Hansel and Gretel's Night In The Wood

Beneath them, both children could feel the cold, damp earth seeping through the burlap they’d been shoved and folded into.

Hansel knows this game all too well and save for a twinge of nausea and dry eyes from the drugs he’d been given, he was otherwise alert and ready to, yet again, face the elements. Gretel on the other hand was in a more delicate state; though, Hansel found it hard to determine whether it was due to the medications; she was younger after all and therefore her weaker body was more likely to encounter the side effects, or whether the breathless sobs were a result of Gretel’s realisation that she was a broken toy no one loved nor wanted.

After all, both parents had spent more money and time on these burlap sacks, rope, blindfolds and drugs than they had ever spent on either child and Hansel cursed himself for believing that they had wanted to spend an evening dining with their children the day prior. The childish desperation to be loved by one’s parents had clouded his judgment and he found himself unable to look Gretel in the eyes after peeling her out of the sweat-sodden sack. It was his fault they were back here.

They’d awoken to the sound of nothingness, which effectively served as a shrill and mocking ring of abandonment that echoed through the forest. Hansel sat down, cross legged and posture slumped, he stared in front of him, trying to refocus his eyes to the surroundings. That’s when he saw it.

Saw… her? -

Meanwhile, Gretel had stumbled around. Needing a moment with her thoughts, she tilted her dirty face towards the clouds above and prayed for some rain – water or acid, she was impartial – but she had prayed that whatever fell was either able to cleanse her or kill her. She watched the clouds, jealous of their freedom to swirl and though they looked ready to burst, nothing came. Unsurprised at yet another disappointment, she returned to her brother. Hansel was older than Gretel by two years and it showed in both his size and maturity. Gretel could rely on him for sound mindedness, though it seemed when she needed it most Hansel would be unable to provide this reassurance, for he was absent.

Although he had not moved, it appeared as though he was absent from his mind. Hansel stared blankly at the path in front of him, eyes wide, pupils dilated and his mouth lulled open, his demeanour reminded Gretel of a corpse she had seen once at the harbour after a stowaway had died on a voyage from Scotland to Germany. She stared at Hansel blankly, almost certain that touching her brother would make him shatter into a million pieces. Despite calling to him softly and stroking his hair, Hansel had not moved from his position. Gretel put her brother’s symptoms down to stress and perhaps a delayed reaction from their parents’ tea. He will be better tomorrow, she told herself.

Eventually the sun began to set, and the tops of the trees had merged with the night sky that blanketed them. Gretel had watched Hansel fall asleep, still cross-legged, with his mouth open. She forced him to lie, covered them both with the burlap sacks gifted to them by their parents and vowed they would devise a plan the following day, should the sun dare to curse them by coming up. After all, there is no rush when you have nowhere to be and no one wants you – she pulled her brother close for warmth and allowed herself to cry quietly and drift asleep, praying its permanence.

- SNAP -

Gretel’s eyes darted open.

What was that?

Her body shot up as if she’d been kicked through the earth and she examined her surroundings.

Hansel was no longer lying next to her but was instead stood over her, eyes wide open and his mouth stretched into an uncomfortable looking smile. Gretel could feel her pulse in her toes and could imagine that her heart had been beating so strong it was visible through her shirt.

“Gretel, I’ve found someone to help us. She spoke to me through the woods earlier today, she wants to help.”

“Hansel, please sit down, you must be starving and dehydrated, you sound insane. No one spoke to you in the forest, you and I have been alone all day. Please stop, you’re scaring me.”

“Starving and dehydrated?! Sis, I’ve just laid eyes on the largest feast, she has it ready for us and I have come to bring you to her. Look, look what I have in my pocket!”

Hansel took Gretel’s hand and filled it with warm cookies and in the other, a cup of water.

“What did I tell you? Come with me Gretel, I have been told to invite you to the feast but we must hurry or the trail of crumbs I left to guide us to her will have blown away or been eaten by the birds. We cannot lose her, Gretel.”

Even in the dead of night, Gretel could see her brother’s eyes, crazed and fixated on her uncertainty, he was practically slobbering with excitement, giggling like a child. His excitement oozed into her, a feeling she’d not felt in so long, since Christmas four years ago, when the baker in their town gave them both a minced pie, hot chocolate and had them sing along to carols whilst packing up the carriages with the next day’s orders. They’d had the best evening, and Hansel’s exact same smile was worn by him every night for a month as a secret memory they shared – until it had been beaten off of him.

