A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz Read Free Book Online Page A

exhausted but as happy as the little animals that run among the underbrush. Over his shoulder was slung the fawn. He placed it before his sister on the ground.
    â€œWhat have you done?!” she cried.
    He attempted to calm her. “Now we can eat meat for a whole month!” he said. “And I won’t have to kill another animal for a long, long time!”
    She looked at him in disbelief, and then began to weep bitterly over the dead fawn. “Why did you do it?” she muttered. “We have all we need here. Remember what the tree said.” Hansel suddenly remembered once more, and remorse swept over him.
    That night, he tossed and turned. He was furious at himself. Hadn’t she told him? Hadn’t they both told him? Don’t take more than you need. He and Gretel had eaten as much of the fawn as they could that night, and it looked as if they hadn’t even touched it. Now the carcass lay outside on the grass attracting flies, its stench wafting over their beautiful clearing. As Hansel stared at it, he vowed to be his own master, and not let his impulses carry him away again.
    The next day, before he went out to find fruit, Gretel made him swear on his very life that he would kill nothing else. He swore it, and hugged her and kissed her for being so good and so forgiving, and he promised he would do nothing violent ever again as long as they remained in this forest. She kissed him on his forehead, as if he were much younger than she, and sent him off for the nuts and fruit.
    He spent the whole day basking in the lovely green light of the leaves, picking berries and storing them in his tattered shirt, which he had tied around his waist like an apron. He felt the peacefulness and calm of the forest, and he wondered why he hadn’t always been able to feel it, why he had been overcome the last two days with that uncontrollable animal lust.
    And then he saw a white dove perching on a nearby branch. Something tingled in his legs and arms. “Don’t,” he told himself. “It’s wrong.” He started to shake. “Go home. Turn away and go home.” But he found himself creeping in the direction of the dove. The berries fell to the ground.
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    As the sun set that evening, he walked back into the clearing, exhausted but as happy as a sated wolf. Blood covered his arms and his face, and he carried in his hands the broken, eviscerated carcass of the white dove. Gretel screamed when she saw him. “What have you done!” she cried. “Hansel, what’s wrong with you?” Hansel stopped. Then he looked down at the dead bird. He noticed that his arms were covered in blood, and his shirt was stained with a mix of blood and berry juice. He wondered where the berries were. Gretel began to cry. Hansel, confused and upset, placed the dead dove at her feet. She backed away from it, covering her face. He looked at her, and felt awful. But not as awful as he had felt the night before. He turned and walked back into the woods.
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    Gretel saw Hansel only infrequently after that. Occasionally, as she was out collecting berries, she saw him running through the forest after some animal or other. At first he had stopped to speak with her—just a few words each time. But soon she noticed that words were not coming as easily to him as they once had, and he was ever and always looking off over his shoulder, or following the flight of birds with jerky movements of his head. Soon he wasn’t stopping to speak with her at all.
    She found animal carcasses littered all over the forest. Some were half-eaten, others barely touched. Once, she found a wild boar, larger than Hansel, with its neck broken. She wondered how Hansel had the strength to do such a thing. She wondered how he had the heart to do it.
    She saw him only in flashes now. A blur of skin through the trees. The scream of a dying animal, and then a howl of delight. She thought he looked different. He was growing