“What do you think you’re doing?” he went on. “Have you seen the dragon? Have you fought it before? It will kill you. It will kill all of you!”
“Shut up!” someone cried.
“We’ve got to do something!” someone else called out.
“Die? Is that what we have to do?” He paused. No one responded. “I’ve seen this beast. I was there when we fought it the first time. You can’t beat it. Arrows practically bounce off of it. It can kill four people at once, one with each of its four feet. And look at them!” he said, gesturing at Hansel and Gretel. “They’re children! Children! You’re going to follow children into battle against a dragon? Are you all out of your minds?!”
There was a pause. The subjects of Wachsend turned to hear the prince and princess’s reply. Hansel was red in the face. Gretel was pale. They stared out over their subjects. All was quiet. The children opened their mouths. But neither had anything to say.
“Ridiculous!” the bald man cried. And he turned his back on Hansel and Gretel and walked into the tavern. The door closed with a slam.
“Wait!” Hansel shouted. “Wait!”
But suddenly, people were dispersing, heading to the tavern or back to their homes.
“Would you rather die in a tavern or on a field of battle?” Hansel cried.
“A tavern!” someone shouted, and a few others laughed. More Wachsenders turned their backs on Hansel and Gretel.
“Would you rather die having done nothing or having tried?”
“Nothing!” someone called. But those who would have laughed were gone now. The remaining villagers were silent.
“Will you follow us to fight the dragon?” Hansel asked.
More silence.
“If you will,” Gretel said, “meet us at the castle in three days’ time. Bring your weapon of choice. And,” she added, with as much strength as she had left, “bring your courage!”
As Hansel and Gretel made their way out of Wachsend, Hansel turned to his sister. “Well,” he said, “that went terribly.”
“Yes, it did,” she replied. They walked a little farther. Then she asked, “Ready to do it again?”
He sighed. “I guess so.”
And they set off for the next town.
Three days later, Hansel and Gretel waited in the castle courtyard. Scattered around it were groups of volunteers. Small groups. No more than a handful apiece.
“It’s early yet,” Gretel said. “More will come.”
Hansel wrung his sweaty hands. “I suppose,” he said.
The recruitment had been brutal. Town after town. “Are you crazy?” “What do you think you’re going to do?” “You’re just children!” “They’re just children!” “You’re going to follow children into battle?” There had been some who seemed ready to fight. A few. But most grew silent and wary when they heard they were expected to follow Hansel and Gretel—little Hansel and Gretel—to war.
But as the hours went by in the castle courtyard, people came. Raw recruits, carrying hunting bows and even pitchforks, made their way through the great gates. But there were also groups that were obviously veterans—men with thick necks and wooden shields and shining swords. There were women, too. Archers, mostly; but also women carrying swords and spears. One had a rake.
“We’d better get that one something proper to fight with,” Hansel said, pointing.
Gretel chuckled and nodded.
By late afternoon, the children felt better. Before them stood some five hundred soldiers. It wasn’t an enormous group. And it certainly wasn’t a pretty group. But it would do. It would do.
The children’s chests swelled. They had done it. They had raised an army.
The king and queen, however, were suddenly no longer so keen on Hansel and Gretel’s plan.
“Wait, you’re going out?” said the queen when the children came before them that night. “You never said anything about you going out.”
“They’re not going out,” the king said. “I will not allow it.”
The queen looked at the two children as they stood before her, stone-faced and armed. “Please,” she said, “we’ve already lost you once. We couldn’t stand losing you again. Please. My children.” She began, softly, to cry.
Their father came and knelt before them and took each one by the hand. “Please, my dears,” he said. “Understand. You are children. Why can’t you send someone else out in your stead?”
“Father,” Gretel said, “maybe you should try to understand that yourself.”
She and Hansel drew their hands away. Their mother began to cry louder.
Hansel and Gretel went to the stable to ready the oxcart with the golden apples. The apples were held securely under a canvas tarp and—except for the one apple they had given to the poor family, and the other they had given to their mother—they were all there.
As Gretel hitched the cart up to Betty, Hansel looked under the cover of the other. “What about the wine?” he said. “Maybe we could get the dragon drunk.” Gretel smiled. But he said, “Really. Why not?”
“It couldn’t hurt, I guess,” Gretel said. So they hitched up Ivy, too.
When the sky was black and dotted with stars and the moon was just beginning to creep above the horizon, big and round and white, the two children led the oxcarts out into the darkness. Hansel and Gretel looked back over their shoulders with pride. Behind them followed their army.
They led them down a road to a large wood that stood not far from the castle. As they approached, the army began to whisper and point. The ground at the wood’s edge seemed to glow, as if the moon was reflected by the very soil. It shimmered and sparkled, an earthbound Milky Way. Was it magic? the soldiers asked one another. Or a sign from the dragon?
But Hansel and Gretel confidently followed the path of white pebbles that they had scattered on the forest floor the day before, leading their army deep into the wood, to a large, grassy clearing.
Here, for the first time, Hansel and Gretel told the army their plan. They would all stay in hiding until the dragon came for the bait. When it came—if it came—they would wait until it was distracted by the contents of the oxcarts. Then, when it was least ready to defend itself, they would spring out of their hiding places and attack.
“You have every right to be afraid,” Gretel told them. “The dragon is big. The dragon is strong. The dragon has divided our families and taken our children and stolen our childhoods.
“But that is no reason to cower. Until we stand up to him, our lives will remain shattered, our hearts will remain divided against themselves, our heads will remain severed from our bodies.”
The moon was white and bright behind Gretel. Hansel stared at her. He didn’t quite understand what she was talking about.
“But we will soon be healed,” she went on. “We will be healed. There will be blood first. But then there will be tears of joy.
“For our kingdom!” she shouted.
“And our families!” Hansel cried.
“And our children!” they said together.
The soldiers repeated their cry. In the silence that followed, all could hear the word children echoing off the thick trees and then away through the black wood.
Gretel readied the oxcarts in the clearing. In the moonlight, the apples glowed golden, as if they possessed some fairy magic. Hansel unharnessed Ivy and Betty from the carts and tried to shoo them off. But the two oxen took to cropping grass nearby. Someone had to draw them by their halters far off into the woods, as far as possible from the field of battle.