The stone floor is cold beneath your bare feet. Peek out from the hallway and see the freshly stoked fire that crackles and spits. Wipe the sleep from your eyes! Find cushion and blanket close to the hearth, where it’s toasty warm. No matter the time is past midnight. It’s time for the crone to tell a tiny tale, so open your mind and heart and find what meaning you will.

The elder of two sisters scrubbed a chamber pot as her young sister, Handmaid to the Queen, fluffed the royal pillows.

“Your queen hangs innocents,” the elder whispered. “You must poison her. See here—I cursed this tart. Feed it to her. The queen’s sister is good and kind. Let her inherit the throne!”

The Handmaid to the Queen looked anxiously behind her and scratched at her eyes. “Still your tongue, sister! The queen dispenses justice, as she must. Besides, can you not see I am fed and dressed well as Handmaid? Do you wish me to clean chamber pots as do you?” In a fury, the Handmaid called the guard, who locked away the elder sister in a dungeon. There she survived on foul water and bits of fish.

One cold winter’s day, as the elder sister shivered against the filthy dungeon floor, a visitor did come. “You are free,” the Handmaid her sister declared. “The queen has died, and her sister now reigns. I have begged for your freedom and it is granted. Dear sister! I did marry. I have borne two children in your absence!”

The elder sister drew herself up on thin legs. “Do not call me sister. Do not speak to me. Not. One. Word!”

The elder sister returned to her village, though it was hard to find. Her eyesight had never been good, but it was even worse after living in a dungeon. She gave news to her father and mother of what evil had befallen her. Her mother wept. Her father wept. “Forgive your sister, our beloved daughter,” they begged. “She was young and afraid.”

“Never,” the elder sister sobbed. “I will hear no more of what you say.” She gathered her meager belongings and traveled far away to find work scrubbing. Night upon night she told herself sternly, “My sister betrayed me. My father and mother love her and not me. Plus my eyesight gets worse every day!” Bitterness flowed at the injustice served her. God Himself was unfair and cruel.  

This made her burn for justice in all things.

The elder sister kept vigilant. She caught pickpockets in their thievery and blasphemers in their lies. Many were thrown into the dungeon thanks to the elder sister, but most were hanged. Villagers feared her thirst for justice and sought her favor by bestowing upon her gifts of pork and fine cloth.

One morning the elder sister rubbed itchy eyes trying to better see the fit of her gown in a mirror. She caught sight of her sister’s features, there in her own face. It had been many years but memory revived. “Oh,” she said, a hand to her heart. She saw a vision of her young sister, who did wish to eat and dress well though villagers did hang.

The elder sister fell to her knees. “What I did once condemn in my sister, I surely have done myself,” she confessed. She returned to the castle at once.

“We are the same, we are the same,” she told the Handmaid to the Queen, who at once recognized the words as true. The two sisters clung to one another in relief. But a fierce agony did come upon them. They screamed, clawing at their faces until fish scales fell from their eyes.

After this they poured compassion upon the world until they died together in old age. Even today, stories are told far and wide of the two wise crones with bright eyes.

Heaven on earth is like this.