Mother Love

The first thing she noticed was that she wasn't cold anymore. When she opened her eyes to see if someone had stoked the fire, there was a pair of bare feet on the earthen floor in front of her. She had fallen asleep over the mending, and her fingers tingled, either from wearing a thimble too long or from the spectacular warmth that filled the whole room.

Gretel knew it was her angel even before she looked up, even though when she did, there were no wings. Or perhaps, she thought afterward, they had been folded behind, where she couldn't see. The figure standing in their tiny cottage looked at once astonishing and familiar. Though the body was taller, stronger than she remembered, the face was the same, and the eyes—the eyes that studied Gretel with head-to-toe delight. And just as she had each time her angel came to her, Gretel wanted more than anything to reach out, to touch the shining skin, the long transparent robes. But she couldn't bear to frighten the vision away and to find her hands empty, clutching air.

So she sat still, basking in the warmth and a steady, low sound that was like the humming of crickets, though it was long past the season when those tiny noisemakers rubbed their legs together to announce spring. It was as if everything around her—the small table, the fire in the hearth, even the bedrolls under the window ledge—was buzzing like bees, whispering in the language of birch or flame or sweet hay. Mother, the table said. Mother, spoke the fire and the hay. Mother.

When Hansel slammed through the door and staggered in under a mountain of cordwood, the whispering died and the angel melted away. "Are your ears stopped, girl?" he asked, spilling the logs by the fire, wiping his face with his sleeve. "I told you I would kick the door when I had the wood ready."

Blinking, Gretel willed back the angel, the tiny voices. But there was only Hansel, filling the room with cold air and resentment. "I did not hear you, Brother," she told him. "I was ... sewing."

"Ay," he said. "Inside, where it is dry and warm. While I was splitting wood with no gloves."

She wanted to make it up to him. She always wanted to make it up. "I saw something, Hansel. Something beautiful." If she could help him see it, if he could share the splendor, maybe he would feel warmer.

"And what was that, Sister?" He looked out the tiny window to make certain their parents weren't nearby, then threw himself, full-length, in front of the hearth. "Still more heavenly nonsense? More messengers with wings?"

She picked up her mending, told the cloth instead of him. "I could not see the wings this time," she said. "But there was such a feeling of peace in the house, Hansel. I know Mother was nearby, and I know Father will come back with good news."

Hansel rolled onto his stomach but sat up suddenly, his fingers to his lips. "Not a word of your visions, girl." He scrambled to his feet and set about stacking the logs of wood. "Do you hear?"

Gretel nodded, but as the door opened and their father and stepmother tossed empty bags onto the floor, she knew there was no good news. And the feeling she'd had, the glimpse of a mother she had nearly forgotten, faded. Their stepmother, bigger, louder, ten times more real, sighed theatrically, then unwrapped the straps of wool from her ankles and put her shoes by the fire. Their father walked to the hearth, rubbing his hands, his face furrowed with disappointment. "Not even beans," he said. "Not even a stale loaf."

It was the third time this week the pair had taken Gretel's sewing to market, the third time they had been turned away by merchants unwilling to part with food in return for the girl's dainty-work. "We cannot go on like this, you know." The children's stepmother was named Prudence, but she was more stingy than wise. "I have said it over and over. Four are too many mouths to feed." She glared at the children, who stood still and light on their feet, like birds ready to fly. "Especially when these two do nothing to earn their keep."

"I could help Hansel with the chopping, mistress." Gretel looked at her brother, so exhausted he could barely stand, at her own mending and sewing, folded into a careful pile on the table. "We could sell extra wood that way. Or I might stitch hats in place of aprons?" Despite all their work, her stepmother was bleeding anger, and Gretel needed to stanch the flow. "We will do better tomorrow." It was what her mother had said, day after day, when she was sick. I will be better tomorrow.

"Tomorrow," Prudence told her, closing her eyes against the heartbreak of their day, "we may all starve to death." She looked hard at her husband, harder still at Gretel. "And unless you plan on cooking them, girl, your hats will not fill our empty bellies."

The image of their stuffing coarse wool in their mouths hung over the table when they sat down to supper. The meal, which was nothing but water seasoned with the dried mushrooms Gretel had gathered in the fall and small pieces of the moldy bread they had been too proud to eat the night before, did not last long. It was eaten in silence and ended when their father stood suddenly, hurled his spoon into the fire, and did something neither of his children had ever heard him do before: he swore.

"Christ's blood!" His voice cracked, then trembled on the edge of tears. "A rat would not eat this slop!" Without meeting the eyes of anyone at the table, he picked up his jacket, sodden with snow, and walked out the cottage door.

As soon as he was gone, Hansel raced to the hearth. He grabbed the poker and nudged his father's spoon out of the flames. It was only a little twisted and would still serve. No one spoke until Prudence rose and began moving their chairs from the table.

"Best sweep and put the bed things out," she told Gretel. Her tone was almost gentle in its shock. "I will fetch your father before he freezes."

When the bowls and spoons were rubbed clean and the pallets placed on the floor, their parents came back inside, Father still avoiding their glance, Prudence set and stiff as beaten cream. Hansel stoked the fire, and they all four lay down in silence until Father's snoring started at last. Gretel lay awake, listening to the ragged rhythm it made, waiting for the call of the owl that ab ways set up its night vigil in the poplar outside their door.

