by Adam Gidwitz
Along the roads, the subjects of Grimm walked silently toward the source of the beautiful golden light. Toward the castle.
“You never told us,” the queen said to her children as they sat on the floor of the bedroom, blood winding through the crevices of the stones, collecting in little pools. “You never told us where you’ve been, and what you’ve done.”
Hansel and Gretel looked at each other.
“You don’t have to tell us,” their father said gently. “Not now. Not ever if you don’t want to.”
Hansel held his sister in his gaze. Her eyes, ocean-blue, sun-bright, were happier, clearer than he had seen them in a long, long time. Gretel returned her brother’s stare. He looked unburdened. Lighter. And he looked older than he had ever looked. Not old with care. Old with wisdom.
“We can tell you now,” Gretel said.
And so they did. Hansel started with what Johannes had told him, about the old king, lying on his deathbed. Gretel planned to pick up as soon as she and Hansel entered the story.
But just then there was a knock on the king and queen’s chamber door.
“Yes?” said the king.
A servant poked his head in. “Excuse me, Your Majesty,” he said. Then he saw blood on the king. “Your Majesty! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said the king. “What is it?”
“I ... uh ...” The servant, named Wilhelm, shook his head and tried not to stare at the blood. “Your people,” he went on. “They’re standing outside the castle.”
“What? What people?”
“The subjects.”
“Which subjects?” the queen demanded.
“All of them, Your Majesties.”
The king and queen leaped to their feet. “But why?” the queen asked.
“I ... I’m not sure,” said the servant. “I think it might have to do with the golden smoke.”
“What smoke?” said the queen.
“The dragon,” Gretel whispered to her.
“What?” the king said. Hansel gave him a meaningful look. “Oh,” he said. “Right.” He turned to his wife. “Should we go down?” He looked concerned.
The queen looked at her children.
“It’s okay,” Hansel said. Gretel nodded.
But the queen said, “No. Let them wait.”
“But, Your Majesty!” the servant said. “They’re calling for you!”
“Let them call,” the queen replied.
The king added, “Try to keep them entertained.”
The servant was about to protest again, but, on seeing the expressions on his masters’ faces, thought better of it. He closed the door. Hansel and Gretel smiled at their parents, and Hansel started again.
In the hallway, the other servants crowded around Wilhelm. “What are we supposed to do?” one asked.
“Keep them entertained,” Wilhelm said. “Somehow.”
“What are they saying in there?” another asked. “I think I hear the children talking.”
So the servants leaned their heads against the door. Hansel was telling of the portrait of the golden princess.
“Quick!” said Wilhelm. “Go get everyone you can. Every servant in the castle.” So one of them did, as the others continued to listen at the door.
When all the servants were assembled, Wilhelm said, “Jacob and I”—he gestured to the servant to his right—“are going to listen at the door and relay everything we hear. Then you pass it down, as best you can, to the next servant, and keep passing it, all the way out to the balcony. The royal crier will stand on the balcony and relay it all to the subjects.” He turned to the kitchen staff. “Go and make food. For everybody.”
“For everybody?!” the chief cook exclaimed.
“Everybody!”
And so the plan was carried out. Hansel and Gretel told the whole tale, from the old king’s deathbed all the way through the beheading of their father. And the servants relayed it, as best as they could, down the halls of the castle and out to the royal crier, who in turn relayed it to the people of the Kingdom of Grimm.
The storytelling took all through the day, and into the early evening. And then, as the stars were beginning to twinkle, but before the creepy moon had made an appearance in the southern sky, Hansel and Gretel finished. The family hugged one another once more, very tightly, and stood up. They stretched their arms and legs, and then they went to the door. The servants had retreated to the opposite wall of the corridor. When the king came out, he asked what they were all doing there. Wilhelm said that they were ready to take them down to the great balcony, where their subjects were still waiting. They’d been fed.
“You fed them?” the queen said. “That was very clever of you.”
Wilhelm bowed.
“What did you tell them?” the king asked.
Wilhelm rubbed his hand nervously over his hair. He looked at Jacob and the other servants. They all looked at the floor. He said, “We told them what Hansel and Gretel told you. About their adventures.” The queen raised her eyebrows. “And let me be the first to congratulate the children,” he added quickly, “on the successful vanquishing of the dragon. We are all more grateful than words can express.” And he said it like he meant it.
The queen looked at the king, but the king only smiled. “Fine,” he said. “Well done. That’s fine.” He, too, said it like he meant it. Then the royal family followed the line of servants down to the balcony.
The subjects of the Kingdom of Grimm were spread out before the balcony in the thousands, sitting on the ground, eating the suppers that the kitchen had provided them, and listening to the end of the story with rapt attention.
“I understand,” the crier was saying as the king and queen and Hansel and Gretel emerged from behind him. “I understand, my children.”
A roar erupted from the subjects. The crier, thinking they were roaring for his telling of the story, took a little bow. But then he saw the royal family. Quickly, he retreated.
The subjects’ cheers were deafening. Hansel and Gretel stood before them and took it all in. They smiled.
Then the king raised his hands. The subjects quickly grew quiet.
“I have something I must say,” he announced. “These two children have killed the dragon. Killed the dragon, when everyone else had tried, and everyone else had failed.”
