by Adam Gidwitz
Joringel shook his head no and gulped the night into his lungs.
Jorinda, watching the torches, said, “Do you think it was the prince?”
Joringel, still sucking air, nodded.
The cries of the men were getting louder. And louder.
Jorinda pulled herself to her feet. “It’s time—”
The words died away on her lips. Standing in the darkness at the edge of the clearing was a shadow. Even in silhouette, Jorinda could see that it was tall and lean and muscular.
And that it had a horn.
The creature stepped forward, and the moonlight shimmered on it. Despite herself, despite everything, Jorinda smiled. It was much larger than it had been. Its shoulders were broader, its haunches thicker. And the horn rising from its forehead was over a foot long.
“Is that . . . ?” Joringel stammered.
“Yes.” His sister grinned. “That’s a unicorn.”
As if in response, the unicorn trotted forward and pressed its soft muzzle into Jorinda’s neck. She felt a pang of bitter joy. It had been a year since she had seen her friend. A dark and bloody year.
In the deep forest, the torches were spreading out, fanning through the trees, moving in their direction. They could hear a voice barking orders.
The unicorn was nudging Jorinda’s hand as if he wanted something. “I don’t have any food for you,” she whispered. The unicorn ducked his head, so that her arm was over his neck. She tried to push him away, saying, “We have to go! We have to—”
Suddenly, the unicorn knelt and pushed his body against Jorinda’s, so that she was thrown over his back. She grabbed his mane.
Joringel laughed nervously. “I think he wants to give you a ride!”
“I think he does. Come on!” And she took her brother’s hand and yanked him up behind her on the warm, wide back.
Without any warning, the unicorn sprang into the darkness, away from the approaching torches. His hooves pounded through the gloom, and Jorinda held tightly on to his mane, and Joringel wrapped his arms around her, and their legs squeezed the little unicorn’s pulsing black flanks.
The wind whipped Jorinda’s hair into Joringel’s face, the branches slapped the children and snapped behind them, and the forest flew by in a blur.
The ride was half dream, half nightmare. Soon there were no torches. They passed out of the Kingswood. Far, far from any wood that either child had ever visited. But still, the unicorn rode on, now racing nothing but the moon.
* * *
At dawn, as the mist huddled in the trees like gray-clad monks, the unicorn slowed. The children gratefully, wearily, slid off his back.
Nearby, a brook burbled out of the fog, tumbled over stones, and disappeared into the fog again. The children fell to their stomachs and drank from its frigid, clear current.
Joringel sat back on his haunches. His mouth hurt from the cold, but the water tasted pure and good, liked melted snow. “Where are we?” he asked.
Jorinda wiped her sleeve across her face. “I don’t know.”
The unicorn shook himself and came and nuzzled up to Jorinda. She held his head. And then something sharp poked at the back of her mind.
She grimaced.
And she pushed the unicorn away.
He looked confused, staring at her with his wide, white eyes.
“Go!” Jorinda suddenly shouted. “Go home!”
The unicorn pawed the earth, as if to play their old game again.
“No!” Jorinda bellowed. “Leave! It’s not safe!”
“Um, Jorinda? What are you doing?”
Jorinda was standing now, and shouting. “You have a family! You have a home! Go to them! Go now! GO!”
The little unicorn danced back and forth, pawing the earth in agitation. Still, Jorinda shouted at him, pushing his head away from her. At last, the little beast turned mournfully and disappeared into the mist.
“What did you do that for?” Joringel demanded. “Now we’re lost!”
Jorinda did not look at him. She gazed into the fog that had swallowed the unicorn. “We’ve been lost,” Jorinda said. “We’ve been lost for a long, long time.”
She lay down by the riverbank. “I need to sleep.”
Joringel stared at his sister. She pulled a fallen branch, thick with leaves, over her, but the fog didn’t care. It crawled in through the thousand green gaps and wrapped Jorinda in a cold, wet quilt of gray. Joringel, too confused and exhausted to fight, leaned his back against a nearby tree and slid wearily to the ground.
In a moment, both children were asleep.
* * *
The morning was barely a morning. The mist was paler, as if somewhere, far, far above, a dim fire burned. The children stood, stretched, and shivered. Jorinda rubbed her thin arms up and down.
“Where are we?” Joringel asked, yawning through chattering teeth.
“I dunno,” his sister replied. “But I’m hungry.”
“I can’t believe you told that unicorn to go away.”
Jorinda shrugged. Hard. “It’s not safe to be around me,” she said. “Something bad happens to everyone and everything that comes near me.”
Joringel looked at his hands and did not answer.
They decided to follow the stream. As they pushed farther and farther ahead, the mist began to lift. The forest looked familiar. Joringel, who had been walking ahead of his sister, came to a sharp stop.
“No,” he murmured.
Jorinda walked up behind him. “What?”
Joringel was shaking his head. “No, no, no . . .”
“What is it?” she demanded.
He pointed. “The hunting lodge.”
Jorinda looked. After a stunned moment, she said, “We didn’t . . . ?”