The angel who visited her in dreams seemed more intense, more real than the visions she saw during the day. At night, she could feel its breath, like wind across a meadow; sometimes it would touch her, sending a shiver through her whole body, the shock of grace. It was the same way she'd felt when another hand, moist and burning with fever, had stroked her hair. I have already seen heaven, Gret, Mother had told her. It looks just like you.

While the rest of the family stumbled from their pallets, grumbling, fighting their way into morning, Gretel always woke smiling. The dreams were like a small bird, a tiny heartbeat she kept warm against her chest.

So when her parents' voices woke her that night, she came unwillingly from the lip of a dream, a scene in which her angel threw sparkling stones along their path, leaving twisting trails of gems behind them. She sat in the dark, brushing hair from her eyes and listening to the angry talk.

"You must do it tomorrow," she heard her stepmother say. "Take them deep into the forest and leave them there."

And Father answered, weary, frightened. "I cannot, Pru. I will ne'er do such a thing. What would become of them?"

"What will become of us, man?" Prudence's voice forgot caution, spiraled toward hysteria. "Would you choose your children over your wife?" Then in the space left by her unanswered question, "Your wife, who can bear you other babes." Lower now, almost a purr, "Our own children, not hers."

"Lord Jesus, help me," Father said. "Would you nail me to the cross of an old love? Hansel and the girl are mine, Pru. I will not leave them to starve."

"Then give them the rest of the bread. Give them whatever you will. Only take them deep enough they'll not find their way back."

"How will they fend?"

"Like any two hungry beasts, Husband. Better than four."

Torn from her dream, Gretel felt cold and wretched. An old love, her father said. Had he forgotten how he wept by their mother's bed? Had he no memory of the times before, the way he and Mama danced for them, how she whirled, pink-cheeked, then fell against him? Enough! If you spin me more, you may shake my good sense out. The babes will have no ma, I shall run off with the gypsies and howl at the moon! Their mother had always looked at Hansel and Gretel then, winking. And when Gretel obligingly gasped and ran to block the door, Mama would go to her and hold her tight. Well, then, she'd say each time, I suppose the gypsies would not mind if you came along, too.

Now Gretel crawled across the shadows to Hansel's pallet. She shoved his shoulder and when he startled put her hand over his mouth to make him listen. They both heard it then. The plan to pretend a trip for better firewood, a trip that would end with the children abandoned miles from home, left to the mercy of God and wild wolves.

Neither slept, and sunrise found them pale and drawn. While Prudence hummed over a small knapsack and their father sharpened the axes, Hansel fumed. "How dare they?" he whispered to his sister. "Does all the wood I've chopped count for nothing?" His face was as flushed as if he had already been outside in the frosty morning. "Or the rabbits I caught last spring?"

"Do not fret, Brother," Gretel told him. "Our angel will save us." And before he could laugh, before he could daunt her with that scornful look of his, she told him about the dream. "Can you not see? If we drop stones as we go and wait until the moon comes up, our way home will be lit by heaven itself!"

He did not laugh. Instead, he lowered his chin nearly to his chest and squinted with the effort to imagine what she had described. When he raised his head to look at her, his eyes were narrow, calculating. "Mayhap," was all he said.

What neither of them had counted on, of course, was the storm their homecoming caused. That night, they waited until the moon was high enough to light the stones Gretel had sewn like seeds as their parents led them deeper and deeper into the forest. And when they arrived at the cottage well after dark, there was only one person glad to see them again. "Praise the Savior!" Their father hugged each of them in turn, grinning like a fool. "Look how Providence has seen fit to spare you!"

But Prudence saw less to celebrate. Much less. "What trick did you use?" She turned on Gretel and her brother as if walking home was devil's work, as if they had no right to share the roof under which they'd been born and raised. "Tomorrow we will go further. Tomorrow you will stay where you are put."

So there was no pretense now, no talk of gathering firewood, of the two adults leaving to gather it up while the children napped by the fire. Despite Father's pleas and the children's arguments, their stepmother was determined. "Whether you go or we," she said, "matters little. We will all be better off, with fewer hungry mouths to fill.

"But since your good father and I have kept you fed and dressed till now, it is only right that you be the ones to repay this debt by trying your fortunes in the world."

"Their fortunes!" Father sounded hoarse and sharp, a baited bear with no way out. "What fortunes can they find in a land wasted by drought and famine?"

"What if we won't go?" Hansel folded his arms and braced himself as he did when he chopped wood. "What if we refuse to be pushed into the cold?"

"Refuse all you wish," Prudence told him. "Stay here and watch your father starve." She rushed out of Father's grasp and turned on the boy. "You are certain to outlast him, you know. He is old and tired from working to keep you in firewood and soup." A flame fanned itself to life in her narrow eyes. "And mark me, when he weakens and dies, the two of you will earn a place in hell."

"Pru, you must not say such a thing," Father told her.

