The Willful Child–A Fairy Tale Re-Telling

Graphic also by Harlow Berny

Retold by Harlow Berny

Centuries ago, in a long forgotten kingdom, there was a willful daughter of a single peasant woman. She refused to do even the simplest things that her mother told her, no matter if it was something that the girl liked to do or would keep the child healthy and safe. For this reason, the girl went and ran through the house of an old man who had recently died, and she contracted some horrid illness that had killed him. No doctor could heal the child as she fell into her death-bed. Soon the peasant’s daughter was lain in a coffinless grave and was covered in dirt, until suddenly her arm burst through the ground and stood tall, grasping for the sunlight. When a mound of new dirt was placed over the arm, the arm pushed it away, time after time again. Eventually, the girl’s mother was brought and made to strike the hand down with a rod. Upon doing so the hand shot back into the ground and the daughter’s soul finally left her long-dead body. While we know that the little girl’s soul abandoned her body, we do not know if the soul flew to the gates of heaven for the fact that she was but a child, or sank to the gates of hell for never obeying her mother and causing her own death in her careless actions…

Editor: Brennan Nick

A Re-Telling of Grimm’s