared at her with her green eyes. “...”

“Right. Not much of a talker.” She faced forward again. “Just… keep what you saw to yourself, okay? It shouldn’t be too hard.”

“How do you like the gown, though?”

Emmeline pouted. “It’s not exactly what I’m used to wearing to bed… or at all.”

“Really?” Kriemhild turned and walked through an archway. “I think it looks flattering on you.”

Emmeline felt her cheeks turn red. “Um, thanks…?”

She was going to say more, but when they entered the next room, she forgot all of her other thoughts.

Emmeline looked at the great room they were in. “This is…?”

She wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was the sort of room that had to be taken in at intervals, as her eyes processed everything that they saw. She noticed the bookshelves first. Much of the blue walls were lined with them. As she stepped closer, she saw that they were full to near-bursting with books of many different titles. Some of them seemed to be from the 1800s, even. They were children’s books, “serious” (Emmeline always found that description silly) books for adults, and all manner of tomes on history, architecture, folklore, and more.

There were also paintings on display, old, European-looking paintings in addition to Japanese Ukiyo-e ones. The tables were full of miniatures and artifacts from all over–Porcelain dolls, Japanese daruma, old wind-up toys and automatons that must have come all the way from Europe. It made Emmeline think about that time her and her family had gone to see Hearst Castle in California. It was like looking at the whole world in one area, or rather, a collection curated by a person over their lifetime.

“This is all yours…?” Emmeline said after taking it all in for a while. She glanced at a book on the shelf, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, and instinctively reached for it, before realizing that it was rude to do so.

“Go ahead,” Kriemhild said as Emmeline withdrew her hand, “it’s fine.”

Sheepishly, Emmeline took the book and looked at it. “You collected everything here?”

“Collected, inherited… I call it my cabinet of curiosities,” Kriemhild said, smiling proudly. “Or as they call them in Germany, my wunderkammer, Wonder Room.” She walked up beside Emmeline and glanced at the book she was looking at.

“I see you appreciate Rackham,” she said.

Emmeline nodded. “I have a book with some of his illustrations in my apartment.”

“Really?” Kriemhild looked at the book with her. “You know, he was a Grimm, too.”

“... Seriously?”

Kriemhild grinned. “I actually have some of his journals. Did you know he once battled a Nixie?”

Emmeline looked up from the book. “Wait… you have Grimm journals? Here?” She started looking around.

Kriemhild chuckled. “Not in the open. Come here.” She walked over to a corner of the room, towards an old automaton that vaguely appeared to be a man in old clothing. His soulless eyes gazed out at Emmeline.

“Watch.” Kriemhild went around and opened a hidden compartment of the automaton. She took out a key from her pants and inserted it into the mechanical man. She wound it, causing the automaton to whirr. As it did so, a section of the wall beside it opened up, revealing a staircase leading down. Pale light lit the pathway.

“Wow…” Emmeline said.

Kriemhild stepped into the secret door and started to walk down the stairs. “Coming?” she asked, turning to look up at Emmeline.

Emmeline immediately followed her down. Deeper, deeper she went, their footsteps echoing along the narrow walls.

The wall of weapons was the first thing to catch her attention.

Emmeline paused when she saw it. “You collect weapons, too?” She looked at the wall, taking note of the whips, the axes, the crossbows, and swords on display.

“They’re weapons used by Grimms in the past,” Kriemhild said. “Today a decent gun can kill a Wesen, but some still need to be taken out the old fashioned way. It’s a bit barbaric, but it gets the job done.”

She walked over towards the adjoining corner, where another set of bookshelves adorned the room. These books looked old and faded. She pulled one with a cover of black leather out.

“Here,” she said, “a Grimm journal; one of many I have.” She flipped through the book and stopped at a page, handing the book to Emmeline.

