Chapter 2
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, YOU HAVE TO BE CLEVER.
You traded one danger for another: a wolf for a witch. You couldn’t have known the house was a trap.
But now you do.
Locked in a child-sized cage in a corner of the witch’s kitchen, you know so much more about this world than you’re ready to know.
Wolves and witches—one you could outrun, but the second has you where she wants you, and if you want to avoid joining the bones that litter the bottom of your cage, you’re going to have to think.
Your only idea is to refuse the meals Gretel brings you. And you try that, at first. You try with all your might to resist each warm loaf of bread, each sliced apple served with nuts, each hunk of roasted meat…
… and even though you know the witch is fattening you up for the table…
… even though you know you should be wary of the meat…
… you tumble mouth-first into each plate, entranced.
“Hansel, don’t,” Gretel whispers in the dark, her voice thin and shaking. “Don’t eat it. Every bite only makes you want more.”
But you can’t hear her. Not really.
“There’s enough for us to share,” you say, and offer her a deep spoonful of rich, hearty stew. “We’ve never had food like this in our lives. Not ever.”
She refuses you three times a day, every day, for a week.
And then the witch comes.
“Let us see if you’re ready,” she says. “Put a finger through the cage, boy.”
(A finger? Why a finger? Stop it. Don’t ask questions. The story needn’t make sense. This is simply how the story goes.)
You’ve had seven days to prepare for this. Seven days to shake off the haze of her bounty and think of a way out. You haven’t thought of a way out. You’ve thought only of your full belly—full, for the first time in years—and when your next meal will arrive.
What a strange thing, to be full and yet keep yearning for more. You hadn’t thought it strange until just this moment. You hadn’t given yourself time to think of anything but food, and its endless, abundant, reliable delivery.
Frigid realization sloshes through you. You were supposed to think of a way out and you didn’t. You want to live and you’re not going to live.
You offer the witch your finger. She gropes it and cackles. “Gretel, darling,” she sneers, “prepare the cauldron.”
THAT CAN’T BE THE WAY THIS STORY ENDS.
Try Again?
“Let us see if you’re ready,” says the witch. “Put a finger through the cage, boy.”
You’ve had seven days to prepare for this, but the idea doesn’t strike you until the last possible moment.
Instead of offering the witch your finger, you stick a bone through the bars of your cage. You’re sorry for the children who’ve died before you, but grateful to them, too. All of them, and the one in particular whose bone you’re using to save your own life.
“What? How can this be?” the witch bellows. Her sightless eyes narrow. Her anger pulses through her with such strength you expect she’ll puff steam. Then she composes herself.
“You must have been skinnier than I thought,” she says, “if a week of good meals won’t stick to your bones. Very well, very well… Another week.”
* * *
Another and another and another. Four weeks pass and you’ve done little more than buy yourself time.
“I’ve been eating the house,” Gretel whispers. “It’s different from the food she gives you.”
“Different how?” you ask.
“It’s… changing me.”
“How?”
The floorboards creak. Gretel’s eyes widen and she shakes her head. Maybe in another story, you convince her to tell you more, but in this one? In this one, she collects your empty dishes—each plate licked clean for the very last crumbs—and disappears.
* * *
“I’ve waited long enough,” says the witch. “Skinny or fat, I eat the boy today. Gretel, turn on the oven.”
A horrible silence.
“But… last time you wanted your cauldron,” says Gretel. She risks a glance at you.
Somehow you sense that a plan to save you has just gone awry.
“Last time I wanted to boil him in a stew,” says the witch. “Now I want to bake him into a pie.”
Another more horrible silence. “A pie?”
Gretel’s stalling.
“Don’t just stand there,” the witch barks, “turn on the oven!”
“But Grandmother,” says Gretel, “I don’t know how.”
“You don’t know how?”
The witch cannot see, yet she sees right through that lie. She snatches Gretel by the roots of her hair, opens the oven door, and shoves her inside. Like a bear trap, the oven door snaps shut. Your little sister screams, but there’s nothing you can do.
“Don’t worry, boy,” she says. “You’ll join her soon.”
THAT CAN’T BE THE WAY THIS STORY ENDS.
Try Again?
“Don’t just stand there,” the witch barks, “turn on the oven!”
“But Grandmother,” says Gretel, “I don’t know how.”
“You don’t know how?”
Remember: if you want to live, you have to be clever.
“It’s true,” you offer before the witch can scent the lie in the air. “Our mother died when we were young, so we never learned how.
“Useless children,” she hisses. “No wonder you were left in the woods.”
The witch opens the oven door, and then: chaos.
Gretel on the witch’s back. Gretel pulling the witch’s silver hair.
The witch clawing open Gretel’s calves. The witch’s teeth sharpening into fangs.
Both of them shouting—Gretel’s high-pitched scream, the witch’s lowing growl.
The witch bucking like a wild horse, and Gretel’s hands in her mane of cobwebs, hanging on.
The bone that has saved you for a month saves you again as you use it to pick the lock of your cage.
The cage bursts open just as Gretel and the witch both tumble into the oven.
As soon as their bodies hit the metal rack within, the door slams shut.
Listen: some stories have endings before they begin. Your ending is already written in stone, and you won’t make it there if you cannot follow instructions.
Sometimes it will seem like you have choices; this moment is one such illusion. Years from now you will look back and wonder what you might have done differently. Rest assured, there was nothing. There is only one thing you can do, and that’s to do what you’re told.