But Prudence ignored him and shifted her attention to Gretel. "Ay, you shall find yourselves near enough to the devil's throne to kiss his horny feet." Reluctantly, she unfolded the two bedrolls she had stashed by the hearth. As the girl bent to help her, she studied Gretel's small shoulders, down-turned head. "Make no mistake, ungrateful wretch. You will murder the good man as surely as if you took that ax"—she pointed to the long-handled ax in the hearth corner—"to his throat and did the job clean."

And so the four of them set out for the woods again next morning, the children lagging spiritlessly behind their parents. Neither of them scattered stones, for they both felt the stinging truth of their stepmother's words. If the family stayed together, they were all likely to perish. But if Hansel and Gretel took their chances in the wide world, their youth and daring might somehow earn their keep.

"If he finds a bone," Hansel told his sister as they trudged through the thickening forest, "she will suck it dry, then give him the leavings." He nodded toward Prudence, and Gretel wondered if he remembered the last day, the day Mama called the two of them to her. Take care of your da, she had said, kissing them both. Love him as I have loved you. She'd curled on her side then, as if she were taking a nap. Gretel could still see the sharp curve of her back, the way her poor bones showed through her shift.

So at first when Prudence came into their lives, cleaning and scrubbing and scolding only a little, it seemed as though Mama might have sent her. Father's spirits lifted, and he even began to sing again. Sometimes Prudence laughed and joined in, though she never danced with Da the way their mother had.

"It may not be long before she turns him out as well." Hansel threw a stick he had picked up into a small stream. It landed with a dull thud against the ice. "We will have company on our death march, eh?"

Apparently, though, their father had other plans. When they had traveled deeper into the forest than any of them had ever been and the children lay beside a meager fire, he gathered up his axes and the knapsack he shared with Prudence. But before he left, he leaned to whisper in Gretel's ear. "You shall find your way home again tonight," he told her, pretending only to kiss her farewell. Then, bending to the boy's ear, too, he added quickly, "The bread crumbs, lad. Follow the crumbs as you did the stones."

When the older pair had finally disappeared into the woods, the younger sat up and told each other what they'd heard. Gretel jumped to her feet, raced to the edge of the pale light cast by the fire, and then shouted to her brother. "Father spoke true, Hansel," she cried. "Come look at what he has left for us."

She would tell it years from now, over and over. How the trail of crumbs Father had dropped from his loaf led away from the fire. Led the two children, laughing and hopeful once more, back along a winding trail between the oaks and linden, the alder and the elms. Led them for a joyous, buoyant hour, before it dwindled and then disappeared, before the children realized that birds and squirrels had found the bread sooner than they. She hadn't wanted to discourage Hansel, but the spot where the crumbs stopped was such a dark and desolate one, and she had been so looking forward to the warmth of their hearth, that Gretel sat upon the damp ground and cried.

For once her brother did not mock her but sat down beside her, silent, tearless. It seemed less out of tenderness than fatigue and a certain weary patience with her moods. But when she had cried out all her hurt and disappointment, he stood and held out his hand. "Come on, then," he told her. "We are no worse off than we expected to be when we set out this morning."

It was true enough. And as they walked slowly, taking their cues from the angle at which the setting sun poked through the thicket of branches overhead, or the path of a rivulet that funneled through the moss, Gretel began to feel better. Not less hungry or cold, but surer, more certain that they would survive. Which may be why it was she, and not Hansel, who finally called a halt to their wandering. "It is too dark to see," she told her brother. "Let us find a cave or a hollow to keep out the wind. We can set out again at first light."

Hansel offered little argument and less help. After a few minutes, with no break in the dense trees, Gretel pointed to a great oak that lay across their path. "There be our cave," she said, walking around the fallen giant, noting with satisfaction the way the empty trunk opened into a small but dry chamber. While she gathered kindling for a fire and pine needles for their beds, her brother, as disconsolate as she had been earlier, blew on his fingertips and complained. "We will freeze before we starve. How thoughtful Stepmother was, to spare us a slow death for a quick one."

"There is no end of fuel for our fire," Gretel reassured him. Though she thought sadly of the tinderbox they kept by the hearth at home. "I will find some flint, and soon we shall have a blaze started."

Curled in the hollow of the tree beside her brother, Gretel fell quickly into an exhausted sleep. At first there was no angel in her dream, only a small house that lit up the woods around it. Surprised and delighted, she ran toward its shining windows and the curl of smoke like a friendly hand, beckoning. As she got closer, she was astonished to find that the cottage had been built with huge slabs of buttered gingerbread and dollops of meringue. There were two bushes by the door, one filled with lemon drops, the other with sugarplums. She thought she saw a figure in one of the windows, though it could have been her own reflection, running eagerly toward the house.

But she reached neither the amber panes nor the sugarplums. Her angel, with a sorrowful countenance and Mama's long dark curls, suddenly barred the way. It shook its head and stamped its bare feet, then put out one hand and pointed a flaming fingertip at the girl's chest. Though she'd never resented her angel before, Gretel was confused now, even angry. As she woke to Hansel's shaking, she remembered the widespread wings and behind them the figure in the window, the bushes full of candy.

"Listen," her brother commanded, putting a rough hand over her mouth. "Only listen."

