“Grandmother!” the Devil whined, his voice lower, “you’re embarrassing me!”
“Lucifer Satan, I wouldn’t care if I was embarrassing you in front of God himself! You listen to your grandmother! We do not strangle little boys in the house!”
“But—”
“Lukey!”
The Devil put the little boy down. Joringel collapsed to his hands and knees, frantically trying to suck air down his crumpled windpipe.
“There, there,” the Devil’s grandmother said. She lowered her great girth beside the little boy and began to pet him. The Devil’s grandmother. Petting Joringel. The Devil watched, disgusted.
“Now, what’s all this about your sister? In Hell?”
Joringel, still gasping at the air, tried to nod.
“Was she a much older sister? Was she loose? I bet she was one of those loose girls . . . I was never one of those. You could get me in the back of the car, but you couldn’t—”
“She wasn’t loose, Grandmother,” the Devil cut in, before any details emerged. “She was a tyrant. A bloody-minded oppressor of people.”
“What? How old was this sister of yours?”
Joringel managed to gasp, “Twins. We were twins—”
“What? A little girl? A tyrant?” She turned to her grandson. “Lukey, don’t exaggerate. You know I don’t like that.”
“Grandmother, I’m not! She was a tyrant! And this boy here would beat parents in the street!”
“What?” the grandmother looked sternly at Joringel. He was finally sitting up on the floor. His shoulders rose and fell dramatically, and it hurt to breathe, but at least he could draw air into his lungs again. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“They . . . they were abusing their children.”
“Oh! Then they deserved it!”
“Grandmother!”
“What? It’s true! You don’t hit a child. But,” she said, turning back to Joringel, “your sister, a tyrant? Was she really?”
Joringel shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Why? She was just a little girl . . .”
Joringel didn’t know what to say. He thought back to his sister’s reign. He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t explain why he helped her, either. He had just felt . . . so angry. He told the Devil’s grandmother this.
“Angry? About what?”
Joringel shrugged.
“Now don’t do that. Talk to Granny. You’ve got to talk it out.”
Joringel looked up into her eyes. They were red. Entirely red, with little black dots for pupils. But, somehow, they looked kind.
“It’s a long story.”
“Then let’s go into the living room and get comfortable.”
“I don’t know all of it . . . My sister knows the rest.”
“Well, then let’s go get her!”
“What?” the Devil barked. “Grandmother, no!”
“Lukey . . .” Her voice was stern.
“Grandmother, I can’t get a sinner out of a Cocoon of Solitude!”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because it’s embarrassing!”
“Lukey . . .”
“Grandmother!”
“Lukey, don’t make me raise my voice,” the Devil’s grandmother said, very quietly.
“It isn’t fair!” the Devil pouted. He glared at Joringel. Then he stared at the ceiling. Then he stormed out of the house.
The Devil’s grandmother smiled at Joringel. “You just take it easy until he gets back. Then we’ll talk this whole thing through, okay?” Joringel nodded. “Would you like a nice, hot cup of tea?”
Joringel squinted. “What kind of tea?”
“Earl Grey’s Blood.”
“No,” said Joringel. “No, thank you.”
The Devil’s grandmother shrugged and rose to make some for herself.
* * *
Joringel waited on the couch made of human scalps, staring at the Devil’s front door, waiting for it to open, praying that it would, and that the Devil would come through it with Jorinda (which, he realized, was a strange thing to pray for), hoping against all reasonable hope that she would be okay. In the kitchen, the Devil’s grandmother was boiling blood for her tea.
At last, the doorknob turned, the door swung open, and the Devil appeared. A limp body was slung over his shoulder.
“Jorinda?” Joringel cried.
The Devil unslung the little body and dropped it, rather hard, on the floor.
“Is she okay?” Joringel asked, falling to his sister’s side.
“She’s just been in HELL,” the Devil said. “If she is okay, I need a new job.”
The Devil’s grandmother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “I’ll make her some tea.”
“No!” said Joringel. “Thank you. No tea.” He bent over his sister. Her face was white and peaceful as a cloud. “Jorinda?” he whispered. “Jorinda? Can you hear me?”
She moaned.
“Jorinda! Jorinda! Wake up!”
Her eyes roved behind her eyelids. “Joringel?”
“I’m here! Wake up! Open your eyes! Please!” Joringel was fighting back tears now. “Please, wake up!”
The Devil turned away. From the kitchen doorway, his grandmother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Slowly, Jorinda’s eyelids fluttered open. She looked at her brother. And then there spread across her face a smile so sweet, so pure, so rich with relief that Joringel nearly buckled. He fell upon her. She lifted her thin arms and wrapped them around him. Quietly, they cried.
Joringel murmured, “If you won’t leave me, I won’t leave you.” And Jorinda murmured back, “I will never, ever leave you.”
Which, you will be glad to hear, is finally true.
Still, they’re both in Hell, so that might not be a good thing.
As the children held each other, the Devil shouted, “This is disgusting! It is disgusting, and I will not have it! Not in Hell. Not in my grandmother’s house. Stop this instant! Stop! I said stop it!” But Jorinda and Joringel didn’t care.
