A Tale Dark and Grimm (20 page)

From her pocket Gretel had taken out the warlock's twine. It was nearly nothing. Just a frayed strand, no thicker than a hair.

“Hold his head on,” she said.

So Hansel put their father's head on his neck. Then Gretel wrapped the twine around it and, fumblingly, tied it. As she untied it, the twine snapped. She let it fall to the ground.

They watched the skin on their father's neck creep together, healing before their eyes. But he did not move.

Gretel began to cry harder. Hansel cried, too.

“We forgive you,” Gretel said.

“We do,” Hansel agreed. Their tears fell on him.

And he moved. Gretel nearly threw him off her, she was so surprised. The king groaned.

“Father? Father!” Gretel cried. He groaned again. His eyes opened slowly.

“Hello,” he said.

Hansel and Gretel fell upon him. “Oh, Father, you're all right! You're all right!”

Gretel said, “We wish we hadn't had to do that.”

Hansel said, “But we did have to.”

He took hold of them both. “I understand,” he said. And then, blinking at them as if he had just walked into the sunlight after a long time in the darkness, he said, “I under-stand, my children.”

 

Just then they heard footsteps in the hall. The queen's. Hansel looked at his father, covered in blood.

“Father,” he said, “did Mother know you were the dragon?”

“No,” their father replied. “I didn't know myself, until just now. I just kept waking up in strange places. I really did think I was shav—”

“Okay. Get in the wardrobe.” So their father got in the wardrobe. Just as he did, their mother entered the room.

“Did you have a nice time praying, Mother?” Hansel asked.

She took her children in her arms. “Oh, I can barely pray. I think only of the dragon, and of our poor kingdom.”

Gretel said, “What if we told you, Mother, that we knew who the dragon was, and that the only way to stop the dragon would be to kill that person?”

The queen looked back and forth between her two children. “You know who it is? Then we must do it! Right away!”

“No matter who it is?” Hansel asked.

“No matter who it is.”

“It's Father,” the children said at once.

The queen gasped. She fell to the floor and wept bitterly.

After a long time, she said, “If you're sure it's him, if you can prove it—then yes. I couldn't do it. But I would understand.”

The children looked at each other, and then said, at the same moment, “Are we glad you said that!” Then they walked over to the wardrobe and let out their father, all covered in blood.

The queen screamed. Then Hansel and Gretel explained it all. The queen wept and beat the king's chest with her hands. But after that she laughed through her tears and threw her arms around all of them. Then she wept some more.

“You're all okay?” she asked, as tears streamed down her face.

“We're all okay,” they said together.

And they all held one another—one big, happy, sad, complicated family—as tightly as they always should have.

 

 

 

 

 

As Hansel and Gretel and the queen and king held one other, the final golden fumes of the dragon drifted from the chimney and out onto the morning air. The gold mingled with the sunrise and slowly suffused itself over the whole kingdom. As people woke that morning, they saw it. They were drawn out of their houses by it, by the beautifully golden smoke that floated beneath the clouds. They followed it. Without wondering, without saying a word, they followed it. As if they knew, upon seeing it, that something had happened. Something important. And that, to find out what it was, all they had to do was follow the golden smoke.

Along the roads, the subjects of Grimm walked silently toward the source of the beautiful golden light. Toward the castle.

“You never told us,” the queen said to her children as they sat on the floor of the bedroom, blood winding through the crevices of the stones, collecting in little pools. “You never told us where you've been, and what you've done.”

Hansel and Gretel looked at each other.

“You don't have to tell us,” their father said gently. “Not now. Not ever if you don't want to.”

Hansel held his sister in his gaze. Her eyes, ocean-blue, sun-bright, were happier, clearer than he had seen them in a long, long time. Gretel returned her brother's stare. He looked unburdened. Lighter. And he looked older than he had ever looked. Not old with care. Old with wisdom.

“We can tell you now,” Gretel said.

And so they did. Hansel started with what Johannes had told him, about the old king, lying on his deathbed. Gretel planned to pick up as soon as she and Hansel entered the story.

But just then there was a knock on the king and queen's chamber door.

“Yes?” said the king.

A servant poked his head in. “Excuse me, Your Majesty,” he said. Then he saw blood on the king. “Your Majesty! Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” said the king. “What is it?”

“I ... uh ...” The servant, named Wilhelm, shook his head and tried not to stare at the blood. “Your people,” he went on. “They're standing outside the castle.”

“What? What people?”

“The subjects.”

“Which subjects?” the queen demanded.

“All of them, Your Majesties.”

The king and queen leaped to their feet. “But why?” the queen asked.

“I ... I'm not sure,” said the servant. “I think it might have to do with the golden smoke.”

