He named the oxen Ivy and Betty—which is strange, because oxen are boys.
That doesn’t come into the story much. I just thought I’d tell you.
So Hansel, having bested the Devil, and saved the two villages, and now leading a fortune in wine and gold, set out for the Kingdom of Grimm. It wasn’t hard to get directions, either. Everyone could point you toward a kingdom where a dragon was.
But Hansel’s progress was slow. For he stopped at every village, every hamlet, every house and hovel he passed along the way, to ask if they had seen or heard anything of his sister, Gretel. But no one had.
“You mean Gretel, the old woman?”
“No, my sister.”
“Gretel, my sister’s baby?”
“No, my sister. And she’s not a baby.”
“I have a goat named Gretel.”
“No!”
He may have had a fortune in gold and wine behind him, and two obedient oxen to follow him wherever he went, but Hansel’s heart was as black and heavy as it had ever been, and his feet dragged in the mud and the ice. Without his sister, he did not want to go home. Or face a dragon. Or face his parents.
Gretel stood at the door of the tavern, staring down the road. Coming toward her were two enormous oxcarts, each capped, like miniature mountains, with snow. Walking out in front of them was someone with dark hair—a small, dejected someone, whose feet dragged as he walked. There was something about the someone that made Gretel want to wait for him.
As the carts drew nearer, her heart caught in her throat. With her fine, ocean-blue eyes, Gretel could now make out the someone’s face.
She cried aloud and tore off for him down the road.
As Hansel drew closer to the kingdom, he seemed to see Gretel everywhere. In bakeries. In upstairs windows. Going into outhouses (which resulted in some pretty embarrassing moments, as you can imagine). Just up ahead, there was a girl standing at the doorway of a tavern, and, had he not known he was just seeing things, he would have sworn that that girl was Gretel, too.
Then the girl was no longer standing at the door of the tavern. She was sprinting toward him, her long blond hair flying out behind her. Hansel blinked. He stopped dragging his feet. He ran.
Hansel and Gretel came together like two magnets meeting, like meteors that have been screaming through space toward this one moment of collision. They met in the middle with a bang, and instantly their feet went out from under them on the slick roadway. They landed, hard, in a puddle of icy mud.
They stared at each other, sitting in the puddle.
Lost and then found.
Dead and then alive.
Covered in mud.
Sitting on their behinds in three inches of filthy water.
And they began to laugh. They threw their arms around each other and laughed until tears streamed down their faces. They sat, freezing, muddy, in a puddle in the middle of the road, with the gray sky overhead, and their parents’ castle waiting just a few miles away. They sat there and held each other until their arms ached.
“Where have you been?” Hansel asked as they pulled themselves out of the puddle.
“How are you alive?” Gretel asked at just the same moment.
So they climbed up on an oxcart and told each other about every single thing that had happened since the day of the hunt in the Lebenwald—and some things twice.
And as they talked and laughed and gasped and talked some more, Ivy and Betty drew them closer and closer to home.
Hansel and Gretel are coming to the hardest part now.
It’s true that they’ve been nearly eaten by a cannibalistic baker woman; and they’ve talked to the fiery sun and to the child-eating moon and to the kind stars; and they’ve journeyed to the Crystal Mountain; and that Gretel has cut off her own finger, and caused somebody to be boiled alive; and that Hansel has been turned into a beast and been shot and skinned and gambled away; and that he went to Hell and dressed up like the Devil’s grandmother; and that he’s been chased by the Devil himself and has held an old man’s hand as he died.
It’s true they’ve done all those things.
But sometimes, coming home is the hardest thing of all.
Soon Hansel and Gretel found themselves in the heart of the Kingdom of Grimm, driving through towns that still lived in their earliest memories. As they looked around, their stomachs began to twist into knots.
Some of the towns looked just as they remembered them, as if memories of home could be modeled in wood and brick. But other towns—other memories of home—had been razed to the ground. Houses were torn apart, with their roofs and walls scattered and broken. Shops were burned, eviscerated, empty. Dead animals lay in the street, their bloated bellies stiffening as flies walked carefully across the surface of their eyeballs.
“The dragon,” Gretel murmured.
Hansel nodded and stared.
As they passed through one gutted town, the door on the wreckage of a house began to move. Its hinges groaned angrily. Hansel leaned close to Gretel. She took his hand. Then, from the darkness, a head emerged.
It was a child. He was very small—the size of the child Gretel had seen in the tavern. He was followed by an older child, a girl, and then a still-older girl.
“Come out,” the eldest said. “Look.”
From behind them emerged their parents. The whole family was dirty, emaciated, with ragged clothes and frightened eyes.
Gretel said, “This is not good.”
“No,” Hansel said. “It isn’t.”
Suddenly, Gretel jumped down from the cart and ran around to the back. “I’m going to give them an apple,” she shouted to Hansel.
