by Adam Gidwitz
“Is this really . . .” Joringel began, trailing behind his sister through the wood, “whatever he called it? The Marching Vault? The Story Forest?”
Jorinda shook her head. “How could it be?” She clambered over a rotten log. “Everyone we meet is just a character in a story? It makes no sense.”
“Yeah,” Joringel agreed. “Crazy. I think that guy had a problem.”
The children walked on without speaking for a long time. At last, Joringel asked, “What do you think of the other stuff he said, though?”
“What?”
“You know. About stones and weeds and oceans and stuff.”
“Oh. I don’t know.” Suddenly, tears poked at the sides of her eyes. She wiped them away quickly. “I don’t know.”
They trudged on. The mist began to dissipate. The sun was still obscured by gray, but at least they could tell where it was now. They felt, very faintly, its warmth.
Joringel turned to his sister. He took a deep breath. He held it. And then he said, “Jorinda, if you won’t leave me, I won’t leave you.”
Jorinda pursed her lips into a small red rose. Something bubbled and roiled inside her. “I will never, ever leave you,” she said.
Joringel smiled.
And Jorinda added. “Ever.”
Which was a very nice thing to say.
Sadly, though, it was not true.
For just at that moment, they heard the sound of hooves, pounding through the wood.
The children turned.
From the wood emerged three unicorns, each black as midnight and foaming sweat. In the lead was the little one, followed by two larger beasts, both with long, twining horns and wide eyes.
There was something wrong.
The unicorns pounded past them. “Hey!” Jorinda cried. She tried to follow.
But Joringel grabbed her sleeve. “Little Sister . . .” he whispered.
She turned back to him. Her eyes went wide.
Pounding through the wood after the unicorns came a dozen white horses, each carrying a rider with a lance and a bow slung across his back. The riders prodded their mounts with bloody spurs and exhorted one another to hurry. At the center of the group rode Herzlos.
“STOP!” Jorinda screamed.
Joringel yanked his sister to the ground behind a thick hemlock bush. “Shhh!” he hissed. “They’ll kill us!”
“STOP!” Jorinda cried. She shoved her brother away. “They’ll kill the unicorns! STOP!” She leaped to her feet and went running after the tyrant Herzlos. “STOP!”
As the horses cantered forward, Herzlos glanced over his shoulder at the little girl screaming and running after him.
He pulled up. He turned his horse around. He was staring at Jorinda. The other horsemen reined their steeds around to see what Herzlos was after, as the unicorns galloped away. Herzlos’s black hair hung down over his smug, scarred face.
Jorinda glared.
Suddenly, Herzlos’s bloody spurs jabbed at his steed’s side, and the beast catapulted forward.
Joringel, still lying behind the hemlock, screamed.
The tyrant’s horse barreled ahead, and he lowered his lance, and tucked his chin, and squinted.
Jorinda flinched.
And just then, Herzlos’s lance went straight through Jorinda’s chest and came out the other side.
Red blood spattered the green ferns of the forest floor.
The little girl was still standing.
For a moment.
Then she fell.
Jorinda lay on the brambled ground. She was no more than a crumpled body, a lance through her chest, blood seeping into her clothes, her eyes wide, her face still.
Herzlos reined his charger, threw back his black hair, and smiled.
Without a sound, Joringel turned and fled into the wood.
Then, as he ran, he began to scream.
I don’t know what to say.
I’m sorry.
I . . . I’m sorry.
Hell
Once upon a time, a little boy crouched amid tall, dark bushes. Overhead, birds sang as if nothing at all had happened. As if the one-time queen of Grimm had not just been murdered. As if the center of a clearing nearby was not smeared with her blood. As if the greedy flies were not buzzing around her corpse, sizing up their next meal.
Joringel bent over and was sick on the ground for the fourth time in as many minutes. Then he wiped his mouth and held himself and rocked back and forth under a little shelter of branches.
“Wowza,” said a reedy voice just above Joringel’s head.
“Tough,” said another.
“That’s an understatement,” said a third.
Joringel looked up. Three ravens were perched in the upper branches of the dark green bushes, peering down sympathetically at him.
Joringel wiped both cheeks and his nose on his sleeve. He sniffed, which made him cough, which then made him be sick all over the ground again.
“Maybe we should come back later,” said the first raven.
Joringel wiped his face again and shook his head.
“Help me,” he said.
“We’re really not supposed to,” said the first raven.
“It’s against the rules,” said the second.
The third said, “Besides, what kind of help do you want? She’s dead.”
Joringel’s face was iron. “Help me get her back.”
“Um, did you hear my brother?” the first raven said. “She’s dead.”
“Gone.”
“Deceased.”
“She is an ex-person.”
“But where did she go?” Joringel demanded. “Which way?” He pointed up with one hand and down with the other.
The three ravens started coughing and looking anywhere that wasn’t the boy. “We don’t know,” said one awkwardly. “Hard to say,” said another. “Not really our domain,” said a third.