Gretel was delighted to see her brother so elated and truth be told, the loudness of her stomach’s cry deafened any other feelings she’d possessed. She stood feebly, shook the dirty off of her and before she’d had a chance to put her shoes back on, Hansel had grabbed her wrist and ran away with her down breaded trail.

The children stumbled and scrambled, Gretel scraping her legs on rocks, thorns and roots on the ground whilst Hansel practically galloped like an animal. Gretel could feel the warm moisture on her wrist, dripping down her fingers and sloshing between her and her brother’s hand. He was holding her too tight. Gretel caught a glimpse of her hand being held hostage and noticed that Hansel’s fingernails were long, sharp and black, they looked like claws as they pierced into her. Despite her screams, Hansel dragged Gretel through the forest, to the end of the breadcrumb trail.

“I told you, Sis. I told you that she would help us.”

Hansel took his arched claw and outstretched it, pointing to the window of a cottage as Gretel tried her hardest not to curse her brother and regain a steady breath.

Gretel could not believe her eyes, there was an essence of something almost, fantastical about this cottage, which stood in front of them. Despite its generic structure, there was a – feeling, of magnificence, which emanated through its very existence. She looked around and noticed that despite hitting so many obstacles on their journey, there actually were no trees around. Or anything. No rocks, flowers, trees, animals, not even a sound.

How could that be?

All that was visible was a pathway, leading from the front door of this cottage into the darkness beyond.

“Gretel! I told you to look!”

Gretel snapped back to attention and followed her brother’s finger to the upstairs window of the cottage. There she stood. She was beautiful.

Gretel did not have many women to look up to growing up, and in her fourteen years had only heard of beautiful women as being those to exist in the pictures. This woman, was… a Goddess. She remained there for a second, stared at both children and then disappeared from view.

Upon Hansel seeing this, he grew visibly agitated, barking like a rabid dog, urgently stomping and scraping his foot on the ground and crying on all fours, that is, until she appeared at the door. Hansel responded as though he’d been saved from drowning at the very last second, gasping for air, the colour returning to his cheeks and his voice settled back to normalcy as he sprinted to the woman and fell to his knees.

“Mother! Please don’t leave me, Mother. Please do not let me live, if I am to only live without my view of you.”

Gretel stiffened, as she watched this beautiful woman stroke her brother’s hair and soothe him. She was wearing a floor-length laced, black dress, embedded with red roses at the waist, and wore a star-shaped beret, to keep her raven tresses maintained and out of the way as she held eye contact with Gretel.

“Excuse me – my brother says you have offered to help us. Please can I ask your name and where we are?”

The woman’s upper lip curled, her eyes – yet to blink, focused on Gretel intently.

“My dear, my name has been long forgotten by those who bothered to learn it. I insist you call me Mother. And as for where you are, you are Home.”

The hairs on Gretel’s neck stood at attention and her entire mouth felt like cotton. Before she could react, Hansel ran inside their Home and through the window, Gretel saw her brother sit at the table and start rampantly eating the feast he spoke of earlier, piling in mounds of roast potatoes and beef with his bare hands, whilst warming next to the open fire. Gretel had never seen such a scene, and she longed to join her brother at the table.

“Gretel, my sweet girl, you’re bleeding and your feet are shredded and torn. Come inside, I’ll see to them and get you cleaned up before you eat. As your Mother, it is my job to care for you and to teach you how to care for yourself.”

Gretel cursed her naivety, as the warnings in her head were being phased out by a beautiful song, one she’d never heard before, similar to a church choir that sung through the heavens of her mind. As she stared at this cottage, she felt a warmth inside her, like warm caramel coursing through her veins, a true and well-intentioned comfort she had never experienced.

She paced carefully towards the cottage, careful to not step on the pathway tiles so that the blood and mud would not stain them, she would have been caned for committing such an act previously and she knew the capabilities of a parent all too well. As Gretel approached the entrance to her Home, she looked more closely at her Mother’s face. The beauty she’d seen from a distance had not quite made its way to her Mother’s neck, ears and hands. Although her face seemed young and inviting, her remaining features appeared old and tired, Gretel looked down to the woman’s hands as they reached out for her, and beneath the black laced gloves, Gretel could see the same talons on her Mother’s fingers that had been handed down to her brother.

“For so long I have waited for my beautiful children to come home to me, I am so relieved you could finally hear me, I’ve been waiting and calling for years.”

Gretel was confused. How could this woman have been calling them for years? How did she know Hansel and Gretel, and above all who is she?

Mother held Gretel by her shoulders and stared at her squarely, with a furrowed brow and shallow breath.

