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.
“Wha—well, excuse us!” a voice said.
Gretel lost her grip and nearly fell out of the tree.
“Well, I never!” said the voice. “Some people!”
Gretel looked up. There was a thick mess of twigs and needles on the branch above her head.
“Well,” said another voice, “see who it is!”
And then a black head, with black eyes and a black beak, peered over the branch above her.
“Well, I’ll be!” said the first raven. “If it isn’t Gretel!”
“No! Here?” said the second.
“Tell her to be more considerate of a raven’s nest!” said the third. “Has she no manners? Was she raised by apes?”
“I think she was raised by a king and queen,” said the second.
The ravens? In this very tree? Gretel could barely believe it. In fact, had it not been for all the strange, incredible things that had happened to her already, perhaps she wouldn’t have. But after eating a house, and talking to the stars, and all the rest of it—well, she believed it just fine.
“Please!” she said. “Help me!”
The sound of tearing wood came from below. She looked down. The dragon had just slid halfway down the trunk again. “Please! There’s a dragon after me!”
“Help you?” said the third raven. “After what you’ve done to our nest?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” said the second raven.
“You’re not the one who’s going to fix it, though, are you?” replied the third testily.
“I have my responsibilities, too. When food is scarce, and my job gets difficult, do I complain?” said the second raven.
“Yes,” the other two ravens answered at once.
Below, the dragon regained his footing and was climbing again.
“Please!” Gretel cried.
“We can’t help you,” said the first.
“Yes,” said the second. “It’s not what we do.”
Gretel looked down. The dragon was gaining quickly. She hadn’t time to plead. “Then move!” she shouted, and clambered up onto their branch, just barely avoiding crushing their nest with her foot.
“Careful there!” the third raven cawed.
Gretel pushed past their branch, straining to keep ahead of the dragon. The first raven beat his wings beside her. “I’m sorry for my companion’s rudeness,” he said. “We understand the gravity of your s
ituation.” He looked down. “No pun intended, of course.”
Gretel didn’t know what he was talking about. “Are you going to help me or not?” she cried.
“I’m afraid we can’t,” the raven said. “You see, we can only tell the future. We can’t attempt to change it. It wouldn’t do any good, you see? It’s the future.”
There was an enormous crack from below, followed by terrible squawking. Gretel hurried her pace, but up ahead, the branches were thinning out to almost nothing. She was just about out of branches to climb to. And at any moment, the dragon would be able to fly. Just as Gretel realized there was nowhere else for her to go, around her head there was a frantic beating of wings and a very angry raven.
“Did you see that? Did you? Our nest! Gone! Crushed! Unbelievable! The height of inconsideration!”
The second raven fluttered up beside the third. “Inconsiderateness, I think, is the word.”
“Either one is acceptable,” said the first judiciously.
“I don’t care about the stupid word!” the third raven cried. “I care about our nest!”
Suddenly, Gretel was nearly blown off the tree by a swift burst of air. She turned. The dragon was hovering beside her, beating its translucent wings, staring at her with its terrible golden eyes. The dragon’s mouth was no more than six feet away. He opened it.
“Kill!” the third raven shrieked, and in one of the more comical acts of heroism Gretel had ever seen, the raven dove at the dragon’s head. The dragon snapped at it, and the raven turned and headed back for the tree. “Retreat!” he cawed. “Temporary retreat!”
Now, the third raven was not afraid of dying. As the ravens have already implied, there are some things that they do, and some things they do not do. Dying is of the latter group.
Of course, getting trapped in the stomach of a dragon is, even for a creature that cannot die, an indescribably unpleasant experience.
Though not quite as unpleasant, I would imagine, as getting out again.
The dragon flew closer to Gretel. It snapped at her feet. Gretel could smell its hot horrible breath; see the blood and the foam mingling between its long, sharp teeth; hear the beating of its enormous heart out of time with the beat of its enormous wings. It lunged at her, not only with its head, but with its entire body. It knocked the branch she was standing on clear off the tree. She fell and grabbed hold of the only thing she could.
The dragon’s neck.
The dragon reared backward. Perhaps if it had had its full wits about it, it might have managed to get her off its back. But as it was drunk, it circled in the air and snapped at its own shoulders, but could not manage to get her off.
“Attagirl!” cried the first raven.
“Yeehaw!” yelled the second.
“Incoming!” crowed the third, and it dove for the dragon’s eyes. The dragon twisted away from the attack and beat its huge wings three or four times to rise above the tree. The ravens followed.
Up, up through the black, starry night they rose. Gretel held on tightly to the dragon’s supple, scaly skin as its muscles rippled beneath her. Occasionally the dragon would twist to try to snap at her, but she was too close to its head. She worried that it might use its claws to get at her, as a dog gets at its fleas. But a dragon is not a dog, and that hadn’t seemed to occur to it yet.
From time to time the ravens would reappear beside Gretel and make diving attacks at the dragon’s eyes.
“Avenge the nest!” cried the third raven.
“A bird’s nest is his castle!” cried the second, finally getting into it.
“Habeas corpus!” cried the first, somewhat tangentiallly.