“We didn’t go anywhere,” Joringel completed her thought. “We’re still in the Kingswood.”
Jorinda was squinting hard at the lodge. She started walking forward. Joringel tried to grab her, but she pulled her arm away.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Jorinda! They’ll see you!”
“It looks like they repainted it,” she said. “It used to be brown. Now it’s green.”
“Why do we care?” Joringel whispered. “They could paint it pink and yellow and call it Candy Land Hou—”
“LOOK!” Jorinda exclaimed. She was staring in the direction of the castle.
Joringel looked. One whole wing of the castle was missing.
“They destroyed it . . . ?” Joringel said. But there was no sign of fire, nor any rubble. Standing in its place was a garden. A full garden, in bloom. It looked as if that wing of the castle had never been built.
“What—?” Joringel stammered, “I . . . I don’t understand . . .”
Jorinda started for the door to the kitchens.
All was quiet. Someone was cleaning up from the breakfast service. Nothing looked particularly out of order. Which was strange. Because last night there had been an invasion.
A kitchen maid bustled by, laden with dirty plates. “Excuse me!” she barked. Jorinda and Joringel stared as she went by.
“She didn’t bow,” Jorinda murmured.
“Or have us killed,” Joringel added.
Cautiously, incredulously, they made their way from the kitchens up the back stairs, into the royal corridor. The décor was completely different than it had been, and everything looked newer, fresher.
They passed the chapel. Inside, a woman bent her head before the altar. Jorinda put an arm out and brought them both to a stop.
“She’s wearing a crown,” Jorinda whispered.
“Who is she?” her brother replied.
Even from the back, Jorinda was sure she didn’t know. The children proceeded even more cautiously than before.
They passed many more doorways. The rooms
looked strange. Finally, they came to the grand bedroom, where Jorinda had slept ever since she’d become queen. Both children stopped and peered from behind the doorjamb.
In the room, two children, smaller than Jorinda and Joringel, played at the foot of a bed. And a man with a beard and a crown on his head knelt beside the life-sized statue of a hideously ugly man.
The statue was speaking. Jorinda and Joringel stared, dumbstruck.
“There is a way, king, to rescue me from this rock, if you truly wish it,” the statue said.
Jorinda and Joringel gaped at the talking statue.
“Oh, I do!” the bearded king cried. “I’ll do anything! Anything!”
And the statue said . . .
There are no children in the room, right? You’re certain? Okay . . .
Jorinda and Joringel stood straight up. They had heard a voice. A loud voice. It seemed to come from . . . everywhere. It had asked if there were children in the room. They looked at each other as if, perhaps, they were losing their minds.
The stone statue was speaking again. They looked back into the royal chamber.
“You must cut off the heads of your children, and smear my statue with their blood. And then, and only then, will I return to life.”
Remember what I told you would happen when Hansel and Gretel finally showed up?
Jorinda and Joringel looked frantically all around them. Who had said that?
From the room, they heard the king say, “You under-stood me always, no matter what. So I will under-stand you.”
The king drew a sword from its place on the wall, walked over to the two adorable children playing at the end of the bed, and swung the sword at their necks.
Jorinda and Joringel fell back into the hall as blood spattered across the floor. They froze. One second passed. Two. Three.
They ran. They flew down the hallway, past the bedrooms, down the stairs, through the kitchens, out the door, and into the Kingswood. They ran and ran and ran, and their little lungs could not get enough air, and they felt as if they were drowning.
They ran without thinking, without seeing, plunging past trees and logs and brambles, until the mist became heavier—so heavy that they could not see at all.
They fell to the ground and held each other, huddling in the cold fog. They could not say a word.
* * *
Jorinda and Joringel shivered in the mist for an hour or more. Then, in the distance, they heard the rumble of thunder. They peered into the gray soup overhead, waiting for the rain to follow. Thunder rumbled again, this time closer. The children huddled closer together. A third clap of thunder shook the leaves on the mist-shrouded trees.
“I felt that in my feet.” Joringel swallowed.
Jorinda nodded. “It must be a big storm.”
Another roll of thunder, and another, and another, closer and closer. The great trees shook.
And then, from the mist, emerged a mountain. That was the only way to describe it. A moving mountain of flesh. Pink flesh. The mountain had a ridge like a backbone, and little valleys formed by small arms and legs, and a slope of a wide, flat tail. They could see thin black bones through the pink skin, and in the distended bag of a belly, black organs wound around one another, beating. And at either side of its huge, flat head sat two tiny black eyes.
The children could not move.
Each step the beast took made the whole forest tremble. Trees fell before it like weeds.
Suddenly, it stopped. Its little black eyes swiveled toward Jorinda and Joringel. The children stopped breathing. It cocked his head at the children. The children’s hearts stopped beating. It opened his mouth. The children grabbed hold of one another.
Out of the beast’s maw roared a column of flame. Jorinda and Joringel fell to the forest floor, eyes closed, holding each other tightly.
We are going to die, Joringel thought.
