Once upon a time, in a land far away, on a dark but unstormy night, What’s-His-Face left his cabin, carrying his Whatchamacallit. Ostensibly, no one knew what he was up to. His wife, What’s-Her-Face, feigned being too sleepnotized to ask. Any onlooker would have wondered why What’s-His-Face was leaving the family cabin in the middle of the night, and why he was carrying his Whatchamacallit. As he reached the door, What’s-His-Face and What’s-Her-Face exchanged a hopeful smile and silent wave goodbye. Whatchamacallit then closed the door behind himself, and stepped resolutely out onto the porch.
As she drifted back to sleep and into the dreamy midway world ‘twixt earth and paradise, What’s-Her-Face pondered the quandary of whether this subterfuge on their part would achieve its desired effect.
Meanwhile, on the second floor, Katrina, the daughter, peered from her bedroom window. She had been reading tales of fantasy in bed when she heard her father clomping down the three steps that formed a bridge between the cozy porch and the cold ground of the outside world. The house was her world; she considered everything beyond it as something to be feared.
What the daughter saw from her vantage point surprised her: her father marching briskly forward, clutching his Whatchamacallit against his chest as if it were a talisman. Where was he going? What was his errand at such a time of night?
Katrina descended the ladder which was the barrier between her sanctum sanctorum, a land of make-believe inhabited only by herself, and the domain of her parents below.
Gingerly approaching her mother’s bed, Katrina bent down beside it, looking into her mother’s slumbering face. It was not a peaceful countenance she encountered. A sudden contortion of her face and an accompanying groan from What’s-Her-Face caused Katrina to shake her mother by the shoulder.
What’s-Her-Face suddenly awakened, wide-eyed and shuddering.
“Katrina! You must go after your father! I’ve had the worst nightmare: He has gone up the mountain in search of what he lost. And he took his Whatchamacallit with him! You must go fetch him before he discovers the awful truth!”
“But mother,” Katrina objects. “It was just a dream; perhaps father is just out for a walk, to clear his head or something.”
“No, Katrina, dear; I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I know he is on his way to that fateful spot. You need to save him. Only you can do it. My legs are in a frightful condition and won’t carry me that far. He needs you, Katrina! Please, bring him back to us!” she pleaded.
But the daughter had not gone further than the well for months, and had only ventured as far as the pond once in the last two years, and only then because she was deathly ill and her father had carried her there to dip her fevered body into its inviting waters. Just the thought of going outside, and in the middle of the night no less, made Katrina shudder.
Despite all this, the daughter was eventually moved by compassion for both of her parents, and agreed to conquer her fears and comply with her mother’s frantic entreaties.
Once she had prepared herself and received her mother’s hugs, kisses, and urgent encouragement, Katrina warily opened the front door. With a longing glance back at her mother, whose eyes shone with a mixture of dread and hopeful anticipation, Katrina closed the door softly and haltingly made her way down the steps. Though shaking violently—partly from the cold night air, but more so from trepidation—Katrina willed herself onward, one step at a time. She would proceed from landmark to landmark, and not think about how far from home she might have to venture. Her first goal was the well.
On reaching the family’s source of water, Katrina only paused a half-beat before continuing, fixing her eyes on the next landmark, the pond. She had now bravely made it from her own little world and even her accustomed world below her solitary refuge to the world beyond the pail.
Katrina gradually grew accustomed to the night air and no longer noticed the cold. In fact, on reaching the pond, she felt flushed. So uncomfortably warm did she become that she undid the top buttons of her jacket. She had not been to the pond—under her own power, that is—since the fateful event. Katrina forced herself to put the tragic events of the past out of her mind for the time being and focus on finding her father.
Looking up, Katrina suddenly trembled. Halfway up the mountain in front of her, she espied the dancing flames of a fire. Was it a campfire? A signal fire? A forest fire? At least it gave Katrina something visible in the sheer bleak darkness to navigate toward. She suspected her father was on the mountain. And it was quite possible that he was the source of the fire.
Keeping the fire fixed in sight, Katrina made it to the base of the mountain in short order. After a brief pause to catch her breath, she began the climb.
Once she had made it almost halfway up the mountain, Katrina had a good view of the fire. Several men were sitting and standing around it, obviously having an amiable time socializing. Katrina spotted her father. The men were passing around his Whatchamacallit and quaffing from it. She recognized one of the men as a former neighbor and good friend of theirs, Ebenezer Flood. Another was attired in very old-fashioned clothing which seemed to have been in need of replacement ages since. This geezer, adorned with a very long white and wispy beard, carried an old musket in his left hand which looked to be rusted completely through and about to fall apart. He animatedly pointed up the mountain, time and again, as if he were regaling the group with a yarn.
Yet another man looked strangely familiar to Katrina, but she couldn’t quite seem to recall where she had seen him before. He was strutting nervously about, arrayed in clothing so baggy that it fluttered around his lanky frame. In fact, so rail-thin and undernourished-looking was this man that he could have been viewed as the epitome of famine, or mistaken for a scarecrow which had eloped from a cornfield.
“Hello, father,” Katrina said, as she shyly approached those assembled around the fire.
“My daughter! You’ve come! I knew you would,” What’s-His-Face said, standing up and gesturing for Katrina to come to his arms.
“But father, why are you here, and at this time of night?”
“For this very reason: that we would meet here, my dear. I knew drastic steps were necessary to get you to come out into the world again. Love was the only force powerful enough to get you to come.”
“But what will mother think? She’s worried about you; and no doubt about me, now, too.”
“She’s not worried about me, my dear sweet daughter. And she will no longer worry about you, either, now that you have escaped the mind-forged manacles and made your way back to us. I apologize for tricking you, Katy, but I’m not sorry; not in the least.”
Katrina was still stunned and confused.
“Your mother was in on it,” What’s-His-Face continued. “It was our idea, together. There’s nothing wrong with her legs at all; we planned this so that you would come, and we could all meet here, the three of us.”
“The three of us? You mean the ... let’s see ... the six of us?”
“Six of us? What do you mean, my daughter?”
“They were just here: I saw our old neighbor Mr. Flood, also Mr. Van Winkle, and … Mr. Crane, I think his name was. Where have they gone?”
“They were not here, my dear,” What’s-His-Face said, cradling his daughter’s face in his hands. “You were seeing things. You were imagining things again.”
“I was imagining them?” Katrina asked, confused.
“Yes, but you’re not imagining this,” her father said, and pointed at the figure appearing out of the darkness and into the light of the fire.
“Mother!”
No other words were needed. The three hugged, and cried together.
“I knew you could do it, Katy,” What’s-Her-Face said. “I knew you could, and would. I had faith in you!”
What’s-His-Face took his daughter gently by the shoulders, brought his face close to hers, and peered piercingly into her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, Katy. It wasn’t your fault.”
Her mother then caressed Katrina’s crying face, wiping her daughter’s tears away with her thumbs. “It wasn’t your fault, Katy—it wasn’t.”
As the sun rose, gradually illuminating the verdant valley, the trio descended the mountain, and made their way back home. Walking between her parents, Katrina had her right arm around her father’s shoulders, and her left around her mother’s. They each had an arm around her waist.
Katrina cried all the way home, but was smiling. Smiling and crying, she had one overriding thought, and she kept repeating it to herself: All of this is mine again.