So the dragon kept rising. The air became cold around Gretel’s hands. Her knuckles turned blue. Soon, she and the dragon were higher than the ravens could fly. But the dragon didn’t seem to mind. Its transparent wings took them higher and higher and higher still, until Gretel had to breathe hard to get any air at all, and her head began to spin. Still the dragon climbed.
And then Gretel heard a voice. It was low. And soft. And creepy. It said, “Fee-fie-foe-fesh, I think I smell child-flesh!”
Gretel looked up. There—very, very close—was the moon. His eyes were hard and glistening, like diamonds. His white lips were parted around his sharp, ivory teeth. He was watching Gretel as the dragon rose.
“Oh boy,” Gretel muttered.
Snap! The cold breath of the moon froze the sweat on Gretel’s neck. The dragon felt it, too, and turned. The moon snapped again. The dragon twisted. The moon wanted nothing to do with the dragon. Not that the moon is afraid of dragons. The moon is not afraid of anything, except the sun, and only then because the sun calls him names and he does not appreciate that. Still, the moon does not generally bother dragons. Of course, dragons do not often have children on their backs. And the moon rarely passes up an opportunity to taste the succulent, tender meat of a child.
The dragon twisted, and the moon snapped his teeth.
Twist!
Snap!
Twist!
Snap!
Twist!
Snap!
Gretel fumbled at her belt. She wanted to be eaten by the moon even less than by the dragon. She took out her little dagger. As the dragon twisted and the moon prepared to snap again, she plunged the dagger into the dragon’s neck with all her might.
It did not pierce the scales, but the dragon turned toward her. And toward the moon.
It screamed.
Gretel fell through the air. Her arm was covered in black dragon-blood. Above her, the dragon was screaming its terrible scream and writhing back and forth. Above that, the moon was trying to spit the disgusting dragon-meat out of his mouth, and cursing himself for missing Gretel’s tender flesh. She watched them disappear into the blackness as she fell.
Gretel would die any moment now. That was clear. She had been thousands of feet in the air. Higher than the ravens could fly. Soon she would hit the ground, and all of her bones would be broken, and her brain would smash through her skull, and her heart would stop beating immediately. Or, she thought, she would land on a sharp branch and be skewered like a piece of meat. Her speed increased as she fell. The cold air grew a little warmer. She could see the stars twinkling at her from above.
Then she hit something. It was soft, and she rolled off it and kept falling. She hit another soft thing, and then rolled off that. She hit a third soft thing, and then rolled off that and into the branches of a tree. She fell all the way down the tree, hitting its leafy branches as she fell. Then she hit the ground.
She was not dead.
She sat up and looked around. She was covered with black feathers. She heard a fluttering sound, and saw three woozy black ravens, missing most of their plumage, settling on a branch overhead.
“Ow,” said the first raven.
“Ow,” said the second raven.
“Ow,” said the third raven.
“That hurt,” they all said at once.
“You saved me!” Gretel said.
“Not intentionally,” said the third raven.
“You just happened to hit us on your way down,” said the second.
“Of course, we knew that would happen,” said the first. “We just didn’t know it would hurt so much.”
Suddenly Gretel leaped to her feet and ran off into the woods.
“Manners!” said the third raven.
“We saved her life, and she just runs off without a thank-you?” said the second.
“She’s going to find her brother,” said the first.
“Oh yes,” said the second.
“We knew that,” said the third.
Gretel tore through the wood, branches slapping at her face, vines grabbing at her ankles. “Hansel!” she cried. “Hansel!” The creepy, child-eating moon shone down through the branches of the trees. She ran by his light.
Ahead, in the shadow of a pine sapling, lay a body. It was facedown on the ground. Gretel slowed and approached it. She turne
d it over and quickly turned away. It was not Hansel. It had a gash across its chest. And half a head. Gretel got up, swallowed bile, and began to run again.
She saw another body, lying half in a bush. She ran to it and pulled it out. A woman. Her chest was caved in, and her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Gretel turned and ran on.
Bodies. More bodies. Gretel hadn’t realized so many had fallen. There were dozens of them, scattered, lifeless, throughout the woods.
But where was Hansel? Where was he? Was he as lifeless as these bodies she found in the underbrush? Was he as still? As cold? Where was he?
Then the forest floor began to shine. White pebbles. The white pebbles were lighting her way. She followed them. They brought her to the clearing.
There, standing at the clearing’s center, was Hansel, covered in blood. She ran to him and threw her arms around him. “I’m okay,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not my blood. I was helping the wounded.” She nodded and held him.
They followed the path of shining pebbles out of the woods. As they walked, the creepy moon illuminated the forest floor and the bodies scattered among the silent trees. Some faces were covered in blood, with eyes open but dead. Others were crushed beyond recognition. A hand was lodged in the crook of a branch. A young woman lay facedown, her hair spread out about her bloody head like a halo.
The children hid their faces.
Lost lives.
Empty bodies.
Hansel and Gretel held each other as they walked through the quiet, awful night.
Okay.
Take a breath.
Last story.
Here we go.
HANSEL and GRETEL and Their Parents
Once upon a time, two children, a boy named Hansel and a girl named Gretel, followed a path of shining pebbles out of a dark, bloody wood and into a small town. The inn of the town was lit, and the children could hear loud voices within. They walked to the door. They opened it. They were met with a roar.