The Devil’s grandmother blew her nose into her handkerchief. Then she settled down on the couch and cleared her throat.
The two children turned to her. “Well?” she said. “Tell Granny all about it. And I want details.”
“She wants to know why you’re in Hell,” Joringel explained to his sister. “Why you were a tyrant. Why we were both so angry.”
Jorinda’s eyes, still shining and wet, drifted back and forth between her brother and this red-eyed, orange-haired, buxom old lady sitting on a couch of human scalps.
“I told her it was a long story.”
“Which,” the Devil’s grandmother interjected, “is my favorite kind.”
Jorinda’s voice was creaky when she said, “Where should we start?”
“Personally,” said the Devil’s grandmother, “I think the beginning would do very nicely.”
The Devil rolled his eyes. “Granny—
“Shhhht! Not a word! The children are talking!”
Jorinda looked helplessly to her brother. Joringel shrugged. Then he smiled. Then he said,
Once upon a time, in the days when fairy tales really happened, there lived a man and his wife. They were a happy couple, for they had everything their hearts desired . . .
“How did your voice get like that?” the Devil demanded.
“Get like what?”
The grandmother and Jorinda were staring at Joringel.
“All loud and bold and boomy!” the Devil said.
“I-I don’t know . . .” Joringel stammered.
The Devil’s grandmother leaned forward. “Well, don’t stop! It sounds good!”
So Joringel went on. He told of how badly his parents wanted a child and of how his mother ha
d wished for it under the juniper tree after cutting her thumb.
She bore twins: a little boy with dark hair, dark eyes, and lips as red as blood; and a little girl with dark hair and green eyes and cheeks as white as snow.
She brought them to her husband. And this man took one look at his two beautiful children, and he was so happy that he died.
“WHAT?” the grandmother cried. “He was so happy that he died?”
Jorinda nodded and cut in. “It happens all the time. It’s just . . . ‘Oh, I’m so happy! I’m so happy! I’m so ha-a-a-ack-ack-ack . . .’—Dead.”
The Devil snickered. His grandmother looked horrified.
Joringel went on with the story. He told of how their mother withdrew from them, how she spent all her time in her study, and how she eventually married their stepfather.
As he told it, Joringel’s face became tighter. His shoulders hunched. When he described his mother taking the children into their study, Jorinda looked away. He told about the stone under the mattresses and stamping out the weeds.
“And never cry,” Joringel recounted their mother saying. “Choke back your tears. Tears are waves on the ocean of sadness. You will drown in them if you’re not careful. Believe me. I know.”
The grandmother clucked. “That’s an awful thing to teach a child! No wonder you’re so angry at her!”
Jorinda objected. “We’re not angry at her!”
The grandmother looked confused. “Oh! Excuse me!”
Joringel went on with the story. After a little while, he came to this part:
I bent down and leaned my head over the apples. They smelled fresh and rich, and their yellow skin was dappled with rose and—
BANG!
Our stepfather slammed the lid of the chest down.
Right on the back of my neck.
And my head fell off into the apples.
“WHAT?” the grandmother screamed.
“THAT’S AWESOME!” cried the Devil.
“Lukey!”
“What, Grandmother? I’m sorry! It is!”
Joringel went on. Soon, he came to this part:
Finally, the man took Jorinda by the shoulders and whispered, “There, there, my dear. Don’t cry. Come in the kitchen.” And then he added, “I’ll help you hide the body.”
The grandmother, under her breath, whispered, “No . . .”
So our stepfather dragged my body into the kitchen, and Jorinda carried my head, weeping furiously. And then our stepfather took a big knife, and he carved the meat from my bones. And then he threw it into the largest stew pot.
“I LOVE IT!” screamed the Devil.
“Lukey!”
The Devil ignored her. “Is this true? This is the best story I’ve ever heard!”
“It gets worse,” Joringel informed him.
“You mean better?”
“Well, depends on your perspective,” Jorinda said. “It definitely gets bloodier.”
“Oh, goody!” squealed the Devil.
So Joringel finished his part of the story. And Jorinda started hers.
Once upon a time, I knelt under a juniper tree and tried not to weep . . .
When the stepsisters cut off chunks of their feet, the Devil snickered. “I know them! They’re down here now! I know them!”
“Calm down, Lukey.”
The two children traded off telling stories all night long. The Devil cackled when Joringel cut the corpses down from the tree. He clapped his hands when the half man tried to strangle Jorinda, and then chortled when she untied his string. The grandmother gaped at the castle that had fallen asleep and bit her black nails when the huntsman pursued the baby unicorn. And both the grandmother and the Devil smiled knowingly when Joringel told of the ivory monkey.
Finally, they came to the period when Jorinda was queen and Joringel the self-appointed Protector of Children. They described it all as honestly as they could. The grandmother’s face became very serious.
“I just felt so . . . so mixed up,” Jorinda said.
