Legend of Jessie Jester

  The Legend of Jessie Jester


    Once upon a time in Southern France living in a small village there was a wood cutter and craftsman, he could carve almost anything anyone wanted from the frame to a picture to the casing for a clock; he even made puppets and marionnettes. The wood cutter one day had gone two towns over looking for hard wood, as a client was being very particular about the kind of wood used for the marionnetes in his show, and needed it for jester who would be struck in the head with a bat and do prat falls for their comedy routine so couldn't be made of any wood that would break too easily. The village he went to however that had the right wood as he had made tables and chairs from this wood before he knew he couldn't tell his friend the wood seller there what he needed this wood for and would have gone only one village over but they were short on the kind of wood he needed as new trees need time to grow and hard woods grow the slowest or else he'd have to travel much further and pay much higher prices for such a small project. The reason he could not tell his friend two towns over what he needed the wood for was simple, superstition. Although no one in one sitting ever told the whole story, this village once burned a young girl as a witch, the pyre made from the wood of this forest. This witch was a real witch however and her father was a terrible dark fairy or dragon who raised her from the ashes, killed the priest, and then cursed the forest. All who use the wood for fire would fall ill and die, but another curse was said to arise that was unexpected. Any toys or figurines made in the likeness of anything alive would come to life at night and attack the living; believed to be because the wood had been used to cause the death of something so magical and tied to the life of the forest that the forest must make amends by being so filled with life that the wood can magically bring life to immitations of life.

   It was a taboo in that village, but the wood cutter did not believe the story, this was an age of clock work and steam engines, scientific discoveries and explorations of the world; not an age of closing your windows at night and doing weird rituals to not offend forest spirits.