A Tale Dark and Grimm (16 page)

“Since we left,” Hansel said, nodding in the darkness.

“Since just before we left,” Gretel corrected him. There was silence. Then she said, “It's been getting worse recently. It's never been so bad as it is right now. I feel like I can barely breathe.”

“I know.”

“I just want to take it and throw it off of me. Make someone else feel it and hold it and carry it for a while.”

The beds creaked and settled beneath them. They had been empty for a long time. At last, Hansel said, “Not just
someone
else.”

“No,” Gretel agreed. “Not just
someone
else.”

O
nce upon a time, on a bright but sunless morning, Hansel and Gretel stood in the middle of the town of Wachsend's tiny central square. Actually, it wasn't even a square. It was more like a grassy hole between the tavern and the bakery. Hansel and Gretel wore their finest, most regal clothes, and, so that all could see them, they stood on a table that had been brought out from the tavern.

The people of Wachsend gathered around the black-haired prince and the golden-blond princess and peered at them wonderingly, expectantly. This was the strangest thing to have happened in their little town in anyone's memory. Not only was it unheard of for royalty to pay them a visit, unless in some grand procession that was just passing through (Hansel and Gretel had come alone—
alone
!), but the prince and princess had been the talk of the kingdom since their return. To see them? Here? Well, you can imagine that no self-respecting Wachsender would miss it.

So they gathered in the grassy square, beneath birds that sang in the bare branches of the trees, and waited to hear what had brought the young prince and princess to their town.

Hansel shifted uneasily from foot to foot as he looked at the expectant faces before him. Wachsend had been lucky so far. The dragon had not yet visited. But nonetheless the people were thin, from the lean times the dragon had brought to the kingdom. And they looked afraid. There seemed to be fear lingering at the corners of their mouths; a few even glanced up at the sky periodically. Hansel didn't have to ask what they were looking for.

Gretel saw all this, too. And then she began to speak to the people of Wachsend.

She told them she knew they were scared. She told them that she was scared, too. She told them that fear would not save them from the dragon. She told them that only courage would save them. They must fight it, she said.
They must fight it
.

Gretel spoke, and the people of Wachsend—grown men and women—listened to her. Not a single villager spoke, not a single villager moved. When she had finished, every person was totally still.

And then someone shouted, “What?”

“What did she say?” cried someone else.

Gretel looked confused. Had they not been able to hear her?

“She must be out of her mind!” another called.

“She's crazy!”

“Is that child talking to
us
?”

They had heard her. Gretel turned red. Hansel cut in. “If we do nothing,” he said, “the dragon will destroy the entire kingdom. We'll die! We might as well fight it!”

“Join us!” Gretel called desperately. “Do something that you will be able to tell your children, and your children's children! Join us and fight the dragon!”

A single person cheered.

“We need you all!” Hansel said, taking encouragement from this one enthusiast. “Men and women, veterans and volunteers! Anyone who can shoot an arrow or hold a weapon! We need you all!”

“I volunteer!” that single person called.

“Yes!” cried another. “Let's fight it!”

The crowd began to hum with talk. Hansel and Gretel looked at each other. It was working. It was working.

“Are you crazy?” suddenly rang out above the hum and din.

Heads turned. Hansel and Gretel looked around for the source of the cry.

“You people must be nuts!”

It was a tall man, thin but muscular, with a bald head and a boxer's nose. He stood near the back of the group.

“What do you think you're doing?” he went on. “Have you seen the dragon? Have you fought it before? It will kill you. It will kill all of you!”

“Shut up!” someone cried.

“We've got to do something!” someone else called out.

“Die? Is that what we have to do?” He paused. No one responded. “I've seen this beast. I was there when we fought it the first time. You can't beat it. Arrows practically bounce off of it. It can kill four people at once, one with each of its four feet. And look at
them
!” he said, gesturing at Hansel and Gretel. “They're children! Children! You're going to follow
children
into battle against a
dragon
? Are you all out of your minds?!”

There was a pause. The subjects of Wachsend turned to hear the prince and princess's reply. Hansel was red in the face. Gretel was pale. They stared out over their subjects. All was quiet. The children opened their mouths. But neither had anything to say.

“Ridiculous!” the bald man cried. And he turned his back on Hansel and Gretel and walked into the tavern. The door closed with a slam.

“Wait!” Hansel shouted. “Wait!”

