The one watching from the arms of the wood clasped the front of her shawl tightly, holding her breath, her heart hammering. Her good eye fixed on the woodcutter’s face.
And then, his features cleared. And he nodded.
“That is a good idea,” he said quietly, without any passion. “We will do as you say.”
The woman smiled, and kept her hand there for a moment longer. Then, she dropped her arm.
“Come. We will go have dinner.”
And she walked past him, back toward the village. The woodcutter stood for a moment, eyes blank, then turned and followed her.
The one watching clenched her teeth, heat crawling across her leathery skin. Her hands clenched tighter.
Then, she turned away from where they had gone, and rushed back through the woods toward her cottage.
l
Early the next morning, she waited in the shadows of the cold, rose-colored dawn, silent as a new-dug grave. A hoarfrost lay in dusting across the leaves and the bark of the trees. Soon, stamping and puffing issued from near the road, and the handsome woodcutter, his axe braced over his shoulders, led his little family off the wide path and into the forest. His wife followed directly behind him, carrying a basket. The two children, holding hands once again and bundled in last year’s winter clothes and caps, walked warily after. As soon as they had passed by and trailed on further, the one watching slipped in behind them, unheard, and kept within their footprints until the family lighted deep in the wood, in the very clearing where She had seen the woodcutter and his wife talking the day before. There, the woodcutter left them, without a backward glance, and strode off into the wood, whistling that old dancing tune.
The wife bent and assembled a fire and lit it, and the children gathered in and sat close to the low flames. The wife talked to them in soothing tones, handing them little bundles of food. Then, she took out a larger bundle and stood up.
“I’m going to take this to your father,” she told them. “I will be right back.” And she turned, and left them there. The children watched her go.
The one who watched bared her pointed teeth, her chest clamping. For an instant, she thought…
But no. Better to remain within the plan she had devised the night before. And so, with one last look at the children, she whispered off between the trees to her nearby cottage.
Once there, she slid inside, left the door open, and flung open all of the windows. She made up the fire in the hearth, using the sweetest of apple wood, and with swift and skillful hands began to concoct the most savory and buttery caramels she had ever made.
Chapter Three
For furious hours she worked, baking and cooking and stirring. Delicious smells and warmth flooded the cottage and rolled out through the door and windows. The heat from the mounted fire swelled the scent of the cinnamon walls and the mint and licorice in the thatch. While certain treats baked, she swept the cottage clean, lit all the lamps and candles, and set out the long table with accompanying chairs, spread with a lace runner and lit by candles on silver stands. As each dish was completed, she set it out upon the table in grand display. Tortes, cookies, cheese creams, plum cakes, berry pies, gingerbread, trifles, chocolates and caramels, accompanied by steaming ciders and hot chocolates topped with whipped cream crowded the table. All that remained in the oven was a juicy apple strudel.
But in the midst of digging through a cupboard to find a platter to put it on, soft footfalls sounded at the front of the house. She stopped, her hands freezing. Then, she straightened up and turned around.
Across the room, the front door stood open. Twilight draped its cloak over the wood, and purplish light huddled across the threshold. She clasped the front of her weathered apron, straining her one good eye, not daring to move.
Then, they appeared.
Two children, their curly black hair tucked under caps, clasping each other’s hands, gingerly stepped across the threshold. Their brown eyes grew even wider, and they both gasped as they cast their wondering gaze across the warm, candle-lit room, and the veritable feast of sweets that lay spread before them. Hansel let go his sister and wandered further in, licking his lips. Then, he glanced back at his sister.
“Come on, Gretel,” he urged. “Let’s eat!”
“But Hansel,” she protested. “Whose house is this? It looks like someone was expecting us…?”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Hansel protested. “My stomach has been growling for hours.”
“Yes, I’m hungry,” Gretel huffed. “But what if…”
“Gretel…” Hansel said, his tone different as he frowned at the food on the table. “Come look.”
“What?”
“Come look at these chocolates. They look just like…”
And then he saw her. The one who watched in the corner. He saw her.
And so did Gretel.
They saw her—her grey skin, pointed face, missing eye, wiry braided hair, tattered leafy dress, claw-hands and ugly feet.
And their faces turned ashen.
Gretel screamed.
Hansel turned, grabbed his sister’s arm, jerked her out the door…
And the two children fled.
And the one who watched slowly covered her face with her hands, knelt to the ground, and wept.
When the time came, she listlessly took the strudel out of the oven, not caring if she burned her hands. She set it on a fine platter, and laid it on the table, dragging her watery gaze across all the splendid food. Upon this table lay her winter stores—all of her milk and butter and preserved fruits and flour. All of it would be ruined by the cold soon, uneaten. For she no longer cared.
The candlelight flickered. She stood for a long time, gazing over the untouched feast, her heart like stone. Then, she shuffled across the room to a corner, to a pile of old cloths and rags that she had halfway hidden behind a screen. There she sat down and tucked herself into the rags, folding herself in their embrace, and glanced partially around the screen, absently watching as the sky became dark. In a little while, snow began to fall. It coated the garden, frosting the roses, and drifted across the threshold. Cold began to seep far into the house.