Emmeline read the entry on the page:

“The Greenteeths and the Powlers have had their feud as far back as medieval times. Much of this stems from both families claiming to be the descendants of the Lady of the Lake who gave Arthur the sword Excalibur. I have spoken to Grimms in the United States. Many say the feud has carried over to the young country, as well.”

Next to it was an illustration of a Nixie, with green hair and green teeth, and pale green skin, done in a style that Emmeline immediately recognized as Arthur Rackham’s. Her head was in the action of flying into the air, as next to her was an illustration of Rackham himself (the glasses were a dead giveaway), swinging a sword.

“You weren’t kidding,” Emmeline breathed.

“All these books are like that,” Kriemhild said. “They record Wesen from all over the world. Everything from an Alpe to a Ziegevolk, and then some.”

She gestured to the room. “All of these can be at your disposal,” she said, looking at Emmeline, “if you agree to help me.”

Cold reality splashed Emmeline in the face. She should have remembered; it was all wonderful, yes. Enough here for her to continue fighting dangerous Wesen. But it was also clearly Kriemhild trying to win her over to her side.

Sure she looks pretty and kind now, Emmeline thought. But she’s still a Hexenbiest. Don’t forget that.

“You really need a Grimm on your side that badly?” she asked.

Instead of answering immediately, Kriemhild went and pulled out a book from one of the shelves. It looked like an old children’s book, with a German title.

Emmeline looked at the title. Albträume für Wesen Kinder. Nightmares for Wesen Children, she figured based on her rough understanding of German.

“I told you,” Kriemhild said as she flipped through the book, “you’re the monster under our bed. All of our beds.” She showed a page to Emmeline. It was an illustration showing what appeared to be a little Blutbad boy being menaced by a Grimm wielding an ax. The Grimm looked positively brutish, and his eyes were pitch black, like he had no soul.

“Your eyes look like that when we woge,” Kriemhild said. “Did you know that? That’s how we can tell you’re a Grimm.”

“Huh. Never knew that.”

“So? What do you say?”

Emmeline frowned. Before she could give any answer, Melinoe entered the hidden room.

“Melinoe?” Kriemhild turned to her. “What is it?”

Melinoe took out her phone and opened a security app. She showed it to Kriemhild. Outside, drenched in rain, a figure stood at the front door.

Emmeline became alert. “Gertrud!”

“Indeed it is,” Kriemhild said. “Looks like she decided to turn to an old friend.”

Emmeline felt her blood boiling. “I’m going to kill her.”

“That’s probably a good idea. Even I want her gone.”

Emmeline glanced at Kriemhild. “Really?”

Kriemhild’s face was serious again. “Her actions risk exposing the Wesen community. Historically, whenever that happens, bad things follow… for everyone. Witch hunts, and all that.”

“I’ll need my sword.” Emmeline looked at the white nightgown. “And my clothes.” There was no way that she was going to fight in a gown like this. And it only seemed right that she use Helena’s sword to take Gertrud’s head.

“Melinoe can get that for you. For now… I’ll entertain our guest. When she’s alone, then you can move.” Kriemhild handed Melinoe back her phone, and started walking upstairs.

Melinoe led Emmeline from the hidden room, out of the cabinet of curiosities, and back into another room. She handed Emmeline her sword and clothes back, and Emmeline changed into them immediately. It felt comfortable, being back in her own clothes, with most of her skin covered up. In that white nightgown, she had felt more like a doll that had been prettied up by strangers. Now she was someone she could recognize in the mirror–she was Emmeline Salvador, the Seattle Grimm. She slipped on her remaining black glove onto her right hand and was ready to go.

Melinoe led her out, and they walked to where Kriemhild had taken Gertrud. They walked into the room adjacent to the living room the two Hexenbiests were in, when Melinoe held out her hand to stop. The lights were off in this room, and they stuck to the shadows. The dim light of the living room spilled in through the archway, and they remained out of it.

The voices of the two women in the next room reached Emmeline’s ears. She could see the two of them sitting around the coffee table–Kriemhild on a small chair, Gertrud on the sofa. They were having hot chocolate.

