by Adam Gidwitz
Finally, one of the technicians called out, “Your majesty! We’re ready!”
Herzlos nodded and spurred his horse. “AT ARMS!” he cried. “AT ARMS!”
Three thousand soldiers lifted their weapons to their shoulders and advanced to their places before the wooden wall. Catapult cranks whined loudly as they were turned.
“JORINDA! JORINGEL!” Herzlos cried. “THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SURRENDER! THE CATAPULTS AWAIT!” He was answered with silence. So he leaned his head back and bellowed, “SURRENDER, OR DIE!”
* * *
Inside the walls, the children heard Herzlos. They had not prepared for battle. They still sat on the ground, half covered in blankets, listening to Jorinda and Joringel’s mother as she instructed her children to keep telling their story. A shiver of panic ran through the group.
But the twins’ mother stared steadily at her children. “Just tell us what happens next.”
“They’re about to assault the fortress, Mama,” said Joringel.
“We should be getting ready,” added Jorinda, anxiety beginning to lace her voice. “We should have been getting ready hours ago.”
“Tell us what happens next,” their mother insisted. Her voice was firm.
“Why?” Joringel asked. The children around the campfire shifted nervously, eyes darting between Jorinda and Joringel on the one hand and their mother on the other.
“Tell us,” their mother repeated. “Tell us.”
Jorinda rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she snapped. “Another great piece of advice from our brilliant mother.” Her mother winced.
Once upon a time, Jorinda began, her voice laced with angry sarcasm, a kingdom of children sat on the ground behind a great wall. They were scared.
Beyond the wall was arrayed the largest army the Kingdom of Grimm had ever seen. At its head rode a tyrant bent on murdering kids. As dawn rose, that army had prepared for battle, while inside the walls, the children sat and listened to stories.
Shivers of anxiety ricocheted among the children of Grimm.
The soldiers lined up before the wooden wall, and the catapults were readied for the assault. Technicians turned huge iron cranks to tighten the coils of rope. Soldiers dressed the enormous boulders with cloth, soaked in oil. King Herzlos cried to the walls—
“SURRENDER, JORINDA! THIS IS YOUR LAST FLIPPING CHANCE.” A shiver ran through the children. “JORINGEL! SURRENDER!”
Jorinda faltered for a moment. Her face grew longer, paler.
But Herzlos’s cry was not answered—because the children were telling a story. So he raised his arm. Three thousand soldiers stood at attention. Three catapults strained at their great, wooden triggers. Three great boulders, covered in oiled cloth, were lit with flame. They hissed in their wooden cups. Herzlos dropped his arm. Three triggers were pulled. Three flaming boulders rose on high arcs into the sky—
Children began to scream. Joringel looked at them, and then up. Hanging in the air, tracing a high arc against the clear blue sky, were three orbs of fire—like three new suns. They seemed to move very slowly, gaining altitude. The screams of the children sounded far away. As the great fiery orbs reached the top of their parabola, they stopped and hung, just for an instant, in midair. And then they began to fall. Slowly at first. Then faster. And faster. And suddenly the screams of the children were very loud, and there was a rushing, roaring sound from the fire as it tore the air, followed by a horrific crash.
One of the stones hit the wall from directly above, shearing off the top five feet of the strong wooden structure and burying itself at the wall’s base. Its flames licked the dry wood and lashed ropes. A second stone went sailing over the children’s heads. It landed with a crash on the very edge of the quarry, where the trees were thin. It scattered them like ninepins, and then went caroming over the side of the cliff. The third stone landed with a sickening thud at the edge of the group of children and came to rest on a small girl’s leg. She screamed horribly, and the children around her tried to yank her away from the stone and beat the flames from her clothes.
“Quickly,” Jorinda and Joringel’s mother said. “Keep telling the story! Now!”
Jorinda’s eyes were wide, staring at the horrible scene. She stammered. Joringel cut in.
Outside the wall, soldiers cheered.
As he said it, the children heard the sound rise up from beyond the wall.
Boulders were fetched from the oxcarts that stood waiting and were heaved onto the great wooden spoons. Herzlos shouted at his troops, “Don’t attack until my word! Wait until the catapults have done their job!”
Jorinda went on:
The ropes coiled back around the catapults’ crankshafts. The oiled cloth on the stones was set aflame. Herzlos raised his arm. He dropped it. Three burning boulders traced their high, silent arc into the air, and—
A horrible tearing sound ripped through the wood. The children saw the top of their great wall shorn clear off in three different places. The boulders went careening into the clearing. Children leaped to their feet and dove out of the way.
“Now what?” their mother cried. “What happens now?” Children were screaming and huddling together. Suddenly, the fire from one of the boulders caught the pine needles on the ground. Flame swept out from the rock in a great wave. The children’s screams became shrill with panic.
Jorinda looked helplessly at Joringel.
“I don’t know!” he cried, his voice practically drowned by the roar of the spreading fire and the screams of the children.
“You’re telling the story!” their mother cried. “It’s your story!”
Joringel shrugged, dumb with panic.
Jorinda grabbed her hair with her hands. Children beat at the flames on the ground and screamed as the fire spread in a great circle around them.
