Imagine that he or she is in that house. Waiting for you. For no one but you.
What would you do?
What wouldn’t you do?
Gretel followed the path of ashes up to the stairs. The heavy ebony door stood slightly ajar. “Hello?” she called. No answer. Slowly, fearfully, she pushed the door back and entered the front hall. All was dark, save a faint glow from a stairway that descended to the cellar. She followed the dim light belowground, carefully placing one small foot after the other on the creaking stairs.
She found herself in a filthy old kitchen. Dirty pots and pans lay in piles on the stone floor. Chairs were overturned. In the middle of the room was a plain oaken table, with a large copper-colored stain. Gretel thought it looked like blood. Off in one corner, a great cauldron boiled, and crouched over it was an old woman with an iron shackle on her leg.
“Hello?” Gretel said uncertainly.
The woman turned. Her face was like worn leather; her teeth were rotting in her gums. She glanced fearfully at the steps that led above. “Who are you?” the old woman hissed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see my friend,” Gretel answered, her voice atremble.
The woman stared at her. “Through the wood?” she asked. “By yourself?”
Gretel nodded.
“Oh, poor girl,” the old woman muttered as she came nearer. “You are brave to come all this way. But you must flee.”
Gretel’s eyes grew wide, but she did not move. “I want to see him,” Gretel said.
The old woman sighed and touched the girl’s cheek, which was bleeding from the clawing branches. “Oh, my dear, does your friend have long black hair, green eyes that dance with flecks of gold, and lips as red as blood?”
Gretel nodded.
“Then, my dear, you have befriended your death.”
The old woman paused, and then went on. “He is my son, though what kind of son would keep his mother locked up as a prisoner, I do not know. He is evil—an evil magician, a warlock. He invites girls to this house, and he ...”
No little children around, right? Like I asked? Are you sure? Check under the bed. At this point, they’re usually hiding under the bed.
No? Okay, so long as you’re certain....
“He invites girls to this house, and he reaches down their throats and rips their souls from their bodies, and he traps the souls in cages in the form of doves, to let them rot under his eaves. Then he hacks the girls’ bodies to pieces to make our supper.”
The old woman smiled sadly and reached out to touch a lock of Gretel’s golden hair. “Such a brave and pretty girl. But such a fool.”
Suddenly, a crash rang out above. The woman’s eyes went wide, and, without another word, she pushed Gretel behind an enormous stack of dirty pots and scampered back to her cauldron. At that very moment, the handsome young man with the green eyes and smile as red as blood appeared at the foot of the steps.
He had a girl by the hair.
Dear Readers:
I’m sorry for what follows.
He threw the girl on the oaken table, and from a nearby cupboard produced a filthy iron cage. Then he reached his hand into the girl’s mouth until his arm was buried deep in her throat. Slowly, painfully, and with great struggle from the girl, he pulled forth a beautiful white dove. The dove fought the young man as he shoved it in the filthy cage and slammed the door shut.
The girl’s body was still.
Now you might want to close your eyes.
He lifted an ax that hung on the wall, and Gretel, peering through a gap between a filthy pot and a filthier pan, watched her handsome, wonderful, funny friend hack the girl’s body into bits and toss each piece into the boiling cauldron. His blunt butcher’s knife rose and fell, rose and fell. He licked the blood from his hands and sent piece after piece sailing into the pot.
Each piece, that is, save one.
On the girl’s left hand there was a lovely golden ring, inlaid with rubies, red as rubies can be. He tried to remove the ring so that it would not ruin the stew, but it wouldn’t come off. Finally, in a rage, he hacked the finger clean off her hand and hurled it across the room. Gretel watched, dumbstruck, as it tumbled through the air, over the enormous pile of pots and pans that she was hiding behind, and landed squarely in her lap, ring and all.
Somehow, she did not scream.
The young man picked up the cage and started for the stairs. “I’ll be back in a moment, Mother,” he said. “See that my stew is ready!”
As soon as he’d gone, the old woman ducked behind the pile of pots and pans. “Go, my dear!” she hissed at Gretel. “Run away and never come back!” The little girl needed no further encouragement. She fled up the stairs and out the door. But she came to a stop on the steps of the house. The rain was falling fat and wet and hard now, and the ashen path was utterly washed away. Even the lentils would be buried in the muck that was made by the heavy rain. Gretel had no way to get home.
But then she noticed something incredible. The lentils had sprouted. In the little time she’d been in the house, green shoots had come up from the wet soil, and now a pale green path marked her way back through the wood. She followed it as fast as her feet would carry her.
When Gretel arrived at the widow’s house, she went straight to her room and locked herself in.
The widow came to the door, leaned her head against the door frame, and asked Gretel if she was all right. Gretel didn’t answer.
She had her face buried deep in her pillow. As if it were still before her eyes, she could see the young man’s bright blade, slicing through the air toward the innocent girl on the table. And yet it wasn’t the young man’s blade at all. It was the blade of her father’s sword, and the innocent girl was Gretel, her white neck exposed to the cold, flashing steel. She saw the young man’s face and her father’s face, as if they were one.