It was a bird's song, and if Gretel was surprised that Hansel even took notice of such a thing, she was more surprised by the song itself. The music wasn't human, though it sounded like someone singing under water, the words almost clear, nearly understood. She had no words, either, for the feelings the music stirred in her as she listened, though she recognized the pictures that danced in her head. The images she saw as the bird sang came straight from the dream she had just left: there was the house again, small and bright, and the figure in the window, waiting for her. And something else, something she couldn't see but was more real than all the rest. It was a mouthwatering smell, a smell that promised food she had never tasted, an unknown pleasure that drew her on like the ants she'd seen break ranks and swarm, madly, passionately, across a drop of honey.

Hansel must have been filled with the same images, the same scent. For together, without speaking, brother and sister rose and left the hollow of the tree. Side by side, they followed the bird's song to a nearby alder. The moment they reached the tree, though, the bird flew off and called to them from deeper in the forest. All morning they followed it, and as they walked, Gretel told her dream. With each detail she recalled, Hansel nodded, grinned. "Yes!" he said when she described the soft pink roof and the meringue that dripped from the eaves. "Exactly!" He even clapped his hands and slapped his knees when she told how the almond paste was carved into a door knocker and window boxes. "That's just how it is!" he told her.

When at last they came to a clearing and saw the house, Gretel stood frozen, remembering the way the angel had blocked her way. But Hansel raced for the dream. "Come on, girl!" he called, without looking back. "We are saved!"

The small swift—they could see it clearly now that it was out of the trees—that had led them here settled on the roof of the littie cottage. It preened its feathers and was suddenly silent, as if to announce that its job was done, that there was no longer need for singing.

Hansel had already removed the marzipan door knocker and stuffed it into his mouth. Ravenous, he finished that and two sugarplums before he turned and scolded his sister. "Foolish thing!" he said. "Why do you stand there? Your angel sent you a dream of this good fortune." He laughed with unaccustomed abandon, and pointed to the bird on the roof. "And her heavenly messenger has led us here."

But Gretel had not told him how the angel's finger still burned her chest. How she had actually checked under her shift to see if the skin was reddened there. It had not been, of course, and perhaps Hansel was right. Perhaps the angel had only meant that they should not take more than they needed, that they must repay the owner of the house for what they ate.

"We must knock," she told her brother. "We must offer to work for our food."

Hansel laughed again. "I have eaten the door knock, Gretel," he said, smiling like a naughty child, looking younger, lighter, and happier than she had ever seen him. "If we cannot knock, we shall sing for our supper, eh?" He came to her then and took her hand, wrapped his arm around her waist, and pulled her into a clumsy dance. Round and round he whirled her, singing the old song their father used to sing, until at last, giddy with his attention, she joined in:

"Oranges and lemons," say the bells of St. Clements.
"You owe me five farthings," say the bells of St. Martin.

For an instant, as they spun past the front window, Gretel thought she spied a shadowy figure staring out at them. She clasped one hand to her mouth, but as Hansel twirled them nearer, she saw that the window's glass was made of boiled sugar, cloudy and mottled as still water in a pond. Over its surface, bobbing and weaving like falling leaves, were only their own silhouettes, their own dancing selves.

"When will you pay me?" say the bells of Old Bailey.
"When I grow rich," say the bells of Shoreditch.
"When will that be?" say the bells of Stepney.
"I do not know," says the great Bell of Bow.

But she could not mistake the voice that stopped their dance. That was real, as rasping and ugly as the swift's had been beautiful. "Nibble, nibble, little mouse." Hansel let go his sister's hand when he heard it. "Who is nibbling on my house?"

Too afraid to run, the children stood rooted to the spot. And again the crusty voice called to them from behind the very window where Gretel had dreamt shadows. "Perhaps 'tis the wind, heaven's child." The owner of the cottage laughed, but since the sound was closer to a growl, her paralyzed listeners were hardly reassured. "Only the wind, playful and mild."

When the door opened and a stooped crone with a halo of fine white hair appeared on the steps, Gretel and Hansel were both relieved. The old woman was a pathetic sight, after all, her thinning hair, her watery eyes, the stockings that fell in folds around her ankles. "Ay," she told them. "I was partly right, was I not? Two of heaven's children have found their way to my door."

"Good dame," Hansel began, using the same unctuous tone with which he addressed their stepmother when she was angry. "We only want..."

"I won't have it whispered about that I turned such innocents into the woods." She smiled at them, though her mouth moved too slowly, too largely, as if it was unaccustomed to such an expression. "Well, come, then," she urged them, opening her door wide. "Out of the cold now, and I shall try to make us a bit of supper."

Supper was a feast—pancakes cooked on top of a brick oven that gave off a pleasant heat even when the hearth fire had died. The old woman served them cakes with nuts and fruit, and sweet cream that tumbled like a bountiful river from her china pitcher. The children, not trusting this sudden plenty, spoke little and ate a great deal. Then, bloated and easily won over by the promise of breakfast next morning, they followed the woman to a small room, where two beds covered with fresh white linens glowed like twin stars. They sank into a dreamless sleep, and neither could remember ever waking so late as they did next day.

Regaining some courage, and with it her manners, Gretel begged for work that might repay their elderly hostess's kindness. She could not help but notice the layers of dust beneath the stick candy on the walls and under the rush rug on the floor. "I might tidy the place a bit," she told the old woman, timidly. "I am fair handy, as well, with needle and thread."

