Merry-Anne and The Three Doors

Once there was a poor girl named Merry – Anne who lived with her step mother in a little rundown house in a poor part of town.

Her step mother was not wicked as most stepmothers in stories are but just very poorly; so poorly that she had to stay in bed most of the time and couldn’t go out to work and so Merry-Anne was forced to get a job as a ladies maid for a rich woman named Miss Zabelia.

Miss Zabelia lived in a very big house in a part of town where lots of very wealthy people lived but her house was very strange; more like a gothic castle than a house because it was built out of a jet black stone and covered in ugly, grimacing gargoyles and its windows were made of black glass so that no-one from outside could see into it and Miss Zabelia dressed all in black as well and wore a pair of spectacles with dark lenses so Merry-Anne never saw her eyes.

Miss Zabelia was very strict as well; in fact, it was she who reminded Merry – Anne of a wicked queen from a fairytale; she made Merry-Anne work long hours for a pittance of pay and she would inspect every inch of her house for dust and dock Merry –Annes pay if she ever found so much as a speck.

“I am allergic to dust”, she explained to Merry – Anne one day, “Just one sniff of it and I start to sneeze; can’t breathe and even break out in a rash, so I expect my house to be dust free from top to bottom. You understand?”.

But not only that, there was something else; something even more peculiar that Miss Zabelia insisted on that made her seem very mysterious and strange to the girl.

“Upstairs as you will probably notice”, she told Merry-Anne on her first day working in her house, “There are three doors. One large one; one medium one and one small one. You are never to open any of them or look inside them. Is that perfectly clear?”.

Merry- Anne because she was polite and also slightly afraid of Miss Zabelia, only curtsied and said, “Yes, Miss Zabelia”.

But then, one day, a black coach and horses arrived in the cobbled street outside the house and Miss Zabelia said that she would have to go out and would be away all day.

She pointed to a giant hourglass that always stood in the corner of her hall way and, mechanically, turned itself over at the beginning of every day.

“When the last grain of black ash falls inside the bottom of the hour glass then I will return”, she said.

Then, after she entered the back of the black coach, it sped away down the cobbled street and Merry-Anne was left in the house all alone.

At first she simply went around her cleaning chores as usual; dusting and sweeping and scrubbing the downstairs from top to bottom as she was supposed to but then she began to clean upstairs and she saw the three doors; the three doors that Miss Zabelia had told her never to open or to enter.

She gazed at them for some time, wondering what might be behind them and why Miss Zabelia was so secretive about it.

She imagined all sorts of horrors and scandalous things that Miss Zabelia might want to hide.

And then, suddenly, before she knew it, she had put down her dust pan and brush and had crossed the floor towards the largest of the three doors and placed her right hand upon its handle.

“She will not know”, though the girl to herself, “If I just take a peek inside. How could she know?”.

And then, her hand slightly trembling with fear and a strange sort of excitement, she pulled the door open.

But then, to Merry-Annes immense astonishment and fear; gasping, she saw a black wolf chained to a wall by a bright silver chain.

However, though the wolf might easily have attacked her, he did not leap out at her and try to bite her or even snarl and growl but simply made a whining sort of noise like a sad or frightened puppy and looked at her the way that dogs do when they are begging for something.

“How peculiar?”, thought Merry Anne, “To keep a wolf locked up inside your house”.

Looking at the wolf again, he appeared so sad and helpless that she could not believe he would ever harm her and so, reaching out she petted him and then, leaping up, he licked her face.

But then, as she was petting the wolf, stroking the black fur between its pointed ears, she thought about the medium sized door and what might be behind it and so, leaving the room with the wolf inside and much more confidently this time, she reached for the handle of the medium sized door and turned it.

She was quite disappointed, however, by what she found behind this door.

All she saw was a room in which there was a small table with a large wedge of yellow cheddar upon it in a silver tray and, beside it, a bottle of red wine and an empty wine glass and then, entering the room and inspecting the table further she saw that there was a brass plaque upon it and, upon that, were the words, “Eat, Drink and be Merry”.

Merry-Anne considered the words for some time.

“Perhaps they are an instruction of some sort”, she thought.

And so, picking up a crumb of yellow cheddar that had fallen onto the silver tray, she swallowed it and, fearful of leaving any wine in the wine glass to stain it, she uncorked the bottle and took a sip straight from its neck then, because the words on the brass plaque had said to be merry, she gave a small chuckle.

But then, suddenly and terrifyingly, Merry- Anne started to feel as if she were falling into a deep hole;

“No, wait”, she thought, “Not falling…shrinking!”.