“Are there no good grown-ups anywhere?” she cried.
She wished she had her brother beside her. But he was gone. Dead.
And it’s my fault, she thought, and suddenly she realized that she had thought this all along. It’s my fault. We shouldn’t have run away from home. We shouldn’t have eaten the walls of that house. And I shouldn’t have let Hansel go into the woods alone—not once, not twice, and certainly not three times! Her whole body throbbed. All the grown-ups want to kill me! I don’t blame them! What is wrong with me? Her little body shook. Why am I so bad?
“Oh, don’t be stupid,” said a voice.
Gretel looked up with a start.
She was alone in the room. So who had said that? She looked under the door. The widow had gone away. She turned and faced the window.
There, sitting on the window frame, was a black raven. She gazed at it curiously.
He tapped his black beak against the glass. And then he said, “Do you mind if we come in?”
Gretel wiped her face and advanced to the window. “We?”
“Yes, my brothers and I.”
Gretel opened the window and in fluttered three ravens, as black as could be.
“You shouldn’t tell her she’s stupid,” said the second raven to the first. “It isn’t polite.”
“Even if it is true,” said the third.
The first raven cleared his throat. “We happened to be flying by, dear girl, when we noticed that you were upset. We felt bad.”
“Personally responsible,” added the second.
“Accidentally complicit,” said the third.
Gretel, who had had a very long day already, plopped down on her bed and stared.
“You see,” the first raven continued, “all the misfortune that you and your poor brother have experienced is really the result of a ... well, I guess you’d say, an indiscreet conversation that the three of us had.” He cocked his head apologetically.
Gretel continued to stare.
“Indiscreet,” the second whispered.
“What about it?” the first replied.
The third rolled h
is eyes. “Indiscreet, dear girl, means we shouldn’t have been talking about what we were talking about where we were talking about it.”
“Oh, that was helpful,” said the second. And then, “Why don’t we just explain it to her?”
And so, once the three ravens had settled their feathers and found comfortable perches on the windowsill, they told Gretel the whole story, from the very beginning. They told her about her grandfather’s dying wish, and how her father had found the portrait anyway, and then how he had stolen her mother ...
“He did what?” Gretel interrupted.
“Moving right along,” said the second raven.
Then they told her about their indiscreet conversation, and how her father’s servant, Faithful Johannes, had heard it and used it to save her parents’ lives.
“You see,” the first raven continued, “any wedding between your parents was destined to be cursed.”
“The three of us know all about destiny,” interrupted the second raven.
“It’s sort of what we do,” said the third.
“They were destined to be cursed,” the first began, “though what they did to you children ...”
“That goes a little beyond the scope of the curse, I’d say,” finished the second.
The third raven added quickly, “But it certainly isn’t your fault.”
“It’s probably ours,” said the first magnanimously. “Had we kept our black beaks shut, none of this would have happened.”
Gretel scrunched up her face. “Because my parents would have died before Hansel and I were born?”
“Exactly!”
“That doesn’t seem much better,” Gretel pointed out.
“Hmm,” said the first. “I guess that’s right.”
“No,” Gretel said. “It’s my fault. If Hansel and I hadn’t run away from home, he wouldn’t be dead. And we never would have killed the baker woman, and the father never would have wished his sons into swallows, and—”
The third raven interrupted her. “Do you remember why you ran away, Gretel?”
She looked into his black eyes and nodded.
He said, “Seems like a pretty good reason to me.”
Gretel stared past the three ravens and out the window, at the red and orange leaves that balanced on the ends of branches like tears. After a while, the third raven said, “Well, we really should be going. More flying around to be done, letting people’s fates out of the bag.”
“Anything else we can answer for you before we go?” said the second raven.
“It really isn’t my fault,” Gretel said.
“We are unable to lie,” the first raven replied. “So it must not be.” And with that, the three ravens beat their black wings against the air and flew out the open window.
Gretel fell back on her bed.
It wasn’t her fault.
She had the sudden impulse to take all of the sadness that had been crushing her and hurl it away—to hurl it at those who had caused it in the first place—to make them feel the pain, and know it, and understand it. And understand her.
Slowly, she reached into her pocket and let her hand close around something that was small and cool and turning blue.
The next day, the village was all merriment. Tables were set all about with bread and beer and cider, as well as harvest gourds and autumn leaves and other signs of the festive season. Neighbors spoke cheerily about the cool, clear weather, and little clouds of steam puffed from their mouths. Smoke rose from chimneys, and the smell of roasting sausage, topped with apples, wafted over the gathering.
The handsome young man stood with the other men, drinking beer from a great mug and laughing about this and that. Children ran to and fro. Soon the sausages were ready, and heaping platters were brought to the tables. Gretel quietly emerged from the old woman’s house, her hands buried deep in the pocket of her dress.
Everyone went to their seats at the tables, and the master of the town stood and delivered a few fine words. A couple of the older men did as well. Then the handsome young man stood up, raised his glass to the women, and said they were as beautiful as any women in all the world. All the men cheered heartily, and the women blushed and smiled.