And then…
Crunch, crunch, crunch…
Footsteps. Short, little hurried strides.
And the next moment, Hansel and Gretel bundled back into the house covered in snow, their little faces red with cold. Hansel, without thinking, shoved the front door shut, sealing out the snow. It slammed shut. Every candle and lamp in the place leaped.
“We shouldn’t have come back here, Hansel!” Gretel hissed, shivering.
“Would you rather have us freeze to death in the snow?” Hansel demanded. “Besides, I wanted to see something.”
“You wanted to see that awful witch again?”
“No,” Hansel growled impatiently. “The food.”
“Look, I know you are hungry, but—” Gretel tried.
“No, Gretel,” Hansel cut her off. “Look at the food.”
Frowning a delicate little frown, Gretel approached the table and stood beside her brother. Unconsciously, both children took deep sniffs, leaning closer and closer, studying all of it with keen eyes.
The one who watched stared at them, biting the inside of her cheek.
“Does it seem familiar?” Hansel whispered.
“Yes,” Gretel whispered. “Especially the…”
“The strudel,” Hansel gasped. Both children gaped at it. Then, Hansel lunged at it, tore off a piece of the sticky pastry with his hand, and stuck it in his mouth. He chewed ravenously, his eyes wider than ever, then quickly tore another piece off.
“Gretel, eat this!” he cried. Gretel quickly took it from him and stuffed it in her mouth. The next moment, she grabbed his shirt.
“Hansel!” she yelped around her mouthful. Hansel broke loose of her, darting through the front room of the house, searching like a bloodhound. Gretel quickly followed him. They came nearer and nearer the screen…
A
nd all at once, the boy had heaved the screen away, revealing the one who watched, huddled and frightened in her pile of rags.
The children stopped. They stared down at her, their eyes brilliant and penetrating. Then, Hansel took a low, cautious breath.
“Is your name…Lotta?” he demanded.
The one who watched, shivering, dared to lift her head. Dared to show her pointed teeth.
Dared to let the tears fall from her one eye.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Mumma!” Gretel shrieked—
And the two children fell to their knees and threw their arms around their mother.
Chapter Four
“Mumma, how did this happen to you?” Gretel demanded.
The three of them sat around the table of sweets—Lotta at the head, and one child to either side. In true childlike fashion, they had plied her with questions even as they stuffed their mouths with food, both with equal intensity. Each child held onto one of Lotta’s hands with one of their hands, and with the free hand, they ate. The feeling of their fingers grasped within hers filled Lotta’s heart to bursting, and she found it difficult to form any words at all.
“Tell me first what has happened to you,” she urged. “I have tried to watch you, but I didn’t dare come too near.”
“We’ve nearly starved to death all summer!” Hansel exclaimed around a mouthful of tart. “When Marta married father, everything got worse. She almost never cooked enough food for us, and when she did feed us, she told us we were greedy and would try to take it away.”
“And she gave the dog and cat to our neighbors, no matter how much I cried!” Gretel told her.
“And she would do things—break things—around the house, and then tell Papa that we’d done it!” Hansel went on, his face turning red. “And whenever he was being kind to us, or spending an afternoon or evening with us, she would come up to him and put her hand on him, and he would forget about us completely.”
“Like he was under a spell,” Gretel whispered tearily, looking at her brother. “She made him hate us as much as she hates us!”
“And now they’ve left us out in the woods to die,” Hansel muttered angrily, taking a swig of hot chocolate. “I know it was Marta’s idea.”
“What happened to you, Mumma?” Gretel demanded again.
“Yes, Papa came home one day and told us you were dead!” Hansel cried.
Lotta tried to smile, and squeezed their hands.
“I’m not sure I should tell you…” she murmured.
“You can tell us, Mumma,” Gretel urged solemnly. “You can trust us.”
Lotta smiled painfully again, then took a bracing breath.
“When I was a girl, and I met your Papa, we fell very much in love. But Marta loved your Papa, too. After Papa and I married, Marta became so bitter and cruel that no one else wanted to marry her, either. The day your father came home to tell you I had died…I had actually just gone into the wood for a moment, while you were in school, to search for mushrooms. Marta followed me. And she told me how jealous of me she had always been, how she had always wanted revenge on me for taking what she wanted. And she laid a curse on me.”
“She is a witch!” Hansel yelped. “We knew it!”
“Yes,” Lotta nodded. “She made me ugly and unrecognizable, and thus banished me from the village. And when your Papa came, she cursed him too, so he would think a tree had fallen on me.” Lotta took a shaking breath. “And when I saw my reflection in a pond, I knew I could never come home looking this way.”
“You could have come home, Mumma,” Gretel whispered, tears falling. “We don’t care what you look like.”
Lotta smiled again, gently.
“But what about your father?” she whispered.
“Papa loves you—!” Gretel tried.
“But he’s forgotten her and married Marta! He’s under her spell!” Hansel reminded her. “We have to rescue Papa!”
“But how?” Gretel asked. “What should we do, Mumma?”
Lotta shook her head.
“I don’t know, my dears. So long I’ve thought and thought about it…But I don’t know.”