But suddenly, people were dispersing, heading to the tavern or back to their homes.

“Would you rather die in a tavern or on a field of battle?” Hansel cried.

“A tavern!” someone shouted, and a few others laughed. More Wachsenders turned their backs on Hansel and Gretel.

“Would you rather die having done nothing or having tried?”

“Nothing!” someone called. But those who would have laughed were gone now. The remaining villagers were silent.

“Will you follow us to fight the dragon?” Hansel asked.

More silence.

“If you will,” Gretel said, “meet us at the castle in three days' time. Bring your weapon of choice. And,” she added, with as much strength as she had left, “bring your courage!”

As Hansel and Gretel made their way out of Wachsend, Hansel turned to his sister. “Well,” he said, “that went terribly.”

“Yes, it did,” she replied. They walked a little farther. Then she asked, “Ready to do it again?”

He sighed. “I guess so.”

And they set off for the next town.

Three days later, Hansel and Gretel waited in the castle courtyard. Scattered around it were groups of volunteers. Small groups. No more than a handful apiece.

“It's early yet,” Gretel said. “More will come.”

Hansel wrung his sweaty hands. “I suppose,” he said.

The recruitment had been brutal. Town after town. “Are you crazy?” “What do you think you're going to do?” “You're just children!” “They're just children!” “You're going to follow children into battle?” There had been some who seemed ready to fight. A few. But most grew silent and wary when they heard they were expected to follow Hansel and Gretel—little Hansel and Gretel—to war.

But as the hours went by in the castle courtyard, people came. Raw recruits, carrying hunting bows and even pitchforks, made their way through the great gates. But there were also groups that were obviously veterans—men with thick necks and wooden shields and shining swords. There were women, too. Archers, mostly; but also women carrying swords and spears. One had a rake.

“We'd better get that one something proper to fight with,” Hansel said, pointing.

Gretel chuckled and nodded.

By late afternoon, the children felt better. Before them stood some five hundred soldiers. It wasn't an enormous group. And it certainly wasn't a pretty group. But it would do. It would do.

The children's chests swelled. They had done it. They had raised an army.

 

The king and queen, however, were suddenly no longer so keen on Hansel and Gretel's plan.

“Wait,
you're
going out?” said the queen when the children came before them that night. “You never said anything about you going out.”

“They're
not
going out,” the king said. “I will not allow it.”

The queen looked at the two children as they stood before her, stone-faced and armed. “Please,” she said, “we've already lost you once. We couldn't stand losing you again. Please. My children.” She began, softly, to cry.

Their father came and knelt before them and took each one by the hand. “Please, my dears,” he said. “Understand. You are children. Why can't you send someone else out in your stead?”

“Father,” Gretel said, “maybe you should try to understand that yourself.”

She and Hansel drew their hands away. Their mother began to cry louder.

Hansel and Gretel went to the stable to ready the oxcart with the golden apples. The apples were held securely under a canvas tarp and—except for the one apple they had given to the poor family, and the other they had given to their mother—they were all there.

As Gretel hitched the cart up to Betty, Hansel looked under the cover of the other. “What about the wine?” he said. “Maybe we could get the dragon drunk.” Gretel smiled. But he said, “Really. Why not?”

“It couldn't hurt, I guess,” Gretel said. So they hitched up Ivy, too.

 

When the sky was black and dotted with stars and the moon was just beginning to creep above the horizon, big and round and white, the two children led the oxcarts out into the darkness. Hansel and Gretel looked back over their shoulders with pride. Behind them followed their army.

They led them down a road to a large wood that stood not far from the castle. As they approached, the army began to whisper and point. The ground at the wood's edge seemed to glow, as if the moon was reflected by the very soil. It shimmered and sparkled, an earthbound Milky Way.
Was it magic
? the soldiers asked one another.
Or a sign from the dragon?

But Hansel and Gretel confidently followed the path of white pebbles that they had scattered on the forest floor the day before, leading their army deep into the wood, to a large, grassy clearing.

Here, for the first time, Hansel and Gretel told the army their plan. They would all stay in hiding until the dragon came for the bait. When it came—
if
it came—they would wait until it was distracted by the contents of the oxcarts. Then, when it was least ready to defend itself, they would spring out of their hiding places and attack.

“You have every right to be afraid,” Gretel told them. “The dragon is big. The dragon is strong. The dragon has divided our families and taken our children and stolen our childhoods.