and he drew symbols in the air. She would not have blinked if he had swung a gleaming axe or a sharp knife towards her eyes, but she did so when he drew the sign of the cross on her forehead and breast. Now she sat like a tame bird with her head bent on her chest.
Then he spoke to her gently of the act of love she had shown towards him in the night when she came to him in the shape of the ugly frog. She had cut his bonds and led him out to light and life. She was also tied, he said, tied with stronger bonds than had bound him, but she also would come to light and life with his help. He would take her to Hedeby, to the holy Ansgar. There, in that Christian place, the enchantment would be broken. But he didn’t dare have her sit in front of him on the horse, even if she sat there willingly.
“You must sit behind me on the horse, not in front. Your magical beauty has a power that comes from evil. I fear it—and yet the victory will be mine in Christ!”
He bent his knee and prayed so piously and sincerely. It was as if the quiet forest was consecrated thereby to a holy church. The birds started singing as if they belonged to the new congregation. The wild curled mint wafted as if it wanted to substitute for the ambergris and incense. He preached aloud the words from Holy Scripture: “To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
And he spoke to her about “creation waiting with eager longing,” and while he talked the horse, that had carried them at such a furious pace, stood still and pulled at the big blackberry vines so that the ripe juicy berries fell down in little Helga’s hand, offering themselves for refreshment.
She patiently allowed herself to be lifted onto the horse’s back, and sat there like a sleepwalker, who neither wakes nor wanders. The Christian man tied two branches together with a cord of fibers in the shape of a cross. He held it high in his hand, and they rode through the forest that became denser and denser. The road went deeper and deeper and finally disappeared altogether. The black-thorns stood like barriers, and they had to ride around them. The spring did not become a running stream, but rather a stagnant bog, and they had to ride around it. There was restoration and refreshment in the fresh forest air, and there lay no less power in the gentle words that resounded with faith and Christian love in the heartfelt desire to lead the possessed one to light and life.
They say that raindrops hollow out the hard rock. Over time the waves of the sea polish the angular stones until they’re round. The dew of grace that fell over little Helga hollowed out the hardness and rounded the sharpness. But she didn’t recognize that, didn’t know it herself. Does the seed in the earth, when it’s dampened by life-giving moisture and the warm rays of the sun, know that it hides growth and a flower within itself?
Just as the mother’s song roots itself unnoticed in the child’s mind, and the child repeats the single words without understanding them until they become clearer with time, so was the word working here, with the power to create.
They rode out of the forest and over the heath and then again through trackless woods, and towards evening they met a band of robbers.
“Where did you steal that beautiful girl from?” they shouted. They stopped the horse and pulled the two riders off, for there were many of them. The priest had no other weapon than the knife he had taken from little Helga, and he thrust with it to all sides. One of the robbers swung his axe, but the young Christian luckily jumped aside, otherwise he would have been struck. The axe flew deeply into the neck of the horse so the blood flowed out, and the animal fell to the ground. Little Helga, who awoke from her long, deep trance, threw herself over the gasping horse. The Christian priest stood in front of her to defend her, but one of the robbers swung his heavy iron hammer against his forehead so that it smashed, and blood and brains sprayed all around. He fell to the ground dead.
The robbers grabbed little Helga around her white arm, but just then the sun set. The last ray of sunshine disappeared, and she was changed to a hideous frog. The whitish green mouth stretched across half her face. The arms became thin and slimy, and a wide hand with webbing stretched out like a fan. The robbers dropped her terrified. She stood as a hideous monster in their midst and in the manner of a frog, she jumped into the air, higher than her own height, and disappeared in the thicket. The robbers thought that this must be Loki’s evil trick,7 or secret black magic, and they hurried from that place terrified.
The full moon was already risen. It gave radiance and light, and out from the thicket crept little Helga, in the pitiful shape of the frog. She stopped by the corpse of the Christian priest and by her murdered steed. She looked at them with eyes that seemed to cry. The frog head gave a start as when a child bursts into tears. She threw herself over first one and then the other. She took water in those hands that grew larger and more hollow with the webbing and poured it over them. They were dead, and dead they would remain! She understood that. Soon the wild animals would come and eat their bodies. No! That must not happen! So she dug in the ground as deeply as she could. She would dig a grave for them, but she had only a hard tree branch and both her hands to dig with, and between her fingers the webbing soon ripped and blood flowed. She realized that she would not be able to do it. So she took water and washed the dead man’s face, and covered it with fresh, green leaves. She brought big branches and laid them over him, shook leaves in between them, and took the largest stones she was able to lift and laid them over the dead limbs. Then she stuffed moss into any openings, and thought that the burial mound was strong and safe, but during this hard work the night passed. The sun came up and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, with bleeding hands and with tears on the rosy youthful cheeks for the first time.
During the transformation it was as if the two natures were fighting within her. She trembled and looked around as if she were waking from a troubling dream. She ran to a slender beech tree and held onto it for support, and then suddenly she climbed up like a cat to the tree top and clung to it. She sat there like an uneasy squirrel, sat there the entire long day in the deep forest loneliness, where everything is still and dead, as they say—dead? Well, there were a couple of butterflies fluttering around each other, in play or dismay. There were some ant hills close by, each with several hundred little creatures scurrying back and forth. Countless mosquitoes were dancing in the air, swarm after swarm. They chased past crowds of buzzing flies, ladybugs, dragon flies, and other little flying creatures. The earthworms crept out of the damp ground. The moles pushed up earth. Yes, as a matter of fact it was quiet, dead all around, as it’s said and understood. No one paid any attention to little Helga except the jays that flew shrieking around the tree top where she sat. They hopped on the branches towards her with bold curiosity. A blink of her eyes was enough to chase them off again, but they didn’t get any wiser to her, nor she to herself.
When evening was near, and the sun started to sink, the transformation summoned her to new action. She let herself slide down the tree, and as the last ray of light disappeared she stood there in the frog’s crouched shape with her hands’ torn webbed membranes, but the eyes now shone with a beauty that they didn’t have before when she was in beauty’s form. They were the mildest, gentlest eyes of a young girl that shone out from the frog’s mask. They witnessed to the deep spirit and the human heart. The beautiful eyes burst into tears and cried the heart’s heavy tears of release and relief.
The cross of branches, tied together with the fiber cord, and the last work of the priest who was now dead and gone, was lying beside the raised grave. Little Helga picked it up, and the thought came by itself—she planted it among the stones that covered him and the murdered horse. With the sad memory tears burst forth, and in this