“What smoke?” said the queen.

“The dragon,” Gretel whispered to her.

“What?” the king said. Hansel gave him a meaningful look. “Oh,” he said. “Right.” He turned to his wife. “Should we go down?” He looked concerned.

The queen looked at her children.

“It's okay,” Hansel said. Gretel nodded.

But the queen said, “No. Let them wait.”

“But, Your Majesty!” the servant said. “They're calling for you!”

“Let them call,” the queen replied.

The king added, “Try to keep them entertained.”

The servant was about to protest again, but, on seeing the expressions on his masters' faces, thought better of it. He closed the door. Hansel and Gretel smiled at their parents, and Hansel started again.

 

In the hallway, the other servants crowded around Wilhelm. “What are we supposed to do?” one asked.

“Keep them entertained,” Wilhelm said. “Somehow.”

“What are they saying in there?” another asked. “I think I hear the children talking.”

So the servants leaned their heads against the door. Hansel was telling of the portrait of the golden princess.

“Quick!” said Wilhelm. “Go get everyone you can. Every servant in the castle.” So one of them did, as the others continued to listen at the door.

When all the servants were assembled, Wilhelm said, “Jacob and I”—he gestured to the servant to his right—“are going to listen at the door and relay everything we hear. Then you pass it down, as best you can, to the next servant, and keep passing it, all the way out to the balcony. The royal crier will stand on the balcony and relay it all to the subjects.” He turned to the kitchen staff. “Go and make food. For everybody.”

“For everybody?!” the chief cook exclaimed.

“Everybody!”

And so the plan was carried out. Hansel and Gretel told the whole tale, from the old king's deathbed all the way through the beheading of their father. And the servants relayed it, as best as they could, down the halls of the castle and out to the royal crier, who in turn relayed it to the people of the Kingdom of Grimm.

 

The storytelling took all through the day, and into the early evening. And then, as the stars were beginning to twinkle, but before the creepy moon had made an appearance in the southern sky, Hansel and Gretel finished. The family hugged one another once more, very tightly, and stood up. They stretched their arms and legs, and then they went to the door. The servants had retreated to the opposite wall of the corridor. When the king came out, he asked what they were all doing there. Wilhelm said that they were ready to take them down to the great balcony, where their subjects were still waiting. They'd been fed.

“You fed them?” the queen said. “That was very clever of you.”

Wilhelm bowed.

“What did you tell them?” the king asked.

Wilhelm rubbed his hand nervously over his hair. He looked at Jacob and the other servants. They all looked at the floor. He said, “We told them what Hansel and Gretel told you. About their adventures.” The queen raised her eyebrows. “And let me be the first to congratulate the children,” he added quickly, “on the successful vanquishing of the dragon. We are all more grateful than words can express.” And he said it like he meant it.

The queen looked at the king, but the king only smiled. “Fine,” he said. “Well done. That's fine.” He, too, said it like he meant it. Then the royal family followed the line of servants down to the balcony.

The subjects of the Kingdom of Grimm were spread out before the balcony in the thousands, sitting on the ground, eating the suppers that the kitchen had provided them, and listening to the end of the story with rapt attention.

“I understand,” the crier was saying as the king and queen and Hansel and Gretel emerged from behind him. “I understand, my children.”

A roar erupted from the subjects. The crier, thinking they were roaring for his telling of the story, took a little bow. But then he saw the royal family. Quickly, he retreated.

The subjects' cheers were deafening. Hansel and Gretel stood before them and took it all in. They smiled.

Then the king raised his hands. The subjects quickly grew quiet.

“I have something I must say,” he announced. “These two children have killed the dragon. Killed the dragon, when everyone else had tried, and everyone else had failed.”

The subjects cheered wildly. The king raised his hands again for silence.

“The dragon would have destroyed this kingdom altogether,” he went on. “It would have left it an empty ruin.” He paused. He tried to swallow down a thickness that had developed in his throat. “
I
would have left it an empty ruin. I didn't know what I was doing, of course. I did not know I was the dragon. But the dragon, I, would have destroyed this kingdom if Hansel and Gretel had not stopped me.”

The people of Grimm stared.

“I can no longer be king. How could I? After what I have done?”

In all the Kingdom of Grimm, not a single person made a single sound.

“I am passing my crown on. And I ask my wife to do the same. We will pass our crowns to our children.”

A murmur swept through the crowd. “To Hansel and Gretel? To children?”

“Yes!” the king declared. “They are children. But they are the wisest, bravest children I have ever known. My wife and I will help them as long as they need us to. But”—and here he held up his hand, and all murmuring stopped—“there is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children. These children. King Hansel and Queen Gretel.”