The Little Match Girl

Written long ago, something wintry for Christmas eve. I rewrote this fairy tale a bunch of times, each with a different take, a different history, a different point. I kept hoping to turn it into a whole long thing, to create one of those re-told fairy tales of which I am so fond, but I've never quite managed it. So, anyway. Here's this one.

Pilgrimage. Being situated on the road to the resting place of a poor martyr’s earthly remains kept the village alive. The locals were a tough, suspicious lot; life was hard on them. They had little to spare. The strangers were enraptured, caught up in the spirit of their journey, unwilling to deal with anything that might taint their holy mission.  Snow fell on the paths through this hard and holy village, blanketing the thatched-roofed houses, the barns, the market stalls, and the poor, worn-out girl child dying – as she had lived – wretched and alone.

            Her name was Cora, or Elise, or Mary, depending on who was disparaging her:  “She is a changling, cast out of Fairyland.” “She’s the devil’s child, punished for her father’s wickedness.” “She is the baby of a whore; stay away, lest you be tainted too,” the local would inform the inquiring outsider. And the stranger would shudder, turn, and dismiss the girl who begged with huge, tear-filled eyes. It was the age of suspicions, of a desperate need for orthodoxy. Disagreeing would get you burned by the Church: anyone different was obviously a sinner, punished for his evil deeds by a just and emphatic god.

            Coraelisemary was either nine, or twelve, or fifteen, depending on how it would help her case. To the new mother, she said she was nine, hoping to spark a woman’s love for children. To the leader of a band of street urchins, she said she was twelve, putting on what little bravado she could muster, hoping to be accepted, fed, and clothed. To the schoolboy, she said she was fifteen, hoping he would fall in love – or at least desire her enough to feed her. These methods rarely worked. She was too skinny, too desperate, and too tainted by gossip-turned-hearsay-turned-truth. She was poor, desperately so. Poverty, like bad luck, was catching. Coraelisemary never had more than the dress – more of a rag – that she had worn as long as she could remember. It could have been the one her mother (she, too, must have one) wrapped her in as an infant, some indeterminate number of years ago.

           

But this night was different: Coraelisemary also had a box of matches, stolen from the tinker in the hustle of the market place. His dogs had come running after her, but she was quick – the quickness born of desperation. She had not eaten for five days and hoped to sell the matches to buy a crust of bread, and perhaps some moldy cheese if luck chose to visit her. (The fickle woman seldom did.)  She would have stolen the bread, but after a string of thefts by the street waifs, the baker had bought a gun, and let it be known he would shoot without mercy, especially “that devil-spawned changeling.” Coraelisemary was not taking any chances.

            She was hungry hungry hungry, and no one would feed her or buy the matches. It was Christmas eve, but none were feeling charitable. Coraelisemary was a freak, with a soul either already damned or not worth saving. None offered anything to the starving girl selling matches in the square, choosing instead to ignore her plaintive cry of “Buy a match?”

            Oh, it was cold. The wind began to blow, crisp and hard and brutal; shutters began to close. Her teeth chattered: “B-buy a match, g-good sir? Fanc-cy a b-box, milad-d-dy?” But the answer was always the same: averted eyes, thin lips, crosses drawn on chests to ward off evil, little ones pulled into skirts, faces turned away so as not to see the starving girl they could not stand to help. The few that did not think her a condemned thing felt guilty for a few moments, but quickly forgot her and their guilt, distracted by the thoughts of a warm, dry home and a steaming Christmas eve dinner.

            Finally, as the streets grew silent and white and the wind blew colder and colder, she gave up. Everyone was inside, laughing and talking and enjoying a feast. No one came out, turned by pity, to buy a match or offer some food. Coraelisemary wandered through the empty streets, looking at those more fortunate than she. Everyone qualified. Even the street kids curled up under the bridges had each other. They had a safety in numbers that, isolated as long as she could remember, Coraelisemary had never known. She crept up on one such group, just looking, too exhausted to beg. The leader chased her off, not wanting to bring out the evil spirits or tricksy fairies. Next, she lingered too long at the window of the bustling, prosperous miller. He came roaring, bellowing, “Begone, you! Get back to where you came from!” She fled, terrified.

