Maria

Being lost in the woods isn't pretty, especially when it's cold and snowing. The girl knew there was supposed to be a road, or at least a trail, but she'd lost it, even though she couldn't remember leaving it. Her parents had been ahead of her, but now she couldn't see them. She guessed it was just that she'd lagged behind too long, and so she pressed on despite the cold.

 

The house was large, pretty, and entirely white, even though there wasn't a speck of the snow that covered everything else on it. The door was unlocked, too, and the girl thought that maybe it was the roadhouse her parents had wanted to stop at, although she didn't really believe it. The interior was as clean and orderly as the outside, every surface fastidiously clean of dust. There were more rooms with beds than she could count, and every one was perfectly made and the pillows freshly shaken out, as if awaiting massive amounts of guests. The dining hall held foods of all kinds and variations, even some she'd never seen before, and it was warm inside. So, with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do and no-one else to talk to, she ate and slept.

 

Looking out of the window the next day, she saw a heavy fog over the land, and through the fog she could see only a few trees. However, those trees looked entirely different from those she remembered passing - different kinds, in different places, with differently-colored bark and needles. When she turned away from the window, the girl saw that the bed she had slept in was once again made, and the pillow was shaken out. Scared, she went to go outside, to look at the strange trees and possibly flee entirely. But as she opened the door, a large, entirely white woman with long teeth stood in front of her, looking down angrily. Though the woman said nothing to her, she knew instinctively her crime. She had come in without invitation, without even knocking, chosen a bed and eaten and drunk without asking, and now turned to leave without leaving a guest present.

 

Only when she had understood this did the woman speak to her. As a punishment and recompense, she was to stay, not as a guest, but as a servant. She learned that there were more like her, though far too few for such an enormous mansion, some recruited from a place called "the Hedge", some animals given sentience and hands, some stray souls like her. She never saw guests, but the beds still had to be made every day, having been upset over the night for an unknown reason. None of the servants saw guests, but they toiled as if they were maintaining a house constantly inhabited by dozens. The realm and weather needed tending, as well. Shaking out the pillows made it snow, keeping the land blanketed in a white pleasing to the mistress. The smoke from a freshly-stoked fire in the fireplace shrouded the forest in fog, and when they reeled flax to make or repair blankets, the sky was parted by thunder. The roof needed to be cleared of the constant snowfall, and food had to be cooked for a legion of nonexistent mouths in unseen and unheard wild revelry.

 

Though there were never visible guests, their work was always undone by the next morning, after only a few hours of rest. Occasionally, books, trinkets, and other indications that there had indeed been a guest in the room turned up. Mother Holle, as the servants called the woman, apparently got her tributes, and let the servants have the items if she didn't take a shine to them herself, though often she would later take them anyway. The girl especially latched on to any books left behind by the ephemeral guests of the house, reading through them greedily for random snippets of information. It didn't matter - fairy tale, Nordic epic, non-fiction book. Though there wasn't much - or really any - time to read, she found time, most often by eschewing sleep, or skipping a meal.

 

One such time she sat in her bed, amid the beds of the other servants, and saw through a little cellar window a landscape that she remembered. Fir trees of a natural brown color, lush with green needles, not the seemingly random colors she saw on other days. A few yards past the first line of trees, she spotted a road, like one where wanderers would tread. The memory was vague, but it contained one clear word: "Home". The image she recalled was subtly different, but the similarity was enough to awake that word within her memory. Taking care not to wake her fellow servants, the girl silently went to the front door. Before going outside, she hesitated. After a moment's consideration, she placed the book she had been perusing on a table near the door and stepped through, hastily running towards the road that sparked her memories.