Seven years passed. A werewolf named Hans was twelve. His sister, Greta, was thirteen. It was winter, bitter and white.

The children knelt by their parents’ bed, watching them sleep. Their father and stepmother shook with fever, which had turned their skin clammy and gray. The sound of their chattering teeth made Hans want to sob on the floor.

“Hans,” Greta said, “what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I keep hoping they’ll wake.”

Hans crept to the fireplace and put another log on the flames, just a small one, so that Greta wouldn’t scold him about their short supply. He could always find more wood.

He leaned against the window by the kitchen table, cupping his hands around his eyes. Moonlight silvered the snow. It was a full moon; his bones told him so. Ordinarily that made it the kind of night he liked to be outside, running on four paws, breathing in the whole world.

Not tonight. He’d never leave Greta and their parents alone. Not now. Hans kept his face against the glass. He didn’t want Greta to see his tears.

The forest was always quieter during winter, as though it needed a season to rest and replenish. That’s usually what winter was for Hans and his family. But not this year. Father and Stepmother had taken ill at the change of seasons. A cough into their fists, then blood spat into their palms.

He pricked up his ears. Full moons always sharpened his hearing. His sense of smell too, though it was hard to detect anything over the sickness.

Cappella’s pipe pierced the night. Her music had drawn him that first day. He’d been so lonely for a friend who was not his sister, and Cappella was exactly what he’d wished for. She still didn’t know he was a werewolf, though. He’d been forbidden to tell anyone lest he be taken by the king.

There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wanted to ask, none of which was possible when he was in his wolf form. She didn’t even know his name.

“I know that song,” Greta said. She knew about Cappella. She’d never asked to meet her. She understood that would ruin Hans’s secret. She was a good sister, in that way and every way. “I made up words to go with it.”

Greta made up songs so often their parents used to joke that she was really the daughter of the woods, halfway to being a tree herself.

He looked to their parents. “I think they’d like for you to sing.”

Greta knelt by the bed and held her stepmother’s hand. “Do you think they can hear us?”

He nodded. He wasn’t sure, but he wanted her to sing. He wanted to feel something like normal again, and he also loved when his sister’s voice and Cappella’s pipe found each other. His two favorite things made into one.

Greta stood by the bed. Her song was sad, but somehow the words she’d come up with made it feel like sadness was necessary and beautiful, the way seasons were for the trees, the way the night was for the sky, and the way valleys were to hills.

He moved to the table, which held the last of their bread and their empty soup bowls. He and Greta usually tidied up straightaway, but they hadn’t that day, as though putting off the task would stop time.

As Greta sang, his father’s breathing changed. It had been rattling for days. Now it ceased for long stretches. Greta noticed and stopped singing. The sound of Cappella’s pipe continued, faint but clear, as though the coldness of the air had sharpened it to a fine point.

Father’s last breath was nearly soundless. A whisper, a sigh. Then the song ended. In the silence afterward, as the fire burned itself to ash, Stepmother followed Father into the beyond.

“Hans.” Greta sagged to the floor.

He knelt next to her, sliding his hand into hers as he had when he was learning to walk. He needed her hand then to keep from falling down. He needed it now too.

She squeezed his fingers. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll take care of us,” he said. “Always.”

“We’ll take care of each other. That’s our promise.”

When the first light of dawn seeped through the windows, their parents looked as though they were sleeping peacefully, dreaming of spring. The awful chattering of teeth had stopped.

He looked into Greta’s dark blue eyes. “Now what?”

“Ash for the earth. It’s what they would have wanted.”

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“You’re always hungry.” Greta hung the kettle over the fire and sliced a dry husk of bread into two pieces. As the water heated, she toasted the bread over the flames. Hans made tea from dried dandelions.

It had been quiet since the sickness arrived, but the quiet felt different now. It felt endless. There would be no more of Stepmother singing harmonies with Greta as breakfast was made. No more of Father talking about which part of the forest he planned to tend.

The woods were quiet too. Hans supposed they knew. He finished his toast and tea and went outside. He needed to pee, and he needed to cry, two things he didn’t want to do in front of his sister.

When he returned, Greta was combing the tangles out of their stepmother’s long black hair. Greta handed him a damp cloth, and he wiped his father’s face and smoothed his beard.

“His hands too,” she said.

Father always had dirt under his nails. His fingertips were so dirt stained they looked like tree rings.

“The trees are everything to us,” he’d often said. “Our home, our heat, our livelihood.”

Whenever Father had to cut one down, he always thanked the woods for their sacrifice, and he made sure to plant replacements.

Hans set down Father’s hands. “I think we should leave them as they are. The dirt was part of him.”

“True enough.” Greta had braided Stepmother’s hair and fastened it around her head like a crown.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said.

“You know what Father always said.”

“Ash for the earth, for the plants and the trees, and all of those for the yous and the mes.”

Hans swallowed. That meant they had to do the next thing, the hardest thing.

Wood was scarce. They’d been too busy caring for their parents to gather and chop it. But Hans went where he knew he could find twigs and sticks. Greta gathered their parents’ clothing and bedding. It was a shame to lose it, but if it had disease on it, they couldn’t have it in the cottage anyway.

By midday, everything was ready. Greta fetched a burning stick from the fire inside. “Ready?”

Hans nodded.

She touched it to the pyre and then blew. Kindling caught, burning red and orange and gold. Some of the wood was wet and sent showers of sparks into the air. They spiraled down, sizzling when they reached the snow. Hans and Greta sat side by side, surrounded by giant trees, watching the flames at work, turning the silhouettes of their parents into something else entirely.

The fire burned until darkness fell.

“We’re alone now,” Greta said.

“We have the trees,” Hans said. “The music. We have Cappella.”

Greta was silent, but he could tell from her expression she did not think much of that. “We should go in,” she said. “It’s started to snow again.”

The next morning, they found three gold coins on their doorstep—as bright as tiny suns. Greta picked them up.

“Are they real?” Hans said.

She nodded. “As far as I can tell. Where do you think they came from?”

“I don’t know.” Theirs was the only house in the woods; the king would permit only one to be built. Cappella and her mother lived in the hollow tree. But surely they had no gold. They didn’t even wear shoes.

“Should we keep them?” he asked.

His sister was matter-of-fact. “If we don’t, we’ll have a hungry winter. Think of all we didn’t do to prepare while Stepmother and Father were ill.”

“Someone must have wanted us to have them,” Hans said.

Greta wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and looked into the woods. The music was soft and gentle, comforting even. “Do you see anyone?”

It had snowed overnight, enough that the remains of the fire had been buried. He saw no footsteps. He would have expected some leading up to the porch, unless the delivery had been made just after they went inside.

He pointed that out to Greta. “I don’t smell anyone either.”

“Bundle up,” she said. “If we leave now, we can be back before dark.”