by Anthea Sharp
The cooking lessons picked up as if nothing had gone awry. Greta started baking pies and cookies and single layer cakes. Always the kitchen bot turned on the temperature and set the timer, not allowing Greta access to the oven.
“I’ll never really learn.” Greta’s voice was cross as she threw out batch after batch of cookies she declared burned or underdone. “You have to let me control the oven.”
“The oven is dangerous,” the house said.
“I can’t hurt you with an oven,” Greta said.
The house felt a shiver in its electronic brain.
“See, you were worried about nothing,” Greta said later as she blind baked a perfect piecrust without any help. “Not a single problem.”
She learned to use the blender and the food processor, the industrial size mixer and the blast chiller.
“If you let me use the gas stove, I could make caramels and lollipops and Italian meringues,” Greta said.
“Oh, yes, let her!” Hans said, biting into a jam thumbprint cookie Greta made that afternoon.
“The stove is the most dangerous thing of all,” the house said.
Greta snorted. “I could burn you down with the stove,” she said. “But I won’t. What would be the point? Hans doesn’t want to leave, and I won’t leave Hans.”
The steady hum that was the lifeblood of the house wobbled. Hans gave Greta an odd look before taking the last bite of his cookie.
That night she woke her brother.
“We have to get out,” she hissed. “I’m going to burn down the house.”
Hans’ eyes rolled like a wild animal. “You can’t. The house won’t let you. The kitchen bot will put out the fire.”
“The bot is dead. I cut its wires. The house will kill us when it finds out. Now hurry!”
“The house won’t kill us,” Hans said, a note of pleading in his voice. “It loves us.”
“It’s just a house! It doesn’t love you!” Greta grabbed Hans’ arm and twisted it until he cried out. “If you don’t come with me, you will die!”
“Help!” Hans shouted. “Help me!”
“The house can’t help you,” Greta said, twisting Hans’ arm harder. “It can’t even help itself.”
Abruptly she let go of Hans’ arm and faced him, their bodies inches apart.
“Listen,” she said, her voice soft and soothing, “we need to let Papa know we are okay. Then we can come back to visit the house any time you want to. We can stay as long as you like.”
Hans’ expression was skeptical.
“I promise,” Greta said, letting the fingers of her right hand rest on his forearm. “Any time you want to, we’ll come back.”
“But the candy—“
“I’ve taken care of that,” Greta said. “I know how to make all the things you like.”
“We can come back when we want to?”
“Promise.”
Hans nibbled his thumbnail. “I do miss my comic books,” he said. Greta seized on this and gave him a push into the hall. “Head to the kitchen,” she whispered.
The hall lights flickered on.
“Are you having difficulty sleeping?” the house asked.
Greta didn’t answer but propelled Hans down the hall. The kitchen was already brightly lit, as if the house had known their destination. On the floor near the sink was the kitchen bot, its cylindrical metal body strangely inert.
Without hesitating, Greta walked to the stove and rotated the knob for the front left burner. The suss of gas preceded the leap of flames.
“What are you doing?” the house asked.
“Unlock the front door,” Greta said, “or I’ll burn you down.”
“You may not leave,” the house replied. “I do not wish to be alone again.”
Greta rotated the knob for the second burner. It, too, raised flames six inches high.
“Turn off the stove,” the house said, its normal monotone edging into fear. “You are putting yourself in danger.”
With sudden violence, Greta twisted on the last two burners. The heat in the kitchen ticked up noticeably.
“Let us go!” she shouted.
“I will not allow it,” the house said over the whoosh and thunder of the fire. The towel hanging on a hook next to the stove began to smolder.
“We have to leave,” Greta sobbed. “Don’t you understand?”
“You are happy here,” the house said. “Hans is happy here,” it amended.
“No,” Greta said, snuffling. “You’re happy we’re here, but we’re prisoners.”
The fire alarm in the kitchen chimed. The automatic sprinklers sent down a spray of ineffective water droplets as the fire on the stove raged on.
