Sugar and Spice

by Sarah Mlynowski

  My stomach growls. I would totally eat that house, too. Not that it would be safe to do so.

  “Hansel and Gretel are so happy to see the cake house,” I continue, “that they gobble up pieces of the roof and windowpanes. But then a woman comes out.”

  “Is it the stepmother?”

  “No. Another woman.”

  “A stranger?”

  “Yes. And the stranger invites them inside for a proper meal. Hansel and Gretel are thrilled. But the woman is just pretending to be nice. She’s really a witch! And she made her house out of cake to lure in kids.”

  “Because she doesn’t have any?” Jonah asks.

  “Because she wants to eat one for dinner!” I say.

  Jonah gasps. “That’s gross!”

  “Yup. And now Hansel and Gretel are trapped in her house. The witch throws Hansel in a cage. And she tells Gretel to cook for him — to fatten him up so he’ll be tasty to eat for her dinner.”

  “Poor Hansel!” Jonah says. “Poor Gretel!”

  I nod. “Well, Gretel cooks and cooks, and soon her brother is gaining a lot of weight. But the witch can’t see that for herself. She has really bad eyesight. So she asks Hansel to stick his finger through the bars of the cage so she can feel if he’s fat enough to eat yet.”

  “And is he?” Jonah asks.

  “Well, he is,” I say. “But Gretel doesn’t want to let the witch know that. So she comes up with a great idea. She gives Hansel a chicken bone and tells him to stick that through the cage instead of his finger.”

  “I get it,” Jonah says. “So when Hansel sticks out the chicken bone, the witch thinks that’s his finger. His very skinny finger. His too-skinny-to-eat finger.”

  I nod. “But the witch is getting impatient. She wants Hansel fattened up fast. So the next day, the witch tells Gretel it’s time to bake dough for kid pie.”

  “Kid pie?” Jonah shrieks. His eyes bug out.

  “Yes,” I say. “The witch plans to trap Gretel in the oven. But Gretel manages to trap the witch in the oven instead. Gretel frees her brother from the cage, and they take some jewels from the witch’s house and run as far away as they can.”

  “Do they go straight home?” Jonah asks.

  “No,” I say. “There’s this pond, and a duck has to carry them across. But then they finally get to their father’s house. And he’s happy to see them.”

  “Yeah!” Jonah pumps another fist into the air. “I’ll bet their stepmother wasn’t, though.”

  “Well, in the time Hansel and Gretel were gone, the stepmother died.”

  “Huh? She did? From what?”

  “Um, I don’t know. The story doesn’t say. Hunger maybe?”

  “Or maybe she got eaten by a wolf. That happens in forests, you know.”

  I look around and shudder. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Well, I’m glad they got home,” Jonah says.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “Oh, no!” Gretel says up ahead. She comes running back to us, Hansel behind her.

  Her face is pale. “The bread crumbs are gone!” she cries.

  Um, yep. I so called that. At least we didn’t mess up the story.

  “Did YOU eat the bread crumbs?” Hansel asks, narrowing his eyes at Jonah. “You did, didn’t you?”

  “My brother wouldn’t eat food off the ground!” I yell. Then I remember his lollipop comment earlier, and try again. “My brother wouldn’t eat bread crumbs off the ground!”

  “Yeah, why would I eat bread crumbs from the dirt?” Jonah asks. “That’s gross.”

  “Maybe your dog did it,” Gretel says, glaring at Prince.

  “Prince doesn’t like bread,” Jonah answers, bending down to pat Prince’s head. “He likes cheese. Cheese crumbs he would have gone for.”

  “It was probably the birds,” I offer.

  It was one hundred percent the birds.

  “Oh, yeah,” Gretel says, looking up. “The birds. We forgot about the birds.”

  “But now we’ll never find our way home!” Hansel says, his eyes filling with tears.

  Gretel wraps her arms around him and pats him on the back.

  “What do we do?” Jonah whispers to me.

