The path was tight, barely visible. It felt like it became thinner the more you looked at it: a thick carpet of leaves, needle-like, concealed it as if the woods themselves were ashamed of its presence. Its boundaries were constantly under siege by relentless roots, aggressively lush bushes and falling pinecones.
Wilhelm followed it nonetheless, his steps as uncertain as the path he was treading on, resounding with the crunches and creaks of broken branches and dry leaves. From time to time, he would stop and scried his surroundings: his memory remained unroused by the walls of trees towering around him…and yet, they felt strangely familiar.
Before him, a small figure was marching on. From Wilhelm’s trembling perspective, as he tried to keep up, he could see a luxuriant cascade of blonde, somewhat curly hair, reaching down to the ankles and sometimes dragging across the green floor. The figure did not wear shoes and yet it never slowed down. There was never a trip nor a stumble. The same couldn’t be said of Wilhelm’s clumsy attempt at striding.
Why was he following? Where was he going?
He lifted his eyes from the swallowing roots, up towards the small, limber creature, trying to gather where this path was leading…
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3rd of August, 1916
A string of knocks on the door of his bedroom pulled him away from his dream, prying his eyes open. They were facing curtains the colour of pines, stubbornly containing the rays of yet another incredibly sunny day.
“Herr Hoffmann!”
A feminine voice rushed inside the room, carrying a certain degree of kind authority.
The young man had already shut his eyes, trying to fall into the realm of Morpheus and see what he was going to find at the end of the shrinking path…
“Herr Hoffmann, wake up!” exclaimed the voice. “It’s 7 a.m!” she added.
The last words of the sentence dragged him back to material reality…as well as dragged him out of his blankets. He sat by the bedside, his feet hanging above the floor as he stretched out with such energy that he collapsed on his back once more.
“I’m awake, Frau Kramer! Worry n- ” Wilhelm’s drowsy voice was soon cut short by a roaring yawn.
The warm blankets were tempting as was the promise of a finale to his oneiric voyage. Fortunately, the reason why Wilhelm had asked to be woken up at this time, so early in the morning on a summer’s day, had already imbued him with excitement.
A few seconds later, miss Kramer, the housekeeper to the Hoffmann’s family, opened the door to his bedroom.
“Good morning, Herr Hoffmann!” It felt like a living beam of sunlight had entered the room, carrying a reassuring smile on a round face and breakfast on a wooden tray. She was just a bit taller than Wilhelm, had ash-blonde hair in a chignon and was barely older than 40.
After placing the tray on the bed-side table, she threw the curtains and then the windows wide open, inundating the room with light and air straight from Berlin’s countryside. Meanwhile, Wilhelm did quite the same with his wardrobe, giving way to a long and contrived inner monologue.
He tossed some of his suits on his bed, staring at them with much the same posture of a philosopher debating himself on the nature of evil… or some similar sort of rumination.
He was not particularly keen on the rules of fine dressing, despite his mother’s best attempts to teach them to him since he was very little. Deep down in his heart of hearts, he was certain that there must’ve been a reason why that collar over there had a different shape from this one, there must’ve been a reason why that coat had three buttons and not four and why there were so many nuances of grey and dark blue. Unfortunately, his eyes did not allow him to see such variations. Meaning that to him every suit and coat were, in the end, inevitably the same.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
His meditation was interrupted as he laid eyes on the small pendulum clock hanging by the wall: panic immediately shot through his body as the minute hand kept marching on, as the hands on a respectable clock tend to do. He opted, in the end, to rely on the judgement of a woman, as he had always done.
“Frau Kramer!” Wilhelm threw himself on the round shape in housekeeping uniform, his hands holding on to her arms. “A meeting of the utmost importance awaits in little more than an hour! Still, I have no idea what to wear! I need your counsel!”
“That’s not a problem, Herr Hoffmann” she attempted and succeeded in calming him, gifting her best smile “However, I think you should give me my arms back first.”
The young man in a nightgown obeyed, stepping aside to observe Annika Kramer at work, unravelling the eternal mystery of masculine fashion as she had often done before…while he feasted on delicious bread rolls with butter and ham.
“This meeting, is it an informal one?”
“Absolutely not!” Wilhelm answered, almost offended “It is extremely formal! The most formal!”
It should be noted that, to Wilhelm, the word “informal” read as “trivial nonsense”, such as meeting for a tea with the neighbours or taking a merry stroll through the countryside.
“Obviously…” miss Kramer brought two sporty-looking suits back into the wardrobe “But will it be outdoors or indoors?”
Wilhelm hesitantly replied “Both!”
Three more suits, too long and too heavy for such a sunny morning, were brought back to the wardrobe.
Watching upon the last surviving alternatives as they laid on the bed, she asked one final question.
“Will gentlemen of some importance be there, Herr Hoffmann?”
And so, the floodgates were opened.
“Absolutely!” he began enthusiastically, as if he had been waiting for this specific question to be asked for days “The most important gentlemen in all of Berlin, in all of Prussia even! Philosophers, poets and artists without equals!”
Miss Kramer let him dissert on those individuals bearing resounding names and achievements…that she had never heard before. Meanwhile, the last suits were sent back to the wardrobe, all having failed the housekeeper’s scrupulous selection…except for one.
Wilhelm stopped.
“Are you certain that this is the proper suit?” he asked uncertain as he investigated the dark blue clothing.
“Trust me, Herr Hoffmann” she beamed back at him “Now get changed, chop-chop! We don’t want to make those philosophers wait!” as she closed the door behind her back. ‘Lord knows what a philosopher does when he has too much time on its hands’ she thought to herself.
Reassured, he wore the ordained suit, staring at his reflection in the mirror, looking for a possible flaw. His research took very little on account of his short height. The eighteen-year-old boy’s sharp features had never yet seen any sort of adolescent facial hair but they were quite acquainted with freckles, sprinkled all over his nose and cheeks. His reddish blond hair reached his shoulders and, as he woke up, were akin to the grass of a poorly maintained lawn, only kept under control by relentless combing and a very resilient ribbon holding them in a pony tail. His blue eyes, currently scanning his sleeves and their buttons, were spry, the irises surrounded by a golden crown, often the cause of much curiosity. Which was always appreciated, of course.
To complete his preparations, only one thing was missing…and it was laying on his writing desk, wrapped in an envelope that smelt of persistent spruce: its contents’ importance was immeasurable, to him at least.
He re-read the letter within, one more time, starting from the date (precisely a week ago), passing by the sharp italics of “Mein lieber Wilhelm”, ending on the complicated words of a poem in gothic scripts. The kind of calligraphy that threw him in a spiral of confusion. The one that made him wonder if 𝕬 was meant to be a U or an A, as well as what, in the name of the Lord, was 𝖄. Fortunately, however, he had learned what 𝖂 was. The eldritch symbol was the first letter in "Wilhelm". For this very reason, his heart was filled with gratitude towards his parents, having blessed him with such a name.
Before tucking the envelope safely within the folds of his coat, he pulled out the last of its contents: a small piece of wood shaped in the form of a leaf, no bigger than a German mark and hanging by a string. He wore it around his neck, observing the symbol that had been carefully carved into it: ᚹ.
Finally ready, he dashed through the corridors and down the stairs. In front of the entrance stood miss Kramer, giving the boy one final tidying up before he left the estate for his meeting. In exchange for this final kindness, Wilhelm gave the housekeeper a brief peck on the cheek and briskly walked through the entrance to the Hoffmann’s farm.
“Viel Spaß!” she exclaimed, as he waved at her with a cheerful smile.