"Do not trouble yourself," the woman told her. "There be only one small thing I need."

"Name it," said Hansel, sounding as though he was ready to perform miracles.

"'Tis something you might manage, young master," their hostess said. "Come and have a look at the wobbling leg on this chair." She led him back to the bedroom in which they'd passed the night, but when Gretel tried to come along, the woman pointed back to the kitchen. "There be the broom," she told the girl.

After she had swept the hearth, Gretel went in search of her brother. She tried the bedroom door and found it locked. "The young master must stay abed from now on," the old woman told her when she asked. "I shall not have him running off the lovely fat I plan to put on him."

Perhaps because Gretel had become accustomed to her step-mother's high-handed scorn, she was slow to apprehend the extent of the horror into which she and Hansel had stumbled. It took days of begging for scraps from the crone's table; of hearing the woman, whose voice no longer pretended any charity toward her at all, scold Gretel for drinking too much water or moving too slowly; of watching the witch (for what else could she be?) kneel and mumble prayers in a strange tongue before an ab tar covered with a blood-red cloth. It took the knife-sharp thorns of the black, bloomless brambles that had grown up around the house since she and her brother sought refuge there. And it took, finally, a chain of dreamless nights. Not once, after she had fallen, exhausted, into the brief sleep the witch allowed her, was Gretel visited by her winged guardian. It was a sign, she realized later, she should have taken to heart.

Eventually, though, she could delude herself no longer about the witch's plans. Three, and sometimes four times each day, the old woman took a brass key from around her neck and opened the door behind which Hansel now slept and ate. She always brought a tray with her heaped with elegant food: cakes and loaves and sugar tarts; cream and strawberries; even whole capons turned golden red on the spit above the kitchen fire. When she called Gretel to come get the dishes piled beside the door, the girl often heard the witch ask Hansel to hold out his hand. Through the keyhole, she watched the old woman circle his wrist with her gnarled fingers, and frown. "Not yet ready, my morsel," she would say, as if he were a roasting hen instead of a boy. "Not quite done."

It wasn't long before the witch, knowing Gretel would not leave her brother and that if she did there was no way out of the impenetrable thicket she'd contrived, began to treat the girl worse than ever. She fed her scraps, left her to sleep without a blanket, and at last grew as careless and talkative as if Gretel were a cat or dog, a pet that fended for itself but kept her company. "Ay," she grumbled one morning, stirring Hansel's porridge, "it has been a chain of long, lean days between meals. If I could eat such slop"—she stabbed at the pot with her spoon, then spat on the floor Gretel had swept only minutes before—"things would be different. But the blood thirst cannot be sated with your paltry human fare." She unhooked the cauldron from the hearth and set it to cool by the window. "'Tis a hunger to reckon with, a torture that feels close to madness when I must wait so long."

Gretel said nothing, knew the woman expected no reply. "But ah, when I feel that boy's flesh filling out, fat with life as he is of late, 'tis worth the pangs, the nights of waiting with my whole body crying out for him and my teeth rattling in my jaws."

Gretel knew, because the witch had told her, that if all went well, she would prepare her soulless feast soon. It was this fearful prospect that made the girl take a foolish risk and slip into Hansel's room the next time the old woman failed to lock the door. (The hungrier the crone got, the more forgetful she seemed. Once she even neglected to put on her shoes and clothes and spent the day naked, her wizened shins and third teat leaving Gretel torn miserably between laughter and tears.)

The room in which they'd spent that first night was much the same as Gretel remembered, except for the books and toys strewn everywhere. But in the midst of games and penny whistles, surrounded by whittled soldiers and chocolate candies, sat a boy she hardly recognized.

Hansel looked first at his sister's hands. "You have no tray," he said, his own hands describing a small, despairing arc in his lap. "I thought she might have sent you in her stead." Then he noticed her expression. "Why, girl, what is wrong? You look as though you see a haunt."

But it was no ghost Gretel stared at in disbelief. Her brother had far too much flesh on him to be a messenger from the other world. In fact, he was one of the stoutest people she had ever seen. In a few short months he had ballooned to twice his former size and lay propped on his pillows like a miniature pasha.

"You ... you look ... well fed." In fact, nothing that grew or walked or swam, nothing that Gretel could imagine, was meant to be so large. In a shameful moment, she even wondered how it was the witch could think her prize was not ready for the oven. "You must not eat any more, Brother." Hansel turned his cold, disapproving look on her, but she raced on, "Each bite you take puts you in greater danger. I hardly know how to tell you. The witch, she plans to—"

"Witch?" He looked even darker. "Mother is no witch. Though I suppose if she does not fancy you, she may seem so."

"'Mother'?" Gretel said the word aloud, and somehow speaking it herself was less horrible than hearing it on her brother's tongue. "'Mother'?"

"She has asked me to call her that, and so I shall if it pleases her." He leaned back, otiose, languid, and picked up a chocolate drop. He considered the candy, his expression almost fond, then popped it in his mouth.

"But how can you think she means you well?" Gretel was amazed that her brother had no idea what the crone was about. "We must run, Brother. We must leave here at once." She reached for one of his plump hands, but he pushed her away.

