Theodore’s long fuzzy ears perked up as he heard the creaking sound of wood that tells him that his mother was ascending the stairs. He was feeling a lot better. He didn’t feel the chills that used to paralyze his tiny body, and he was more agile and awake than he’ve ever been in his entire bunny life. Even though he hated Gale’s bitter tonics, he decided to not complain or struggle too much in his giant human hands. It was a shame that he couldn’t become human like his ma. If only Gale didn’t say that he wasn’t healthy enough to imbibe the magic potion, which he calls his “special concoction.” At first Theodore was so mad that he stomped on the ground with his left hind paw in protest to this injustice. But he gave up soon enough, as his occasional complaints and pleas were usually stemmed from a belief called “it doesn’t hurt to try.” His mother, though doting and loving, was simply not going to give into his whims.
The door opened. He hopped forward and stood on his hind legs, looking up to Michaela.
Michaela sat on bent knees, and Theodore hopped to her and laid his tiny right paw on her apron covered lap. She nestled Theodore in her arms, making sure that they support his delicate frame, and she closed her dark eyes, overwhelmed by their shared warmth in this intimate moment, the most treasured time of her human hours of a day.
Michaela fell asleep almost as soon as she lied on the quilted bed, her full lips close to her son’s pink pert nose that twitched at her warm breath. Theodore looked at his mother’s face, round and at least twice bigger than his, surrounded by black hair coiled into loose ringlets like the forest vines he used to leap around a week ago. Even though he felt that he should get used to her new face, he still felt like he was looking into a face of a stranger. The first morning at Gale’s house, when Theodore woke up next to his mother, in his alarm he fell off from the bed and raced to the corner of the room in sheer panic. When he looked back, his mother was already wide awake, her eyes glued to his shivering form. To someone who doesn’t know better, she looks like she is just staring, but he knew that he broke her heart.
He and his mother have always been rabbits, just normal rabbits who lived in the vicinity of the hare, rabbit community of the East woodlands before they met Gale. Michaela was petite-sized even as a plump, honey colored rabbit. Her husband was killed by a hunting dog before Theodore was born, so she often had to reluctantly leave her sick son in the secluded barrows to scavenge for food. Michaela was still young and pretty popular and she could have married any of the rabbits who tried to cozy up to her. Theodore remembered one hare called Don who was a lot older than his mom and doubly persistent in his dogged pursuit. Now most elders in the rabbit community thought that Don was a great match for a young, defenseless widow with a ailing baby like Michaela. Don was an excellent scavenger with one of the oldest and highly esteemed lineage. The elders of the rabbit would state in their councils that the only thing missing in Don was alas, youth but that was supposed to be minor trade off. But Theodore knew his mom deserved better. Although Don attempted to be paternal and warm to him, he wasn’t able to hide his sense of entitlement even from Theodore. At first his mom would’ve cared more for Don than a rotten turnip, but she soon acted as if his mere presence required a hasty evacuation.
One evening, Michaela was late. And Theodore was lying, suffering in his barrows, without a clue as to why his mother was late. As he felt sharp pangs of pain across his body, he curled up into a a white fur ball, trying to warm his paws that were getting icy cold. The pain was so great that he had to suck in quick gulps of air to ease his mind and he wondered if he was going to die, like what some pitying, nosey bunnies openly said. But Michaela would vehemently shake her head and simply tell him “You will live.”
This memory prompted little Theodore to push himself up by his trembling hind legs, outside the barrows. As soon as he dragged himself out, he lied plop, his long fuzzy ears lying flat next to his tiny face in exhaustion. His dewy eyes struggled to stay open, and before he lost consciousness, he heard sounds of twigs breaking and smelt something he never encountered in his life. What he initially thought was a large, looming undertaker he heard about from ghost stories was actually Gale who was trying to collect herbs to brew new tonics.
Later Theodore woke up on the same quilted bed he was lying right now. His mom was still a rabbit then, and Gale had a gauze band wrapped around his left arm. They were both looking down at him, and when he woke up, he saw a wave of relief wash over his mom’s features, which looked immutable to Gale.
Gale looked a little taken aback by Michaela’s rather stoic response to her son’s miraculous recovery, but he hastened to Theodore.
“Oh, thank goodness, you’re alive! Your mother here was worried!”
Gale was nice…and sweet since the beginning they met. At first Theodore didn’t know what to do first with someone who shows that he cared through words. Michaela was not much for words, so understandably Theodore needed some time to adjust.
Gale would have looked intimidating for his towering height but the expressive movement of his tan hands and the genuine gleam in his amber eyes hardly made him look frightening. Theodore had to admit that he kind of liked Gale’s energy.