“I’m so glad your parents finally heard me.” Mother whispered to the girl.

Gretel, stunned by this statement, winced with confusion.

“You’ve spoken to my parents? When?”

“I’ve visited them every night since the birth of your brother. I have visited within their sleep, playing many characters in each of their dreams. I have watched them for years, foreseen all of their plans for you. I could see that they were only able to provide you both with lives of mediocrity. Relentless normalcy in a putrid environment. I simply showed them both that they should not be responsible for caring you and that you would be better off living for yourselves, it took only a little, push.

It is rare that I’m alerted to the birth of such an innocent, pure soul that is destined for an extraordinary tale.

My sweet girl, Gretel – this opportunity was delectable.”

Gretel’s eyes widened, like a deer hearing the trigger pull, knowing it’s too late.

“It was you? You are the reason Hansel and I were abandoned and neglected? You are why we have grown with abuse and been beaten within inches of our lives? You are the reason we have experience of only hatred and torment? In a world where we could have had our true mother’s embrace and our father’s love, you snatched that from us?”

Mother grew restless at the accusation, her talons twitching on Gretel’s shoulder.

Gretel shot a glance over at Hansel who had, during the confrontation, fainted on to the dining table, his head on the table’s edge and blood dripping from his nose and mouth.

“HANSEL!”

Gretel slammed Mother away and raced to her brother, Hansel’s eyes flickering with consciousness and his body vibrating as if being shaken from the inside out.

“He is a follower, Gretel, not a leader. You can be great but you must learn to cut those who drain you.”

Gretel could not bear to face Mother, she held her brother’s face as tightly as she could muster and screamed at him to come back, to help her, to be her big brother and to not leave her alone to fend for herself.

She could hear mother laughing in the background, telling her it was too late. That she should quit.

Gretel could see the blood on her wrist once again, still dripping from where her brother had pierced her earlier, she remembered the talons, the same ones that matched her mysterious ‘matriarch’. She twisted her face towards Mother.

“You did this to him, I know you did! You turned him into something outside of this realm. Something dark, something inhuman. You made him like you.”

Mother slammed her mouth shut. No longer laughing.

“How dare you speak to me this way, you ungrateful little girl. In all the years of training I got your parents to give you, they neglected to teach you manners? The boy will never be like me, I am the ultimate. I am the master. I am the puppeteer of the thoughts which enter your little head, giving you such a big imagination.

I am the reason you feel unrest walking upstairs in the dark, the reason you feel uneasy when a hooded figure walks too closely behind you on a cold, wintry night. I am the reason your heart beats uncontrollably when you feel fear and I am the reason death is a word whispered in hushed tones.”

Gretel took a moment to comprehend what she had been told. This was not a woman, this was a nightmare, the evil that touches happy people and makes them commit heinous crimes. This was the evil that could let two loving parents hate their children, and leave them helpless. Gretel had lost two parents who loved her, and although she found comfort in the fact they were once happy with their children, she refused to lose her brother in a similar fashion, beyond her control.

She stood and grabbed the iron poker from the fireplace by the table, paced towards the entrance and struck Mother in her eye, she heard the hiss of the burning and forced herself to witness the aftermath. Gretel screamed as she watched the evil oozing from Mother’s ears and face, it curdled like bitter milk, stiffening and forming black peaks in a mess on the wooden floor, seeping through the floorboards. Gretel looked at Mother’s face and saw it reddening, the tail of her dress burst into violent flames, though her remaining eye remained fixed on Gretel and her mouth laughing. With the poker still lodged in place, Gretel used it to steer Mother’s body into the open fire by the kitchen table. She grabbed Hansel’s vibrating body and guided him towards the cottage door, pushing him outside. The flames elegantly engulfed Mother, caressing her from her shins to the skin on her neck and her hair.

Gretel stood outside the cottage, watching in amazement. Mother’s young, beautiful face was not burning. Once the fire had claimed her body, her face fell to the floor with a clang and lay there, in a similar fashion to a soldier dropping his sword after being stabbed. The cottage, amazingly, had not burned but it smelled as the bakery did on that evening when the children ate and sang in their town. It smelled like gingerbread.

Gretel raced to her brother, holding him in the steady fog that had set. His hands looked normal and his face softened, his breathing sounded deep and restful and Gretel was positive this was the first, undisturbed and truly peaceful sleep he’d ever had, with no intruders possessing him thoughts.

She brought him back inside, cleaned the mess and waited for her brother to awaken from his sleep, whilst sitting, watching the remaining embers. She could rest now. They were indeed, Home.