The bearded man squeezed each of their shoulders with a meaty hand. “You see? This was just the first battle. We’ll get it next time. And now that we know we can beat it, you’ll have a thousand more recruits. Ten thousand more!”
“And it will be a thousand times smarter!” the young man shouted from the corner. “And ten thousand times angrier! How many more people will die for this ... this childishness? And now it will be worse than before. It will take revenge on all of us. On everyone.”
There were scattered murmurs of agreement from around the tavern.
“What have we done?” he moaned.
Gretel’s face was scorching. Hansel’s lips were pressed together so hard they had turned white.
“There are dead in the forest,” Hansel said at last.
“Yes,” said the veteran. “We’ll tend to them. You go home now.”
The children turned and walked out of the tavern. As the door closed behind them, something hit it and clattered to the floor.
They walked back to the castle as the eastern horizon was just beginning to change from black to deep, deep blue. The moon had set. The air was cold and moist. After a while Gretel said, “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
“So?” Hansel answered sullenly. “It did.”
“But how?” Gretel replied, shaking her head. “It must have known somehow.”
“Known what? What knew?”
“The dragon.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It knew the plan. It saw the apples, and then it came through the woods to take us from behind.”
“It didn’t know,” Hansel scoffed. He felt cold. He rubbed his arms up and down.
“It did. About everything except the wine.” Gretel kicked the road. “Who knew our plan?”
“It didn’t know,” Hansel repeated. “Maybe it figured out the apples were a trap.” His stomach twisted. “It was a stupid, childish plan.”
“No,” Gretel said. “No. It knew.”
At the palace, the queen rushed up to them and took them in her arms. “Oh, my dears! You’re safe! Oh, thank God you’re safe!”
They told her what happened, and her face grew long and serious. “It isn’t so bad. You wounded it. No one has ever done that before.”
The children nodded.
“You did a very brave thing. Very brave.” And she pulled them to her. When she released them, Hansel said, “Where’s Father?”
“He locked himself in his room while you were gone,” the queen replied. “He was so scared for you both that he was shaking. He said he tried to shave, but he cut himself. Quite seriously, it seems.
“Will he be okay?” Gretel asked.
“I’ll be fine.” Their father’s voice echoed from across the hall. He limped toward them, a bandage wrapped around his head. He took them in his arms. “Foolish of me, shaving at a time like this. It calms me down when the barber does it.... But forget about your foolish father. You’re all right?” He saw the dragon-blood on Gretel. “What happened to you? What is that stuff?”
So they all went and sat before the fire, and Hansel and Gretel told him about it, too. “You were very brave,” he said when they’d finished. “And you nearly did a very great thing. You nearly saved this kingdom from the dragon.”
“Nearly.” Hansel and Gretel repeated the word together, and it stuck in their throats like a lump. Each saw, in their minds, the dead strewn across the forest floor.
At last, the king and queen took the children to bed, with Hansel helping his limping father up the stairs. Once in bed, their father kissed them both, and then their mother did, and then they closed the door and went away.
When their footsteps no longer sounded in the hall, Gretel sat up and opened the window curtains. The sun was beginning to come up. She opened the window and let the cool morning breeze blow in. She shook her head to get the terrible images of the night out of her mind. And the weight, the old weight, had returned.
“It knew,” she said. “It knew our plan.”
Hansel sat up. He felt the weight, too. Heavier than ever. As if every person in his family were standing on his chest. And every person in the Kingdom of Grimm on top of that. “Come off it,” he said irritably. “It saw us, or heard us, or something. No one knew the plan until we were deep in the forest. And none of the soldiers ran off.”
“Mother and Father knew it.”
“Oh, please,” Hansel said. “Mother and Father told the dragon?”
Gretel admitted that sounded ridiculous.
She sat, looking out the window. The kingdom spread out before her under the rising sun. Maybe the dragon had seen the golden apples and figured it out. It had been an obvious trap. A stupid trap. A childish trap.
But then ...
“Why did Father have a bandage around his head?” Gretel asked suddenly.
“You heard. He cut himself.”
Gretel nodded. After a moment, she said, “Why was he limping?”
“Because—” Hansel said, and then stopped.
“Was he shaving his toes?”
“Wait ... I don’t understand,” said Hansel.
Gretel stood up. “Father,” she said.
“What about him?” Hansel asked, staring.
“Father is the dragon.”
“What?”
“When did the dragon first appear?” Gretel said. “When Father was away, looking for us. When did it kill the kingdom’s army? When Father wasn’t leading the army. Who knew of our plan? Mother and Father.”
“But the wine—you said the dragon didn’t know what was in those barrels.”
Gretel paused, but then she replied, “When did we decide to bring the wine?”
“After we told them—”
“After we told them. And now he has a bandage on his head, and he’s limping.”
“Not.”
“It’s him.”
“He’s our
“It doesn’t matter,” Gretel said. She went to the clothes she had worn for the battle, lying in a bloody pile on the floor, and drew from her belt the small dagger. She walked over to the door to the hall and opened it. She turned to Hansel. “I am going to kill the dragon.”
Gretel walked slowly down the stairs and through the hall to their parents’ room. She opened the door. The king stood in his nightclothes beside the bed. His foot was thickly bandaged, and blood was seeping through the wrappings.
“Where’s Mother?” Gretel asked.
The king turned, surprised. “I thought you would be sleeping,” he said. “She’s in the chapel. Why?” And then, “Gretel, why do you have that dagger? What’s wrong?”
“You are the dragon,” she said.
“What?”
“You are the dragon!” she shouted. She took a step toward him. He took a step back. She stepped toward him again. Then she charged.
“Gretel!” he cried as she thrust the dagger at his chest. He stepped to the side and grabbed her arms.
