THE LADY GRETEL
SENTENCED TO LIFE IN
PINOCCHIO PRISON FOR THE
MURDER OF SIR HANSEL
Alex gestured for Conner to look at the plaque, too. “Conner, it’s Gretel from ‘Hansel and Gretel’!” she whispered to him. “She killed her brother!”
“What?” he whispered back.
“It’s all right, you don’t have to whisper,” Gretel said. “I know what that plaque says. I know who I am. I know what I did.”
Alex suddenly had so many questions. “Why did you kill your brother?”
Gretel dreamily stared off into the distance. “Because it was the only way I could be free.”
“Free from what?” Alex asked.
“From ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ ” Gretel said.
“The story?” Conner asked.
“No, the label,” Gretel said. Their inquiring looks begged her to explain more. “After my brother and I survived the gingerbread house, all I wanted was to have a normal life—but that’s not what Hansel wanted; he wanted us to be heroes. He told everyone we knew about what happened to us in the woods and then those people told everyone they knew and soon word spread and we became household names around the kingdoms. We were treated like royalty; parades were thrown for us, we were honored with medals everywhere we went, they even named a holiday after us.”
“That sounds pretty nice,” Conner said.
Gretel’s eyes shot up at him. “No, it was terrible,” she said. “Because no one cared about me, they just cared about ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ I just wanted to be Gretel, just Gretel, but no matter what I did no one would let me be just Gretel. It was like my brother had become an invisible ball and chain I was forced to carry around for the rest of my life.”
“But he was your brother,” Alex said. “Didn’t you love him?”
Gretel grunted and stuck out her tongue like she had tasted something foul. “No, I couldn’t stand him!” she said. “Hansel may have seemed like a nice young man but all he cared about was himself and the attention he got! He used to drag me around with him just so he could get more admiration! Hansel also took all the credit for what happened in the gingerbread house—even though I was the one who tricked the witch and pushed her into the fireplace! He wouldn’t even be alive without me! Had I known then what I know now, I would have let the witch eat him!”
“So you killed him instead?”
Gretel nodded. “It was an accident. One day we were walking through the trees and he started mentioning all the places he had planned for us to go, all the people we would meet, and all the awards we were going to receive in the upcoming days. Well, I got so mad I pushed him—but I didn’t see there was a cliff behind him!”
“Did you tell anyone that it was an accident?” Alex asked.
“I was planning to,” Gretel said. “But then I realized this cell allowed me to be something that the rest of the world didn’t—just Gretel. So I pleaded guilty and have been here ever since. And so, today when the soldiers asked me if I wanted to join their army or stay in this cell I didn’t have to think twice.”
Gretel sighed at the thought of all the peace her cell brought her. Conner looked at Alex and circled his temple with his finger. “She’s nuts!” he mouthed.
But Gretel wasn’t finished with her story. “The worst thing one person can do to another—besides eat them, of course—is to reduce their identity to being only half of something. When someone is treated as half of or less than half of one identity, they’re not being treated like a human at all. Everyone should have the right to individuality.”
Conner slowly stood up and walked away from the cell. “Well, thanks, Lady Gretel!” he said. “We should get going now. We need to figure out where this army went.”
“Wait!” Gretel said. “I can tell you! The army and the soldiers went back to their camp, but the general and his men were headed somewhere else!”
“Where?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know where, just somewhere else,” Gretel said. “The prisoner across from me—they call him the Masked Man because of the sack he wears over his head—he was talking to the general before they let him out. He convinced the general that he needed a dragon to get rid of the fairies and take over the world! He said it was the only way the general would win!”
Alex and Conner exchanged the same confused look. “A dragon?” Alex asked. “But they’ve been extinct for hundreds of years. Our grandmother and her friends were the ones who fought them off during the Dragon Age.”
“Apparently the Masked Man knows where to find one,” Gretel said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. He’s a very unusual man. He’s been in that cell for almost a decade now. He likes to talk to himself at night—sometimes I swear I heard someone else in there with him, but that would be impossible.”
Conner walked to the cell of the Masked Man and peeked inside. “Hey, Alex, this guy has a lot of stuff in here.”
Alex joined him at the cell. The door was still open and they walked inside together. Just being in it gave them the creeps. The walls were covered in bizarre carved illustrations of winged creatures, pirate ships, and animals with big ears and feet. There was a pile of coal and he had carved the pieces into the shapes of hooks, hearts, and swords.
An oval mirror in a silver frame hung on the wall.
“What does a Masked Man need with a mirror?” Conner asked.
“I have no idea,” Alex said. “But we should get out of here. We need to fly by their camp and see what the army is up to.”
They left the cell and went back to the hatch in the ceiling. Alex pointed her wand at the floor and the stones rose to form a small staircase for them to climb through the hatch.
“Good-bye!” Gretel called out. “I hope you can stop them!”
“Us too!” Conner said before climbing onto the roof.
“Good-bye, just Gretel,” Alex said. “Thank you for your help.”
By the time the twins climbed to the roof, Lester had eaten all the long blades of grass. They hopped aboard the giant goose and took off into the sky again.
“The general told half of his men to set up camp somewhere in the southeast where the portal spit us out,” Conner told his sister. “I bet they’ve regrouped by now.”
Alex took Lester’s reins and steered him into the sky high above the south of the Eastern Kingdom. Alex and Conner searched the ground as they passed over it, not sure what they were looking for. However, as soon as the camp came into view they knew exactly what it was.
Hundreds of trees had been cut down to make way for the expansive camp the soldiers had built. There were dozens and dozens of large beige tents set up and the timbered trees had been used to build a wall around the camp.
There were thousands of soldiers setting up and marching around the camp and the soldiers weren’t alone. A thousand or so recruits from Pinocchio Prison were scattered around the camp as well. Giant ogres did the heavy lifting as the soldiers built the camp, witches wove broomsticks out of tree branches, and soldiers trained goblins how to fire cannons and trolls how to shoot rifles.
To Alex and Conner’s horror, their target practice was a line of wooden fairy dummies.
“Mother Goose was right,” Conner said. “They’re preparing for war.”