"Leave here?" Hansel sat up now, turning over a twig wagon filled with stone marbles. "Why should we leave someone who treats us with more kindness than our own parents?" He picked up a chapbook and opened it. "Why, she has even taught me to read." He lowered his head over the small volume. "This word is raven. See where it flies out of the pie?"

The more Hansel was content to sit and read, of course, the fatter he would grow. Gretel watched him pick up several more books, pointing proudly to pictures and to the single words that described them. "Even our own mother, girl, never taught us such wonders."

Gretel was fairly dancing with impatience. She had to convince Hansel of the danger they faced. And she had to do it before the old hag missed her. "You must understand. You must listen," she told him. "She feeds on human flesh."

"Ay." Hansel grinned ludicrously. "And this be a grand fellow I am eating, too." He pulled a gingerbread man from a chain of cookies strung beneath his window. Hugely, raucously, he chomped off its feet first, then its head.

"She means to eat you, too." There. Gretel had said it at last. She heard her own terrible words in the long silence that followed, that flowed like a thick current between them.

Until Hansel laughed. He even left off savaging the ginger man's body. He put his hands on his knees to steady himself, then rocked back and forth, roaring. The tears streamed from his eyes and down his newly dimpled cheeks. Back and forth, back and forth he rocked, until the room filled with his mirth and Gretel feared the witch would hear.

"Stop!" she commanded. "Stop and hear me." When he slowed a bit, she pushed her words in between the spasms of laughter. "Does she not feel your wrist each day?"

"Ay," he told her. "'Tis but to take my hand. She is wont to pat me often." He glared at his sister, but his tone was softer, almost a purr. "She cannot see at all well, Mother. She must touch where others look."

"She wants you fat enough to cook." Gretel was no longer careful how she put the matter. "When you are done, she will roast you in the oven."

But Hansel looked past her, or through her, she could not say which. "She has a right soft touch, Mother does," he said.

"She has told me!" Gretel stamped in frustration, tears in her eyes. "She has said it to me!"

Hansel no longer glared; his expression approached pity. "You are making it up," he told her. "Because she does not love you as she does me."

"'Love'!" Gretel was blinded by tears, by disbelief, by the word itself. How could he use such a word here, in this house? How could he use it about such a woman?

"She says I have nobility," he told her now. "When she sets eyes on me, 'tis as if she see a duke or a prince." His own fierce eyes fastened on Gretel again. "No one has ever looked upon me that way."

"But—"

"And you shall not take this from me for spite."

"It is not—"

"Go back to Father and our stepdame, if you wish." He ab most rose from the bed, but perhaps his legs were not equal to the task of bearing his weight. He sank down to his bed again, sending more marbles across the floor. "As for me, I would rather die than go back to that thin gruel and those harsh words." If it was not loyalty that shone in his eyes, it was at least pure contentment. "I shall not leave Mother."

Gretel despaired of changing his mind. Of saving his life. But still she took the twig from her pocket. "Take it," she told him. "If you give her this instead of your wrist—"

"Enough of your wiles, girl," he scolded. "Go back to the hearth."

"—she will think you have lost weight."

"Get out! Get out, before you ruin it all!"

"And she will feed you even more."

Her words found their mark. Gretel saw her brother stop, lean back on one round elbow, and consider. She plunged ahead, heaping him with delights. "Crumpets and pasties and those littie blue eggs you like. Rabbit and trout and all manner of fowl."

He reached for the twig she proffered, reciting dreamily, "Pancakes and almond tarts, puddings and jam."

Gretel nodded. "More of everything," she agreed. "She will feed you twice, maybe three times as much as she does now."

When they heard the witch's shuffling footstep in the hall, Gretel had won only half what she'd hoped for: Hansel was delighted with the plan of tricking the old woman into feeding him more, a plan that, although he didn't know it, might spare his life. But she had still found no way to persuade him to leave that cursed house.

Gretel climbed out the bedroom window and circled back to the kitchen. The witch unlocked the door to visit her plump cherub, unaware of the visitor who had left him seconds before. And so more weeks passed, and months as well, time that left Hansel plumper and Gretel and the witch more famished. For as the witch grew hungrier, she fed the girl less, too, and by the time she decided to put an end to her fast, neither of them could remember what a full stomach felt like. Gretel, as she lay by the hearth at night, her poor insides churning and empty, remembered the way Mother, at the end, would push away the trays Gretel brought. I will have none of that, she'd say. Just sing me another song, sweet. 'Tis that will fill me up. And sometimes it was enough to put her to sleep, humming the old song, the lullaby Mama craved.

"There be no use," the witch said one day, as Gretel had known she must. The crone threw her book of spells at Gretel, though it fell short of its mark and skittered along the floor. "I have prayed and chanted and fed the boy until I am worn with toil." She waved a frail hand at the girl. "I may as well eat a skinny thing like you."

She rose then and, with a horrible finality, walked to the drawer where she kept her knives and skewers. "I have conjured cornmeal and compotes, peacock and ham hocks. I have summoned up soups and stews. Souffles and crab cakes. But still he loses flesh." She sharpened one of her longest, cruelest knives on a whetstone, brushing it faster and faster across the oiled rock. "I have coddled and spoiled him and emptied his foul pan."

