Fairy Tales & Ghost Stories by Theodor Storm Read online

Chapter Three: The Rose

  Hinzelmeier lay in his bed when he awoke from a daze.  Mrs. Abel was sitting beside him and held his hand in hers.  She smiled as he opened his eyes to her, and the reflection of the rose was on her face.  "You overheard too much for you not to need to learn still more," she said.  "Only for today may you not leave the bed, but in the meantime I will share with you the secret of your family.  You are now big enough for you to know."

  "Tell me, mother," said Hinzelmeier and laid his head back on the cushions.  And then Mrs. Abel said, "Far from this small city stands the ancient rose garden, from which the legend goes, was created on the sixth day of creation.  Within its walls are a thousand red rose bushes which never cease to bloom, and each time a child is born in our lineage, which has spread in many branches through all the countries of the world, a new bud sprouts from the leaves.  Each bud has a maiden commissioned as a guardian, and she may not leave the yard until the rose has been fetched by him through whose birth it has sprouted.  Such a rose that you have just seen has the power to give its owners lifelong youth and beauty.  Someone therefore does not lightly fail to pick up his rose; it just depends on finding the right path, because the ways are many and often surprising.  Here it passes through a densely overgrown fence, then sometimes through a little corner gate" – and Mrs. Abel saw her husband, who was just entering the room with mischievous eyes – “and sometimes through the window!"

  Mr. Hinzelmeier smiled and sat down beside the bed of his son.

  Then Mrs. Abel went on.  "By this way will the greatest number of maidens be freed from their captivity and leave the garden with the owner of the rose.  Even your mother was a rose maiden who for sixteen years tended the rose of your father.  But those who pass the garden without stopping in are permitted never back.  Instead now the rose maiden is permitted after three times three years to go into the world to seek the rose master and through the rose redeem herself from captivity.  If she does not find him in this time, she must return to the garden and must wait three times three years again before renewing another attempt.  But few take the first, almost none the second procedure, for the rose maidens fear the world, and when they go out in their white garments they go with downcast eyes and trembling feet, and among a hundred such brave ones, has scarcely a single one found.  For these is the rose then lost, and while the virgins go back to eternal imprisonment, he also has forfeited the grace of his birth and must like ordinary humans age and perish miserably.  And you, my son, belong to the rose masters, and if you go into the world outside, then, so forget the rose garden not."

  Mr. Hinzelmeier bowed to Mrs. Abel and kissed her silken hair and said, genially seizing the boy's other hand, "You're big enough now! Would you like to go out into the world and learn an art or skill?"

  "Yes," said Hinzelmeier, "but it must be a great art, one that no one else can yet learn!"

  Mrs. Abel shook her head sorrowfully, and the father said, "I want you to bring a wise master who lives many miles away from here in a big city, where you yourself can choose an art.

  That satisfied Hinzelmeier.

  A few days later Mrs. Abel grabbed a large suitcase with many countless clothes and Hinzelmeier himself put a shaving kit inside so that when his beard came he could cut it immediately.  Then one day the wagon drove up before the door, and when the mother hugged her son goodbye, she said tearfully to him, "Forget the rose not!"