She began to weep, and her tears fell into the shimmering lake. When they landed, they shook the reflection of the stars on the water, waking them from their glittering sleep.
“Whose tears have woken us?” the stars asked. At first Hansel and Gretel were scared. Did stars eat children, too? But the shining stars seemed far nicer than the blistering sun or the creepy moon. So Gretel told the stars all her troubles.
“We’ve seen the seven swallows flying,” the stars said. “They live in the Crystal Mountain. You can save them, but it will take great courage and sacrifice. The mountain is months of hard travel from here. If you decide to go, take this chicken bone with you. It will open the door to the Crystal Mountain and let the seven swallows out.” Just then, the children noticed a chicken bone beneath the surface of the water, at the edge of the pool.
Hansel did not want to go. “Months?” he bleated.
But Gretel said, “Please, Hansel!” And she grabbed his arm and held it tight. At first Hansel resisted, but once he saw that his sister would not change her mind (and that he was losing feeling in his arm), he reluctantly agreed to go.
So Gretel put the chicken bone in her pocket, and the two children journeyed for a month and a day, and then another, and then another. They passed through dark forests and sunny fields, blazing deserts and muck-filled swamps. They grew much during their travels and became strong and lean from hardship and perseverance. Gretel carried her smoldering guilt with her always, but it was bearable so long as she knew she was doing something about it.
Finally they came to a massive mountain range and proceeded through the whipping snow and wind. The peaks of the mountains rose up white and sharp all around them, like the craggy teeth of some stone beast. Above, the sky was pale and clear but so, so cold. Their cheeks became red and chapped, their lips blue with frostbite. Hansel wanted to turn back. But Gretel would not let him.
After days and days of climbing, they finally arrived at the Crystal Mountain. It was tremendous—the most wonderful thing they had ever seen. Its crystalline crags rose straight up from the ice and snow that lay at its base. Kestrels and merlins twirled around its peaks, screaming to the skies.
“It’s beautiful,” Hansel murmured, and Gretel nodded wordlessly. “At last,” he said. “I couldn’t have gone any farther.”
Before them was an enormous door made of ice, with a keyhole just about the width of a finger—or a chicken bone. Gretel reached into her pocket.
She found nothing. She reached down farther, and farther, and farther, until she felt the cold alpine air swirling around one of her fingers. She had a hole in her pocket.
She had lost the bone.
They looked all around for it. “When did you last have it?” Hansel asked. “Last night? The night before?” But Gretel couldn’t remember, and she became more and more afraid. Soon she collapsed on the ground and sobbed until her little body nearly broke. “All these months,” she wept, “for nothing! What I’ve taken you through! And I’ve failed our new mother!” Hansel wrapped Gretel up in their traveling cloaks, and, as the night came on, lay down beside her to sleep.
But Gretel could not sleep. After many an hour her tears subsided. But still she could only think of her failure. Her guilt burned her like the scouring wind. And then the stars came out and reminded her of her failure again, and she felt so guilty, so foolish, so worthless that she could not even look at them.
Near daybreak, she looked down the long path that she and Hansel had trod. They would have to go back now, having accomplished nothing. Months and months more of suffering. And all the while, her guilt would throb inside of her.
Suddenly, Gretel ran to the door of the Crystal Mountain and began to bang with all her might, pleading to be let in. She banged so hard, in fact, that she cut herself on a shard of ice. She woke her sleeping brother, who offered to tend to her wound. But she refused. “I’d rather make it worse,” she said.
She picked up a sliver of ice, as sharp as a knife, and brought it down on her middle finger, severing it from her hand. Hansel stared, aghast. Gretel’s face was white and her voice trembled when she said, “Now I can make things right.” She was bleeding swiftly from where the finger used to be, but she stood and walked, resolute and grim, to the door of the mountain. She picked up the finger, slid it into the keyhole, and turned it.
The door opened.
I’m sorry. I wish I could have skipped this part. I really do. Gretel cutting off her own finger? And putting it into a keyhole?
If there was any question about the truth of this part of the story, I would have left it out altogether. Maybe she could have found another chicken bone. Or maybe, if she wished hard enough, and said some magic word, the door could have opened on its own.
But there’s no doubt about the finger. Besides, if I left it out you’d be wondering why Gretel had only nine fingers at the end of this book. Which reminds me of another question you’re probably asking.
Why did the door open?
I don’t know. A finger is enough like a chicken bone, I guess? Why a chicken bone, even, in the first place? Again, I don’t know. I have no idea why either a chicken bone or a finger should open the Crystal Mountain. (As for the location of the Crystal Mountain, that’s quite clear, and if you have any interest, I’d be happy to share it with you. Just write me.)
Now I’ve got to say something about cutting off one’s own finger, in case any young children are still reading or hearing this tale—which would be almost beyond belief, given all of the terrible things that have happened so far. Cutting off your finger, my young friends, is about the stupidest thing you could do. Don’t do it. You won’t be able to open
Why?
I’ve already told you. I don’t know.
Though it may have something to do with sacrifice.
As the door swung open, a storm of brown wings knocked the children back onto the snow, and seven swallows swirled out of the mountain. They settled on the ground, their black eyes studying Hansel and Gretel curiously.
“It didn’t work,” Gretel said incredulously, her bleeding hand really beginning to hurt.
Hansel watched the swallows walk mutely around on the white snow. He didn’t know what to say. They were still birds. He wanted to cry.
After a few moments of painful, confused silence, Gretel bent down beside the smallest swallow. “It’s time to go home, little bird,” she said. “Your mother misses you.” The swallow held her in its black gaze.
Hansel thought back to the boys’ father, and suddenly he remembered that tear hanging from the end of his nose. “Your father misses you, too,” he told them.
Suddenly the claws on the swallows’ feet softened, and their thin black legs began to lengthen and grow thick. Wings stretched outward, until fingers appeared at their ends, and then there were wrists, elbows, shoulders, and all the rest. The swallows’ black eyes paled, their feathers turned to hair and clothes, and finally, in a circle around Hansel and Gretel, stood the seven brothers.
“He misses us?” the littlest one asked. Hansel and Gretel, amazed by the transformation, nodded dumbly.
The boys began to rejoice, and, after a fit of hugging and laughing and cheering, the eldest turned to Hansel and Gretel and invited them into the Crystal Mountain, where they all drank warm milk and ate Black Forest cookies and talked late into the evening.
The next day, the brothers invited Hansel and Gretel to return home with them.
Hansel and Gretel said they wanted to talk it over. As soon as they were alone, Hansel said, “I don’t want to, Gretel. I don’t want to go with them.” Gretel nodded solemnly. Hansel sat down heavily on the ground. “I don’t want to live with a father that could do something like that to his children.” He thought back to all the other parents