She held up the gleaming knife now and, before Gretel could

pull away, sliced off a lock of the girl's hair. "Sharp enough to do the job," she said, grinning at the curl of fine hair in her hand. "I will have him this day. I can wait no longer."

But when she led him to the table and bade him wait while she stoked the fire, even when the oven got so hot they could feel it across the room, Hansel did not fear the witch. He sat, his haunches overflowing the small bench beside the trestle, and smiled. "What treat shall we have tonight, Mother?" he asked. "It must be a feast if you cannot carry it on a tray." He gripped his spoon and knife, as if the food were already in front of him.

Did he call the crone Mother to please her? Gretel wondered. Or did he nurse some dark angel of his own—the image of a mother made of yams and comfits, chops and pies?

"There shall be no feast until I can make this oven hot enough, my lamb," the witch told him. "Perhaps you could come see if the flue is blocked." She gestured toward the fiery oven. "This old frame is too stiff to bend so low."

If her frame was too old, the boy's was surely too broad. But he stood with what alacrity he could muster and went to her side. "Let me see, Mother," he said, bending down, peering into the blood-red innards of the stove.

Just as Gretel dreaded, the witch rushed at her brother, a look of such fierce yearning on her face that for a moment the girl stood paralyzed. But then, just in time, she reached out and pulled her brother away from the stove, and what had started could not be stopped. The old woman, hands outstretched to push her boy-roast in the oven, fell into the flames herself. The children watched in horror as, blind with agony, the witch crawled deeper into the fire instead of finding the way out. Hansel put his hands in to reach her, but the witch, in her anguish, writhed out of his grasp. "Fools! Fools!" she wailed as the smoke and heat did their work. Once more Hansel reached into the flames, and once more failed to catch hold of the witch before the fire forced him back. "Fools! Fools!" And then her mouth was lost, her skin, her need to cry out at all.

There was silence, blessed silence until Gretel noticed her brother's hands. "Here," she said tenderly, reaching for his burned fingers. "Let me get some salve."

But Hansel pulled away from her. "No!" he screamed. "Do not touch me. Do not dare touch me."

"But your hands are terribly burnt." Gretel looked up from her brother's hands to his face, and lost her breath. What she saw there was hate, burning and bottomless.

"You killed her!" Hansel's skinless hands were balled into fists, and he was crying as she had never seen him cry before.

"But Brother," she said, "she would have pushed you in." She backed away from his eyes, for they seemed to give off a heat like the oven's.

"You were jealous!" he screamed at her, anger turning his round cheeks pink as beef fillets. "It was you she kept working and me she fed."

Gretel backed toward the stove, which still smelled of burning flesh and sulfur. "You couldn't stand to see one of us safe and happy and protected," he yelled. "Only one of us, sister mine. That was it, wasn't it? Only one!"

"Of course not," she told him, hearing herself whimper, try ing to escape those eyes even as the heat from the oven grew behind her.

"You wanted to drag me back home." He was no longer screaming but spoke as slowly, harshly, as a wheel turning on cobbles. "You wanted me to be poor again, to drink soup made of water."

The stove's flames, fed by the witch, leapt higher now and Gretel tried to move toward Hansel. But he pushed her back. "Mother loved me more than anyone ever has"—slowly, relentlessly, he advanced toward her—"but you could not bear it, could you?"

"No! Surely, you know—"

"I know that your mewling angel never fed us as Mother did." He bore down on her, raw hands shaking, his face filled with rage and tears. "I know that no one will ever care for me as she did."

And then he was on her, but not before someone else barred the way. Gretel's angel, sudden, soundless, stood between brother and sister. Just as the boy tried to push Gretel backwards into the flames, the angel with their mother's face stopped him. A white-hot light surrounded it, steamed off the milk-white shoulders and wings. The finger it pointed at the boy, Gretel knew, was molten. It touched Hansel lightly on the chest and he screamed in pain. For a minute he hesitated, but, staring right through the angel, glaring at Gretel, he charged again. Growling with fury, he hurled himself at her, and if her angel had not pulled her away, it would have been the end of her. Instead, it swept Gretel up, as if they were dancing, and whirled her away, while Hansel raced headlong, screaming, into the flames.

When she set out for home, Gretel took some of the witch's cooking pots and a basket of food that would only go to mold if she left it behind. She could not carry more because her hands still ached from the flames she had braved at the end. When her brother fell into the oven, she had tried to pull him out. With no more thought to her own safety than a loyal dog protecting its master, she had leaned against the poker-hot opening of the stove and reached into the fire. But the searing pain, the breathless heat, brought her to her senses. She pulled back and watched in horror as Hansel rushed to his make-believe mother, as he picked up the flaming husk that had been the witch. As the skin ran like melting wax from his arms, he crumpled to the oven floor and raised his hands above his head as if surrendering to the roaring tongues that devoured him, bit by bit.