And then, almost in the twitch of a whisker, she was not a young woman dressed in the outfit of a ladies maid anymore but a tiny, brown coloured mouse.

She knew she was a mouse because, under the table, she now saw that there was a mouse-sized rectangular mirror upon the skirting board and when she twitched her tail or touched her small round ear or brushed one of her whiskers she saw the mouse in the mirror do it to.

“Oh, saints and heavens!”, she exclaimed with a squeak, “What am I to do now?”.

But, just then, Merry-Anne remembered the third door; the smallest of the three doors and, scurrying out of the medium sized door and being thankful that she had left it open just a crack, she hurried across the wooden floor of the upstairs hallway to the third of the three doors.

At first, she struggled to open the door because her mouse paws would not fit round its brass handle but, just as she was giving up hope, she thought of her long tail and then, tying its end around the small handle, she tugged upon it and the door was pulled open.

Now, peering inside and probing and sniffing with her tiny mouse nose, Merry Anne suddenly gasped a tiny mouse gasp of amazement for, inside, she saw a vast, beautiful, sunlit garden filled with green leaved and blossom covered trees and in the trees there were hundreds of exotic, brightly coloured and long plumed birds singing and chattering .

And then, entering the garden, to her further astonishment, Merry-Anne heared an old woman’s voice addressing her sombrely.

“Is that you, Zabelia?”, said the voice, “What more do you want of me?”.

But, turning round in the direction of the voice, Merry-Anne saw that it did not belong to a woman at all but to a gigantic tree with odd, fan shaped leaves.

“What are you?”, asked Merry-Anne; a look of wonder and bewilderment filling her tiny mouse eyes.

“I?”, replied the tree, “I am the Maidenhair tree. The oldest tree in the whole world. I know all the secrets of all the magic in the world and so the Witch, Zabelia keeps me her prisoner in this garden and threatens to cut off my tree limbs if I do not tell her what she wants to know. But who are you? You are not her. I know her voice”.

“Begging your pardon, miss tree”, she said, politely, “But I am Merry-Anne. Miss Zabelia’s Ladies Maid but she does not know I have entered this room and I would get into terrible trouble if she was ever to find out”.

“I understand”, said the tree, her tone becoming one of happiness and gentleness, “And I will not tell her that I have seen you but is there nothing that you wish to know. I know all the answers to every question that can ever be asked”.

Merry-Anne thought for a moment, scratching her mouse’s head between its ears.

“There is one question”, she said, “If you don’t mind, could you tell me why there is a wolf behind the largest of the three doors?”.

“Oh that is easy”, replied the tree, “The wolf in the first room is the Wizard Althaban. He was Miss Zabelias husband and he married her because, once, she had been young and beautiful and had convinced him that she loved him however, once he had taught her all that he knew about magic, she gave him a potion that turned him into a wolf and bound him up with a magical chain in that room. He has been there ever since and will only be restored to his true form if these words are spoken to him ‘When the cold wind winds through the old wild wood where does the cold wind blow?’”.

Merry-Anne tried to remember the words although, with her now mouse sized memory, it was not easy and then, curtseying, she said goodbye to the ancient tree, thanking her for her help.

“Thank you”, she said as she scampered back out of the little door, “Perhaps, if he is a wizard then he can turn me back from a mouse into a girl”.

Now, exiting the little door and hurrying back across the floor of the upstairs hall Merry- Anne slipped through the narrowly ajar largest of the three doors and into the room where, once again, she saw the black wolf chained to the wall.

The wolf growled at first when it saw the mouse and a mouse-sized Merry-Anne thought it quite frightening but then she squeaked,

“It’s me! The girl who petted you earlier. I drank a potion that turned me into a mouse and now I need to turn you back into a wizard so that you can turn me back into a girl”.

Hearing the mouse’s words, the wolf stopped its growling and became gentle again licking the mouses ear which made Merry-Anne laugh because it tickled so much.

But then, searching her memory and scratching her head, Merry-Anne tried to recall the magical words which the Maiden Hair tree had spoken to her earlier,

“Um… when the old cold wood…no, that’s not it”, she said, “When the wild wood wind…no that’s not it either”.

However, just at that moment, from down stairs, Merry-Anne heard a sound that made her mouse body tremble from head to tail.

“Merry- Anne”, called the voice of Miss Zabelia, “I’ve come home early. Where are you?”.

“Oh no”, squeaked the girl, now desperately trying to remember and say the magical rhyme but just tying her tongue up in knots, “If Miss Zabelia catches me I don’t know what she’ll do to me”.