The subjects cheered wildly. The king raised his hands again for silence.
“The dragon would have destroyed this kingdom altogether,” he went on. “It would have left it an empty ruin.” He paused. He tried to swallow down a thickness that had developed in his throat. “I would have left it an empty ruin. I didn’t know what I was doing, of course. I did not know I was the dragon. But the dragon, I, would have destroyed this kingdom if Hansel and Gretel had not stopped me.”
The people of Grimm stared.
“I can no longer be king. How could I? After what I have done?”
In all the Kingdom of Grimm, not a single person made a single sound.
“I am passing my crown on. And I ask my wife to do the same. We will pass our crowns to our children.”
A murmur swept through the crowd. “To Hansel and Gretel? To children?”
“Yes!” the king declared. “They are children. But they are the wisest, bravest children I have ever known. My wife and I will help them as long as they need us to. But”—and here he held up his hand, and all murmuring stopped—“there is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children. These children. King Hansel and Queen Gretel.”
Total silence.
“They will, of course, marry other people,” the queen added.
Still, total silence.
And then, in the crowd, the tall man from Wachsend, the bald one with the boxer’s nose, shouted out, “But they’re just little ki—”
But before he could finish, someone else called out. It was a young man with long hair and a fresh, r
aw scar on his face. The one from the tavern. He had climbed up on the shoulders of a friend. Hansel and Gretel saw him. His face was shining. “They saved us from the dragon!” he cried. “Long live King Hansel! Long live Queen Gretel!”
The people of Grimm gazed up at Hansel and Gretel. There was something in what the king had said. About children. About these children.
“Long live King Hansel!” the young man shouted again. And then someone else took up the cheer. “Long live Queen Gretel!”
Another cried it. And another. More and more, more and more, rising up in a tumult all around Hansel and Gretel. “Long live King Hansel! Long live Queen Gretel!”
As they looked out over the people of Grimm, their father leaned down to them and said, “These subjects are your children now.”
And their mother said, “You must take care of them.”
“Better,” their father added, “than we took care of you.”
Hansel turned to him, and, smiling, gesturing at the crowd, said, “It looks like you did all right.” Gretel reached out and took her father’s hand, and then her mother’s.
The subjects continued to cheer, till their throats strained and the sky seemed to whirl. “Long live King Hansel!” they cried. “Long live Queen Gretel! Long live Hansel and Gretel!”
And you know what?
They did.
The End
Really.
Acknowledgments
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant woman named Gabrielle Howard, who wasn’t very tall, and had a lovely English accent, and who was the lower-school principal at Saint Ann’s School, in Brooklyn, New York. One fine day, Gabe, as she’s called, came into my second-grade classroom and read Grimm’s The Seven Ravens to my students (you now know, dear reader, that the Brothers Grimm should have called it The Seven Swallows—just another one of their many, many errors). As you also now know, the little girl in The Seven Swallows cuts off her finger. So after Gabe had finished reading the story, and after I had been resuscitated with a defibrillator, and after Gabe had assured me that I was not fired, because, after all, she had read the story to the students, and not me, I decided that there was something to these Grimm tales, and that I really should look into them. So it was Gabe Howard who introduced me to Grimm, and Gabe Howard who taught me, and still does teach me, to trust that children can handle it. No matter what “it” is. (Once, she proposed I stage King Lear with a class of second graders. We, led by the brilliant Sarah Phipps, did Twelfth Night instead.)
The students at Saint Ann’s are my muses. It was, in fact, a class of first graders who insisted I tell them story after story after story, and thereby suggested to me that I had stories that kids wanted to hear. It is my students’ thirst for understanding, their questioning, their calling-out, their thinking, their art, their calling-out-some-more, their writing, their still-calling-out-even-though-I-am-standing-right-in-front-of-them-asking-them-to-stop, and, above all, their growing that inspire me.
I must thank my teachers from The Park School of Baltimore. I think about all of them, every single day. I really do. One of them, Laura Amy Schlitz read the English version of A Smile as Red as Blood to me when I was very young, thus warping my mind forever. She still teaches me and inspires me and has kept my spirits up as I traveled through this dark tale.
I have done nothing in the realm of writing and trying to publish my writing without consulting Sarah Burnes, who has been right about just about everything she has ever said to me. She identified me as a writer before I did, and then she told me what in my writing was good and what was bad until we got to where we are. Among her most brilliant acts of guidance was introducing me to Julie Strauss-Gabel. Before she met me, Julie believed that she knew the true story of Hansel and Gretel. But, together, we figured out what the real story was. She has been as much a partner as an editor, and there is no question that I would have produced the wrong, fake, untrue story of Hansel and Gretel had it not been for her.
Some dear friends and family members have read this book and given me invaluable ideas and criticism: John, Patricia, and Zachary Gidwitz; Adele Gidwitz (my first reader); Erica Hickey; and Lauren Mancia.
Indeed, Lauren Mancia has been there for every good and bad idea I have had about anything for the last seven years. And I hope for the next seventy.
Finally, I must acknowledge the Brothers Grimm. It was they who wrote down these dark, grim tales, and it was their vision and voice that inspired this book. If you haven’t read their versions of the tales, you must. Their impact on me, and on all of us, has been immeasurable.
Also, their stories are awesome.