  I glance at my watch. Oh, wow. It’s 3:11 A.M. in Smithville. Time is definitely passing much slower here than it is at home. I’m pretty sure it’s passing twice as slow. But how can I check? I guess I can count. “Quiet for a second, ’kay?” I tell my brother. “I need to check something.” When my watch changes to three twelve, I start to count. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi … When I reach thirty, my watch changes to three thirteen. So I’m definitely right. One minute at home is thirty seconds here. Every half hour here is an hour at home. That means my parents will be up in less than four Smithville hours, which is only two hours here. AHHHH!

  “I think we need to send them off to the witch’s house and then start looking for the portal home,” I whisper to Jonah.

  “Isn’t it bad to send them to the witch?” Jonah whispers back.

  “I don’t think so,” I say nervously. “At least we know they outsmart her. And then they get her jewels and live happily ever after.”

  “True,” Jonah says. “Can we walk with them until they get there at least? Maybe we’ll get to see the cake house!” He leans closer to me. “And taste it?”

  I consider. “We’ll have to assess the situation. But … maybe one teensy piece of roof won’t hurt anything.”

  Don’t we deserve it? Our parents did make us miss dessert.

  And I bet the cake house is much, much yummier than a measly piece of fruitcake.

  Gretel is still comforting her brother.

  “Don’t worry,” I say.

  “Will you help us find our way home?” she asks.

  “We’ll help you,” I say. But what I really mean is we’ll help them find the cake house, and not their actual house.

  “But how?” Gretel asks, narrowing her eyes at me and taking her brother’s hand. “I would like to know a specific plan.”

  Why am I not surprised? I also like to always know a specific plan. Too bad I don’t have one right now.

  “Let’s walk … that way,” I say, pointing forward. In the original story, a bird shows them the way to the cake house. So all we have to do is find the bird.

  Hmm. I hope that bird isn’t the same bird that protected the fence. No, it can’t be. This bird tries to help the kids, right?

  I look up in the air. There are a lot of birds. But none of them are tweeting at us.

  “So where are you from, anyway?” Gretel asks. “Are your parents worried about you being out in the forest by yourselves? Or did they drop you off here, like ours did?”

  “Neither,” I say.

  Jonah snort-laughs. “Right now, our parents are so mad at us, they probably would drop us off here.”

  “Do you get in trouble a lot?” Hansel asks Jonah. “We do. Yesterday we got in trouble for not bringing in enough firewood. Our stepmom is always mad at us about something.”

  “Oh, we get in trouble all the time,” Jonah says, nodding. “If I don’t put away my toys? My parents flip. My mother took away my golden ball just because I broke a lamp! And so what if I leave my remote-controlled robot on the living room rug? Big deal, right? And I wasn’t allowed to get a new lightsaber after I left mine in the yard and it got ruined by the rain.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t my fault it rained!”

  Hansel stops walking. “A remote what? And what’s a lightsaber?”

  “I guess you haven’t seen Star Wars,” Jonah says.

  As Jonah tells Hansel all about his toys, I check my watch again. Another nineteen minutes have passed at home. It’s 3:30 A.M. in Smithville. We’ve got to move it.

  “How many toys do you have?” Gretel asks Jonah.

  “Lots,” my brother says. That’s true. Our closets are overflowing with them.

  “You too?” Gretel asks me.

  “Well, I do
n’t play with toys like I used to,” I say. I feel a little uncomfortable, but I’m not sure why. “But I have a lot of fun stuff in my room. Like a jewelry box and books and Legos and arts and crafts —”

  “Your room?” Gretel repeats, stopping in her tracks. “What do you mean?”

  “My bedroom,” I say. Has she not heard of a bedroom? “Where I sleep.”

  “I don’t have one of those,” Gretel says.

  “Me neither,” Hansel adds.

  “You’re lucky,” Jonah says. “We have to clean our rooms every night before bed. And then we have to wake up early to go to school.”

  “What’s school?” Hansel asks. “Is that where you go to buy food?”

  “Uh, no,” Jonah says. “We buy all our food at the supermarket. You know, huge store, tons of food. Costco is the best. They give out samples. Like little dogs-in-a-blanket.”

  “Pigs-in-a-blanket,” I say. “Not dogs.”

  “They’re little hot dogs! They should be called dogs-in-a-blanket!”

  I roll my eyes. “I know you think so, but they’re not.”

  “Can you answer my brother’s question? What’s school?” Gretel asks.