“... I thought I lost them in Fremont,” Gertrud’s voice went. She sounded like she was still coming down from a huge panic attack. “I hid in the shadow of the troll, but they still found me!”

“Relax,” Kriemhild said, her voice like honey. “I doubt they followed you here, otherwise they would have come in by now.”

“I don’t understand, Kriemhild, who gave it to her? Who gave the Grimm that ring? It had to be another Hexenbiest, I’m sure of it!”

“Well, some of the Hexenbiests, both in and out of the covens, do approve of the Grimm taking care of business for them.”

“But I wasn’t doing anything!” Gertrud cried out. “I was just at home minding my business. I wouldn’t do anything worth getting killed over!”

There was a pause. “Well, you did split from us back during the Black Claw uprising,” Kriemhild said. “I suppose some of us didn’t quite forget.”

Emmeline heard Gertrud scoff. “Seriously? That was years ago! I can’t believe someone would be okay with killing me over a difference of opinion. I mean, really!”

Difference of opinion? Emmeline thought to herself. That’s a funny way of saying you like using children for ingredients.

Gertrud let out an annoyed whine. “What does that matter anymore?” she asked. “Black Claw is done; Hadrian’s Wall killed every cell. They even got a Hexenbiest super soldier to help them. Imagine that. I just want to be left alone now; is that too much to ask?”

Black Claw… Hadrian’s Wall… Emmeline vaguely recalled hearing those names before. She recalled eavesdropping on Helena one night, talking to a stranger who appeared one night at their house. She was only sixteen at that time, and new to being a Grimm. The words “Black Claw,” and “Hadrian’s Wall” had come up in the conversation. When the stranger left and she asked Helena what that had been all about, her big sister had smiled and told her not to worry about it. “After all,” Helena had said, “you’re still a Grimm-In-Training.”

“When I find the Hexenbiest who gave that girl that ring…” Gertrud cut off, but Emmeline could tell she was seething. Finally, she finished her sentence: “We will have words.”

“That would be something.” Kriemhild’s voice had a sense of amusement in them. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go and make sure the house is locked. Stay here and make yourself comfortable for as long as you want.”

Gertrud let out a sigh. “Thanks.”

Emmeline kept her hand on the hilt of her sword. Kriemhild passed by her and Melinoe.

“She’s all yours,” Kriemhild whispered. “I won’t be long.”

Emmeline looked into Kriemhild’s gray eyes. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

Kriemhild smiled and stepped aside.

Emmeline took a deep breath, and entered the living room. She quietly walked up behind Gertrud.

“Hey,” she said plainly. “Haven’t seen you in a hot minute.”

Gertrud jolted; she took one look at Emmeline, and immediately woged, getting up and snarling at her.

“You!” she said in that raspy voice. “How did you get in here?!”

“Front door was open,” Emmeline said flatly. She pulled out her sword. “We have some unfinished business.”

Gertrud composed herself, the Hexenbiest form fading back into her. She eyed Emmeline.

“You want to feel more pain, Grimm?”

“I want what I’ve been wanting this entire night,” Emmeline said. “Your head.”

Gertrud scowled. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble for us both? My house looks like a crime scene!”

“Your house is a crime scene!”

“Whatever. I don’t have time to deal with you. Someone tipped the cops off about me. They swarmed my home and found your two friends’ bodies. I’m sure by now they found where I kept the materials I got from all those children.”

Emmeline felt sick to her stomach. “You brought this on yourself, you were the one hurting innocent children!”

Gertrud woged in front of her once more. “I am Wesen!” she growled. “My kind were gods once! Kehrseite would offer their children to us on burning altars in times long past! And now… they just believe we’re nothing more than fairy tales!”

“That’s not my problem,” Emmeline said. “And human sacrifice is so last millennia.”

“It’s tradition!”

