A Tale Dark and Grimm

The woods became madness. Screams rose and died. People ran in all directions. “Retreat!” Hansel shouted. “Retreat!”

“It’s no good,” Gretel said to him. “We’ve got to go.”

“Where?” Hansel asked.

“To the dragon.”

“What?”

“To lure it away. Run out ahead and make it chase us.”

“It’ll kill us,” Hansel said.

Gretel set her mouth. “It’s us or them.”

Hansel took a deep breath. He nodded at Gretel. Then he stood up and made his way toward the sounds of death.

As he came near, he saw a man and a woman hiding behind a tree. The dragon was on the other side, its head moving this way and that, trying to see where they had gone. They had no weapons—they were shaking so badly they’d dropped them at their feet. Suddenly the dragon darted to one side of the tree. They froze.

Hansel cried out. The dragon turned in time to see Hansel scoop up a fallen spear and with one motion launch it the dragon’s way. It glanced harmlessly off the dragon’s black, snakelike scales. Hansel stopped. He stared.

Oh, he thought. And then he thought, That’s bad.

Hansel spun to his left into the woods. The dragon followed.

“Get away!” Gretel bellowed at the remaining troops. “Get away!” And they did. They ran. On the ground were many bodies. But many more were now escaping through the dark underbrush.

The dragon was coming back. Gretel could hear it, feel it through the vibrations of the ground. She scrambled to hide. The dragon passed her, swift as water, its serpentine head swaying from side to side as it moved. From its mouth dripped blood. Suddenly, Gretel wondered what had happened to Hansel.

The dragon headed straight for the gold at the center of the clearing. Briefly, Gretel considered going to look for Hansel. But instead, making certain she wasn’t seen or heard, Gretel followed the dragon’s path. She crouched behind a thick thornbush at the clearing’s edge. An ax lay not ten feet from her, out in the open. Gretel left it where it was.

The dragon was standing beside the cart of apples. It turned its head this way and that, and then began to pace, its golden eyes glaring at the glowing mountain.

Now the plan was working, Gretel realized, incredulous. The dragon couldn’t figure out how to take all the apples at once. It was confused. Frustrated. If only she still had an army to attack it.

After a few minutes, the dragon seemed to notice the other cart. It approached it and tore at the canvas with its teeth, revealing the barrels. It picked up one of the barrels with its massive jaws. It crushed it. Wine poured out—some down its throat, most onto the ground. The dragon spit out the staves of the broken barrel, shook itself, and resettled its wings on its back. It stood a moment, considering the stack of barrels. Then it took another in its mouth and drank it down just as it had the first one—but this time catching more of the wine in its throat.

It seemed to like it.

It did it again. And again. And again.

Gretel could not believe what she was seeing.

After the dragon had drunk six barrels of wine, it tried to rise into the air. But now its flight was wobbly and uncertain. The dragon is drunk, Gretel said to herself. She almost laughed.

The dragon came back to the ground and drank down four more barrels of wine. Soon it was teetering back and forth, even when it walked. It came up to the cart with the golden apples, stuck its head underneath, and tried to lift it.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Gretel leaped from the thornbush and began to sprint toward the dragon. She could see its black leg, stuck out behind it, straining against the weight of the gold. She could see a thick pulsing vein running over the dragon’s backward-bending knee joint. Gretel stooped for the ax without breaking her stride.

She covered the distance between the ax and the dragon quickly. She lifted the weapon high and brought it down.

The dragon screamed. It was a scream like nothing Gretel had ever heard before. She thought a hundred woodland creatures must all be dying at once—that was the sound. It pierced Gretel’s head like a spear.

The dragon turned. It saw the little, golden-haired girl, holding an ax, frozen by the sound of its scream. It watched, shocked, drunken, disbelieving, as the little girl dropped the ax and sprinted off toward the woods. Behind her, on the ground, was an ax, covered in black dragon-blood. And two dragon toes.

The dragon shook itself, bellowed once, and followed, limping, after her.

Gretel heard the dragon coming. It sounded clumsy. Heavy. The wine, she thought. And the toes, of course. She cursed herself for missing the vein. She had never wielded an ax before.

Gretel wove through the trees, trying to keep ahead of it. Where was Hansel? What had happened to him? She could hear the dragon, wine-sodden and wounded as he was, catching up to her. Just get away from it, she thought. Get free of it. So I can find Hansel, and we can get out of here.

But how to get free of it? She thought of diving into a bush and letting the dragon run past. But it wouldn’t run past. It would see her, and kill her. She thought of finding a narrow cave and crawling into it. Good idea, but where would she find a cave? And then, up ahead, she saw a tree. It was an enormous pine, easily the tallest tree in this part of the forest. Without thinking, without any plan at all, she made for it.

The pine’s bristly branches started low to the ground and ran densely up the trunk. As soon as she arrived at its base, Gretel leaped onto the lowest ones and began to climb. She climbed around to the far side of the trunk, in the hope that the dragon might not see her.

When, a moment later, the dragon, drunk and limping, arrived at the tree’s base, it was indeed confused. It seemed to know she had gotten up in the tree. But she was forty feet up by the time it realized she was on the other side of the trunk.

It set off after her. It tried to use its wings, but they would catch on the branches of the surrounding trees. It tried to climb, but the branches were too thin, and they went cracking and tumbling to the ground when it put its weight on them. So the dragon ended up digging its rough talons into the soft wood and ascending the trunk in leaps, smashing branches as it went.

The pine needles brushed at Gretel’s face as she climbed, and the sticky sap of the tree stuck to her palms. Her heart was pounding from fatigue and fear. But there was no chance to rest. The dragon was gaining. Its leaps up the trunk gained it ten feet or more, while its occasional slides back down—stripping whatever branches it hadn’t smashed on the way up—gained her only a few seconds at most. Her hand reached for the next branch and she pulled herself up. Her feet gained a secure hold and pushed her up to the next one. Go, she told herself. Go. And then she thought, Where? She looked up, hoping that perhaps the top of the tree would be too thin for the dragon to follow her onto. Perhaps it was. But it was also far above the other trees around it. Up there, the dragon could use its wings. Just climb, she told herself. Just climb. She reached up and grabbed onto the next branch.

“Wha—well, excuse us!” a voice said.

Gretel lost her grip and nearly fell out of the tree.

“Well, I never!” said the voice. “Some people!”

Gretel looked up. There was a thick mess of twigs and needles on the branch above her head.

“Well,” said another voice, “see who it is!”

And then a black head, with black eyes and a black beak, peered over the branch above her.

“Well, I’ll be!” said the first raven. “If it isn’t Gretel!”

“No! Here?” said the second.

“Tell her to be more considerate of a raven’s nest!” said the third. “Has she no manners? Was she raised by apes?”

“I think she was raised by a king and queen,” said the second.