A Tale Dark and Grimm

The ravens? In this very tree? Gretel could barely believe it. In fact, had it not been for all the strange, incredible things that had happened to her already, perhaps she wouldn’t have. But after eating a house, and talking to the stars, and all the rest of it—well, she believed it just fine.

“Please!” she said. “Help me!”

The sound of tearing wood came from below. She looked down. The dragon had just slid halfway down the trunk again. “Please! There’s a dragon after me!”

“Help you?” said the third raven. “After what you’ve done to our nest?”

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” said the second raven.

“You’re not the one who’s going to fix it, though, are you?” replied the third testily.

“I have my responsibilities, too. When food is scarce, and my job gets difficult, do I complain?” said the second raven.

“Yes,” the other two ravens answered at once.

Below, the dragon regained his footing and was climbing again.

“Please!” Gretel cried.

“We can’t help you,” said the first.

“Yes,” said the second. “It’s not what we do.”

Gretel looked down. The dragon was gaining quickly. She hadn’t time to plead. “Then move!” she shouted, and clambered up onto their branch, just barely avoiding crushing their nest with her foot.

“Careful there!” the third raven cawed.

Gretel pushed past their branch, straining to keep ahead of the dragon. The first raven beat his wings beside her. “I’m sorry for my companion’s rudeness,” he said. “We understand the gravity of your situation.” He looked down. “No pun intended, of course.”

Gretel didn’t know what he was talking about. “Are you going to help me or not?” she cried.

“I’m afraid we can’t,” the raven said. “You see, we can only tell the future. We can’t attempt to change it. It wouldn’t do any good, you see? It’s the future.”

There was an enormous crack from below, followed by terrible squawking. Gretel hurried her pace, but up ahead, the branches were thinning out to almost nothing. She was just about out of branches to climb to. And at any moment, the dragon would be able to fly. Just as Gretel realized there was nowhere else for her to go, around her head there was a frantic beating of wings and a very angry raven.

“Did you see that? Did you? Our nest! Gone! Crushed! Unbelievable! The height of inconsideration!”

The second raven fluttered up beside the third. “Inconsiderateness, I think, is the word.”

“Either one is acceptable,” said the first judiciously.

“I don’t care about the stupid word!” the third raven cried. “I care about our nest!”

Suddenly, Gretel was nearly blown off the tree by a swift burst of air. She turned. The dragon was hovering beside her, beating its translucent wings, staring at her with its terrible golden eyes. The dragon’s mouth was no more than six feet away. He opened it.

“Kill!” the third raven shrieked, and in one of the more comical acts of heroism Gretel had ever seen, the raven dove at the dragon’s head. The dragon snapped at it, and the raven turned and headed back for the tree. “Retreat!” he cawed. “Temporary retreat!”

Now, the third raven was not afraid of dying. As the ravens have already implied, there are some things that they do, and some things they do not do. Dying is of the latter group.

Of course, getting trapped in the stomach of a dragon is, even for a creature that cannot die, an indescribably unpleasant experience.

Though not quite as unpleasant, I would imagine, as getting out again.

The dragon flew closer to Gretel. It snapped at her feet. Gretel could smell its hot horrible breath; see the blood and the foam mingling between its long, sharp teeth; hear the beating of its enormous heart out of time with the beat of its enormous wings. It lunged at her, not only with its head, but with its entire body. It knocked the branch she was standing on clear off the tree. She fell and grabbed hold of the only thing she could.

The dragon’s neck.

The dragon reared backward. Perhaps if it had had its full wits about it, it might have managed to get her off its back. But as it was drunk, it circled in the air and snapped at its own shoulders, but could not manage to get her off.

“Attagirl!” cried the first raven.

“Yeehaw!” yelled the second.

“Incoming!” crowed the third, and it dove for the dragon’s eyes. The dragon twisted away from the attack and beat its huge wings three or four times to rise above the tree. The ravens followed.

Up, up through the black, starry night they rose. Gretel held on tightly to the dragon’s supple, scaly skin as its muscles rippled beneath her. Occasionally the dragon would twist to try to snap at her, but she was too close to its head. She worried that it might use its claws to get at her, as a dog gets at its fleas. But a dragon is not a dog, and that hadn’t seemed to occur to it yet.

From time to time the ravens would reappear beside Gretel and make diving attacks at the dragon’s eyes.

“Avenge the nest!” cried the third raven.

“A bird’s nest is his castle!” cried the second, finally getting into it.

“Habeas corpus!” cried the first, somewhat tangentiallly.

So the dragon kept rising. The air became cold around Gretel’s hands. Her knuckles turned blue. Soon, she and the dragon were higher than the ravens could fly. But the dragon didn’t seem to mind. Its transparent wings took them higher and higher and higher still, until Gretel had to breathe hard to get any air at all, and her head began to spin. Still the dragon climbed.

And then Gretel heard a voice. It was low. And soft. And creepy. It said, “Fee-fie-foe-fesh, I think I smell child-flesh!”

Gretel looked up. There—very, very close—was the moon. His eyes were hard and glistening, like diamonds. His white lips were parted around his sharp, ivory teeth. He was watching Gretel as the dragon rose.

“Oh boy,” Gretel muttered.

Snap! The cold breath of the moon froze the sweat on Gretel’s neck. The dragon felt it, too, and turned. The moon snapped again. The dragon twisted. The moon wanted nothing to do with the dragon. Not that the moon is afraid of dragons. The moon is not afraid of anything, except the sun, and only then because the sun calls him names and he does not appreciate that. Still, the moon does not generally bother dragons. Of course, dragons do not often have children on their backs. And the moon rarely passes up an opportunity to taste the succulent, tender meat of a child.

The dragon twisted, and the moon snapped his teeth.

Twist!

Snap!

Twist!

Snap!

Twist!

Snap!

Gretel fumbled at her belt. She wanted to be eaten by the moon even less than by the dragon. She took out her little dagger. As the dragon twisted and the moon prepared to snap again, she plunged the dagger into the dragon’s neck with all her might.

It did not pierce the scales, but the dragon turned toward her. And toward the moon.

It screamed.