“Some traditions are better left in the past,” Emmeline said. She pointed her sword at Gertrud. “But hunting bad Wesen, that never gets old.”

“Oh, really?” Gertrud growled. She held out her arms, and the objects in the living room began to shake. Emmeline braced herself, expecting things to start flying towards her again.

Except that didn’t happen.

As soon as the objects began to move, they stopped. Gertrud made a confused noise, looking around.

“What the…?” She flicked her wrists experimentally. Still nothing.

“W-what the hell is going on here…?” she asked. It was odd, Emmeline thought, to hear a Hexenbiest express fear.

“That’s quite enough, Gertrud.” Kriemhild stepped out of the shadow of the adjacent room, holding her hand in front of her.

Gertrud’s mouth opened in shock. “Kriemhild?!” she shrieked. “What is the meaning of this?!”

“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” Kriemhild went on, still holding out her hand. “But your actions threatened to take all of us down. This was the only way to stop you.”

Gertrud’s decrepit face had a look of betrayal and hurt. “This was… a group decision?”

Kriemhild shrugged. “In a way. Since you left we all made some tough decisions; deciding that working with a Grimm was for the best was one of them.”

“So that’s what’s going on, is it?” Gertrud glared at Emmeline. “You’re Kriemhild’s new pet now?”

Emmeline made a face. “I am not her pet!”

“You honestly think this can work out? Huh?!” Gertrud looked at Kriemhild, then back at Emmeline. “She’s a Hexenbiest just as much as I am! All Hexenbiests, no matter where they’re from, have their secrets. You have no idea who you’re getting involved with!”

Her words were like shards of broken glass. Emmeline scowled. “Maybe that’s true…” she said, glancing at Kriemhild. Then she turned her attention back to Gertrud.

“But Kriemhild isn’t the Hexenbiest who cut my sister’s head off.”

With that, she rushed at Gertrud and swung her sword. Gertrud dodged, but was clearly struggling to do something, now that she was severely crippled. With a shriek, the Hexenbiest swung at Emmeline’s hand. Out flung the sword in the action, and it slid across the wooden floor.

Gertrud made a dash for it, only to have Emmeline grab ahold of her arm and pull her back. Gertrud attempted to scratch at her with her own hands, but Emmeline clocked her right in the face, making her reel in pain. Emmeline didn’t stop, and delivered several punches to her, causing Gertrud to scream in agony.

Her screams fell on uncaring ears. Emmeline continued to punch Gertrud, her mind in a whirl. She knew how Grimms were considered the true monsters of the Wesen world. From the streets of Seattle, to the shadows of the Black Forest, to even further back, to the earliest days when people still thought that eclipses were caused by dragons or snakes that wanted to swallow the sun, there were always Grimms, ready to hunt Wesen.

She punched Gertrud in the ribcage. That’s for Uncle John! Emmeline thought to herself.

She kneed Gertrud in the stomach, and she doubled over, falling to her knees, the fight seemingly leaving her. That’s for Mansley!

And finally… She reached out and grabbed her sword, turning to Gertrud’s bent and defeated form. Her head was looking down. Emmeline didn’t hesitate.

She swung. Next thing she saw, Gertrud’s head was rolling on the floor, and her body collapsed.

“That’s for Helena,” she muttered as Gertrud’s head and body reverted back from the fearsome form of a Hexenbiest to the unassuming form of a human woman. Her face still had a look of despair in her dead eyes.

Emmeline took a few seconds to catch her breath. Gertrud’s blood dripped from her blade, making a small puddle on Kriemhild’s floor.

Over… it was over… She had killed her first Hexenbiest. The adrenaline still kicked in her body. She heard someone approaching; her flight and fight kicked in, and she swung again.

“Whoa, there.” Kriemhild held out her hands, the blade stopped by an invisible force field. “It’s over… you can calm down.”

Emmeline let out another gasp, before composing herself. She stood up straight.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay. I should have known better than to walk up behind a Grimm.”

