In the village lived a woodcutter, his wife, and their two children. They were a faithful people in this place, living by the Rule handed to men by God. Some of the Rule was easy, some difficult, but all must be kept.
If you've ever made pancakes, you know the phrase, "first batch for the griddle." You throw out the first pancake. It's "for the griddle." Likewise with firstborn daughters. Yes, these are "for the woods," as the Rule said--made to be thrown out on their tenth birthdays. If done correctly, your next child will be a boy, and healthy.
*
The parents argued that night.
"I can't bear it," said the father. "I can't do it." He was near tears.
"I love her too," said the mother, who was, herself, a second-born girl, and as such had felt the hot breath of the Rule on her neck more closely than some--and so knew, more than some, the inexorable force of it. "I love her," she said quietly, "and, tonight, I fear her."
*
In the children's bedroom, this could all be overheard by Gretel and Hansel (yes, the family already had a boy, their second-born, but this didn't change the Rule. Indeed, it made it all the more necessary, somehow). The two lay awake in the little beds the father had fashioned for them, on mattresses stuffed with hay.
As the parents fell silent below, Hansel got out of his bed, and went to his sister's. "Can I join you?" he asked.
Gretel silently held up her blanket, and Hansel crawled in.
"Why did mom say she's afraid of you?" Hansel asked.
"Because," said Gretel, "I could do something wrong."
"Oh." Hansel, only six, didn't fully understand that if Gretel did anything beyond the required--if she ran away, for instance, or took her own life--their whole family would be exiled, or even killed. Hansel stroked his sister's hair with his little hand. "It's so soft," he said, as a compliment.
*
Midnight. The church bell rings. The front door opens, and the father steps out, with Gretel next to him, blindfolded.
The whole village has gathered just beyond their fence--hundreds of people all sad to see this poor girl led to her ignominious fate, and equally determined that she endure it.
Father and daughter walk silently through the crowd, out of the village, and into the forest.
"Father?" says Gretel. He does not reply, simply leads her on, prodding gently. She trips, but he picks her up. They walk a long time in silence. "Father, will it hurt?" Gretel asks, her voice quaking.
He does not reply.
He ceases to push her forward, and she senses that she is alone.
She removes her blindfold.
She stands in a moonlit clearing. Before her is a little house, made all of gingerbread. Smoke rises from the chimney and blots the stars.
May your children be boys. May they be healthy.