The family heard this, and the father and mother and three children all came out to the cart. “You have apples?” the father said.
“Not the kind you eat,” Gretel told him. “But this might help you.” And she reached under the canvas tarp, took out an apple, and gave it to them.
“It’s golden!” the children cried, and the parents’ eyes grew wide with wonder. But the eldest of the children, who was a few years older than Gretel, stared at her.
“She looks like the princess,” the girl said.
The family stopped marveling at the apple and looked at Gretel again. “She does...” the father said. And then, tentatively, he said, “Your Highness?” Gretel blushed.
The eldest child had run around to the front of the cart. “And the prince!” she shouted.
All the rest of their journey home, the family ran ahead of the oxcart, cheering and shouting for all to hear, “The prince and princess are home! The prince and princess are home!”
People began to come out of their houses. Slowly at first, peering fearfully around their doors. But when they saw the two children sitting atop the oxcarts, and the family walking before them, shouting at the top of their lungs, the villagers’ frightened faces gradually lifted, and they came out into the warming sun to walk behind the oxcarts and cheer.
Soon Hansel and Gretel had a train of followers a thousand people strong, and still they gathered more as they went.
They looked around them at the cheering, shouting, laughing people. Never had they felt so special, so important. They were just children, after all.
Word of their arrival ran ahead of them. It did not take long for it to reach the king and queen at the castle.
At first, neither king nor queen believed it. There had been rumors of the children’s return before. But as the reports were confirmed, and confirmed again, and then again, king and queen, Father and Mother, grew too agitated to wait any longer. They rushed to the great gate of the castle with pounding hearts and clasped hands.
As the castle came into view, with its tall turrets and broad porticoes, Gretel took her brother’s arm. She held it so tight it began to hurt. He looked at her. Her face was lined with worry. “You don’t think ...” She stopped. She began again. “They won’t do—what they did—again?”
Slowly, Hansel shook his h
ead. “No,” he said. And he repeated all Faithful Johannes had told him. “They miss us,” he concluded. “And they’re very sorry.”
Gretel nodded. Hansel found her hand and held it.
When the oxcarts were only a hundred feet from the gate, Hansel and Gretel got down. Their mother and father ran toward them, arms outstretched. Hansel and Gretel stood and watched them come. They did not reach out their arms, but, when their parents reached them, they allowed themselves to be lifted up and held.
“I am so sorry,” was the first thing their father said.
“I am so sorry,” was the first thing their mother said.
And they kissed their children’s cheeks and wet them with their tears and held them tight. They told the servants to care for the oxen and put the canvas-covered carts in the royal stables, and then they brought Hansel and Gretel into the castle, where they washed them and fed them.
At last, the whole family sat before a glowing hearth in the private wing of the castle. The shadows of flames danced on their faces. “Tell us everything,” the queen said, her face beaming. “Where have you been? What have you done? How did you find your way home?”
Hansel and Gretel looked at their parents, and then at each other. They shrugged. Then they looked at the thick red rug on the floor.
It will happen to you, dear reader, at some point in your life. You will face a moment very much like the one Hansel and Gretel are facing right now.
In this moment, you will look at your parents and realize that—no matter what it sounds like they are saying—they are actually asking you for forgiveness. This is a very painful moment. You see, all of your life you’ve been asking for forgiveness from them. From the age you can talk you are apologizing for breaking this, forgetting that, hitting him, locking her in the garage, and so on. So, having them ask you for forgiveness probably sounds pretty good.
But when this moment comes, you will probably be in a lot of pain. And you probably will not want to forgive them.
In which case, what, you might ask, should you do?
Well, you could yell at them, and tell them about all the ways they’ve hurt you. This is a good thing to do once, because—believe me—they need to know. But this is the first step on the road to forgiveness. What if you’re not even ready for that?
You could pretend to forgive them. This I would not recommend. It’s sort of like sweeping broken glass under the carpet; the floor still isn’t clean, and somebody’s going to end up with a bloody sock.
Finally, if you don’t want to forgive them, and you don’t want to fake it, you can always go with Ol’ Reliable: Changing the subject.
After a moment, Hansel said, “What about the dragon?”
And Gretel said, “Yes, tell us about that.”
The king and queen exchanged an anxious look. Their children—they were still children, were they not?—seemed so different from the little ones that had frolicked at the foot of their bed on the very day they’d been lost. These two were so serious, so silent, so distant. But the king and queen agreed with merely a look, as only parents can, that it was best to give them their time and their space. And so they told Hansel and Gretel all about the dragon.
After the children had disappeared, the king explained, he had gone out every day to look for them. At first, he had taken hunting parties with him. But soon he had become so distraught that he insisted on going out alone. He described pushing through the wet leaves of early spring, persevering through the hailstorms of March and the thunderstorms of April to find them. But he never turned up a single trace of them. And it was on one of these days, when he was far from the castle, that the dragon had come.