His sister, on the other hand, was pretty sure they were already dead.
A wall of fire pressed the children into the earth. They could not breathe, for the flame ate up all the oxygen. The mist above their heads had been replaced with reds and oranges and even one streak of pale aquamarine. Breathing, heartbeat, all vital functions had been shut down.
Dead, the children thought. Dead, dead, dead.
Gradually, the flame subsided. The two children did not move for a full minute. Then they looked up. The creature was staring at them from its tiny black eyes. It looked . . . curious.
“GO!” Jorinda screamed. The children leaped up and ran furiously, frantically, away from the beast. As their feet pounded the forest floor, they tried to listen for the thunderous footfall of the monster behind them. They heard nothing. This was good. They ran faster. Still, they did not breathe, nor were their hearts beating. Good: they did not need them.
They ran and ran and ran until they could run no more. Then the two little children collapsed to the ground and wept.
Okay, if you’ve read A Tale Dark & Grimm or In a Glass Grimmly, you are probably slightly confused right now.
If, on the other hand, you have not read either A Tale Dark & Grimm or In a Glass Grimmly, you are probably incredibly confused.
But don’t worry! Neither Jorinda nor Joringel has read A Tale Dark & Grimm or In a Glass Grimmly, and they are experiencing what you are only reading about. So as confused as you might be, you’ve got nothing on them.
Jorinda and Joringel were under the cover of a wide, bushy hemlock. “Did you hear that?” Jorinda hissed.
Joringel was sitting straight as a ramrod. “I think someone is following us.”
“It doesn’t sound like someone is following us,” Jorinda replied. “It sounds like someone is inside our heads.”
“It’s almost like the voice of God.”
“But God keeps making stupid jokes.”
“It knows our names.”
“What’s In a Grass Glimmly?” Jorinda asked.
“Or Tall, Dark, and Grimm?”
Jorinda shrugged. Then she peered out from behind the branches of hemlock. “Come on,” she said. “I think it’s clear.” So the two children rose to their feet and pushed through the mist. It left trails of water on their cheeks and hung like raindrops from their eyelashes. They walked and walked and walked. And walked. And walked. Without being able to see more than three feet in front of them.
Images of decapitated children and fire-breathing monsters danced before them in the mist. Also of closed doors. Of chests of apples. Of sisters riding away on horseback. Of groaning, miserable kingdoms.
Jorinda and Joringel tried to shove the thoughts down, cover them with mattresses, stamp them out, choke them back.
Neither child was succeeding.
At last, the mist began to thin, and the children slowed. They found themselves at the edge of a neatly maintained field. It had sharp, clean edges and white lines running along the grass.
At one end of the neat field was a very strange building. It was tall and kind of fat. Like a tower. But it was made of bright red brick. And there were other buildings like it. Many others. All around it. Near the building, at the other end of the field, children were sitting on the neatly mowed grass. Before them stood a young man. He appeared to be telling a story.
Jorinda started for him. Joringel followed. As they approached, his words became clearer.
They froze.
They knew that voice.
It was the voice they had been hearing in their heads.
It was saying,
Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome . . .
Carriages without any horses zoomed by on the road. Buildings made of brick and steel towered over the treetops. Jorinda’s and Joringel’s knees went weak. And the voice still echoed in their heads—perfectly in time with the tall, awkward guy talking to the seated children.
It was at this poi
nt that Jorinda and Joringel passed out.
The Märchenwald, Part Two
Okay. You are confused. Very confused. I get that.
But please, trust me. Just give me a few minutes, and everything will be cleared up.
Jorinda and Joringel stared up at me, dumbstruck. Behind me, children—not wearing the garb of some long-ago kingdom, but instead dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts—ran around a classroom, laughing and pushing and shouting at one another. I ignored them.
“Where—?” Joringel blinked. He had no words.
“What—?” Jorinda’s mouth stopped even trying.
You fainted. I brought you inside. I know this is very weird. But right now, I have to deal with my students, and then we can talk this all through. Okay?
The children nodded as if they didn’t know what I was talking about.
Will you promise not to pass out again? At least until dismissal?
The children nodded again. I could have been asking them if they wanted to eat a wheelbarrow full of cat food. They were just going to keep nodding. I looked over my shoulder.
SAMMY!
A small boy named Sammy was kneeling in the block corner. My classroom had an excellent block corner, full of beautiful wooden blocks of all shapes and sizes. Sammy, a second grader with long blond hair and shining blue eyes, had just lifted up one of the longest, heaviest blocks in the room, pulled it behind his head, and was aiming it directly at another child’s face.
Sammy! Do NOT do that!
At which point, Sammy brought the block around with all the force he could muster. The child he was aiming at, luckily, ducked. Sammy, displeased, lifted the block again.
NO!
I was just about to sprint over to save the poor child from Sammy and his enormous block when I saw another student of mine. His name was George. George was dancing. On a table.
George! George, get down!
But George was not about to get down. He had just begun his Michael Jackson impression, and he was moonwalking, very convincingly, across the tabletop.