“We will think of something,” Hansel stated.
“I hope so,” Lotta said. “But until then…I’m just so happy to see you, my babies! Eat all the food, and tonight we will sleep together by the fire again!”
The two children cheered, and quickly divvied out portions of the food for their mother to eat, too. And the weight of her husband’s fate almost lifted as the laughter and warmth of Lotta’s children, so long absent, surrounded her again.
Chapter Five
Lotta awoke, taking a deep, contented breath. She lay on the thick fur rug before the fireplace, which still burnt low. She and her children had eaten their fill of the feast, and had laid down, wrapped in blankets and cuddled together, in front of the fire, laughing and giggling together until they dropped off to sleep.
Now, Lotta stretched and sat up, pushing aside the mounds of blankets.
“Hansel?” she murmured sleepily. “Gretel? What would you like for breakfast…?”
She stopped. Then, she flung the blankets this way, and that.
But no children lay beneath them.
“Gretel!” she shouted, panicked. “Hansel!”
She leaped to her feet, sweeping through the cottage, but found them nowhere. Then, upon the table, she spotted a piece of paper. She darted toward it and snatched it up. Upon it, in bold pencil, lay Hansel’s handwriting.
We have gone to break the spell.
Lotta’s heart staggered. She rushed to the door, forgetting her shawl, and raced out into the morning light.
Though the forest paths, over the thick underbrush, past the tangled thickets, over the frosty leaves she ran. Never flagging, never failing—her fear for her children pounding through her blood.
Until at last she burst out of the wood and onto the road, her wiry hair all in a tangle. She spun to face the village, and just at the edge of it, she glimpsed her own home of not so long ago: a pretty and small cottage, now neglected, sagging, and unhappy. She started toward it.
Just that moment, Hansel and Gretel burst out the front door, and then slammed it behind them. Blood ran down Hansel’s nose, and soot covered Gretel’s face. Both of them bore tearstains on their cheeks. But fierce were their expressions as they threw all their strength against the door.
“Children!” Lotta cried, hurrying near. “What are you doing?”
“Stay back, Mumma!” Gretel cried.
And the next moment, the thatch caught fire.
And furious howling issued from inside. Smoke roiled against the windows.
“What happened?” Lotta yelped.
“We came through the door and called to Marta,” Hansel grunted. “She got so angry when she saw us alive—she struck me in the face and knocked me down! Gretel grabbed her and tied her apron to the table—Marta threw a shovel of soot in Gretel’s face!”
“So Hansel kicked over two lamps!” Gretel yelped. “And now we are not letting her out!”
Before Lotta could say a word, the howling inside turned to a screech—
And flames swallowed the whole cottage. The children leaped back even as the door caved in, and the inferno billowed. Lotta grabbed them, and they ran away, following the road toward the wood, leaving the fire in the distance.
Finally, as they paused to catch their breath in a wide span of warm sunlight, Gretel turned, and gasped up at Lotta.
“Mumma!” she cried, pointing up at her. “You…!”
Lotta started. She lifted her hands, and stared down at them.
Smooth, pale hands—no longer grey or leathery. She felt her face. Comely and shapely and soft. And her long braid—glossy and deep brown as chestnut again.
“Lotta?”
She spun around, her heart leaping at the sound of that voice.
And there, just emerging from the woods, was her tall, dark-haired, handsome husband,
his axe on his shoulders. He stared at her, his arms going slack, the axe lowering to the ground.
Lotta held out her arms to him, beaming a smile through her tears.
“Judson!” she called.
He dropped his axe, tears of his own falling, and rushed to her. He took her head in his hands and kissed her feverishly, over and over—and then he wrapped her tightly against his chest and wept for joy. Soon, the children flung their arms around their parents, who embraced them in turn.
And then, overflowing with gladness, the woodcutter set his son upon his shoulders and followed, hand in hand, his wife and daughter into the woods to his wife’s wonderful new cottage, listening to the fantastic tale of all their adventures as he went. And the woodcutter and his wife lived in that cottage the rest of their days, watching their children grow and prosper, happy all the while.
The End
The Curse
Once upon a time, in a perfect and extraordinary kingdom, there lived an immortal King who had many beautiful Children that he loved with all his heart, and many loyal courtiers. But after a time, the Court Magician became jealous of the King, and grew tired of taking orders. So he created a potion he thought would make him stronger than the King, and he persuaded several courtiers to take it with him and try to overthrow the King. But instead of strength, it filled him with a contagious poison. The King fought him and his friends, and threw them out of the kingdom, lest everyone and everything become infected.
The Magician, consumed with hatred, decided to take revenge upon the King by hurting those whom he loved most: his Children. The Magician, being immortal, could not die of the poison, but he knew the Children could, because they were made of different, more precious stuff. The King went straight to his Children and warned them about the poison, and told them how to avoid it—but the Magician convinced them that the King was wrong, and that the poison was actually a good thing that the King was deceitfully keeping from them. And so the Children took the poison—and began to die. Heartbroken, the King had to push them out of his perfect kingdom as well, because otherwise the poison would corrupt it, too. But he had a plan to save them.
Alydia Rackham's Fairytales Page 4