  “It’s where we go to learn,” I say. “Math. Reading. Geography.”

  “We have to go for seven hours a day,” Jonah says with a small groan. “All the kids go. You don’t go to school?”

  “No,” Gretel and Hansel say simultaneously.

  “We do chores all day,” Hansel says. “And get in trouble from our stepmother when our dad is out.”

  “We got in trouble last night because we didn’t finish all our vegetables,” Jonah says. “And then we weren’t allowed to have dessert! They make us eat our veggies every night!” He makes a face and sticks out his tongue. “Even ketchup can’t make spinach taste better. Or peas.”

  “Nothing can,” I say. I actually like some vegetables, but I hate peas. So squishy.

  Gretel’s mouth is open. She’s staring from me to Jonah and back to me. “Wait. You get vegetables every night?”

  “Of course,” Jonah says. “Don’t you?”

  They shake their heads.

  “Lucky,” Hansel says.

  “Lucky?” Jonah asks. “Are you kidding?”

  I think about everything we’ve said. Everything we have. Everything they don’t. My cheeks heat up. She isn’t kidding. Her family is really poor. According to the original story, Hansel and Gretel were lucky to eat a small piece of bread a day. We must sound like spoiled brats. I poke my brother in the shoulder.

  “I’m not kidding,” Gretel says. “We never get vegetables.”

  “But we saw a bunch of veggie plants,” Jonah says. “Who do they belong to?”

  “No one knows,” Gretel says. “But the fence is high and it’s protected by a horrible bird.”

  It must be really hard to live in a town called Vegetopia with lots of vegetable fields when you can’t have any vegetables.

  “We are lucky,” I say.

  Gretel nods. “We’re not. We’re lost.”

  “You’ll get home soon,” I tell her. “You really will.” I really hope so anyway. Where is that bird? How are we going to find the cake house?

  Jonah pauses next to a tree. “Maybe I should climb it and see if I can spot the cake house?”

  I give him a look. He wasn’t supposed to mention the cake house! We made them think we were helping them find their way home!

  “What cake house?” Gretel asks. “You know someone who bakes cakes?”

  “Uh, no,” I say. “We just heard there was a house made out of cake in these woods.”

  Gretel starts laughing. “A house made out of cake? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “No, it’s the YUMMIEST thing you’ve heard,” Jonah says.

  Gretel rolls her eyes. “No, I definitely mean the dumbest. Come on.”

  “It’s not dumb,” I say. Humph. One minute, Gretel is nice, and the next she’s … not exactly sugar sweet.

  “Trust me,” Gretel says, flipping her wavy brown hair behind her shoulders. “If there was a house made out of cake in these woods, my brother and I would have eaten it a long time ago.”

  “There would be nothing left,” Hansel adds. “Not a crumb.”

  “We’re telling you, there’s a cake house,” Jonah says. “Let me just give the tree a quick climb to see if I can find it.” He jumps up on the tree and looks out.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “Don’t see it,” Jonah says.

  “Maybe you’ve climbed a few too many trees and fallen on your head,” Gretel snaps.

  Nope, she’s not that sweet at all. More like sour.

  Although, maybe I’d be like that, too, if my parents abandoned me in the forest. Twice.

  “It’s going to get dark soon,” Gretel says.

  I look at the setting sun. Hmm. Maybe that’s the problem. In the original story, the bird only came to them in the middle of the night. And the sun here is still setting. It’s about 8 P.M. We’re too early. Who knows where the bird is right now? He could be on the other side of the forest! I glance at my watch again. It’s four at home. We have only ninety minutes here before our parents wake us up back home. What are we going to do?

  If only I had super-vision and could see through the trees. Or super-smell. Then I could smell the cake.

  Wait a second.

  I don’t have super-smell. But I know someone who does.

  “Prince?” I say.

  Ruff! Ruff!

  “Jonah, take the lollipop out of your pocket and give it to Prince.”

  “But I’m saving it!”

  “Jonah! Do it!”

  “Fine,” he grumbles, and takes it out. He puts it under Prince’s nose.

  “Smell it, Prince. Take a good sniff.”

  He gives it a lick.