It began by circling in the sky, the queen said. The villagers below ran in a panic every which way, unsure where to go or what to do. When the dragon dove that first time, it screamed, and it was said that villages two miles away heard it. At the end of that first day, one town was utterly gone, and hundreds and hundreds of people were dead.
Hansel said, “What does it look like?” The queen shuddered.
“It’s hideous. Smooth black skin, like a snake’s. Eyes that are golden—with no whites or pupils at all. Its wings are so thin, you can see through them. And each of its talons and teeth look like long, sharp obsidian shards.”
When the king came home that first night and saw what had happened, he assembled an army, and they rode out to meet the beast. But they could not find it. Every day for a week they rode around looking for the dragon. But never would it show its face. Then, one day, the army was under the direction of the captain of the guards, for the king had been taken ill. That day, the king said bitterly, the dragon had come, and it destroyed the army completely. Now there were few soldiers left in the kingdom, and fewer still who would face the dragon. There had been nothing anyone could do for a long time now—except watch the dragon tear the kingdom apart.
Gretel’s brow furrowed. “Well,” she said at last, “Hansel and I will come up with something.”
The king and queen smiled at her as if she were a very little child, and then they smiled at each other. “That’s very brave of you,” the queen said gently. “But we’re just happy to have you home. You don’t have to worry yourself about the dragon, dear.”
Gretel stood up. Her eyes were almost level with those of her seated parents. Almost.
“Has either of you ever had to cut off your own finger?” she asked.
They stared at her. She raised her left hand to show them. They gasped.
“No? How about killing people? How many people have you killed?”
“Killed?” her father said.
“Yes. Besides me and Hansel.”
The king’s face grew red, and his voice quiet. “None, honey. Why?”
“Well, we have. Two,” Gretel said.
Hansel stood up beside her. “Has either of you been to Hell?” he asked.
“What?” his parents cried.
“Been tortured by demons?” Hansel added.
They shook their heads and stared at their children.
He gave them one last chance. “Had the Devil’s head in your lap?”
Neither replied.
“Then I think you’d better leave this to us,” Gretel said. And the two children went back to their room to talk things over.
An hour later they returned. “So,” Hansel said, “dragons love treasure, right?”
“At least in storybooks,” Gretel added.
Their parents looked at each other and shrugged. “I guess,” the king replied.
“Okay, let’s say they do,” Hansel said. “We have a cartload of golden apples in the stable right now.”
His mother’s eyes grew wide. “You do?”
“How on earth did you get that?” the king asked.
“We’ll explain later,” Gretel said impatiently. “Are you listening?”
The king and queen nodded sheepishly.
“Okay, so we take the cart of apples out to a clearing in the forest,” Hansel said.
“We open it up,” Gretel cut in, “so the dragon can see it. Hopefully, he’ll be attracted to the gold.”
“We’ll have to raise an army. They’ll be hiding in the trees all around,” Hansel said. “With bows and arrows.”
“And swords and axes,” Gretel added.
“And when the dragon is distracted by the apples, the archers will fire at it from the cover of the trees. It won’t know where the arrows are coming from, and it will be confused and, hopefully, wounded.”
“And that’s when everyone else will run out and attack it,” Gretel concluded.
Slowly, the queen began to nod. “That’s not a bad plan,” she said. She turned to the king.
Well, the king tried to find some fault or other, because that’s what fathers do. “Raising an army,” he said. “That will be difficult. Our people don’t want to fight anymore. They’re afraid.”
“We have to try,” Hansel said.
“It may not work
,” Gretel agreed. “But it’s better than doing nothing.”
After a few more perfunctory objections, their father finally had to admit that, indeed, it sounded like a pretty good plan.
The queen, blushing a little, said, “Do you need all the apples for the plan? If so, I understand, of course ... I just ...”
The king smiled. “Your mother would like an apple,” he said. “She’s always had a passion for gold. That’s how we met, you know.”
“I heard,” Gretel said. “You stole her.”
“I did not!” the king said.
“Admit it, darling,” the queen laughed. “You sort of did.”
“You stole Mother?” Hansel asked.
“Well, yes ... I ... I suppose ... I sort of did.”
The king laughed at himself, and the queen laughed some more. Hansel and Gretel began to smile. It was the first crack in their armor their parents had yet seen. The king and the queen, laughing and tearful, reached out their arms to their children.
But with that, the children’s smiles died away. After a moment, the king and queen lowered their arms.
Gretel whispered, “We have to go to bed now. It’s late, and we have a lot to do tomorrow.”
Hansel stood without moving for a moment. Then he said, “Yes. That’s true.”
And the two children turned away from their parents and went upstairs to bed.
“I feel like something is pressing down on my chest,” Gretel said, lying in her bed that night, her eyes wide open. “Something heavy and sharp and painful. I’ve felt it for a long, long time now.”
“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.”