Grimm Tales
Leave the path
Every one of these stories begins the same way: someone wanders into the woods.
These were never bedtime stories.
Two brothers in Germany spent years writing down the tales people told by the fire, and published them in 1812. They weren't gentle. They were warnings: about the forest, about strangers, about wanting too much, about the people who are supposed to keep you safe.
This year the lodge is built from them. Here are a few of the old stories. Which ones made it inside, you'll have to find out for yourself.
Tale I
Hansel & Gretel
The birds ate the trail home.
Two children are led deep into the forest and left there. The first time, they follow white pebbles back by moonlight. The second time, all they have is bread, and by morning the birds have eaten every crumb. Three days lost in the trees, and then a little house in a clearing, sweet enough to eat, with a kind old woman who is very glad to have company. She has been waiting for children like them.
Tale II
Little Red Cap
Never leave the path.
She was told, plainly: go straight to Grandmother's house and do not stray from the path. Then someone friendly met her in the trees and pointed out the flowers. By the time she reached the cottage, the door was open, the curtains were drawn, and her grandmother's voice sounded strange. What big eyes you have.
Tale III
Briar Rose
The wheel turns by itself.
Twelve wise women were invited to the christening. The thirteenth was not, and she came anyway. Her gift was a promise: in her fifteenth year the girl would prick her finger on a spindle and fall down dead. Every spindle in the kingdom was burned. Every one but one, at the top of an old tower, turning by itself in an empty room. Then came sleep, a hundred years of it, and a hedge of thorns that let no one through.
Tale IV
The Mirror
It never lies. It never sleeps.
The queen owned a mirror that could only tell the truth, and every day she asked it the same question. For years it gave her the answer she wanted. Then one morning it named someone else, and the queen decided that if the mirror could not be wrong, the world would have to be corrected. Be careful what you ask a mirror in the dark. It will answer.
Tale V
The Woods
Something is always standing just past where the light reaches.
In nearly every tale the real villain is the forest itself: the place where the path runs out, where no one can hear you, where the trees close in behind you. Our woods happen to be Southeast Alaska's. Dark spruce, cold fog, rain that doesn't stop. You drove through them to get here.
Which one is waiting for you?
You'll find out inside. Lights out at seven.