  “Good enough. Now, do you smell anything like that out here? Do you smell candy?”

  He cocks his little head to the side. Then he sniffs the air. Once. Twice. Three times. He gives out a bark and sets off between two trees.

  “He caught the scent!” I exclaim. “Follow that dog!”

  “Gimme back that lollipop,” Jonah hollers. “It’s still good!”

  “Jonah, Prince licked it.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You’re disgusting,” I say, but toss it to him as I run.

  We’ve been chasing Prince for about fifteen minutes, and it’s now four thirty at home. Four thirty! At this point, I can only hope that the portal home is at the cake house. Because if it’s not, we’re never going to make it home in time.

  Right now, all we see are trees, trees, and more trees. And three more vegetable fields with even bigger signs posted on the fences surrounding them. Warning signs that read: TOUCH VEGETABLES AT YOUR OWN RISK!

  “What are those anyway?” Jonah asks, pointing at the leafy green plants poking out of the ground in neat rows.

  “Spinach?” I say, wrinkling my nose. “Oh, wait, no — that’s kale! Mom wanted to make me a kale smoothie the other day when she was having one. Thanks, but no, thanks.”

  “What’s a smoothie?” Gretel asks.

  “It’s fruit and veggies and ice all mixed together. Usually they’re good but not when they have kale in them.”

  “I’ve never had kale,” she says wistfully.

  “Where’s the cake house?” Hansel demands. “I want cake!”

  I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever find the cake house. Maybe Prince isn’t tracking the scent after all.

  “I’m tired,” Gretel complains, frowning. “Your dumb dog is leading us on a wild dog chase.”

  “Yeah,” Hansel says. He picks up a rock and tosses it at Prince, just missing.

  “Hey!” I shout.

  “So?” Hansel says. “It’s just a dog.”

  “Just a dog?” I say. “What’s wrong with you? And he’s not dumb. Be nice to him!”

  Gretel puts her hands on her hips. “Don
’t tell my brother what to do!”

  Ugh. I swear I don’t remember Hansel and Gretel being this awful in the original story.

  Jonah and I aren’t this awful, are we?

  No. We can’t be.

  Maybe they’re just really hungry. Who knows when the last meal they had was? Pieces of bread are not a meal. I can’t blame them for not being in the best mood.

  But … being hungry is not an excuse to throw rocks at dogs.

  “Abby,” Jonah says, pointing. “Look! A house!”

  Up ahead, through some trees, is a totally adorable cottage. It’s light pink with a light-brown roof. The windows are trimmed in red and white.

  “That’s not our house,” Gretel says. “Our house is half the size and mud brown.” She stares at the cottage. “The doorknob looks like a cookie. I’m so hungry my eyes must be playing tricks on me.”

  It does look like a cookie. A chocolate-chip cookie. And the trim around the strawberry-colored door looks like pie crust.

  Because it is a chocolate-chip cookie. And it is a pie crust. It’s the cake house!

  We found it! I bend down and scratch behind my dog’s ears. Good job, Prince!

  Jonah lifts his nose and sniffs the air. “Do you smell strawberry shortcake?” he asks.

  “And brownies?” Hansel says.

  “And gingerbread?” Gretel says.

  “Yup, yup, and yup,” I say, smiling. “You’re all correct. This, my friends, is the cake house.”

  Gretel’s eyes almost pop out of her face, slinky style. “It’s real?” she asks.

  “Told you so,” I say smugly. Take that, Gretel!

  “Hunnnnnngry,” Hansel says. “Want candy.”

  “Me too,” says Gretel. “Come on, Hansel. Let’s go!”

  I grin at Jonah. We’re here. Whew. Now the story can unfold exactly the way it’s supposed to. Yay, us.

  Hansel and Gretel start running down the hill. Hansel reaches the house first.

  “It smells so good,” Jonah says.

  “It does,” I say as the yummiest-smelling breeze ever wafts toward me.

  “I’m just going to run up and take a little taste. ’Kay, Abby?”

  Sniff. Yum. Sniff, sniff. “But …”

  “I don’t see the witch,” Jonah says. “We’ll be careful. Let’s just take a closer look. We have to. It’s a cake house! It’s THE cake house.”