And then, to make matters worse, she heard the sound of Miss Zabelia coming upstairs and as she did Merry-Anne heard the sound her sniffing,

“I smell mouse”, said the witch, her voice becoming darker and angrier as her heavy footsteps came closer, “Like the kind of mouse that a treacherous little girl turns into when she opens the second door and eats my magic cheese and drinks my magic wine”.

And then, slowly and ominously, from behind her, Merry-Anne heard the door of the room creak open.

“So”, said the woman, looking down at a cowering Merry-Anne, “You disobeyed my orders, did you? Well I’ll show you what I do with naughty mice who come into my house and poke their twitchy little noses into things”.

And, then, as the giant Miss Zabelia slipped off her spectacles with dark lenses, Merry Anne saw that both her eyes were bright yellow and their pupils as narrow as a cats and then the rest of her started to become cat like; long whiskers shooting out of her cheeks like ears of wild grass; the tops of her ears narrowing until they became pointed and the black velvet of cat fur spreading over her face like a shadow.

Even her voice now turned into the miaowing of a cat.

Merry-Anne hid her little mouse eyes with horror rather than look as the now cat shaped Miss Zabelia slinked through the narrow crack in the door towards her purring loudly.

But just then the cats narrow eyes widened again as it heard the sound of the wolf growling from behind Merry-Anne and then, with a shriek and howl of terror, it saw the wolf pouncing through the air towards it; roaring with anger, drooling and bearing its giant hairy jaws full of canine fangs.

Unfortunately, just as it was about to sink those jaws into the fur of the shrieking cat, its short chain was pulled tight and it could go no further.

Realizing, with relief, that she was still alive, the feline Miss Zabelia hissed angrily at the wolf before adding, “I’ll deal with you later, after I’ve dealt little Miss Merry-Anne”.

But then, turning the focus of her glaring yellow eyes back towards where it had been, Miss Zabelia saw that Merry- Anne was no longer there. The mouse had slipped past her and out of the door while she had been distracted by the wolf.

Sniffing the floor and listening with her sensitive cats ears; the witch followed the scent and sound of a quickly scampering Merry-Anne across the hall way until, with a contented purr and a smile of wicked glee, she spotted the mouse in a corner.

“Trapped… like the little rat you are”, Miss Zabelia said with a squeal of glee, “And now I’m going to eat you up”.

And then, with a ferocious yowl, bearing its sharp teeth and claws, the cat leapt towards the terrified Merry-Anne  but then, just as the cat was in mid-air the little mouse leapt out of the way and, instead of pouncing upon the mouse, Miss Zabelia only came crashing down, head first, into a dustpan; her nose pushed deep in large heap full of dust.

Then, just as the witch had told Merry- Anne she would, when she came into contact with the dust it set of her dust allergy and Miss Zabelia started to sneeze violently.

“Atch-ooo!”, went the witch, sneezing so powerfully that the dustpan she was sitting on was sent skidding across the floor and into a nearby wall.

But Merry-Anne did not wait around for the cat to recover from its sneezing bout, she ran as fast as her four little mouse legs could carry her back to the room in which the wolf was chained up and now, pausing only long enough to catch her breath, the mouse squeaked,

‘When the cold wind winds through the old wild wood where does the cold wind blow?’”.

And the very moment that the last syllable of those magical words were uttered there was a bright, almost blinding flash of green; an enormous cloud of blue smoke and then, once the smoke had cleared, the little mouse saw, not a wolf anymore but a wizard dressed in long flowing robes of green velvet with a tall, conical green hat upon his head and, in his right hand, a magical wand of silver and gold.

And then, with merely a single swish of that wand, the wizard made the silver chain that bound him to the wall vanish link by link.

“I must thank you, Miss…”, said the Wizard.

“Merry-Anne”, said Merry Anne, feeling her long mouse’s tail begin to shrink as her body grew and returned to its normal, human form.

But then Merry Anne heard the loud howl of a cat from nearby and remembered Miss Zabelia.

“Don’t worry”, said the Wizard,“It is my wife who is chained up now and will stay a cat for as long as I was kept a wolf”.

Now, however, seeing that it was becoming dark outside, Merry- Anne said that she should be getting home to her step mother but the Wizard told her that he was in her debt for releasing him from Zabelia’s wicked spell and would use his magic to grant her any wish that she desired and so that is why, now, Merry Anne and her step mother do not live in a little run down house in a poor part of town but in the very wealthiest part of town and in a house twice as large as miss Zabelia’s.