“She went down, didn’t she? She went to Hell.”
“Well, at least he guessed it,” said the first, relieved.
“Yeah, I didn’t want to have to tell him.”
“Me neither.”
You know why she went down, right?
Because that’s what happens to tyrants.
Even little girl tyrants.
(Not that there are a whole lot of those.)
Joringel put his face in his hands. His eyes were hard and brittle like ice. After a moment, he said, “I want to go get her.”
The three ravens stared at the little boy.
“Wouldn’t be prudent,” said the first.
“Wouldn’t be possible,” clarified the second.
“Hansel did it,” said Joringel. “He went to Hell and came back. Remember?”
The three ravens did a double take.
“What?”
“You know about that?”
Joringel said, “I read it in A Tale Dark and Grimm.”
The third raven blinked at the little boy. “The metafictional dimensions of that statement are kind of blowing my mind.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Joringel replied. “But I do know that it’s possible to go to Hell and come back alive.”
“That’s only the first challenge,” the first raven reminded him. “Retrieving someone who’s already dead is a challenge of a different order entirely.”
“That means it’s way harder,” his brother put in.
“Well, I’m going to do it,” Joringel proclaimed. “And I need your help.”
“What can we do?” the first raven asked. “It’s not like we can bring people back from the dead.”
“It’s not really our field,” the second agreed.
“Thankfully,” added the third. “I am definitely afraid of dead people.”
“Hell?”
“You want to know where Hell is?”
“He wants directions?” The third raven looked at his brothers and then back at the little boy. He shrugged. “That we could do.”
* * *
It was a harrowing journey. Joringel followed the flight of the ravens through forests thick with brambles. He nearly froze to death during the nights on snowy promontories of mountains. He was swept away by a great river and lay, choking, on a bank half a mile downstream.
Finally, he found himself in the midst of rolling green hills. The sky was bright and blue above, the sun beamed warm and gentle on his neck, and the breeze whispered in the tall grass. The ravens were facing away from him, perched on top of a hill.
“How much farther?” the boy asked as he approached.
The ravens turned their black beaks over their shoulders. “Not much,” said the first. “Come here.”
Joringel circumnavigated the hill. When he reached the opposite face, his eyes went wide. Before him stood doors that were as tall and black and smooth as eternity, nestled into the bright green hill as if they were the most natural thing in the world.
“So? What’s the plan?” asked the first raven.
“Yeah,” said the second, “it’s not like you can just walk in.”
“What do I have to do?” asked Joringel, his eyes fixed on the doors.
“Well, you have to knock,” said the first raven.
“And then?”
“And then a demon will probably appear. And he’ll probably ask you what you want.”
“And then?”
“And then we’ve got no clue, kid!” the third raven exclaimed. “This was your bright idea!”
“You could always try to get in the normal way,” suggested the second raven. “You know, jumping off a cliff, or stabbing yourself in the face with a sword, or kicking a pregnant bear—”
“That’s normal?” said the third raven.
“But if you got into Hell that way, you’d never get out again,” the first raven went on. “And it would be indescribable torture for all eternity.”
“Pits of fire?” Joringel asked, remembering Hansel’s journey.
“Maybe. Or maybe not. That’s the beauty of Hell. The Devil’s a clever lad. Whatever you think the worst possible torture would be—that’s what you get. It’s personally tailored to your worst nightmare.”
The three ravens watched the little boy in silence. He was frowning and staring at the tall obsidian portal. He shoved his hands into his pockets. His brow furrowed. He dug around in his left pocket, fingering something. And then, he smiled.
Joringel reached out his hand and knocked on the smooth black doors of Hell.
* * *
The doors screamed as they opened. Not, like, their hinges squealed. Like, the doors were screaming. The sudden sound sent the ravens fluttering off of the hill, a burst of black wings that rose into the blue sky.
Standing just inside the door, shrouded by darkness, was a bony creature. It had a large, round head and leering, wet eyes. It wore no clothes over its ashen skin. In its right hand it held a fire iron, its tip glowing orange. The demon smiled. “Are we expecting you?” it asked. Its voice sounded like shards of broken glass scraping against a mirror.
Joringel shook his head. “I— I don’t think so.”
The demon’s smile turned into an ugly scowl. “Then you can’t come in!”
Joringel withdrew his hand from his left pocket. In his palm sat a little monkey, carved from ivory.
He held it out to the demon.
“What?” the ashen demon demanded.
“Do you see what I have?” Joringel asked.
The demon squinted at it. “Yeah, very nice. But you still can’t come in.”
“Do you see it?” Joringel insisted.
The demon looked again. “Yeah. It’s a cute ivory monkey, but—”
Suddenly, his eyes went wide, he stood straight up, his body became stiff as a board, and then he toppled over backward.
Joringel took a deep breath.
Then he stepped into the darkness of Hell.
