muttered. “We have all we need here. Remember what the tree said.” Hansel suddenly remembered once more, and remorse swept over him.
That night, he tossed and turned. He was furious at himself. Hadn’t she told him? Hadn’t they both told him? Don’t take more than you need. He and Gretel had eaten as much of the fawn as they could that night, and it looked as if they hadn’t even touched it. Now the carcass lay outside on the grass attracting flies, its stench wafting over their beautiful clearing. As Hansel stared at it, he vowed to be his own master, and not let his impulses carry him away again.
The next day, before he went out to find fruit, Gretel made him swear on his very life that he would kill nothing else. He swore it, and hugged her and kissed her for being so good and so forgiving, and he promised he would do nothing violent ever again as long as they remained in this forest. She kissed him on his forehead, as if he were much younger than she, and sent him off for the nuts and fruit.
He spent the whole day basking in the lovely green light of the leaves, picking berries and storing them in his tattered shirt, which he had tied around his waist like an apron. He felt the peacefulness and calm of the forest, and he wondered why he hadn’t always been able to feel it, why he had been overcome the last two days with that uncontrollable animal lust.
And then he saw a white dove perching on a nearby branch. Something tingled in his legs and arms. “Don’t,” he told himself. “It’s wrong.” He started to shake. “Go home. Turn away and go home.” But he found himself creeping in the direction of the dove. The berries fell to the ground.
As the sun set that evening, he walked back into the clearing, exhausted but as happy as a sated wolf. Blood covered his arms and his face, and he carried in his hands the broken, eviscerated carcass of the white dove. Gretel screamed when she saw him. “What have you done!” she cried. “Hansel, what’s wrong with you?” Hansel stopped. Then he looked down at the dead bird. He noticed that his arms were covered in blood, and his shirt was stained with a mix of blood and berry juice. He wondered where the berries were. Gretel began to cry. Hansel, confused and upset, placed the dead dove at her feet. She backed away from it, covering her face. He looked at her, and felt awful. But not as awful as he had felt the night before. He turned and walked back into the woods.
Gretel saw Hansel only infrequently after that. Occasionally, as she was out collecting berries, she saw him running through the forest after some animal or other. At first he had stopped to speak with her—just a few words each time. But soon she noticed that words were not coming as easily to him as they once had, and he was ever and always looking off over his shoulder, or following the flight of birds with jerky movements of his head. Soon he wasn’t stopping to speak with her at all.
She found animal carcasses littered all over the forest. Some were half-eaten, others barely touched. Once, she found a wild boar, larger than Hansel, with its neck broken. She wondered how Hansel had the strength to do such a thing. She wondered how he had the heart to do it.
She saw him only in flashes now. A blur of skin through the trees. The scream of a dying animal, and then a howl of delight. She thought he looked different. He was growing hair on his face, on his back.
She was frightened to be in the wood by herself, particularly at night. She heard howling—howling that she hadn’t heard when they’d first come to the Lebenwald. She wondered if it was Hansel.
She stayed closer and closer to the hut for fear of seeing him. Then, one day, he wandered into the clearing. Gretel stared. He walked bent now. He had hair all over his body—his arms, his back, his face, his chest. Wordlessly, she offered him a handful of berries and nuts. He snarled at her. She dropped them and hurried into the hut. He growled and stalked around the clearing for a few minutes. Gretel wondered if he would kill her. But he left.
There were fewer animals in the forest these days. Gretel heard no birds in song. She saw no small rodents darting in and out of the underbrush. No deer nosed the stands of fern.
And then, early one morning, a hunting party—a duke and his household—entered the wood. They blew their horns and their hounds bayed and barked. Gretel feared for herself. But more than that, she feared for Hansel. She crept into the hut and stayed there all day, hoping he would come to her.
The dogs and huntsmen scoured the forest for some sign of animal life. To their surprise, they found none. All day they searched, and all day they found nothing. The duke became angry and impatient. And then, at dusk, he saw a strange, hairy, hunched creature peering out from behind a large tree. “There!” he bellowed, and instantly the dogs were in pursuit.
Hansel fled through the wood, thrilling at the terror of the chase. The dogs bayed at his heels; the horns sounded all around him. He dodged this way and that, panting, growling, laughing, howling. What fun! he thought.
At last, he came to the edge of a brook. Across the way, the duke sat astride his horse, his bowstring pulled tight, an arrow nocked and aimed at Hansel. The animal-boy stared curiously at the sweating, red-faced man holding the strange bent stick. Then there was a snap and a hiss like a snake. An arrow flew through the air—a straight, simple harbinger of death. Hansel watched it all the way to his chest, to exactly where his heart was. It buried itself there. He felt a searing bolt of pain and fell to the forest floor.
The huntsmen tied the strange, dead animal to a pole and carried him triumphantly back to the duke’s manor.
The next morning, Gretel ran through the wood looking for her brother. For a long time she found nothing but broken branches and paw prints. Then, at last, she came to the brook and saw the earth stained a copper red, and the rocks at the water’s edge spattered with blood.
She ran to the tree with the face in it. “My brother has been killed!” she cried. “He has been killed!” But the tree would not speak to her. Gretel fell to the ground and sobbed and sobbed. She was alone, in a great forest, in a dark tale. Her father had tried to kill her. She’d been nearly eaten by the baker woman, and had cut off her own finger. And now her brother, Hansel, was dead.
She would not stay in that forest, not now. “I need to go back to people,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “To grown-ups.”
As she left the Wood of Life, she saw a bird alighting in a tree nearby. Soon she could hear the sound of birdsong again. But it only made it hurt more. They only came back, she knew, because Hansel was dead.
We’re at one of those places in the story—and they happen in nearly all stories, of any kind—when things seem to be really, really bad. When it feels like, if things get much worse, you won’t be able to listen anymore.
When I was little, I used to call this part “the sad part.” I knew it would happen in every story, and I knew it always ended eventually, and I would repeat, “This is the sad part this is the sad part” over and over until it was done.
And so, as I was piecing these stories together, I came to this part. And I realized that this was “the sad part.” I repeated this to myself again and again, to try to make it not feel so terrible.
But it didn’t help. It never does. It still hurts when a character you love dies, and another is left all alone in the world.
Nevertheless, I will tell you, as I always tell myself, that things will get better. Much, much better. I promise.
