"Bertha's Story"
November 27, 2001, 10:55 p.m.

The following is fictionalized true story and is only as true as any piece of fiction can really be. I wrote it for Storyteller and that's a true statement.

Topic: Write the "real story" behind an urban legend, myth, fairy tale, ghost story, wives' tale, folk lore, or superstition.

---

Bertha's Story

My name is Bertha Wilhelmina Borchardt and I was murdered on the 13th of October, in the year of our lord, 1799, deep in the Black Forest of Germany. My life would have turned out much better if I hadn't taken such care to make my little world a better place.

Alas, I wasn't socially adept which made a difference in how the folks in the next village felt about me. Rather, I kept to myself, growing my own vegetables and herbs in the garden behind my little cottage. I liked to keep my home neat and attractive, decorating it just the way I liked it, just for myself. My own little haven.

Of course, living so far away from everyone else, I had no real friends, no one to help me or even speak up for me. As it was, the nearest person lived far away. It was a three-day trek on foot to get to their farm. I had no neighbors close by. No friends, except my little milk goat, my laying hens, a rooster, and the ducks that lived in the river on the other side of the glen.

Never the less, I loved my simple life. Most of all, I loved to be in the kitchen, baking sweet breads and cooking savory meals. Before my husband Ludwig was killed in Frederick's war, I took great pleasure in cooking for him. He especially loved my cakes and pastries, which he took much delight in, from my simple gingerbread to my fancy strudel. Even after Ludwig died, I continued to bake those scrumptious sweets he loved so much.

Over the years, my little cottage needed mending. As I grew older too, and my joints became stiff, it was difficult to forage for the materials I needed to fix things up. I solved the problem of my leaking roof when I over-baked the gingerbread cookies one day. They baked hard as rocks. I couldn't even break them. So I began to cover the chinks in my roof with them. Yes, I know that sounds like something a mad woman would do, but I had limited resources and the cookies worked wonderfully and did not soften even in the rain. I decided to bake up a couple of batches of the hard-as-rocks gingerbread cookies, which I used to tile the roof of my little cottage.

This is how I lived my last years. I took delight in simple pleasures in my own little corner of the world.

That is, until the young wayfarers came. I wasn't even aware that day that anyone was near my little cottage until I began to hear the creaking noises that sounded like the cottage was being yanked apart. I called out several times, but no one said a word. I stepped into the dooryard and then I saw them. A boy and a girl. They were not as young as they would later claim. The boy was near the age of 14 and the girl was about 12 years of age. They looked like homeless ragamuffins. They were unkempt, wild-eyed and obviously very hungry for they were fiercely struggling to eat the cookies they held in their hands. I recognized those cookies. They had come from my roof. When the boy and the girl saw me, they quickly hid the cookies behind their backs. I took pity on the poor souls and invited them into my home. I served them a bit of blackberry tea and gave them each one of the muffins I had baked that morning which they devoured. I asked them who they were, where they came from and where they were going. I noticed how thin they both were and told them they needed to be fattened up. Neither of them had said a word to me, but only cast furtive looks at each other in silence. I felt uncomfortable with them in my house and at my table, not being used to such company, but my sympathy for their apparent and unknown plight won me over.

The young girl's eyelids began to droop and I offered her my bed so she could rest a while. The boy took the girl over to the cot and placed my coverlet over her. He bent down and spoke to her in such a low tones that I could not hear what he was saying. Then the boy turned around and walked out of the cottage. From the window, I watched him step into the dark little shed where I kept my goat.

After a few moments of watching the quiet shed, I turned away from the window and got busy to prepare a big pot of cabbage stew, in case my visitors would be staying for dinner. I chopped up the cabbage, potato, onions and carrots and tossed them in the pot of boiling broth. For dessert, I thought it would be nice to bake a gooseberry pie. I was muttering to myself about the fragile pie dough that kept tearing, when the young girl awoke. She sat on the bed and looked around for the boy but was not alarmed to find him gone. I told her he had locked himself away in the shed. She said not a word to me but got up and walked about the room, looking intensely at everything. It seemed odd that she didn't speak and her silence unnerved me. She kept looking about as if searching for something and continued to ignore me when I asked her if she needed anything. I let her be, while I finished topping the pie with dough.

Looking up, I caught the girl staring at me. She spoke then and startled me by asking if I was a witch. I laughed uneasily and told her I was far from being a witch, as I don't know what witches even do. She seemed to become agitated. Her eyes grew hard and her voice grew louder. She told me I must be a witch because I said that I wanted to fatten them up, that she heard me casting a spell when she woke up and that only a witch would build a house out of gingerbread!

Laughing at her, I told her to calm down for she was being silly and stupid. I could feel my blood rise though and I struggled to control it. She glared at me. Hoping to settle my discomfort and diffuse her agitation, I turned away from her. I thought to distract her, so I asked her to open the oven door for me. I picked up the pie to put it in the oven. She stepped forward and opened the door. She moved behind me. I leaned down to place the pie in the oven and felt a strong push from behind. I lost my balance. My head collided with the upper sill of the hot oven, burning my flesh. Raw gooseberry pie splattered the cottage floor. I screamed and held my burned head. Crouching, I turned toward the girl to make sense of what was happening, I looked in time to see the skillet just before it hit me in the face. I felt the blows and the searing pain, one blow after another, until finally, I felt no more and closed my eyes while my heart stopped.

Apparently, the girl all bloodied, ran and got the boy from the shed and together as I lay dead in a pool of blood, they ransacked though my little cottage. They stole the coins and the little bits of jewelry, including my mother's pearls, which I had kept all those years in a box in the trunk at the foot of my bed.

The boy and girl were found in the village with my jewelry. They were questioned by the burgermeister, who listened to their tale of being lost in the woods and how they met a scary witch who lived in a gingerbread house, a witch who lured them inside to cook them up for dinner, and how they escaped her clutches and killed her the in self-defense.

Everyone believed the children. It was an amazing story indeed, as no one would make this up. No one, but Hansel and Gretel.