A Tale Dark and Grimm (17 page)

“But that is no reason to cower. Until we stand up to him, our lives will remain shattered, our hearts will remain divided against themselves, our heads will remain severed from our bodies.”

The moon was white and bright behind Gretel. Hansel stared at her. He didn't quite understand what she was talking about.

“But we will soon be healed,” she went on. “We will be healed. There will be blood first. But then there will be tears of joy.

“For our kingdom!” she shouted.

“And our families!” Hansel cried.

“And our children!” they said together.

The soldiers repeated their cry. In the silence that followed, all could hear the word
children
echoing off the thick trees and then away through the black wood.

Gretel readied the oxcarts in the clearing. In the moonlight, the apples glowed golden, as if they possessed some fairy magic. Hansel unharnessed Ivy and Betty from the carts and tried to shoo them off. But the two oxen took to cropping grass nearby. Someone had to draw them by their halters far off into the woods, as far as possible from the field of battle.

 

 

 

 

Leaving both carts out in the clearing, the two children retreated to the cover of trees to watch, and wait.

 

The forest made sounds. Branches creaking. Leaves whispering to one another. Bats flapping between trees, looking for prey. Hansel plucked the grass at his feet. Gretel fingered a small dagger strapped to her belt. The volunteer soldiers began shifting uneasily. One did not venture into a wood at night. Especially not when there was a dragon about. Sword handles became slick with sweat, bowstrings were pulled back and released, pulled back and released. An owl hooted. Far off, they could hear its great wings beating against the air.

No.

They were not the wings of an owl. The beats were too far apart. Too deep and distant. Hansel and Gretel peered out from under the cover of branches and leaves, but they could see nothing against the black, starry sky.

And then there it was. In front of the moon. The long, thin silhouette of the dragon, its wings resting on the currents of night air.

Its body was narrow, its four feet were tucked up underneath it, its long tail trailed out behind. Its wings were so thin that the moonlight shone through them. Stifled gasps arose from those who had never seen it. It was disgusting. It was enormous. From below, one could see the outline of its head, broad and viperlike. It looked nothing like the dragons in storybooks.

 

 

 

 

Gretel made a sign to the army. Arrows were notched. Bows began to bend.

The dragon disappeared from sight. Down below, all waited. Then it appeared again over the clearing—a little lower this time. It had seen the gold. It was circling. Gretel could hear her brother's breath coming quiet and quick. Hansel heard his sister's heartbeat mingling with his own.

The dragon flew over them again, lower, and was gone. Then again, lower still. Then again.

Gretel gestured at the sky. Arrows were aimed. They waited. The dragon flew over again. It was close enough that they could see the delicate scales of its skin gleaming in the moonlight, and its enormous, jagged talons. It flew over again, and this time the leaves on the trees shook from its passage.

The trees became still. They waited.

And waited.

No dragon.

Hansel and Gretel and all their soldiers stared up at the black, starry sky. Empty, save for the moon.

“What happened?” Gretel whispered to her brother. He shook his head and shrugged.

They waited longer. The people began to feel uneasy. They let their bowstrings go slack. They rubbed the sweaty handles of their weapons, trying to find a good purchase. Where, they wondered, was the dragon?

The darkness seemed to become heavier, more menacing. Glancing over their shoulders, they could see no more than a few feet into the forest.

Then, through the silence, there ran a sudden whisper in the leaves. The whole army stopped breathing all at once. They stood still and listened. Hansel felt something beneath his feet. Carefully, he lowered himself and put his hand on the earth. He felt it again.

“Gretel,” he whispered. “The ground is shaking.”

“I know,” she whispered back. “I feel it.”

It shook again. And again. Now all the men and women were looking frantically back and forth between the ground and the black forest that surrounded them.

People began to whisper. “What is it?” and “What's happening?”

“Shhh!” Gretel hissed. “Quiet!”

But they wouldn't quiet. They were afraid.

And then they saw it, weaving through the trees like an enormous snake with legs. Its wings were folded along its spine; its wide, viperlike head swung back and forth as it moved; and its golden eyes were shining in the moonlight.

It had come to take them from behind. And it was moving fast. So fast that the first villagers barely had time to scream before it was upon them.

 

 

 

 

Its mouth opened wide and snapped down on a woman with a bow. She hadn't even moved to defend herself. There hadn't been time. Now half of her was gone. Simultaneously, with a massive, taloned claw, the dragon swiped at a man with an ax. He landed on his back, ten feet away, without his internal organs.

With that, the forest awoke. Some of the people tried to fight the giant creature. Most tried to run. Occasionally, with a horrible, tearing sound, the dragon would kill someone else. Hansel grabbed Gretel and held her tightly. “Don't go out there. It'll kill us. All of us.” And then he called at the top of his lungs, “Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!”

The woods became madness. Screams rose and died. People ran in all directions. “Retreat!” Hansel shouted. “Retreat!”

“It's no good,” Gretel said to him. “We've got to go.”

“Where?” Hansel asked.

“To the dragon.”

“What?”

“To lure it away. Run out ahead and make it chase us.”

“It'll kill us,” Hansel said.

Gretel set her mouth. “It's us or them.”

Hansel took a deep breath. He nodded at Gretel. Then he stood up and made his way toward the sounds of death.

As he came near, he saw a man and a woman hiding behind a tree. The dragon was on the other side, its head moving this way and that, trying to see where they had gone. They had no weapons—they were shaking so badly they'd dropped them at their feet. Suddenly the dragon darted to one side of the tree. They froze.