The first thing that caught Theodore’s eyes was Gale’s bright golden brown hair with dark flecks. Also what didn’t make sense was that Gale, clearly human, could understand Theodore. When he asked Gale what he was, he simply introduced himself as a “Hulder.” Theodore was born and raised in Virginia, so he had no idea what hulders were.
As Theodore cocked his adorable head to one side, Gale giggled, like giggled, and explained
“Hulders are native to a large region called Scandinavia. My ancestral land is a land of ice that you need to swim across to reach. Religious book say that hulders are bastard children of the first woman, Eve. That we are ‘children of the night.’ There is no way to prove that of course. Some of us have donkey tails, a group of us have fox tails, but all of us look like people. Oh, some of us have backs that look like tree barks, isn’t that something! I’ve lived as human most of the time I spent life here. But sometimes I turn into a fox, because…Well, to stretch once in a while I suppose.”
“What are…bastards?”
Gale pursed his lips together and made a sweet, apologetic smile to him and then to Michaela Michaela simply glanced sideways at him, without moving a muscle. Despite their difference in size, for some reason his mother who almost assumes a look of vigilance and composure looked far more of an imposing figure and Gale looked light and flighty. Then Theodore saw a band of gauze wrapped around Gale’s left arm.
“Uh, what happened to your arm?”
“Oh, it’s nothing!”
“Are…you hurt?”
“Oh, no, I’m really okay! It was…a simple misunderstanding.”
Michaela ever so slightly bowed down her head. The truth was that Gale tried to alleviate Theodore’s suffering with a vial with pain-killing properties. That was when Michaela appeared and when she saw the back of a tall human arched over her habitat, she charged and sank her front teeth on Gale’s left arm.
Then Michaela raised her head and pinned her dark eyes at Gale. Gale at first stared back for a brief second, and embarrassed, turned his head away and coughed a little.
“Uh…thank you for saving my life. You said your name is Gale, right? Mom just said that she would like to talk to you…in private.”
“What, really? She said that? But she didn’t say a word!”
“I think…she wants to apologize.”
“Oh, there is really no need!”
“She…insists.”
“Oh.”
So Michaela and Gale walked out of the bedroom, him hesitantly following her into his own study and not forgetting to ask Theodore “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” before finally closing the bedroom door. Theodore with his rabbit ears, was able to eaves drop on some of Gale’s words, like “suggestion,” “until my left arm gets better,” and “the tonic is effective on land mammals.” When Michaela came back, she explained to Theodore that Gale has a magic drink that turns animals into humans and she was going to help Gale’s work in the human town until his left arm heals. Theodore still to this day doesn’t know the exact details of his mom’s agreement with Gale. Was his mom always this assertive? The only thing that he knows for sure is that his mother has turned into a human and lives as an apprentice, a helper to Gale, a hulder, a shape shifting fox who makes potions, salves, and other distasteful but necessary tonics.
Unfortunately Michaela didn’t allow Theodore to witness her transformation. She did it behind doors in solitude with brief exposure to Gale who was the supervisor. She explained.
“I don’t want to startle you. It is dark magic, Theodore.”
For a considerable time, Michaela acted carefully around Theodore. She didn’t rush to him and enwrap him in a hug like she used to, lest she scares her son with her new form. She would refuse to look at the mirror at first. To Theodore, she looked ashamed and lost in the initial stage of transition. Theodore was worried at first for her, but he believed her. She always possessed an unusual strength in mind. And despite her doll-like face, she was full of surprises.
Like the one time she surprised Gale when she descended the stairs in just a petticoat.
Now she can efficiently dress herself in both a petticoat and a practical cotton frock, wrap around a milk-white apron, and style her hair, making every bit of her body look like the public’s ideal of a widow. She knows how to dry the cornflowers she gathered from the plains, parse poisonous mushrooms from the choice ones, and grind greens into fine paste. She can immediately sense how her visitors are ailing, so she quietly hands in the needed remedy in a neatly wrapped paper envelope before disappearing behind an ever smiling, charming, handsome Gale. When she performs her task in her olive green frock and gathers her hair in a cap, she looks like a widow even to bystanders. A mousey widow who works in silence, observes in silence in Hudors Herbology, the only apothecary that offers trustworthy antidotes at a reasonable cost. She is a stranger to the town of Fullgreens, an alien whose dark hair and beady eyes struck the folks in their bottomless depth and who looks every bit out of place next to the town’s finest lad with sunset hair.
When Theodore asked his mother why she was late the night Gale discovered him, his mother froze. It was late at night, and she was sitting on a stool with Theodore on her apron-covered lap. She just shook her head softly and mouthed, “Don.” And she nuzzled the tip of her human nose against his nose as if to hush him. It was the sixth day she turned human when she said that.
His mother’s soft murmur in her sleep gently pulled Theodore from his reveries. He looked at the tiny double-sided window. The moon was letting the stars breathe for once.
Hulder Tales 