Behind her, Melinoe walked up with a spray and wipes. The sight of a dead Hexenbiest didn’t seem to phase her at all.

“Now we have to get rid of the body,” Emmeline said.

“That won’t be hard,” Kriemhild said. “I know people.” She turned to Emmeline.

“So… about my offer…”

Emmeline held her hand out to stop her. “I’m really, really worn out. I… I want to take some time to think things over.”

Kriemhild nodded. “I understand. In that case, I suppose you’ll be wanting a ride home.”

Emmeline blushed. “Please?”

Kriemhild took out her phone and dialed. “Hope you don’t mind riding in a cop car.”

Emmeline froze. “W-what?”

“Relax, she’s a friend of mine. I told you I knew people.”

Emmeline relaxed a bit. “Oh… thanks.”

*** After the night she had had, Emmeline decided it was a good time to get out of Seattle and visit her mom and aunt in Kent. The rain had stopped, but gray clouds hung in the sky. For Emmeline, this meant that all was back as it should be.

She saw Mount Rainier’s snow-capped peak in the distance as she exited the freeway and drove towards her aunt’s house. The streets were wet and the trees and grass a fresh green, having been drenched all night long. In contrast to Seattle, Kent was a lot quieter. She wondered if there were any Grimms here, also hunting Wesen. The houses she passed by looked quiet, normal–but even Kriemhild’s mansion looked like any of the other ones in Broadmoor.

Emmeline drove up to her aunt’s house when she suddenly stepped on the brakes. She looked closely. Parked on the street across the house was that white car from before.

What’s it doing here…? Dread built up in Emmeline. She drove into the driveway of her aunt’s house and got out as fast as she could. She ran up to the front door and used her key to get inside.

“Mom!” Emmeline called out. “Tita…?!”

She ran through to the kitchen, expecting the worst.

Instead, she found her mom and aunt having tea with Kriemhild. Melinoe was on the couch nearby, minding her own business.

“Mom…” Emmeline gasped, catching her breath. “Is everything… okay?”

Her mom turned to her. “Oh? Hello, Pangga. Welcome back.” She smiled. Emmeline’s aunt smiled, too, and so did Kriemhild.

“Hello, Emmeline,” Kriemhild said. “We meet again.” Even under the muted colors of the gray morning, her red ringlets stood out.

“What…” Emmeline took a moment to catch her breath again, “... are you doing here?”

Emmeline’s mom spoke again. “Oh, Pangga,” she said, excitement in her voice, “Ms. Wagner here was saying that she’ll be willing to help with your financial aid for grad school!”

Emmeline paused. “... What?”

“It’s true!” her mom went on, stars in her eyes. “I had no idea you knew someone who worked for the city government! She said that she’ll be helping you, since you’ll be working for her now. She can help with your other expenses, too. And she’ll pay you well!”

“R-really…?” Emmeline turned to Kriemhild.

Kriemhild put her teacup down on a coaster on the table. “Well, the thing is,” she said, “Emmeline hasn’t formally accepted my offer. But it is still on the table.”

“She hasn’t?” Emmeline’s mom turned to her. “Pangga, think about it! You can still go to school and get your master’s! It wouldn’t hurt to run a few errands for a nice lady like Ms. Wagner, would it?”

“Running errands…” Her mom didn’t know what Kriemhild really was. Emmeline wondered if her mom even knew what kind of errands a Hexenbiest would make a Grimm like Emmeline run.

She looked at her mom, her aunt, and Kriemhild. Gertrud’s words echoed in her head: “She’s a Hexenbiest just as much as I am! All Hexenbiests, no matter where they’re from, have their secrets. You have no idea who you’re getting involved with!”

Kriemhild’s words followed right after: “I know all kinds of people and businesses in this city… and beyond. You can say I’m a poisoned apple. But… I’m in your basket. Or is it that you’re in mine…?”