“You’ve told your story!” their mother shouted over the roar of the flames. “Now use it. Use what you know! Make something new!”
And suddenly, they understood.
Jorinda’s eyes found Joringel’s.
Make something new.
In the midst of the fire, and the screaming, they understood.
That tears can bear a boat upon their waters. That weeds can blossom into wildflowers. That stone can be carved into art. Joringel began:
From up in a high red cedar, three ravens stared angrily at the carnage on the forest floor.
“It isn’t right,” said the first raven.
Up above, in the tree, the first raven said exactly that.
“We should do something about it,” said the second.
Up in the tree, the second repeated Joringel’s words. Then he added, “Wait, we should?”
“I’m gonna kill them!” the third raven screamed. And as Joringel described it, the raven did scream that. He began beating his wings angrily against the air. “I’m gonna beat in their brains, I’m gonna break their legs, I’m gonna tear off their—”
“We get it,” said the first raven.
“Well? What do we do?” said the second, hopping around the branch in agitation.
“Defend the forest!” the third raven cried. “Defend the kingdom! Defend the children!”
And with that, he dove from the branch. His two brothers, inspired by his courage, dove right after him.
Outside the wall, Herzlos grinned gleefully. The fortress was a ruin of fire and splinters. Soon his men would be able to pour in and take the children by storm. Dead or alive. “Catapults!” he cried. “Ready your—”
Suddenly, there was an explosion of black feathers. Herzlos went staggering backward, stunned.
A large black raven was suddenly stabbing at the tyrant with his beak. Herzlos waved his arms at it frantically, trying to beat it back. His men stared at the surreal sight. They had never seen a king attacked by a bird.
Just as he seemed
to be fending the crazed raven off, a second slammed, like a missile, into Herzlos’s head. The tyrant went flying earthward. He lay on his back, kicking and flailing at the two insane, homicidal black birds.
“BLAST!” he cried (he wasn’t saying “Blast”). “BLASTBLASTBLAST! Help ME—EEEK!” This last scream came as the third raven plunged right between Herzlos’s legs, beak first. Herzlos’s hands flew to his groin, while trying to cover his face with his arms. It was no good. The ravens thrashed him mercilessly.
Inside the fortress, Joringel went on:
His soldiers stared as the great, the terrifying, the merciless King Herzlos writhed on the ground, being attacked by a storm of black feathers and sharp black beaks. Herzlos screamed and screamed and screamed.
Jorinda grinned and took over.
Still, the soldiers had their orders. As the catapults were loaded with great, flaming stones, the men readied their swords and spears and shields, steadying themselves for the final assault on the fortress of children. But before the crankshafts were set, before the men could rush the broken wall, a strange sound came echoing through the wood.
It sounded like howling and roaring and baying and barking and growling all at once. As if some horrible menagerie of beasts was about to be unleashed on the soldiers from behind. The men at the back turned to look. And indeed, they saw one of the strangest sights they had ever beheld.
Joringel knew what was coming. He bit his lip and smiled. Jorinda continued:
They saw a monster of a man: enormous, hideous, his huge body terminating at the top of his shoulders—which towered over a long scrawny neck, craning out like a vulture’s. A bald head with a great white beard, tiny black teeth, and round, red-rimmed eyes was perched at the end of the neck. This ogre held a dozen chains, and at the end of each, a black beast, huge and ferocious and slavering, bayed and cried and struggled to be set loose.
And indeed the children could, from over the wall, hear a cacophony of wild animal noises.
The soldiers who saw the beasts dropped their weapons and fled. The great ogre Malchizedek loosed the animals from their chains. The beasts flew at the undefended flank of Herzlos’s army. A great black cat landed on one soldier and broke his spine with a swipe of his claws. A dog the size of a wolf grabbed another soldier by the thigh and tore his leg clean off. A great black bear cuffed a man so hard his head crumpled in his helmet. Soldiers screamed and ran. And then Malchizedek himself pulled a great, double-headed battle-ax from his back and began swinging it. Terror swept the left flank of Herzlos’s army.
Just then, the children saw some soldiers crawling over the holes in the great wall. One man had made it over and was coming right for the children. Some of the bigger kids rushed to greet him. But the soldier, seeing them, screamed, turned to one side, and kept running. He had not been coming for them. No. He was running for his life.
Still, Joringel went on, the right flank of Herzlos’s army pressed forward, ready to assault the remains of the fortress. Three captains beat at the ravens, trying to rescue their king. “Forget me!” Herzlos cried. “Fire the catapults! Fire the catapults and assault the flipping fortress! NOW!” A raven poked him in the eye. “BLAST!”
Inside the fortress, the fire had spread. There was now a towering wall of it, running from one end of the clearing to another. It ate up the ground and licked at the frightened children.
“Hurry!” Jorinda and Joringel’s mother cried. “Finish this!”
Jorinda gazed at the carnage. Joringel shook his head. “How?”
“I don’t know.” Jorinda’s face was pale.
The children near them stared desperately.
And then Joringel said, “Eddie?”
The panic slid from Jorinda’s face. She said, “Eddie.”