The thorny brambles had dissolved as soon as the witch died, and Gretel now made her way easily back into the woods through which she and Hansel had wandered before the old woman had trapped them. As she walked, the girl found ivy and chickweed to make poultices for her hands and for the bright red scar that crossed her waist where she'd leaned against the stove. Though she had no idea how far or which direction she and her brother had traveled, she was not afraid. Each night her angel leaned over her dreams, kissed her burning hands, and whispered the way to take next morning. By the time she reached her father's house, spring was coming on; tender shoots curled out of the ground, and birds flew once more in packs so thick they peppered the sky.

The old man, for old he suddenly seemed, was outside chopping wood as Gretel came up the rise toward the cottage. When he saw her, he dropped his ax and went mad with joy. "Gret, Gret!" he called, folding her to him, making the pots she carried clank and clatter. "You are home. You have come home at last!"

When she shrank back, peering toward the dark cottage, he shook his head. "You have naught to fear, child," he told her. "Your stepdame fetched poison berries from a fair on St. Joseph's Day. They gave me a fearsome bellyache, but they stole the life clean out of her."

"She is dead, then?" Gretel had seen enough death of late; the news gave her little joy.

"Ay," her father told her, linking his arm through hers, leaning on her as he had never done before she left. "But let us talk of pleasant stuff. There be time enough for sorrow." He led her to the door of the house, then looked behind her, toward the rise she had just climbed. "Say where your brother is and when he will join us here."

The time for sorrow came sooner than he must have hoped. For Gretel told him how brother and sister had found the witch's house but only one of them had left it behind. She told him about her angel, and how it had saved her from the fire that killed both the old crone and Hansel. It was clear, though, from the way her father listened to the tale, the way he held his head in his hands, that he did not believe her.

"I tried to save him, Da. Truly, I did." But when Gretel held up her hands as proof, she saw how her angel's kisses had healed them, how they looked as white and smooth as if she had worn gloves along her rough and tangled way.

Father's eyes, the way they fell from hers, told her what he thought. "Hunger can drive God's love from our hearts," he said. "It can turn us into beasts." He stood beside Gretel, staring at the empty, sloping hills. "When times were still hard, not two days after we left you lambs in the woods, your stepmother tried to steal a crust from me. She came at me while I slept, slipped her hand into my pocket like a thief. Taken sudden that way, I struck her hard across the mouth.

"Whatever you did, child, is less than some and more than others. It's done and forgotten." There was weariness in his voice, and a dim gratitude. "The witch was starving you, but you have come home with food." At last he raised his eyes to hers. "You have come home with that slow smile of your ma's."

He reached for his daughter's hand. "We will tell the neighbors you have both returned." Gretel heard the surrender, the tired truce behind his words. "I have been without family for too long. I shall not lose you to sheriff's men, to a tribunal and the noose."

So her father shaped a new story, with a happy ending, repeating it again and again—to neighbors and peddlers and travelers; to brides and housewives who began afresh, now that the drought was passed, to pay for Gretel's handiwork and lace. Once upon a time, it seemed, there were two children, a boy and a girl. Father told of the witch, the gingerbread, and the oven. He told of the fire and the way the witch had planned to fatten the boy. He described with pride how his children had tricked her, how they had come home to him, hand in hand. "Of course, you know the way of young men," he always added at the end. "No sooner does Hansel come home than he takes a fancy to a comely lass from Wainridge. He is off courting, but my girl is home to stay."

Each time her father told the lie, Gretel felt as if he had branded her. The mark of Cain burned on her forehead, turning her awkward and ashamed in front of others. She had tried to save her brother, but only she and her angel had seen it. And perhaps God. What wouldn't she give to trade her heavenly father's trust for her earthly one's!

But she knew her da was right. She would never leave him now. Where was there to go? Where could she hide from the memory of Hansel racing into the fire? From the foolish, useless wish that she had said enough, done enough, been enough to save him?

So she stayed. Her father needed her, after all. Her table linens and scarves helped put food on their table. And if he blamed her for her brother's death, he never said so outright. Only sometimes she caught a look on his face, a shadow when she looked up from her sewing and found his eyes on her. It wasn't like the hate she had seen on Hansel's; she could never have lived with that. It was more like pity. Though pity for her or himself, she could not have said.

It did not matter. She had her angel. She could endure the cold stream where she took their buckets each morning. And the endless succession of days, like heavy, rough-scaled logs across her back—she could survive that, too. She could bear the mark Da's stories set on her forehead, because every night, in her dreams, it was kissed away. She worried sometimes, as she waited by the hearth for sleep to come, that it might not happen, that the angel might fail her. But it never did. Night after night, even after her father had died and Gretel was an old woman who lived by herself, the sweet moment always returned.

Once she had drifted past thought, Gretel found herself again in the woods. Again she stood by the small house trimmed with delights. But this time she walked without fear to the open door and the figure that waited there. Sweeter than a lemon drop, softer than caramel was the kiss Gretel's angel placed on her forehead. And when she was once more folded into the milk-white arms, Gretel felt no mark, no shame, only a tide of joy that rushed to fill her head, her heart, her whole body. Like a flood of music bursting from a small bird's chest, love forced itself through her bones and skin and erupted in a single perfect flower. Mother, she said as she held the angel fast. Mother, she sighed as she rested her head on the creamy shoulder. Mother, as the two of them turned their backs on the world and walked together until dawn.