Chapter 7 Hansel
Hansel
I’m done with this cottage and the fear it evokes. We burned the witch but this cottage… this cottage is cursed.
I take her face in both my hands and run my thumbs over her cheeks. Her lips. She stares up at me, her brow furrowed.
“Finish it?” she asks. “Hansel, what does that mean?”
“It means—this is over. This place won’t exist. You can forget all about what happened. You can move on, and so can I, because this cottage won’t be sitting here, haunting us.”
“But—”
I cut her off with a kiss. Feeling a sense of purpose. This cottage will be nothing but ash.
The only thing I’ve ever been more sure of than my new quest is Gretel. Something changed in me when I laid eyes on her for the first time. Now I know what that was.
Gretel hesitates for a second, like she might argue with me about what I said, but then she melts into the kiss, parting her lips to let me in.
We fit together. That’s the only way I can explain it. There’s no awkwardness when I kiss her. There’s no fumbling around, wondering what to do. I slide my hands down to her waist, holding the blanket close around her gorgeous body, and pull her close.
She’s warm against me. The blanket brushes against my waist, and her breasts brush against my skin, and God—if I didn’t have to finish this, I’d take her straight back to bed. If I didn’t have family waiting for me in the village, I might never get out again.
Maybe someday, I’ll have a bed of my own to give her. A house. A ring and life she deserves. Something other than all my bitterness and the old wounds from the witch.
Someday, when this cottage isn’t here anymore. When it’s scattered in the wind.
I break the kiss and pull her close, just holding her. I hate letting go so much I almost can’t do it.
But then Gretel moves against me, taking a nervous little breath, and this can’t wait. I should have done this the first time I came back here. I’d spent so many nights awake and sweating in my bed, wondering if the witch was really dead, and finally I came to find out.
Maybe she was waiting for the two of us. Maybe she really did lure Gretel here.
I press a kiss to Gretel’s forehead, then let go. It’s time to end this.
In here makes it feel like the chains might still be touching me. Those damned things are nowhere to be seen, so I can’t drag them outside and melt them down.
But the rest?
The rest of this cottage is weak. It’s just wood. It’s made of things that can be destroyed if a man puts his mind to it, and I’m putting my mind to it.
I let myself loose.
I start by the sink in the kitchen, tearing dried herbs off the walls along with the boards the hooks were nailed into.
I rip off a set of indoor shutters, then make a loop around the cottage, pulling off the rest. Shutters on the inside and the outside.
The witch wanted to be able to hide. She never wanted anyone to find out what kind of things she did in here.
It’s too bad for her that I found out. It’s even worse that Gretel and I survived, because now I’m going to wipe this place out of existence.
Gretel watches me intently, staying close as I tip the wood into the fire. It leaps up around the boards like it’s delighted to have something to blaze through.
I break down the chairs at the kitchen table. They go into the fire as well. The oven is roaring now, pouring heat into the house, but I don’t want to feed that thing. The bedroom grate is better.
“This is what you should have burned,” I say to the flames, though I know it wasn’t this fucking fire that wiped out the crops and sent people to early graves from starvation.
“This hellhole.” She joins me in destruction, grabbing everything she can.
The pillows and cushions. The drapes and the rugs.
Gretel comes with me when I head back for more pieces of the house. She grabs my arm as the fire catches and slips through the grate.
“Hansel,” she says, her voice gentle. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”
“We’re going,” I snap, then take a deep breath and look her in the eyes. “We’re going, Gretel. I’m burning this place to the ground, and then we’re leaving.”
“That’s not going to be enough.”
I stop dead in the middle of the rug, my arms full of panels from the walls. The cottage is old enough, and it’s been sitting here long enough, that pieces are coming away in my hands almost as easily as the shutters.
“What do you mean, it’s not going to be enough? This place won’t exist. We—we replaced her. We replaced what happened with what we did. There’s nothing left but to get rid of it. The memories though… what she did to you… what she did to you was—”
“Me?” Gretel has tears in her eyes. Her chin, which she’d stuck out so bravely, wobbles. “I can’t stand to see what she did to you.”
“Gretel.” I bend down and kiss her temple, then her cheek.
“The worst part about that night was seeing you cry. I would have survived anything she threw at me to be able to take you home, and it was—God. You screaming for me like that—nothing could be worse. Do you understand? Nothing. I can’t let her do that to you again. ”
“She tortured you,” Gretel argues, her voice breathless.
She clears her throat. The fire rages behind her in the bedroom.
Our time is running out. “She tortured you, Hansel. Why do you think I’m willing to let her live?
I’m not going to let her—let her taunt me.
She can’t spend the rest of her life trying to scare me into anything.
We have to kill her. Or I have to kill her.
She has to be dead. That witch can’t exist in the same world as us anymore. I can’t take it.”
“I love you, Gret. I always have.”
Shock shows in her widened eyes and for a moment it’s like I cut her deep. Or like I kissed her for the first time. The sound is so packed with emotion that I can’t decide what it means.
Gretel wouldn’t have let me touch her if she didn’t feel just as strongly. If she didn’t trust me with every part of her.