“Well?” Kriemhild asked in the present. “What will it be, Emmeline? It’ll be hard work, but… I think you can handle it. You’ll get to see more of the city that you never saw before, too.”

More of the city. A city full of dangerous Wesen. Who needed a Grimm to protect it.

Emmeline sighed. She stepped forward and offered her hand to Kriemhild.

“Sure, when can I start?”

Kriemhild took her hand in hers and shook it. Her grip was firm.

The Hexenbiest smiled down at the younger Grimm. “You already have.”

EPILOGUE:

Final Journal Entry of Klaus Hoffmann, Germany, 18__:

The night before a storm passed with a force so terrible it was as if the Old Gods were riding through the dark sky. Because of this our journey was delayed, for we decided it was best to continue when the weather was more favorable.

The next morning Johanne and I left the comfort of Eisenach and heading towards the Hörselberg. The wind picked up that gray afternoon, and I experienced first hand why the Hörselberg–the “Hear-Souls Mountain”--received its name. It seemed as if the wind blowing through the mountains was the wailing of a thousand lost souls. It chilled me to the bone. Even more so when I recounted the warnings the local villagers had given to us of the entity that had been recently spotted there.

The villagers nearby claim that a mysterious woman haunts the mountain, luring in unsuspecting adults and children alike. Those who are unlucky are taken by her deep into the mountain, never to be seen again. It is the hope of Johanne and I that journeying together will ensure that neither of us are taken in by what we hope to only be a mere Hexenbiest… and yet the legends surrounding the mountain are enough to give even the most pious Grimm pause…

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Songs in German from the 80s

