She picked up a sliver of ice, as sharp as a knife, and brought it down on her middle finger, severing it from her hand. Hansel stared, aghast. Gretel’s face was white and her voice trembled when she said, “Now I can make things right.” She was bleeding swiftly from where the finger used to be, but she stood and walked, resolute and grim, to the door of the mountain. She picked up the finger, slid it into the keyhole, and turned it.
The door opened.
I’m sorry. I wish I could have skipped this part. I really do. Gretel cutting off her own finger? And putting it into a keyhole?
If there was any question about the truth of this part of the story, I would have left it out altogether. Maybe she could have found another chicken bone. Or maybe, if she wished hard enough, and said some magic word, the door could have opened on its own.
But there’s no doubt about the finger. Besides, if I left it out you’d be wondering why Gretel had only nine fingers at the end of this book. Which reminds me of another question you’re probably asking.
Why did the door open?
I don’t know. A finger is enough like a chicken bone, I guess? Why a chicken bone, even, in the first place? Again, I don’t know. I have no idea why either a chicken bone or a finger should open the Crystal Mountain. (As for the location of the Crystal Mountain, that’s quite clear, and if you have any interest, I’d be happy to share it with you. Just write me.)
Now I’ve got to say something about cutting off one’s own finger, in case any young children are still reading or hearing this tale—which would be almost beyond belief, given all of the terrible things that have happened so far. Cutting off your finger, my young friends, is about the stupidest thing you could do. Don’t do it. You won’t be able to open anything with your finger. Only Gretel could.
Why?
I’ve already told you. I don’t know.
Though it may have something to do with sacrifice.
As the door swung open, a storm of brown wings knocked the children back onto the snow, and seven swallows swirled out of the mountain. They settled on the ground, their black eyes studying Hansel and Gretel curiously.
“It didn’t work,” Gretel said incredulously, her bleeding hand really beginning to hurt.
Hansel watched the swallows walk mutely around on the white snow. He didn’t know what to say. They were still birds. He wanted to cry.
After a few moments of painful, confused silence, Gretel bent down beside the smallest swallow. “It’s time to go home, little bird,” she said. “Your mother misses you.” The swallow held her in its black gaze.
Hansel thought back to the boys’ father, and suddenly he remembered that tear hanging from the end of his nose. “Your father misses you, too,” he told them.
Suddenly the claws on the swallows’ feet softened, and their thin black legs began to lengthen and grow thick. Wings stretched outward, until fingers appeared at their ends, and then there were wrists, elbows, shoulders, and all the rest. The swallows’ black eyes paled, their feathers turned to hair and clothes, and finally, in a circle around Hansel and Gretel, stood the seven brothers.
“He misses us?” the littlest one asked. Hansel and Gretel, amazed by the transformation, nodded dumbly.
The boys began to rejoice, and, after a fit of hugging and laughing and cheering, the eldest turned to Hansel and Gretel and invited them into the Crystal Mountain, where they all drank warm milk and ate Black Forest cookies and talked late into the evening.
The next day, the brothers invited Hansel and Gretel to return home with them.
Hansel and Gretel said they wanted to talk it over. As soon as they were alone, Hansel said, “I don’t want to, Gretel. I don’t want to go with them.” Gretel nodded solemnly. Hansel sat down heavily on the ground. “I don’t want to live with a father that could do something like that to his children.” He thought back to all the other parents he had known. His own father had cut off his head. The baker woman had tried to eat Gretel. And then this new father had wished his sons into birds.
Gretel was thinking the same thing. She felt the space on her hand where her finger had been. She looked up at Hansel. He was leaner and stronger than she had ever seen him. They had both grown much over the difficult journey to the Crystal Mountain. “Perhaps we don’t need parents at all,” she said. “Perhaps we can take care of ourselves.”
“Yes!” Hansel cried, leaping to his feet. “Let’s live without any terrible parents at all!”
And so the two brave children, now a little older, and a lot wiser, and with only nineteen fingers between them, set off into the world to find a life that they could call their own.
I won’t even bother saying “The End” anymore. You know it isn’t.
As for this next story, it is really dark. Frightening things happen. You may feel upset—I’m talking to the big kids now.
And as for the little ones, if they are still around, I warn you, I plead with you: Make them go away. Don’t let them hear this story. They may have nightmares. No, they will have nightmares.
At least read it yourself first. Then, if you think they can take it, maybe, maybe you can read it to them. And then you have only yourself to blame if they can’t sleep for a week.
Brother and Sister
Once upon a time, a brother and a sister clasped hands (one of which was missing a finger) and strode out of the white mountains, across green hills, and into a large and wonderful wood.
Trees towered above them like the pillars of Heaven—strong and straight all the way up. Birds sang and flitted by their faces. Little rodents—chipmunks, squirrels, mice—dashed in and out of the underbrush. A fawn appeared and looked at them from behind a stand of ferns, and then bounded off after his mother. Everything was greener here, more full of life, than anywhere Hansel and Gretel had ever been.
The vibrant power of the place began to take hold of the children. Hansel rushed out ahead of his sister, bounding through the ferns, and then running back again, like a dog that’s been let off his tether. Gretel laughed and sang and collected bluebottles and daisies and other wildflowers.
“We could make a life here!” she shouted to her brother.
Hansel hooted with delight and took off after a low-flying blackbird.
Soon the two came to a clearing where there stood a magnificent tree. It rose to such heights that they could barely make out where the lowest branches began, though they could see, if they looked really hard, a crown of green far above them. Gretel jumped when she noticed, in the wood of the tree, what appeared to be a woman’s face. It was made of bark, with brown hair wrapping around its smooth cheeks and wide eyes. Gretel walked up to it, mesmerized.
“What a magnificent tree,” she said.
“Thank you,” the tree replied.
Now you might have expected Gretel to jump, or Hansel to fall backward over a conveniently placed log, but neither did. The tree’s voice was so gentle that neither child was startled at all.
“Welcome to my wood,” she went on. “It is called the Lebenwald, the Wood of Life.”
That’s pronounced LAY-ben-vault. Go ahead and say it. German is fun.