Chapter Six
Hansel did not ask again if he might follow her to the enchantress’s house.
Their time together began with his inquiries into her well-being and happiness and ended with his pleas that she be careful.
The precious minutes in between were spent in pleasant conversation, warm embraces, and periods of comfortable silence.
How she missed him on the long, lonely days they were not together.
If not for the spell binding Gretel to the enchantress’s home, they might have courted like an ordinary couple, meeting at her home, Papa offering his blessing.
She paused in her weeding of the garden.
No matter how hard she tried, she could not form a clear image of her home or her papa.
She had not been gone so long that she ought to have so fully forgotten the faces and places she had known all her life.
This, no doubt, was the enchantress’s doing.
Would she eventually forget Papa entirely? Would she forget Hansel as well?
“Your vow requires you to work.” The enchantress’s hissing voice echoed off the tall stone wall. “Daydreaming does not count.”
The enchantress seldom ventured from the house, which had always offered Gretel some comfort. What had brought her to the garden?
Gretel did not dare ask. The few times she’d inquired of her mistress over some matter or another, she’d been severely scolded and subjected to long days locked in the basement. She had learned to keep her questions to herself, to put her head down and do her work.
She watched her mistress out of the corner of her eye.
The enchantress walked beside the wall, an unnervingly satisfied smile on her hideous face.
Something about the stones pleased her. A shiver slid down Gretel’s spine.
Nothing that delighted the enchantress could possibly be anything but contemptible.
The garden, and the wall in particular, had unnerved Gretel from the very start. This moment confirmed that impression.
The breeze picked up, gusting cold. The ever-present flow of water splattered in the wind.
The enchantress jumped back. Odd. Never, in the months Gretel had been in the enchantress’s cottage, had anything frightened her mistress.
Indeed, nothing had even seemed to concern her.
But the water had. Gretel knew deep in her bones that the water was, in some way, of crucial importance.
The enchantress’s head snapped upward. Her eyes pulled wide, searching the area nearby. Her slit-shaped nostrils flared wide. Gretel looked about as well, unsure what had captured her mistress’s attention. She saw nothing. She heard nothing.
The enchantress’s thin lips spread in an eager smile. “We have a visitor.”
Gretel’s heart sank. Someone had been entrapped.
She suspected others had been, though she’d been banished to the basement and didn’t know for certain.
There could be no uncertainty now. Neither could she harbor any doubts as to the fate of those the enchantress lured to this cottage.
She hadn’t the first idea how to save whoever had stumbled into this trap.
“To the basement,” the enchantress snapped.
Gretel’s mind spun as she walked back to the cottage. What could she do? How could she help? She could not simply descend into the basement and leave the poor soul to his fate. But what power did she have?
She stepped inside the cottage and froze.
Hansel.
How had he come here? She’d laid the determents. They ought to have kept him far away.
The enchantress had not yet arrived.
“You must leave,” Gretel said, the words rushing from her lips. “Please. Go now. She will kill you. She has done so before.”
She glanced over her shoulder. The enchantress was coming near enough to overhear. There was no time for escape.
“Good evening,” the enchantress said as she glided into the cottage. “How wonderful of you to join us.”
Hansel watched the haggard witch with utter adoration. Gretel vaguely remembered Papa doing the same. Another enchantment, no doubt. Her actual hideousness was somehow not seen by the men she lured to their doom.
“Gretel,” the enchantress hissed. “Why are you still here? I told you to go below.”
“I only just stepped inside,” she said. “I wasn’t certain if you wished me to do something to make your guest comfortable. Perhaps some food or something to drink.”
“I will provide his food,” the enchantress said. “He will join me for supper, for however long it takes.”
She had said precisely that with Papa. The food, then, was part of her devious plans.
Hansel sneezed, pulling their attention to him once more.
“Are you ill?” The enchantress sounded utterly disgusted.
“Only a little.” He sounded pleading, as if desperate for her to approve of him.
She circled him, Gretel entirely forgotten. “You do seem hale enough. Young.” She ran a clawed finger down his arm. “Strong.”
He watched her worshipfully.
The enchantress nodded to herself. “You’ll do.
But first you must regain your health.” She motioned him toward the room where Gretel had found the spell book.
