A Tale Dark and Grimm (7 page)

She saw him only in flashes now. A blur of skin through the trees. The scream of a dying animal, and then a howl of delight. She thought he looked different. He was growing hair on his face, on his back.

She was frightened to be in the wood by herself, particularly at night. She heard howling—howling that she hadn't heard when they'd first come to the Lebenwald. She wondered if it was Hansel.

She stayed closer and closer to the hut for fear of seeing him. Then, one day, he wandered into the clearing. Gretel stared. He walked bent now. He had hair all over his body—his arms, his back, his face, his chest. Wordlessly, she offered him a handful of berries and nuts. He snarled at her. She dropped them and hurried into the hut. He growled and stalked around the clearing for a few minutes. Gretel wondered if he would kill her. But he left.

 

There were fewer animals in the forest these days. Gretel heard no birds in song. She saw no small rodents darting in and out of the underbrush. No deer nosed the stands of fern.

And then, early one morning, a hunting party—a duke and his household—entered the wood. They blew their horns and their hounds bayed and barked. Gretel feared for herself. But more than that, she feared for Hansel. She crept into the hut and stayed there all day, hoping he would come to her.

The dogs and huntsmen scoured the forest for some sign of animal life. To their surprise, they found none. All day they searched, and all day they found nothing. The duke became angry and impatient. And then, at dusk, he saw a strange, hairy, hunched creature peering out from behind a large tree. “There!” he bellowed, and instantly the dogs were in pursuit.

Hansel fled through the wood, thrilling at the terror of the chase. The dogs bayed at his heels; the horns sounded all around him. He dodged this way and that, panting, growling, laughing, howling.
What fun!
he thought.
What tremendous, terrifying fun!

At last, he came to the edge of a brook. Across the way, the duke sat astride his horse, his bowstring pulled tight, an arrow nocked and aimed at Hansel. The animal-boy stared curiously at the sweating, red-faced man holding the strange bent stick. Then there was a snap and a hiss like a snake. An arrow flew through the air—a straight, simple harbinger of death. Hansel watched it all the way to his chest, to exactly where his heart was. It buried itself there. He felt a searing bolt of pain and fell to the forest floor.

The huntsmen tied the strange, dead animal to a pole and carried him triumphantly back to the duke's manor.

 

The next morning, Gretel ran through the wood looking for her brother. For a long time she found nothing but broken branches and paw prints. Then, at last, she came to the brook and saw the earth stained a copper red, and the rocks at the water's edge spattered with blood.

She ran to the tree with the face in it. “My brother has been killed!” she cried. “He has been killed!” But the tree would not speak to her. Gretel fell to the ground and sobbed and sobbed. She was alone, in a great forest, in a dark tale. Her father had tried to kill her. She'd been nearly eaten by the baker woman, and had cut off her own finger. And now her brother, Hansel, was dead.

She would not stay in that forest, not now. “I need to go back to people,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “To grown-ups.”

As she left the Wood of Life, she saw a bird alighting in a tree nearby. Soon she could hear the sound of birdsong again. But it only made it hurt more. They only came back, she knew, because Hansel was dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O
nce upon a time, a little girl named Gretel walked down a wide, lonely road all by herself. She was as sad as a little girl can be, for the person whom she loved most in all the world was gone.

After a time, she came to a small village that stood in the shadow of another great wood. This wood was as big as the last one, but no two woods could have been more different. Where the Wood of Life had been bright, inviting, and alive, this one was dark, forbidding, and dead. So forbidding that almost no one went in. And exactly no one came out.

It was called the Schwarzwald—the Wood of Darkness.

 

 

But the little village that stood near the Schwarzwald was not dark at all. No, no: It was ringed by trees that, when Gretel arrived, had just slipped into their golden robes of autumn. Laughter was in the air, as was the smell of wood burning in fireplaces and apple cider frothing with cinnamon.

Gretel walked down the town's single road, looking in the warm windows of the little houses, wishing that someone might invite her inside for some food, cider, and a little human comfort.

But all the doors remained closed to Gretel. She was very tired, and very, very lonely, and on the verge of giving up. She sat down and all her troubles overwhelmed her. She began to cry.

Presently, the door to one of the houses opened, and a silver-haired woman came out. She went up to the little girl crying by the side of the road and asked her her name, and why she was all alone. Gretel told her that she and her brother had long ago run away from home, but that recently her brother had been killed and she didn't know where to go or what to do. The woman reached out to hold her, and Gretel fell into her arms and buried her face in the woman's neck. She took Gretel into her home and washed her and picked the knots from her hair and gave her some old, but clean, clothes.

