A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

over until it was done.
    And so, as I was piecing these stories together, I came to this part. And I realized that this was “the sad part.” I repeated this to myself again and again, to try to make it not feel so terrible.
    But it didn’t help. It never does. It still hurts when a character you love dies, and another is left all alone in the world.
    Nevertheless, I will tell you, as I always tell myself, that things will get better. Much, much better. I promise.
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    Just not quite yet.

A Smile as Red as Blood

    O nce upon a time, a little girl named Gretel walked down a wide, lonely road all by herself. She was as sad as a little girl can be, for the person whom she loved most in all the world was gone.
    After a time, she came to a small village that stood in the shadow of another great wood. This wood was as big as the last one, but no two woods could have been more different. Where the Wood of Life had been bright, inviting, and alive, this one was dark, forbidding, and dead. So forbidding that almost no one went in. And exactly no one came out.
    It was called the Schwarzwald—the Wood of Darkness.

    That’s SHVAHTS-vault. In case you were wondering.
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    But the little village that stood near the Schwarzwald was not dark at all. No, no: It was ringed by trees that, when Gretel arrived, had just slipped into their golden robes of autumn. Laughter was in the air, as was the smell of wood burning in fireplaces and apple cider frothing with cinnamon.
    Gretel walked down the town’s single road, looking in the warm windows of the little houses, wishing that someone might invite her inside for some food, cider, and a little human comfort.
    But all the doors remained closed to Gretel. She was very tired, and very, very lonely, and on the verge of giving up. She sat down and all her troubles overwhelmed her. She began to cry.
    Presently, the door to one of the houses opened, and a silver-haired woman came out. She went up to the little girl crying by the side of the road and asked her her name, and why she was all alone. Gretel told her that she and her brother had long ago run away from home, but that recently her brother had been killed and she didn’t know where to go or what to do. The woman reached out to hold her, and Gretel fell into her arms and buried her face in the woman’s neck. She took Gretel into her home and washed her and picked the knots from her hair and gave her some old, but clean, clothes.
    Some weeks went by. Gretel had no thought now of where else she should go, or what else she should do. For what sense did it make to do anything now that Hansel was gone?
    And that is how Gretel came to live with the silver-haired widow in the little village.
    Soon Gretel was just another child there, and, though she carried a great sorrow around with her, she put on a brave face. It was the time of the harvest, and everyone worked all day long, including Gretel. In the evenings, when the autumn air became cool, the villagers would gather in and in front of the town tavern and drink and laugh and converse, while the children ran about in their games. But Gretel had no heart to play. So instead she sat by the grown-ups and listened to their talk.
    There was one grown-up in particular whom Gretel liked listening to. He was a young man, cheerful and kind. And he was very handsome. He had long black hair and green eyes flecked with gold that seemed to dance in the light. And it seemed to Gretel that the young man liked her, too, for whenever he saw her looking at him, he would smile with lips of deep red, before she, blushing, could turn away.
    So she sat near him always and marveled at his easy jokes and his careless laughter and his wonderful eyes. Occasionally he would leave the grown-ups in the tavern and go out among the children. He would tease them gently, and lift them up, and all of them, particularly the girls, loved