The Grimm Conclusion Read Free Page B

a juniper tree and tried not to weep.
    She had, as far as she could tell, killed her brother. She was confused, a bit, by how his head had fallen off with just a slap across the face. She hadn’t even slapped him very hard. But his head had fallen off nonetheless. No question about it. And now his bones were buried under the juniper tree, and his flesh sat in a stew pot in the icebox out back.
    Jorinda, kneeling beneath the tree, tried to choke back the tears that pressed at her eyes, just as her mother had told her to. But it was not easy.
    And then, the little girl felt a tickle on her shoulder. She raised her head. There, sitting just beside her ear, was a little bird. It was as red as blood and as white as snow. It cocked its head left and right as it looked at her. Jorinda smiled. It reminded her of her brother.
    â€œHello,” she said. “What’s your name?” It flittered its wings and pecked her twice on the nose, gently. She laughed.
    And from that moment on, Jorinda spent every moment of her free time beneath the juniper tree, and the little bird played in the dirt around her feet and chirruped at her and pecked her happily on the nose.
    But while Jorinda’s friendship with the bird lightened her heart a little bit, her life in the house became worse. Her mother barely seemed to notice that Joringel was gone. She asked about him, absently, one night, and before Jorinda could say a word, her stepfather replied that Joringel had gone off to visit with his uncle in the country. Jorinda’s mother tried to remember if Jorinda and Joringel had an uncle living in the country. After a moment, she shrugged her shoulders and went back to her study. Jorinda stared in disbelief.
    Jorinda’s work around the house became much harder than before. Without her brother to help her, she had twice as many windows to clean, twice as much floor to scrub, twice as much laundry to wash in the cold, cold stream that ran behind their garden. And they began to call her “Ashputtle.”
    Why, you might ask, did they call her Ashputtle?
    Well, you might think it was because her job was to clean the chimney and fireplace, making her all covered with ashes and cinders.
    Which is fifty percent correct. That is one reason she was covered in ashes and cinders. But there is another reason, one that is never mentioned in any of the cute, boring, pretty-princess versions of this story.
    You see, the other half of the reason that she was covered in ashes and cinders was that her job was to clean the chamber pots. What, you ask, is a chamber pot? A chamber pot is a bowl that is used like a toilet, but doesn’t have a hole or water at the bottom. It’s just a pot that you go potty in, if you know what I mean. So, you sit on this little pot, and you do your business. Then you leave your business in the pot. Eventually, someone comes around and pours all your business into a bucket. Then they scrub the pot with water and ashes and cinders, until it’s as clean as they can make it, and until they’re covered in ashes and cinders and . . . well . . . whatever business you left in the pot.
    And
that
is why the girl was called Ashputtle.
    Once upon a time, everyone who heard the name “Ashputtle”—or “Cinderella,” for that matter—knew exactly what it meant.
    Toilet Cleaner.
    Her name was Toilet Cleaner.
    By the way, the next time you see a little girl who’s excited for Halloween, and she says, “I want to be Cinderella! I want to be Cinderella!” you’ll know that what she’s actually saying is, “I want to be Toilet Cleaner! I want to be Toilet Cleaner!”
    But don’t tell her that, because she’ll cry.
    So Jorinda, whom the stepsisters and stepfather called Ashputtle, scrubbed the floors and cleaned the windows and the fireplace and the chamber pots. And, late at night, she would go out to the little juniper tree, and the bird