Jorinda was suddenly speaking as quickly as she could, letting her voice boom out over the screams of the children and roar of the fire.
The earth began to shake.
And indeed, the earth began to shake.
Children were thrown from their feet.
Children were, in fact, thrown from their feet.
And then there was a peal like thunder. It was so loud that everyone—children inside the wall, soldiers outside of it—bent over and grabbed their ears.
All of that happened.
Then came the sound of tearing and scraping and ripping, as if stone was being rent asunder.
Which, Joringel cut in, it was. For up out of the granite quarry that lay behind the clearing, erupting from beneath the stone, there rose an enormous creature. His skin was pink, but thin—so thin you could see his black bones through it.
As he said this, a giant, fleshy mass appeared.
It rose from behind the cliff. It was a wide, pink head, and then a black spine, a huge, pink belly, and finally a great, massive, fleshy tail.
Jorinda and Joringel were gaping and grinning at the same time. For as Joringel described it, the creature did indeed rise out of the quarry. The children said, in unison,
It was the Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende.
And they pronounced it perfectly.
And then the gigantic body came crashing down in the clearing, and children were thrown this way and that, and the creature roared—so loud and long it blew the trees backward and knocked half the wall down. The soldiers suddenly could see into the clearing. They did not like what they saw.
They saw a humongous beast—a humongous pink salamander—roaring and blowing fire from its mouth into the sky.
Then it stopped.
There was a moment of total silence, when not a soldier, not a child, not a single leaf moved, as if all were paralyzed by the deafening sound, the horrible sight, and the vomitous smell of the giant beast.
A raven landed next to Jorinda. “Eddie says hi.”
And then three catapults loosed three flaming boulders into the air.
They traced a tall arc. At their zenith, each paused, high, high above the earth, their flaming orange framed by the blue sky. Then they fell. Right for the huddled, frightened children.
Joringel bared his teeth and said,
The Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende, watched the great boulders as they screamed toward the ground. He bounded to his left and wrapped his huge, fleshy body around a thousand screaming children.
A thousand screaming children were suddenly enveloped in Eddie’s pink, foul-smelling flesh.
The fiery boulder crashed to the earth, igniting the pine needles all around the children, and then went rolling past them and off the side of the cliff. The flames raged all around the clearing. The air was so thick with smoke and heat it was getting hard to breathe. Eddie stayed wrapped around the children as the flames licked his skin.
Everything happened just as Joringel was describing it. Jorinda took over:
A second boulder, its aim perfect and deadly, fell exactly where Jorinda and Joringel had been standing a moment ago. But now, the Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende, stood there, with Jorinda and Joringel and all the other children huddled behind him.
Suddenly, a boulder slammed into Eddie’s side. The children ducked their heads. Eddie was rocked sideways. The boulder exploded on impact. Eddie began to make a sound like hacking, or coughing.
“Is he hurt?” Jorinda cried.
A raven, huddling for protection between Jorinda’s legs, said, “No! That’s him laughing.”
“Really?”
“Really!”
Joringel went on.
And then a third boulder completed its arc. This one was aimed deeper. Directly for the center of the children. Their screams became shrill. The flaming stone would not hit Eddie. It would fly over him. It would land on top of hundreds of children—
And just as the third boulder plummeted into the cowering crowd, Eddie flicked hi
s enormous fleshy tail over their heads and smacked the boulder with it. And the stone exploded. Like fireworks. Like the largest display of fireworks you’ve ever seen. A million microscopic shards of flame flew all over the forest, and the children gaped at the most beautiful display of pyrotechnics ever witnessed in the Storied Kingdoms.
The Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende, lifted his head and opened his mouth and sprayed a column of fire, red and white and aquamarine, looping across the clearing and over the remains of the wall. The kids who had not done so already threw themselves to the ground, and for an instant it was as if they were all lying beneath one giant quilt of flame.
When it finally subsided, Jorinda said:
The Eidechse von Feuer, der Menschenfleischfressende, leaped forward, smothering the flames that raced over the clearing.
Which Eddie instantly did, extinguishing the flames with his great, pink body.
He blew another column of flame over the heads of Herzlos’s soldiers. They screamed like babies.
The soldiers duly screamed like babies.
He advanced upon them, shattering the wall under his huge frame, roaring and blowing fire into the sky. The soldiers leaped to their feet and ran for their stinking lives.
All of that happened. Joringel grinned at his sister. She looked like she was having fun. He took over.
As Eddie approached, Herzlos the oppressor cowered on the ground, unable to rise from where the ravens had beaten him. When the great salamander opened his leviathan jaws again, every remaining soldier ran—save Herzlos. And when Eddie blew his fire across the forest floor, Herzlos glowed like a red ember, and then grayed, and then blackened. And died.
It happened just as Joringel described it.
The rest of the soldiers fled, and the great salamander went loping after them, roaring and blowing fire to the heavens. The children cheered. Malchizedek wiped his brow and smiled. His creatures padded up to him, rubbing their glossy, obsidian coats against one another. And the three ravens pumped their wings and chest-bumped and spun in manic, delirious circles.