The doors screamed shut behind him. It was perfectly dark. Perfectly. As if black velvet curtains had been dropped over Joringel’s head. The only illumination at all came from the floor where the glowing fire iron lay. Joringel bent over, scooped it up, and held it aloft. The gloom was so thick, so solid, that Joringel could see nothing.
He waved the glowing tip of the fire iron toward the ground until he located the demon, propped up on one elbow, rubbing his head.
The demon blinked woozily at the little boy through the deep gloom. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I want my sister, Jorinda,” Joringel announced.
“You can’t have her,” the demon replied.
Joringel’s knuckles whitened around the fire iron. Wasn’t the demon supposed to obey him now? He licked his dry lips. “I can’t have her?” The impenetrable darkness seemed to swallow up his words.
“No,” the demon groaned, pulling himself to his feet. “What happened to me, anyway?”
“You fell down,” said Joringel. “Stand up.”
The demon pulled himself to his feet.
“Jump up and down,” Joringel commanded.
The demon began to jump up and down.
“Slap yourself in the face.”
The demon continued to jump up and down and began slapping himself in the face.
“Now release my sister.”
The skinny, ashen demon continued jumping up and down in the heavy dark and slapping himself in the face. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Only the Devil can release sinners.”
“Then take me to the Devil.”
“Are you sure? He’s not the nicest guy in the world. Or below it.” The demon was still jumping up and down and slapping himself in the face.
“I can handle him,” Joringel said.
The demon smirked. “Sure you can.” And then he went hopping away from Joringel into the darkness. The little boy trailed with the glowing fire iron, following the sound of a demon slapping himself over and over and over again.
“Um . . . excuse me . . .” Joringel called ahead. “You . . . uh . . . you can stop that . . .”
* * *
Somewhere far above Joringel’s head, water dripped onto stone. Joringel held the poker out before him with one arm, and with the other he hugged himself, for the air was frigid. Rancid, too. A pungent musk assaulted the little boy as he walked. He tried not to breathe it in too deeply. It reminded him of something. What was it? Oh, yes. Smoke, rising from a millstone.
Suddenly, the glow of the fire iron came upon something. Joringel was not sure what this something was, as it was just as black as the air around it. But it had shape. He traced its silhouette with the glowing iron. It seemed to be an enormous, black egg.
“Hey!” Joringel called to his demon guide. “What’s this?”
He heard the demon’s footsteps slow and turn. In a moment, the ghastly, emaciated face was beside his own.
“Sinner.” The demon grinned.
Joringel squinted his eyes at the darkness. “Where?”
“Here!” Suddenly, the demon made a grab for the fire iron. The demon’s sinewy hands wrestled the metal rod away from Joringel, sending the boy stumbling backward.
“Stop!” Joringel cried. “Don’t hurt me! I command you!”
He could just see the demon’s face in the light of the glowing iron. The demon was leering at him. “I wasn’t,” the demon smirked. “I was going to show you the sinner.” And with that, he guided the fire iron over the rest of the black, shadowy egg.
There was s
omeone inside. It was a man. He was old, with a long, gray beard and a bald pate. He seemed to be shouting, though Joringel could hear nothing. The old man shouted, and his hands pushed at the inside of the egg. They pushed and pushed, and then the old man balled them into fists and beat the ovoid walls around him. At last, he gave up. He bowed his head. Suddenly, he arched his back and howled in agony. Joringel didn’t hear a sound.
“That’s awful . . .” Joringel murmured.
The demon grinned. “Isn’t it? Alone. For all eternity. No one cares. No one looks in on you. That’s it. Alone.”
Joringel’s stomach lurched sickeningly.
“You don’t think it’s so bad?” the demon asked, misinterpreting Joringel’s expression. “It’s not—for the first few hours.” The demon’s smile grew. “But then panic sets in. You’d think they’d be lonely. Or sad. And they are. Horribly. Crushingly. But really, it’s the panic that’s the worst. It never leaves you. Something about humans and being alone . . .” The demon thought about this. Clearly, it made him happy.
The demon led Joringel on. As they walked, the demon used the fire iron to illuminate the dark eggs. After a while, they came to two, right next to one another. Inside, two young women writhed and wept. They had no eyes, and their faces were hideously scarred.
Joringel said, “Wait.” His demon guide turned and waited. “What was their sin?”
The demon replied, “Those two? Let me think . . .” He tapped his chin. “Ah, yes! I remember! They are here for their vanity, their cruelty, their selfishness, and their falseness. Do you know they were willing to cut off pieces of their feet just to fool a prince into marrying them? Can you believe it?”
Joringel watched them writhe. They seemed to be calling out. But Joringel could not hear them. No one could. No one would, ever again.
He began to feel dizzy. The cold wrapped around him, yet sweat poured down his brow. The dark eggs stretched on, and on, and on.
They came to another one. Inside this egg, a bearded man wore a broken crown. He wept and beat at his cage and yanked the hair from his beard. Joringel thought he recognized him. Then he remembered. He had been the king of Grimm. Before Jorinda had taken over.