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,
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:
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 cages 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.
Finally, there were two score huntsmen in the great hall, and not one of them carried a dead animal of any kind.
The duke turned to his audience. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he said—and he meant this quite literally—“I present to you the worst hunt—and the best—that I have ever had. The fewest creatures! But the rarest prize!”
In came two more huntsmen. Between them they carried a pole. Hanging from that pole was the strangest, most grotesque beast that anyone had ever laid eyes on—it looked like something halfway between a wolf and a man, a bear and a boy.
Ladies screamed. Lords cried aloud. A servant fainted dead away.
The huntsmen cut the dead creature down from its pole. Two more huntsmen approached it with gleaming knives as the duke looked on proudly. They would take off the beast’s hide and head and mount both on the duke’s wall.
