Gretel & Hansel part 1

Our stepmother hated us.  I knew it as soon as she came to the house, leaning on our father’s arm as if she were too helpless to stand alone.  She came in with a bright smile and glittering eyes and, with a shock, I recognised malevolence. It was like meeting a foe in battle.  She did not want us, the children of a previous marriage.  She wanted to destroy our family and keep our father to herself.  Hansel, of course, realised nothing.  He sickened me with his eager acceptance and brought her flowers, gathered from the forest edge.  I was coldly polite and waited, sure that my father would see through her cloying protestations of love, but it seemed that I was the only one who could see how empty all her promises were.

When Father took us into the forest and tried to leave us, Hansel cried and begged to go back.  I did not.  The home we knew was no longer a sanctuary. Our father had changed, was no longer interested in us but eager to return to his young wife, with her honeyed smile and stinging eyes.  He told us to go and gather mushrooms, he would come back later and take us home.  All the while, his eyes were dull and glazed, like a pigeon that has been torn from the sky by a sparrowhawk.  He had to prise Hansel’s grasping fingers from his coat before he strode away.  Hansel tried to follow but could not match the pace of our father’s long legs.  Desolate, he flung himself to the forest floor and wept.

I had no tears.  I had used them all when our mother died.  Now I had only rage, coiled in my stomach like a viper.  I vowed that someone would pay for everything the world had taken from me and spat into the leaf litter, to make the vow stick.  Hansel knuckled his eyes.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked.

‘Survive,’ I answered and turned on my heel and walked away.

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