“Lie down. Rest. My maid here will bring you food and water until you’ve recovered.
Then you”—she laid a hand on his chest—“and I will have our supper.”
He nodded mutely, his gaze never leaving the enchantress’s face.
“To the room,” she repeated.
He walked in that direction, repeatedly looking back at the enchantress. She waved him on. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
A frown firm on her face, the enchantress turned to Gretel. “Make broth. See to it that he is well soon.”
Gretel nodded. Here was an unforeseen bit of luck. The enchantress needed Hansel fully healthy, which he was not. They had time to think of a plan, if only the spell the enchantress wove on men’s perception of her was not too strong for Gretel to get around.
The enchantress entered her own room and snapped the door closed. Gretel set to the task of making broth. She did not know precisely what her mistress did to the food she fed the men who came to the cottage, but at least Gretel could be assured that the food she would make for him was safe.
The sounds of the enchantress sleeping soon filled the cottage.
Gretel stirred the pot of broth simmering above the fire.
How was she to get through to Hansel, to help him escape?
If she brought a bowl of broth in to him, she would have time to look at the spell book, perhaps find something to free him.
Footsteps sounded behind her. She looked back. Hansel had emerged, no doubt looking for the mesmerizing, engaging woman he thought the enchantress was.
“She is asleep,” Gretel said. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see her again. For now, you had best lie back down.”
His eyes darted toward the closed door to the enchantress’s room. “I heard the snoring. I hoped that meant we would have a few minutes.”
That was unexpected. “You aren’t looking for her?”
He shuddered. “I likely am meant to be. Her appearance fluctuated between beautiful and horrifying. I suspect I was only supposed to see the alluring version, but somehow the enchantment is not working.”
Gretel stepped away from the fireplace and directly to him. She clutched his upper arms. “You have to leave. If she is not truly trapping you here, you have to go.”
He did not heed her warning but instead wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. “She means for you to nurse me to health. I can feign a slow recovery. We will have time and plenty for managing both of our escapes.”
Though she ought to have argued and insisted that he leave while he still could, she leaned into his embrace, resting her head against his beating heart. “I do not know how you found me. The path leading here is enchanted to make you go the other way.”
“I came from the other direction, on my way back from the village.”
She hadn’t thought that the enchantress might have bewitched other paths leading to the cottage, but she should have. “She kills the men she lures here. I could not endure it if you suffered that same fate.”
“We will escape, my dearest Gretel. I have full faith we will.”
“I do not know how to break the spell that keeps me here.”
His hand rubbed a comforting circle on her back. “There is a spell book in the room she’s placed me in.”
“I’ve read portions of it. I haven’t found anything yet.”
“I will read while I am supposed to be sleeping. You can read while you’re meant to be nursing me. We will find the answer.”
She pulled back enough to meet his eye. “Will you promise me you will be careful?”
“If you will promise me the same.”
She took a fortifying breath. “I will ladle a bowl of soup and meet you in the room. We can search the book.”
The enchantress’s snores continued; she was no doubt confident in the spell she had cast over Hansel. That would grant them time to read through the book.
Gretel carefully carried the bowl into the room where Hansel was kept. She placed it on the very table where she had turned the pebbles into determents. Hansel sat on the cot, the spell book open on his lap. Gretel quietly closed the door.
“You should eat,” she said quietly. “The food the enchantress will give you is tainted somehow. It is part of what kills the men who come here.”
He watched her. “They are always men?”
She nodded. “I don’t know if they are because they have to be or because she simply prefers them to be.”
He gave that some thought. She sat beside him on the cot. “Allow me to read while you eat.”
He rose and crossed to the table where the bowl sat. “Are there any other patterns you’ve noticed?” he asked before sipping a large spoonful.
“She always insists they eat supper ‘for however long it takes.’ She often looks quite ill and exhausted before their arrival, but by the time they are . . . gone—dead, I assume—she looks healthy again, energetic, though never pleasant.”
He smiled a little. “Hers is a rather horrifying visage, isn’t it?”
“I suspect she is something otherworldly.”
He continued to eat as she read spell after spell.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that something in the food transfers the life from her prisoners to her. She gains their strength and vitality.”
That fit what Gretel had seen. But how did the enchantress manage it? And how did they stop her from doing it again?