Hansel cried out. The dragon turned in time to see Hansel scoop up a fallen spear and with one motion launch it the dragon's way. It glanced harmlessly off the dragon's black, snakelike scales. Hansel stopped. He stared.

Oh
, he thought. And then he thought,
That's bad.

Hansel spun to his left into the woods. The dragon followed.

 

“Get away!” Gretel bellowed at the remaining troops. “Get away!” And they did. They ran. On the ground were many bodies. But many more were now escaping through the dark underbrush.

The dragon was coming back. Gretel could hear it, feel it through the vibrations of the ground. She scrambled to hide. The dragon passed her, swift as water, its serpentine head swaying from side to side as it moved. From its mouth dripped blood. Suddenly, Gretel wondered what had happened to Hansel.

The dragon headed straight for the gold at the center of the clearing. Briefly, Gretel considered going to look for Hansel. But instead, making certain she wasn't seen or heard, Gretel followed the dragon's path. She crouched behind a thick thornbush at the clearing's edge. An ax lay not ten feet from her, out in the open. Gretel left it where it was.

The dragon was standing beside the cart of apples. It turned its head this way and that, and then began to pace, its golden eyes glaring at the glowing mountain.

Now the plan was working, Gretel realized, incredulous. The dragon couldn't figure out how to take all the apples at once. It was confused. Frustrated. If only she still had an army to attack it.

After a few minutes, the dragon seemed to notice the other cart. It approached it and tore at the canvas with its teeth, revealing the barrels. It picked up one of the barrels with its massive jaws. It crushed it. Wine poured out—some down its throat, most onto the ground. The dragon spit out the staves of the broken barrel, shook itself, and resettled its wings on its back. It stood a moment, considering the stack of barrels. Then it took another in its mouth and drank it down just as it had the first one—but this time catching more of the wine in its throat.

It seemed to like it.

It did it again. And again. And again.

Gretel could not believe what she was seeing.

After the dragon had drunk six barrels of wine, it tried to rise into the air. But now its flight was wobbly and uncertain.
The dragon is drunk
, Gretel said to herself. She almost laughed.

The dragon came back to the ground and drank down four more barrels of wine. Soon it was teetering back and forth, even when it walked. It came up to the cart with the golden apples, stuck its head underneath, and tried to lift it.

Without a moment's hesitation, Gretel leaped from the thornbush and began to sprint toward the dragon. She could see its black leg, stuck out behind it, straining against the weight of the gold. She could see a thick pulsing vein running over the dragon's backward-bending knee joint. Gretel stooped for the ax without breaking her stride.

She covered the distance between the ax and the dragon quickly. She lifted the weapon high and brought it down.

The dragon screamed. It was a scream like nothing Gretel had ever heard before. She thought a hundred woodland creatures must all be dying at once—that was the sound. It pierced Gretel's head like a spear.

The dragon turned. It saw the little, golden-haired girl, holding an ax, frozen by the sound of its scream. It watched, shocked, drunken, disbelieving, as the little girl dropped the ax and sprinted off toward the woods. Behind her, on the ground, was an ax, covered in black dragon-blood. And two dragon toes.

The dragon shook itself, bellowed once, and followed, limping, after her.

Gretel heard the dragon coming. It sounded clumsy. Heavy.
The wine
, she thought.
And the toes, of course
. She cursed herself for missing the vein. She had never wielded an ax before.

Gretel wove through the trees, trying to keep ahead of it. Where was Hansel? What had happened to him? She could hear the dragon, wine-sodden and wounded as he was, catching up to her.
Just get away from it
, she thought. Get
free of it
.
So I can find Hansel, and we can get out of here
.

But how to get free of it? She thought of diving into a bush and letting the dragon run past. But it wouldn't run past. It would see her, and kill her. She thought of finding a narrow cave and crawling into it. Good idea, but where would she find a cave? And then, up ahead, she saw a tree. It was an enormous pine, easily the tallest tree in this part of the forest. Without thinking, without any plan at all, she made for it.

The pine's bristly branches started low to the ground and ran densely up the trunk. As soon as she arrived at its base, Gretel leaped onto the lowest ones and began to climb. She climbed around to the far side of the trunk, in the hope that the dragon might not see her.

When, a moment later, the dragon, drunk and limping, arrived at the tree's base, it was indeed confused. It seemed to know she had gotten up in the tree. But she was forty feet up by the time it realized she was on the other side of the trunk.

It set off after her. It tried to use its wings, but they would catch on the branches of the surrounding trees. It tried to climb, but the branches were too thin, and they went cracking and tumbling to the ground when it put its weight on them. So the dragon ended up digging its rough talons into the soft wood and ascending the trunk in leaps, smashing branches as it went.

The pine needles brushed at Gretel's face as she climbed, and the sticky sap of the tree stuck to her palms. Her heart was pounding from fatigue and fear. But there was no chance to rest. The dragon was gaining. Its leaps up the trunk gained it ten feet or more, while its occasional slides back down—stripping whatever branches it hadn't smashed on the way up—gained her only a few seconds at most. Her hand reached for the next branch and she pulled herself up. Her feet gained a secure hold and pushed her up to the next one. Go, she told herself. Go. And then she thought,
Where?
She looked up, hoping that perhaps the top of the tree would be too thin for the dragon to follow her onto. Perhaps it was. But it was also far above the other trees around it. Up there, the dragon could use its wings.
Just climb
, she told herself.
Just climb
. She reached up and grabbed onto the next branch.