GRETHEL

ZEHN | HANSEL

Tonight had to be the night.

Hansel groaned as the nightly breeze settled over his skin and turned his body to ice. Wrapped in his arms, Ingrid slept soundly, warm in his heat, and occasionally hummed in her dreamstate. It was a quiet sound, soft, that creased the skin of her brow and parted her lips

His knuckles drifted down her spine and in his heart a heaviness grew with each notch of a scar down the valley of her back; her father had whipped her when she'd delivered news she was pregnant and she bore Hansel's child, a lowly peasant, a wandering bounty hunter not worthy of such esteemed blood. To commit such a crime, she was no better than a common whore. Her family stood by and watched because she had betrayed them and she deserved as much. Hansel didn't dare think about how far her father might've taken it had he not intervened, but his hand glided across the plains of her stomach, where his next born lay safe within.

Careful as to not wake her, he untangled himself from the furs and sat up. The night was dark and the wind was wicked. The room pressed in at all corners. Bare as the day he was born, Hansel walked to the window and looked out onto the woods. It didn't move. Didn't so much as wave to him. He shut the windows and moved away.

Tonight had to be the night, he felt it in his bones. Even beneath layers of clothes, he felt the thrum.

He bent to Ingrid and placed a kiss upon her brow. Lavender and white lilies. "I'll be home soon, love."

Then he left, quiet as the night.

Milo was missing. That was the first detail. The second: the trees parted in an arch, a welcoming to their ranks. He headed straight for it. His rifle had been missing, his two daughters, too, but there wasn't an inch of room for fear to tighten his joints or restrict his bones. Hansel was old before he was young, and with age he grew into his recklessness rather than out of it.

Hansel was going to kill the witch once and for all. Tonight had to be the night. Familiarity whispered between the trees and curled at his ears. The woods seemed to release a contented sigh and shrunk back before him. Following the path it set him on, he walked.

He'd been walking for god-knew-how-long when he saw it. The trees closed in around him and blacked out the white light of the moon. A small shadow ran through the thickets ahead and he threw out his voice to stop them. It didn't stop. His legs stumbled in the direction of the child-shadow and he clawed through the thick arms of the branches, though he knew within his gut it wasn't his daughter. Whatever it was, this forest made people see things and he was about to look. But it revealed nothing, and soon he was chasing after nothing at all.

"Where are they?" He screamed it at the trees. Hurled his words, spittled in anger, at a herd of non-sentient trees. "Where are my children?"

"Hansel."

That voice skittered off his spine, small but loud in the silence. As she always was to him. His limbs were slow and stitled and even protested against the sight.

"Grethel." Her name fell from his mouth like ash. It was her who stood before him now, not a year older than he'd last seen. Golden-haired, now brown, hanging in twin plaits, the forest wore his dead sister's skin and spoke with her voice. He conceded a step under the force of her being.

"Hansel, I'm scared."

"Grethel." It replayed in his head: the wicked glint, the fire, grief leaden in his heart, shadowed eyes and steamed drinks. He touched a hand to his wet cheeks and his legs collapsed beneath him.

"You did this."

Before his very eyes, her skin began to flake and curl at the edges. Insanity had not bore into his mind, and he rebuked it at once as some conjuration of his mind's loss. The real Grethel, true to her skin, was dead and buried beneath a mock cairn and this intrusion was figmented from the too-similar stretch of trees and sky above. It wasn't real.

"You did this."

"No, Grethel," he said, but the words scraped up his throat and cut him with their sinful edges. His body gave a mechanical jolt forward and she stepped from his reach. "I didn't want to. You were sick, I couldn't help it–"

She began to hum– that song, that wretched, cursed song. Verrückt, insane, it was what he was. He was insane, and so was his sister, and his father before them. The whole cursed family. A white-petalled flower bloomed in her hand, and as it grew, her skin wrinkled and faded until she was no longer Grethel, but a haggard and shrivelled thing more resemblant of a crouched willow. Strands of leaves for hair and all.

You did this. He did. God's Hell made better punishment than the torment he'd lived through since – or perhaps this was Hell, and he dead.

You did this. You did this. You did this.

Raw-throated, he screamed and clawed at the voices behind his skull but to no avail. The thing before him was voiceless, but he heard every word it said.

"Please." All at once, the world was silent. The word snapped through the trees and scuttled away, and Hansel was left alone. Fevered sweats wracked his body and shook his hands – sold the deal with the invisible devil.

It took some time to pry his head from between his hands, and when he did, Hansel rose to his feet. He walked the path he'd started on as dawn began to bleed through the trees, and when he emerged in a clearing in the never-ending forest, Hansel fell to his knees before the broken house and wept.