He turned back to Johannes. The old man’s eyes stared upward, but he was not seeing. Hansel waved a hand before his face, and then touched his neck. Johannes was dead.
HANSEL AND GRETEL and the Broken Kingdom
Once upon a time, a little girl stopped into a tavern that stood along the side of a road. She shook her traveling cloak as she stood in the doorway, and wet slush fell from it to the rough wooden floor. Outside, the last gasps of winter tossed the branches of the trees, and the road was a mess of water and ice.
Gretel sat down near the fireplace, and the tavern owner brought her warm milk in a pewter mug. She paid for it from the pouch the villagers had given her when she’d left them. Then she sat and stared gloomily at the logs in the hearth, their ashy gray outsides spreading, deadening the fire inside. She knew just what that felt like.
Months. Months on the road as the leaves had turned from red to brown and then had fallen. As the snow had begun to drift down from the gray sky—softly at first, and then heavily, piling onto the frozen road in front of Gretel in white, shifting mounds. She had wrapped her cloak around her tightly, but still the cold seeped into her skin, down to her bones. From time to time her feet would slide out from beneath her as she walked, sending her sprawling into a mound of fluffy snow—or worse, a deep puddle of icy water. She walked without knowing where she was going, and, more and more every day, without caring where she was going, either.
She had lived with parents and without. In homes and in the wild. Nothing was good.
Oh, yes. And Hansel was dead.
She laid her little golden head beside the pewter mug on the worn tavern table. The table was sticky from spilled drinks. Gretel didn’t care. She closed her eyes.
There was a bang, and the door of the inn swung open. Gretel raised her head. A man stood in the doorway. “It’s back!” he cried, his voice cracking with fear. “It’s back ...”
The people of the tavern all rose to their feet at once.
“Kindheitburg is gone!” the man wailed.
Cries rose up from all around. A few people pushed past the man out the tavern door and onto the slushy road, and began to run.
“What do you mean, gone?” someone demanded.
“It’s all gone,” the man in the doorway said. “The houses, Meister Beck’s, the bakery, Frau Hopper’s ...”
“The people?”
“I don’t know. But there were bodies.” He shook his head. “Many bodies.”
The room seemed to groan all together. Some people sat down. Others covered their faces.
“I was out on the hill above town,” the man said. “I saw it circling, circling over the village. I would have run back to warn them, but there wasn’t time. Besides, I had to stay with this one.” From behind the man’s leg, a tiny girl peeked out. She was hiding her face in her hands, but you could tell that her cheeks were stained with dirt and the lines of dried tears.
The man went on. “It circled three or four times. I could hear people shouting. Then it banked and began to descend. It swept in on Frau Hopper’s house—the big stone one. Tore half the building off. I saw somebody—maybe Frau Hopper—fly through the air about a hundred yards. And then crash to the ground.” The man shuddered.
“And after that?” someone asked.
The man shuddered again but said no more. An elderly man nearby guided him to a seat and brought him a drink. He put his head in his hands. A large, heavyset woman came from behind the bar and lifted the little girl up and cradled her and took her up some stairs in the back.
When the door was closed behind the woman with the little girl, the somber tavern suddenly erupted with anxious voices. Gretel tried to make sense of it, but they spoke all together, and too loudly. What were they talking about? What had done this thing? Then, gradually, she was able to pick up one word that was being repeated over and over in the din: dragon.
Gretel was standing near three people—two men, a tall one and a bearded one, and a woman whose back was toward Gretel.
“They say it’s human,” said the bearded man.
“Half-human,” replied the tall one. “And half-dragon, of ” course.
“My priest said it was once a man, but now he’s possessed by a dragon-spirit,” said the woman.
“It would have to be a devil-man, to be possessed by a dragon.”
“No,” the woman replied. “The priest said no. He said a sad soul. A desperate soul. That’s what he said.”
“Yes, I heard that, too,” the bearded man agreed.
The tall one rubbed his stubbly chin. “They killed that man over in Walden. They thought he was the dragon.”
“Guess he wasn’t, then.”
“Guess not. He had children, too.”
“They killed six brothers over in Hamelstatt,” said the woman.
“No, that’s a rumor.”
“It isn’t. My cousin saw it happen.”
“Terrible,” said the man with the beard.
“Terrible,” said the tall man.
“Terrible,” said the woman.
“Excuse me,” said Gretel. She was standing at the woman’s elbow. The woman didn’t seem to hear her. Gretel tugged at the woman’s sleeve. “Excuse me,” she said again. The woman turned around. Her face was pale, her hair hung loose and limp, and her light eyes were circled with black.
“What is it?” the woman said.
“What kingdom is this?” Gretel asked.
“Grimm,” the woman said. “The Kingdom of Grimm.”
“Or it was,” the bearded man said ruefully. “Now it’s the ruins of Grimm.”
“Where are you looking for?” said the tall man.
Gretel’s throat felt thick. “Do the king and queen have any children?” she asked quietly.
The woman looked at the men, and then back at her. “Did once. Twins. A boy and a girl. But they were lost, poor darlings. Disappeared in the night.”
“Just before the dragon came,” the man with the beard added.
“That’s right. Just before,” agreed the tall one. “But where are you trying to get to?”
Gretel hesitated. “I ... I’m not sure,” she replied. She thanked the group and walked to the door of the inn. Two men were standing beside it, arguing about the dragon. She stood behind them, half waiting, half thinking. At length, one noticed her, nudged the other, and they both turned to her.
“Can I help you, dearie?”
She bit her bottom lip. After a moment, she asked, “Which way is the castle?” She said it as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
The men pointed with blunt workmen’s fingers.
Gretel nodded silently and stepped out the door of the tavern onto the road. She looked in the direction they had pointed.
Even the road looked rough, painful.
She looked the other way.
Hansel traveled down the wet, icy roads, a solitary boy with charcoal eyes and curly black hair laden with flakes of snow. Behind him followed two obedient oxen, pulling two positively enormous carts.
The first cart was filled with golden apples—a thousand of them—round and firm and cool. Golden as in made of gold, of course. Not Golden Delicious. Golden Expensive. The second cart was filled with barrels of wine—barrels stacked so high that they tottered and creaked with every turning in the road. There was enough wine in those