Songs in German from the 80s Songs in German from the 80s, including: Dschinghis Khan – Rom, Gitte Haenning - Freu dich bloß nicht zu früh, Howard Carpendale - Wie frei willst du sein, Katja Ebstein - Abschied ist ein bißchen wie Sterben, Mike Krüger - Der Nippel, Peter Maffay - Über sieben Brücken mußt du gehn, Roland Kaiser - Santa Maria and many more!!! Subscribe to our channel to see more of our content! 1. Dschinghis Kahn - Hadschi Halef Omar 2. Dschinghis Khan - Rom 3. Gitte Haenning - Freu dich bloß nicht zu früh 4. Howard Carpendale - Es geht um mehr 5. Howard Carpendale - Wie frei willst du sein 6. Katja Ebstein - Abschied ist ein bißchen wie Sterben 7. Mike Krüger - Der Nippel 8. Peter Maffay - Über sieben Brücken mußt du gehn 9. Roland Kaiser - Santa Maria 10. Tony Holiday - Nie mehr allein sein 11. Truck Stop - Der wilde Wilde Westen 12. Dschinghis Khan - Loreley 13. Falco - Der Kommissar 14. Fred Sonnenschein Und Seine Freunde – Ja, Wenn Wir Alle Englein Wären 15. Gottlieb Wendehals - Polonäse Blankenese 16. Hanne Haller - Samstag Abend 17. Howard Carpendale - Wem erzählst du nach mir deine Träume 18. Joachim Witt - Goldener Reiter 19. Nicole - Flieg nicht so hoch, mein kleiner Freund 20. Paola - Der Teufel und der junge Mann 21. Peter Alexander - Der Papa wird´s schon richten 22. Peter Cornelius – Du entschuldige, I kenn di 23. Rex Gildo - Wenn ich je deine Liebe verlier 24. Roland Kaiser - Dich zu lieben 25. Roland Kaiser - Lieb mich ein letztes Mal 26. Spider Murphy Gang - Skandal Im Sperrbezirk 27. Andy Borg - Adios Amor 28. BAP - Verdamp lang her 29. Hubert Kah - Rosemarie 30. Hubert Kah - Sternenhimmel 31. Kraftwerk - Das Model 32. Markus - Ich Will Spass 33. NENA - Nur geträumt 34. Nickerbocker & Biene - Hallo Klaus 35. Nicole - Ein Bisschen Frieden 36. Peter Maffay - Lieber Gott 37. Peter Schilling - Major Tom 38. Roland Kaiser - Manchmal möchte ich schon mit dir 39. Spider Murphy Gang - Schickeria 40. Spider Murphy Gang - Wo bist du? 41. Trio - Da Da Da 42. DÖF - Codo (...düse im Sauseschritt) 43. Gänsehaut - Karl Der Käfer 44. Geier Sturzflug - Bruttosozialprodukt 45. Kiz - Die Sennerin vom Königssee 46. NENA - 99 Luftballons 47. NENA - Leuchtturm 48. Nicole - Ich hab' dich doch lieb 49. Nino de Angelo - Ich sterbe nicht nochmal 50. Nino De Angelo - Jenseits von Eden 51. Tommy Steiner - Die Fischer von San Juan 52. Udo Lindenberg - Sonderzug nach Pankow 53. Herbert Grönemeyer - Männer 54. Howard Carpendale - Hello Again 55. Klaus Lage Band - 1000 und 1 Nacht 56. NENA - ? Fragezeichen 57. NENA - Irgendwie Irgendwo Irgendwann 58. Peter Schilling - Terra Titanic 59. Roland Kaiser - Joana 60. Stefan Waggershausen & Alice - Zu nah am Feuer 61. Bläck Fööss - Frankreich Frankreich 62. Falco - Jeanny 63. Falco - Rock Me Amadeus 64. Falco - Vienna Calling 65. Heike Schäfer - Die Glocken von Rom 66. Heinz Rudolf Kunze - Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz 67. Juliane Werding - Drei Jahre lang 68. Klaus & Klaus - An der Nordseeküste 69. Leinemann - Mein Tuut Tuut 70. Paso Doble - Computerliebe 71. Peter Maffay - Sonne in der Nacht 72. Wind - Für Alle 73. Die Flippers - Die rote Sonne von Barbados 74. Drafi Deutscher - Herz an Herz Gefühl 75. Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung - Ba-Ba Banküberfall 76. Falco - Coming Home Jeanny Part 2 77. Juliane Werding - Sehnsucht ist unheilbar 78. Juliane Werding - Stimmen im Wind 79. Karel Gott & Darinka - Fang das Licht 80. Münchener Freiheit - Ohne dich 81. Münchener Freiheit - Tausendmal Du 82. Stephan Remmler - Keine Sterne in Athen 83. Clowns & Helden - Ich liebe dich 84. Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung - Küss die Hand schöne Frau 85. Jürgen von der Lippe - Guten Morgen liebe Sorgen 86. Münchener Freiheit - So lang' man Träume noch leben kann 87. Stephan Remmler - Vogel der Nacht 88. Trude Herr - Niemals geht man so ganz 89. Falco - Wiener Blut 90. Herbert Grönemeyer - Was Soll Das 91. Klaus & Klaus - Der Eiermann 92. Münchener Freiheit - Bis wir uns wiedersehen 93. Original Naabtal Duo - Patrona Bavariae 94. Rainhard Fendrich - Macho Macho 95. Stefan Remmler - Keine Angst, hat der Papa mir gesagt 96. Die Ärzte - Bitte Bitte 97. Hanne Haller - Mein lieber Mann 98. Jürgen Drews - Irgendwann, irgendwo, irgendwie 99. NENA - Wunder Gescheh'n 100. Westernhagen - Sexy Related Hashtags #songsingerman #hitsof1980s #hitsof1980to1989 #hitsof1980 #hitsof1980songs #hitsof1980uk #hitsof1980australia #hitsofthe1980sand1970s #kannadahitsof1980 #bollywoodhitsof1980 #hitsof1979and1980 #tophitsofthe1980sbillboard #pophitsofthe1980s #hitsof1980sinmusic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZX0dCarOBA