And then, to everyone’s surprise, Gretel stood up. “Can I say something?” she asked timidly. Even standing, she was smaller than most of the sitting adults.
“Get up on the chair, honey,” one of the villagers told her. So she stood on her chair.
“I want to tell you—” she began. But then she stopped. She looked at the handsome young man. He was smiling at her. But then she glanced down at his hands—hands that could tear a girl’s soul from its body—“a dream,” Gretel said. “Just a dream that I had.”
The villagers murmured with approval. Once upon a time, you see, dreams were thought to possess hidden truth.
“I dreamed that I went into the Schwarzwald,” she said. “But as I walked through it, and the rain hit my face, and the roots tripped my feet, I heard the trees whisper, Go home, little girl, go home; to a murderer’s house you’ve come.”
The villagers started with dismay, and the young man was staring at Gretel with a very strange expression on his face. Gretel glanced at his powerful, magical hands, and said hastily, “It was only a dream.
“I came to a house in a clearing. And white birds hung in cages from the eaves. And they chanted, all together: Go home, little girl, go home; to a murderer’s house you’ve come. But I went inside the house and followed a light into the cellar, where I found an old woman wearing a chain of iron. She told me to flee, and that the man who lived there was her son, and a warlock—and a murderer.”
The young man suddenly leaped to his feet. All the villagers stared at him. Sheepishly, he sat back down.
“It was just a dream,” Gretel said cautiously. “Just a dream.
“Then the man came home. And,” she added quietly, “he looked just like you.” And Gretel pointed to the handsome young man—who was staring intently at her and had begun chewing on his fingernails like a madman.
“He had a girl and he was dragging her by the hair. He threw her onto a table and pulled a pure white dove from her mouth and put it in a cage. It was only a dream. And then he took an ax and he chopped the girl to bits. It was only a dream. And he licked the blood off his fingers and threw the bits of the girl into a boiling cauldron. It was only a dream!” The villagers were now talking to one another excitedly, pointing first at her and then at the young man.
“Except one piece didn’t go in the cauldron,” she went on. “The girl’s finger had a golden ring, with rubies red as rubies can be. He threw the finger in a rage, and it tumbled through the air and fell right in my lap.” She paused. The villagers were now silent, waiting for the conclusion of Gretel’s tale. The handsome young man’s shoulders were rising and falling, rising and falling, and his eyes were wild. Gretel, standing on the chair, put her hand into her pocket and drew it out again. “And here it is!” she said. She held the blueing finger, with the ring still on it, in her hand.
The young man leaped from his chair and began to chant the words of a dark curse, but before he could finish someone came up behind him and knocked him unconscious with a tray of sausages. Then the oil was prepared, and a villager was sent to find the poisonous snakes.
Because the best way to kill a warlock is to cook him with poisonous snakes in a cauldron of boiling oil.
Obviously.
But before the handsome young man could be thrown into the cauldron, Gretel went up to his unconscious body and slipped her slender hand into one of his pockets. She withdrew the tattered, bloodstained piece of twine. She put it in her own pocket, and then nodded to the men of the village, who hoisted up his limp body and threw it into the hissing vat of oil and snakes.
As the evil young man’s life came to an end, somewhere deep in the forest a magic shackle was broken, and an old woman was set free. And around the eaves of a dark house, a hundred doves burst forth from their c
ages and fell to the ground, young women again.
Gretel returned to the feasting table with all the other villagers. They comforted her and marveled at her courage. At the end of the meal she approached the widow and, after apologizing for being so willful and disobedient, told her that she would soon be leaving.
“Where do you plan to go?” the widow asked.
Gretel thought about it. At last, she said, “On.”
There, that one didn’t end so badly. Yes, it was pretty gory in the middle, but Gretel didn’t lose any body parts, and nobody died—at least, nobody we really liked.
In fact, things start getting better right here. So if you’re still feeling sad—about Hansel or anything else—don’t stop now. In fact, if you’re still feeling sad, now’s the time to keep going.
(On the other hand, if you’re feeling sick to your stomach because of all the blood, now’s a great time to stop.)
The Three Golden Hairs
Once upon a time, a duke returned home from a hunt in a magnificent wood.
In his great hall the lords and ladies of his manor awaited him. Every year the duke brought back a great bounty from his hunt, and the lords and ladies would ooh and ahh, and then be treated to a feast.
There was much excitement when the duke finally entered the hall. The lords and ladies cheered, and he bowed and waved and shook hands all around. Trumpets were sounded, and the huntsmen began to file in.
But the first huntsman carried nothing. The lords and ladies wondered at this—but the duke smiled serenely. The second huntsman carried nothing. Still the duke smiled. The third, nothing. The fourth, nothing. The lords and ladies began to wonder if this was some kind of joke. One lord even ventured to laugh, but the duke turned an eye of such withering scorn on him that the laughter immediately ceased, and the laughing lord later sold all of his belongings and moved to a neighboring kingdom.