            Eventually, she came to the edge of town. She dared not go beyond that; there were only bad things in the forest: ghosts and ghouls and evil spirits. And though everyone thought Coraelisemary was the wicked one, she was not. The demon stories frightened her as much as anyone. She lay down beside the gate, curling her feet under her tattered dress in an attempt to keep them from freezing. She lit a match, as though it would warm her. It flared brightly for a moment, long enough to give her hope that perhaps she would survive the night. And then, of course, it was gone. Again and again she lit the matches; again and again they died. One small boy looked out of his window, saw the lights, and cried, “Mommy! Look, over there.” The mother glanced outside, and quickly shooed her son away from his post. “It are the fairy lights, child. They will lead you astray. Come, sit by the fire, and forget you saw them.”

            The little girl lay alone on that Christmas eve so long ago, quietly freezing… freezing ….frozen to death, forgotten, a box of matches burned to ashes at her blue-purple feet.

           

A stranger wandered into town the next morning, Christmas day. None of the locals had left their cottages yet, happy to admire the beauty of the snow-covered world from inside. Had this stranger come on any other day, he would have been pulled aside, told to stay away from the sad-eyed scarecrow of a girl, as she was good for nothing and most likely a-cursed. 

The stranger entered by the gates by which Coraelisemary lay dead. His eyes were soft as he gently lifted her, brushing the snow from her cold eyes, smoothing the shabby dress as best he could. He cradled her, the small corpse completely engulfed in his arms. Walking to the middle of the village, standing in the same square from which she had attempted to sell her stolen matches, he cried, “Come out!” Several faces peered out of cottages. The man yelled again, his voice ringing against the cobblestones. “Come out, you who would not help one who asked so little of you. Come see what you have done!” And the people came, slowly at first, then faster, eager to see a crazy stranger with a dead girl in his arms.

            When they were all gathered, small hands clutching big, the stranger fixed them with a glare cold enough to rival the winter temperature. All felt a chill seize their hearts, felt a guilt whose cause they could not name. He spoke, in a voice deep and terrible, commanding and final. “It is your fault she is dead. Every last one of you will pay for your sin. You will be punished for rejecting she who needed you most.” He looked each of the assembly in the eye. “May your guilt never leave you,” he snarled. The people stood, dumb, gazes fixed on the corpse in his arms.
            And then, before the eyes of the astonished and silent townsfolk, the stranger began to change. Massive wings expanded from his shoulder blades and back, whiter and more resplendent the snow. Colossal, feathered, powerful beyond description. Wings mighty enough they could induce a whirlpool, a tornado, a hurricane, an earthquake. Wings so enormous they dwarfed the surrounding houses. His skin began to blaze, searing the people, blinding them to all but the man – now angel – and the body he was holding. The wings, those wings that seemed to engulf the whole world, the whole universe, beat: once, twice. The people closest were pummeled, forced to the ground. As the angel rose, still cradling the devil-child, he called back in that voice of terror and judgment and finality, “I am Michael, the conductor of souls, sent by God. This girl is free and you remain, trapped on an earth of suffering and pain and loss. Her misery at your hands is over. I hope she looks down on you with pity, for I have none.” Michael was the bringer of justice, the sword and champion of Almighty God, an angel-prince charged with the bringing of swift, dreadful, ultimate judgment. In a word, terrifying.

As the provincials stood, wondering at the sight, trembling at the words, terrified by the wings and the radiance, the archangel’s voice sounded once more. “She was no devil-child.” Here, some of the smaller children, those not yet infected by bigotry and fear, thought they heard a sob in the angel’s voice.  “And her name,” they all strained to hear, “was Anna.”

xo, 

Devo