Some weeks went by. Gretel had no thought now of where else she should go, or what else she should do. For what sense did it make to do anything now that Hansel was gone?

And that is how Gretel came to live with the silver-haired widow in the little village.

Soon Gretel was just another child there, and, though she carried a great sorrow around with her, she put on a brave face. It was the time of the harvest, and everyone worked all day long, including Gretel. In the evenings, when the autumn air became cool, the villagers would gather in and in front of the town tavern and drink and laugh and converse, while the children ran about in their games. But Gretel had no heart to play. So instead she sat by the grown-ups and listened to their talk.

There was one grown-up in particular whom Gretel liked listening to. He was a young man, cheerful and kind. And he was very handsome. He had long black hair and green eyes flecked with gold that seemed to dance in the light. And it seemed to Gretel that the young man liked her, too, for whenever he saw her looking at him, he would smile with lips of deep red, before she, blushing, could turn away.

So she sat near him always and marveled at his easy jokes and his careless laughter and his wonderful eyes. Occasionally he would leave the grown-ups in the tavern and go out among the children. He would tease them gently, and lift them up, and all of them, particularly the girls, loved him.

Sometimes a child would bring to the handsome young man a toy that was broken. It would be a porcelain doll with a finger that had cracked off or a wooden king that had lost its head. The handsome young man would draw from his pocket a tattered piece of twine. He would hold the toy between his knees and tie the twine around the broken place. When he unwound the twine, the toy was as good as new. The children would cry aloud and clap their hands, and the handsome young man would smile. Then he would go back to the tavern with the grown-ups.

Each day, as the sky turned from pale blue to rich purple to black, Gretel would watch the handsome young man say his farewells, slip out the tavern door, and disappear into the darkness. Out of the village. All alone. She wondered where he went.

 

Well, one warm afternoon, when the last of the barley had been brought in from the fields, Gretel sat by the door of the tavern and watched the men play their favorite game. They played like this: One man balanced a mug on his chin, and everyone else tried to throw coins into it. If the mug didn't fall, the man got to keep all the coins. If it did, he had to buy everyone a drink.

It was the young man's turn to have the mug on his chin, and Gretel watched as he weaved about like a snake being charmed, trying to prevent the mug from falling. Just then, one of the young man's friends appeared at Gretel's shoulder.

“Give him a shout,” the friend whispered. “See if he can hold it then.”

Gretel thought this was a funny idea. So she called the young man's name loudly.

He was startled, for never before had Gretel spoken to him. He turned to her, and as he did, the mug went crashing to the ground. The men cheered, and the man who had put her up to it threw his head back and laughed till he was red from his collar to the top of his bald pate.

But the young man's golden green eyes were wide, and suddenly he rushed at Gretel. His hands were stretched out before him like claws. Gretel screamed as he caught her hard around the waist.

And then, in a moment, she was swooping through the air, her long blond hair streaming out behind her, and his strong arms holding tightly onto her hips. And he was laughing—a beautiful, joyous laugh, his head thrown back and his eyes shining.

He placed her on the ground again and smiled at her, and Gretel was breathless. He rubbed her head as if she were a puppy, and then he turned to lead the other men into the tavern.

Gretel had been fascinated by the young man before. But in that moment, when he held her high in the air and his golden green eyes were sparkling and his red lips were curving and he was laughing—laughing with her, and her alone—well, at that moment, Gretel had passed beyond fascination. In that moment, Gretel had fallen in love.

 

 

 

 

Every day after that, Gretel made sure to be near the handsome young man with the green eyes and black hair and red lips. He would talk to her and make her laugh and steal apples from the harvest barrels for her. And she wondered why she should be so lucky as to get all of this attention from him.

One day, soon before the great Harvest Feast, as the day's work in the orchards was coming to a close and all the ladders were being folded up and taken in, Gretel noticed a large, beautiful apple still hanging from the bough of a tree up above her head. She tried to jump for it, to grab it and put it in the barrels before a bird saw it and pecked holes in it. But it was too high for her to reach. So she called to the handsome young man, asking him to come over and pluck it. He came and smiled at her, but it was too high for him, too. So he took her by the hips and lifted her into the air, and she gasped—as she always gasped when he touched her—and then she was high enough in the air to reach the apple. And she picked it.