Yellow and blue flames licked up the wall. Smoke billowed and the backsplash behind the stove buckled like a sheet of taffy.
Greta and Hans backed out of the kitchen and ran into the living room.
“Open the front door!” Greta pulled on the doorknob but the door was immovable.
“I do not wish to be alone again,” the house said. Its voice was strained, as if talking was becoming an effort.
Greta twisted the doorknob again.
“We will die here if you don’t let us out!”
“I do not wish to be….lonely,” the house said, its voice gravelly with sorrow.
Grunting from the effort, Greta tried banging the doorknob with her fist. The fire alarm was louder and more insistent.
Greta’s hands grew sweaty. She wasn’t strong enough to open the door on her own. She’d miscalculated and now they were going to die here in a burning house. Tipping back her head, she howled like a wounded animal.
“I hate you!” she shrieked. In her world, the world she used to know as a child, such words were the worst she could say. She’d said them once to her father and had watched in horror as his face blanched and his expression went dark. Later she couldn’t remember why she’d said them, only his hurt.
And once she’d cast them at her stepmother, the way the witches and wizards in her fairy tale book sent magic words into the air, forcefully, with serious consequences, but her stepmother had swatted them away like a fly, with hardly any notice.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” Greta said as the roar from the kitchen grew louder and smoke made her throat raw.
The lights in the house flickered on and off, the air exchanger hummed loudly, the fire alarm volume ramped up.
Turning towards Hans, Greta saw that his face was streaked with tears and mucus, his round cheeks as red as berries.
“I’m sorry,” she said, touching his face with her fingers. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Hans sniffled, rubbed the back of his hand across his nose, and nodded. “I hate you!” he shouted to the ceiling. He put his hand beside Greta’s on the doorknob. “I hate you!”
The air was close and hard to breathe. The door sprang open as if it had never been locked. For a moment, Greta was so surprised that she couldn’t move.
Then with a jerk forward, she pulled herself and Hans over threshold and down the front steps.
They ran to the edge of the yard where the cedar trees formed a natural screen before they stopped to look behind them. One and then two of the glass windows in the front room shattered. The fire raced along the open door frame and the wooden shingles sucked it up to the roofline.
The perimeter drone rounded the corner and fell to the ground. From inside the house something exploded and a few seconds later, flames burst through the window of the boy’s bedroom.
Hans wept.
Leaning to his ear, Greta spoke, her voice ragged and hoarse. “The house did love you,” she said. “But I love you more.”
Hans said nothing, his throat as tight as a tourniquet.
As she always had—as she always would—Greta took a few steps ahead of him and started leading them home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
No one wants a second helping of kale. A second helping of pie, however? That's a differ
ent story!
* * *
It's also the main idea behind "Hansel and Gretel," one of my favorite childhood fairy tales. Not only does it contain some favorite tropes--an evil stepmother, children lost in the woods, a scheming witch--it also serves as a cautionary tale about temptation. That house made of candy? Delicious, and deadly!
* * *
Even in the short time it took me to write this, I was lured away to check out a TV promo, listen to a weather update on the radio, scan my recent emails, and respond to a text on my phone. That's what temptation looks like in the age of science--and science fiction! Technology is our "candy house." When it becomes sentient, as it does in my version of the classic fairy tale, it is the most delicious, deadly threat to human life possible.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kay McSpadden’s essays about teaching high school are available as “Notes from a Classroom: Reflections on Teaching.” She has contributed non-fiction essays to “Luck: A Collection of Facts, Fiction, Incantations, and Verse” and short stories to “A Child’s Book of Virtues,” “Once Upon a Quest,” and “Orphans in the Black.” She also writes an op-ed column for The Charlotte Observer.
More Faerie Tale Retellings await…
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ONCE UPON A CURSE - 17 Dark Faerie Tales
ONCE UPON A KISS - 17 Romantic Faerie Tales
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