“When I saw that mother beating her child,” Joringel added, “it was like I couldn’t see. I felt like I was underwater. Like I was drowning.”
“We were angry,” Jorinda added. “All the time. I was scared of how angry I was—how angry we were.”
“You were angry at your mother,” the grandmother concluded matter-of-factly. “You were angry that she neglected you.”
“I was not!” Jorinda snapped.
Joringel agreed with his sister.
The grandmother and the Devil both looked surprised. “You really don’t think you were mad at your mother?” the grandmother asked.
“Why would we be mad at her?”
“She was wonderful.”
The grandmother raised her eyebrows. “She neglected you! She left you alone! All the time! She let that awful man try to murder you! Actually, she let him succeed in murdering you!”
“It’s not her fault!” Jorinda insisted.
“She was alone!” agreed Joringel.
“She had no one to help her!”
“If she had had help . . .”
“If Father hadn’t died . . .”
“If we hadn’t killed him . . .”
“She would have been a perfect mother.”
“We were just too much for her. She couldn’t take care of both of us.”
Jorinda sighed. “Maybe if we hadn’t been so much work . . .”
Joringel nodded. “Or if Father had still been alive . . .”
The Devil and his grandmother both sat there on the couch made of human scalps, dumbstruck.
“Wait,” said the Devil, “are you blaming yourselves?”
“Were you listening?” his grandmother responded. “Of course they’re blaming themselves.”
“But—but,” stammered the Devil, “that’s ridiculous!”
“Of course it’s ridiculous!” his grandmother replied. “Of all the conclusions to draw from that long, bloody, horrible, grim story we just heard, that is the most ridiculous conclusion you could possibly come up with.”
“I don’t think it’s so ridiculous,” Jorinda said, so quietly her voice was almost just breath.
“We killed our father,” Joringel whispered.
“You killed your father? You killed your father?” the Devil’s grandmother cried. “How, exactly, did you do that? You were born? You answered your parents’ dearest wish and were born? And were beautiful? That’s your crime? Your father didn’t die of happiness! He died from a heart attack! Or a brain aneurysm! Or high cholesterol!”
Jorinda and Joringel stared.
“And your mother,” she went on, “your poor, heartsick mother, abandoned you in her own home! This is your fault? Because she can’t be a grown-up about losing her husband? This is your fault?”
The children said nothing.
“What else? What else do you blame yourselves for?”
Jorinda swallowed hard. “For leaving Joringel.”
Joringel’s heart caught in his throat.
“You were going to marry a prince!” the grandmother shouted at Jorinda. “And you?” she asked, turning to Joringel.
“Had Jorinda loved me more, she wouldn’t have left,” Joringel said quietly.
Jorinda made a sound in her throat like she was choking.
“She—was—going—to—marry—a—prince!” the grandmother cried. “When that opportunity comes, you take it!”
The Devil nodded. His voice was a little shaky when he said, “She’s right, you know.”
The children stared at the Devil and his grandmother.
“It isn’t your fault,” the grandmother said. “Either one of you. None of this. You have been brave. You have been loving. Occasionally, you have been a little bit stupid. But who is
n’t? None of this is your fault. Can you see that now?”
Tears slowly made their way over the children’s cheeks. They shrugged. But Jorinda smiled. Joringel half laughed.
“It was kind of silly,” Joringel said through a crooked grin, sniffling. “We were just born.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jorinda. “That’s all we did. And I wanted to marry a prince. That’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad at all,” Joringel said. “Not so bad at all.” He sighed a deep, rattling sigh.
Suddenly, the Devil drew his sleeve savagely across his face. “OKAY!” he bellowed, standing up. “That’s enough!”
His grandmother and the two children both shrank before him.
The Devil towered over them, his great red shoulders rising and falling. “You will not—I repeat, will NOT—make me cry in my own home! Get out! Get OUT, and never, ever come back!”
Jorinda and Joringel smiled.
“NOW!” he roared.
The children leaped to their feet.
“Will you take any leftovers?” the Devil’s grandmother asked. “There’s more brisket!”
The children shook their heads vigorously.
“NOW!” the Devil exploded. And then, without any warning, he buried his face in his sleeve, ran into the back of the house, and slammed the door to his room. Even with his door closed, they could all hear him crying into a pillow.
His grandmother smiled, led the children to the door, and said, “The exit’s that way.” She kissed them roughly on their foreheads, leaving great black lipstick marks just below their hairlines. “Now do what my grandson says,” she told them, “and never come back.”
And they never did.
The Ruined Land
Once upon a time, there was a very grim kingdom.
Up and down Grimm’s brown, barren fields, the soldiers marched, chanting to the dusty skies, “Protect our king! Protect our king!”
Rumors ran through the inns and public spaces. It was said that Joringel would return, looking for revenge. That he would bring an army with him that would dwarf any army Grimm had ever seen. That when he arrived, parents would be executed and children would rule over the land. Fear your children, the rumors said. For when Joringel comes, they will rise from their beds, knives clutched in their tiny hands, do you in, and then rush out to join the tyrant.