She cares about me so much that she wants me out of here, just so being within these walls doesn’t cause me any more pain. The fire cracks in the other room and it catches both of our attention.
“If we’re going to leave, then we should leave now.”
It’s not enough though. Not enough to burn every last scrap in this nightmare. I stalk past Gretel and drop the next pile onto the flames.
There’s still no sign of the witch and I’m convinced as I toss the dishes in the flames that it is the house. This cottage is damned with baneful magic.
I wasn’t strong enough when I was younger. I’m strong enough now. I’ve pushed all my anger deep down inside and saved it up so it could become strength.
“We can pretend,” she insists. “We don’t have to think about this place anymore, whether its here or not. When we go back home—”
“I’m not going back home while this cottage is still standing.”
Gretel’s huge eyes follow me as I go for another round. “Hansel, please. We can go right now. We can—we can talk. We can regroup. We need to make a plan to find her and kill her, and then—”
“This first.”
“She could be coming for us right now.”
“And?” Ripping the house apart feels like it’s meant to be. Like I have to do it. It’s a release I didn’t know I needed until it was happening. “She could have come for us any time, if that’s true.”
“You really think she’s dead?” she questions and I do. In the depths of my soul I know we banished her from existence. Whatever this is, this magic, it’s something else.
“I know she’s dead! I killed her. We killed her. We put her in the oven and burned the body. I know she’s dead. I know she’s gone. And now her house will be gone, too.”
Gretel presses her lips together, silencing her protest and hurries for the table. She stacks the remaining plates and bowls into her arms and carries them into the bedroom, then dumps it all on the fire.
“Thought you said we had to leave,” I say as she rushes back across the cottage.
“I’m not leaving without you. And if you really mean it—”
“I do really mean it. God, Gret, why else would I have come here? I want you to stop thinking about that night. It’s never coming back.”
“If you mean it,” Gretel says, louder. “Then I’m helping you, because I don’t think we have time.”
“Nobody’s coming. She’s dead.”
“We don’t know that. And there’s clearly magic here. The fires—”
“Can’t be from her if she’s dead.”
“If she’s alive, the magic might have called her here!”
I catch Gretel around the waist and pull her in for a fierce kiss. When we break apart, she’s gasping, a deep flush in her cheeks.
“If she comes here, she’ll die,” I tell her. “I’ll kill her again with my own two hands. But dead people don’t come back, Gretel. They just don’t. There’s no magic in the world that can bring an evil witch back from the grave.”
“She didn’t have a grave,” says Gretel. “She went into the oven.”
“Back from the oven, then.”
“I really think we should go.”
“And we will,” I promise her. “Just as soon as this is done.”
Gretel helps me as much as she can. The dishes take up a lot of space in the hearth, so after a few more trips, I have to wrench open the oven door.
It’s much hotter than the bedroom fire and chews through wood in a few seconds.
I get one of the window frames out, and a gust of cold air whirls across my face. Somehow, I’ll burn all my memories along with this cottage.
Gretel stops, bracing one hand against the wall and breathing deep.
“Let’s just go,” she pleads, one more time. “Let’s just get the wagon ready and go. We can—”
She’s interrupted by a loud crack of thunder. Gretel jerks upright, staring at the ceiling. The next second, rain pours down on the roof. The wind howls. My pulse races and something has changed. I can feel it in my bones.
“Thunder,” she shouts. Her eyes are wide with fear when they meet mine. Thunder isn’t right. It’s the middle of winter. It’s not the right time of year for a thunderstorm, and no hot air came to mix with the cold, which has to mean—
“Gretel,” I shout.
The door of the cottage opens wide. The firelight from the oven dims.
A figure at the door is illuminated in a flash of lightning. Cold scrapes down my spine. Lightning is just as wrong as thunder, but it’s the figure at the door that stops my breath.
It’s a witch.
It’s the witch.
It’s her. Fear used to paralyze me but in this moment every muscle in my body tightens. Every fiber of my being is prepared to fight. To defend Gretel.
I open my mouth to call out to her, to tell her to get behind me, but the witch waves a hand. When I shout Gretel’s name, no sound comes out. Gretel’s face is in shadow, but I can see her mouth moving. She’s trying to speak to me, but I can’t hear a word she says.
Fear races through my veins as my body chills.
We’ve been silenced by magic. I can feel the spell in my throat, trapping my voice.
No. This isn’t fucking happening. Not to us. Not again.
She’s dead. She’s supposed to be dead.
I run toward Gretel, but I’ve only gone two steps when the witch waves her hand again. Another spell. This one paralyzes me in place. I fight against it with all my strength, but I’m no match for the magic.
Gretel leaps toward me, light on her feet and her hands stretched out in front of her. If she can get to me, there’s still hope. If the witch leaves her alone, then I’ll survive somehow.
It’s only a second or two, but it feels like forever until Gretel’s fingertips touch me.
Her eyes come to mine, and then—
It’s like she’s gone.
Frozen. A statue. All of her, turned to stone.