GRETHEL

SECHS | HANSEL

HE'D ALWAYS HATED THE VILLAGE.

The feeling was mutual, he supposed as he rode down the Main Street, ghosts of men scurrying in and out of equally dilapidated buildings, doors slamming in his presence, hellish in the late winter fires lighting them. Even now, two decades since, the people looked up at him with disdain, cracked in their pure eyes, where they looked upon their altars and whispered his sins to God behind closed doors.

By the time he'd made it Mutter had weaved her lies as she'd weaved her silk, and now she lay swathed in them beneath a stone that had stolen her name.

He never visited her grave.

Neither did his father, whisper told. Left, in the dead of night, no more a ghost than the other residency, chased off by voices in his head, the same that abandoned Hansel and Grethel to fend for themselves under the care of the trees. Their whole family was cursed.

"Big bad wolf, feared throughout the land. I heard stories about you, Hansel Bähr. Word passes, about how you killed your sister and hid her body in the woods--"

He aimed a kick behind him. "Shut it."

Hansel clung to the idea of being a martyr. Perhaps that was what landed him as a hunter, protector of the very people who resented him, and perhaps that was why he now listened to a lowly criminal, tied to the back of his horse, as his greasy words slipped between the broken cogs in Hansel's mind and stuck there, fractured. After all, Hansel never let the looks in; words, however, were another stock of ammunition.

He hitched his horse outside the small jailhouse, nose turned up at the fresh trail of manure lining the road, stinging the inside of his nostrils and homing there, suddenly all too quiet despite it being midday and the lightest the grey skies might get. Hauling the man over his shoulder, grunting as he took the great weight, he walked up the crooked stairs and barged through the door. This one was a rat just like the rest of them, and they paid well.

"Dietrich, got another. Found him scavenging in the old abandoned factory 5 miles south."

It was warm inside, away from the winds; a fire blazed lazily at the hearth, guarded by the old watchdog, Gunther, who grazed in its presence with little more than a twitch of the eyes in Hansel's direction, and Dietrich sat hunched over his desk, glasses glinting and pen furious. Nearly useless, blind beyond his senses, but painfully loyal -- the both of them.

The sheriff, Dietrich, nodded away, pausing over a piece of writing to tap his pen impatiently at the desk, waiting a moment, and then continuing his work. "Good work, Hansel. Put him in there." He gestured off to an open cell, and Hansel obeyed and stood at the edge of his desk, prompt.

Without looking up from his papers, he reached into a drawer, rummaged around until he sourced the metal tink, and chucked a sack of gold onto the desk. Hansel fished out a single piece, pressed it to the table, and lowered his voice. "Have you seen anything?"

"Nothing. Not since." When Hansel huffed and folded his arms across his chest, as he did like clockwork every time the answer befell him, Dietrich finally stopped and added, "Y'know, this village is really getting to your head. Ingrid is a wonderful lady, an educated lady, Lord knows why she married you. Make something of that family of yours. Stop chasing folktales."

Hansel was about to reply, to defend his incessancy, as he had done his whole life, but Dietrich put his pen to paper and began to write again.

So Hansel left the old man and his old dog, mounted up, and made his way home. The air was fresh, he couldn't complain about that, and the cold air nipped at the spots where shirt and flesh stuck together with sweat. For now, the village didn't matter. Dietrich's men had found no sighting nor had one been reported since, and his mind was eager to build up this fantasy until it could be proven, indefinitely, that it wasn't her. His sister was dead, he couldn't stop that, and now what did he have left?

A family. A good wife, honest woman tarnished by his name, who had carried three beautiful children and who now carried another, despite all odds. Good given where gold was due. Their house, he was reminded as he came upon it time and time again, a testament to good fortune on the outskirts of the village, where folktales wouldn't touch but instead lingered to be told.

He walked through the threshold and was met with silence.

There was a letter, on the table, addressed to himself in a spidery scrawl that cried ink.

Once, he checked the house. Twice, he checked the windows were latched. Thrice, he looked over the envelope as he passed.

Outside, he found his family.

He pulled up a chair on the porch, watching the children run rampant over the garden, the small pond separating them from the darkest corners of the world, out of reach of the trees and their thieving fingers. Safe, as always.

He sat, and read.

My dearest Hansel,
It is with no doubt that this letter will find you and you will realise, if your traitor's brain hasn't forgotten, the name yet to be penned before you reach it.

I write with one simple message:
You know. Don't let them fool you.

Signed yours truly,

Blank.

It stopped there.

He stared up at his children. His eldest son, paddling at the pond edge. Safe. His heart trembled in his ears, beat out a war song, and the paper crumpled under the fire of his skin. The woods was black, blacker than he'd ever really noticed, but he could feel its watchful eyes, hungry canines gnashing, claws out and...

"You worry too much." Hansel started. Rocked forward in his chair at the hand Ingrid placed on his shoulder, and only relaxed when her river voice soothed away the jagged rock. "It was decades ago."

He kissed her hand. "Ja, and the people still treat me as if I'm cursed."

"You're a respected member–"

"I'm feared."

No argument made its way from her lips. Instead, she smiled her sun-smile and recalled, "My father always told me I was a fool to marry you, Hansel, and I might agree, but look at our children and what we've made. Isn't it worth more than some common word made of fear and ignorance?"

When he spoke again, it was nearly a whisper. "You married into a curse."

He stood and turned to leave, paper bleeding from between his closed fist, but she caught his arm. "I married an honest man."

He kissed her, once, on her forehead, a passing touch, and she sighed.

"Edvard," he called, and the child stopped in his tracks. "Don't go into the woods."

❖

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays to those who don't celebrate it! 🎄❄️✨

yes this whole story is just pointless narrative lol