It was a bitterly cold winter. The wind howled through the streets of Kleindorf, making the rickety wooden buildings creak with a cacophony of sound that echoed through the little village. Snow coated the roofs, but it would soon be too cold even for snow. The narrow streets were treacherous with ice, so that even the brave dared not venture from their houses without a stick with which to balance.

At the edge of the village there was a smaller house, separate from the others. It was there that lived the woodcutter and his family: two children, a boy and girl, and their stepmother. The woodcutter's family was well acquainted with freezing winters and the pangs of hunger that it brought - all save the stepmother. She had come from a wealthy family, and had never experienced famine before. The pain in her stomach was as foreign to her as the warm lands to the south, where it was rumoured that the sun blazed even in the depths of winter. This new sensation brought out the darkness within her, and as the months passed it turned her as bitter as the plants that hunger forced her to eat.

She resented the woodcutter. He had promised her a family, a cosy life filled with prosperity, fine clothes and children. He would build them a pretty little cottage, he swore, a little wooden one filled with light and laughter and warmth. Honeysuckle that would trail down the walls, and a beautiful garden for her to tend.

Some cottage. It was little more than a shack, and icicles hung threateningly above her even when indoors. There was no warmth - the wind whistled through the cracks in the walls and across the barren floors. There was no light, only the tiny stump of a candle that guttered and extinguished with the merest hint of a breeze. There was no laughter - her stepchildren were sombre creatures, and seldom engaged in any form of frivolity. Their mother's death had clearly affected them deeply, and they made no secret of their objection to her replacement.

At first she had pitied them: they had watched their mother weaken and die, they would doubtless be reluctant to have a new mother. But the coldness that was beginning to grip the stepmother's soul turned her empathy to fury. Idiot children, cold and unwelcoming. Did they not see how she laboured to please them? Her husband, her pathetic fool of a husband, was little better. He clearly cared more for them than he did for her. She would fix that.

If there was some way to remove them from the scene, if there was some way to focus his world on her, if there was some way to put more food in her empty stomach, she would find it.

And she did.


"Friedrich, my husband." began the stepmother, smiling sweetly at the man she had once loved. He turned his eyes to her, but they were devoid of any emotion. Fatigue and poverty had emptied them of anything that might endear him to her.

"Look at us. We barely speak any more. Where has the joy gone from your soul?" she said, sweeping forward to put her hands on his cheeks. He did not respond, earning a long sigh from his wife. She smiled at him sympathetically. "You do not know? Well I will tell you where. It departed with this hunger, concealed by the ice that makes your skin so very cold to the touch. My poor, sweet husband-"

"What do you want, Ilse?" the woodcutter asked abruptly. "You have never treated me kindly since the day we were married. Why this sudden gentleness?"

For one fleeting instant, the stepmother's eyes narrowed, but she checked herself and widened them innocently, allowing her lips to curve softly upwards.

"I have realised the source of our misery, my love."

His face remained blank.

"We have too many mouths to feed. Too many lives to sustain." she paused at the stirring of emotion in his eyes, then continued "The stress is driving a stake between us. It is the children, my love. The children are draining us of our happiness."

At this, the woodcutter's face took on some expression.

"What are you saying, Ilse?" he said sharply, his shoulders straightening from the slump they had reverted to.

"If we were to free ourselves from them, we could be happy again. There would be more food, more money - think how much better our lives would be!"

"Are you suggesting we abandon my children?"

"I am suggesting we allow them to make their own way in this world."

"Abandonment."

"Independence."

"How will they survive this weather?"

"We could leave them in the woods. It is sheltered from the snow in there, and there will be no shortage of firewood. They could build a little shelter to last the winter, then carry on their way."

Her husband's eyes widened and he seemed speechless for a moment.

"They are children! We cannot leave them at the mercy of this fiendish weather!"

The stepmother's face hardened as it always did when she was crossed.

"Then you would have me perish as did your last wife? Is that why she is now entombed beneath the soil? Because you would not do what was necessary to provide for her?"

Gone was the shock from the woodcutter's expression. In its place there was only sorrow.

"Do as I say, Friedrich, and you will no longer feel such remorse." she murmured, once again caring. By the look on his face, she knew she had found his weakness, and she seized it. "Do as I say, and you need never again know weariness or pain. Will you let me enrich our lives? Will you let me save us?"

She knew what his answer would be before he opened his mouth. With only a second of hesitation, his lips parted and formed a single word.

"Yes."


"Traitor!" spat Gretel, eyes blazing. "He's betrayed us!"

Her brother didn't speak. He sat in bewildered trance induced by the conversation they had just heard. Every word was perfectly audible through the thin walls of their bedroom, but he could scarcely believe the father who had raised him almost single-handedly would agree to leaving them for certain death.

"I knew that bitch would lure him away! I knew it! She lures him away from mother, and then from us!" Gretel was saying, pacing across the room with a restless anger that showed in every movement she made. "We should have gone and lived with mother when I said to!"

Still Hansel kept his lips sealed. He was perfectly aware of his sister's fragile mental state. She believed their mother to be alive and well, despite the complete impossibility of the idea.

"There is no doubt about it, we have to kill her. It's the only way we can make sure mother can return when she wants to instead of being driven away by this interfering whore."

This was nothing new to Hansel. The macabre side of Gretel's personality had been showing itself with increasing regularity since their new mother had moved in. The only thing for it was to humour her until she returned to the sweet child she had been before.

"We'll put poison in her breakfast. Yes! There is a plentiful supply of belladonna in the forest - it would take only a second to slip it into her porridge."

"So why don't we play along with their plan? They take us into the forest, and we'll be able to gather all the belladonna we need." said her brother dully, hardly expecting Gretel to acknowledge him.

"Yes!" she hissed, surprising him. "We will do that! But how do we gather the poison without Father realizing?"

"He intends to leave us there. He won't stay long enough to see us gathering. But how do we find our way back?"

So involved was Gretel in her desire for revenge, she ignored his last few words.

"For once, Hansel, your brain seems to have some use. That is what we will do! We'll follow them into the forest, and then poison her!" A cackle like that of a young witch escaped her lips. In it there was the mania that so often accompanied her words nowadays.

"We had best get our sleep. We want to make sure we get the right plants, and we can't do that if we're sleep deprived."

Gretel nodded vigorously then hurtled beneath the thin blanket of her bed. Hansel sighed, then climbed into his own bed. Gretel began snoring almost instantly, but he knew there would be no sleep for him that night. He was far too disturbed by the events of the day – and by the look in Gretel's eyes. She had devised murderous plans before, but never had he seen that look in her eyes. It was something feral, something cold and sharp. It made an icy finger stroke its way up his spine. For once he did not doubt that Gretel would enact her plan to murder their stepmother.

But still, even more overwhelming than his fear of Gretel, was his confusion at how it could be that the man who had told them stories, the man who had worked so hard chopping down trees that his fingers were constantly red and blistered from the rough wood of his axe shaft, the man who had promised never to let anything happen to them after the death of their mother, how could he agree so easily to leaving them in the forest? The world was nothing like those in fairytales - anyone who had lived in Kleindorf for any amount of time knew that. Life was a constant uphill struggle, and in Kleindorf that hill was permanently slick with ice. The forest was the steepest part of that slope. All manner of vicious beasts prowled between its towering firs, poisonous plants entwined around your feet as you moved, and there were rumoured to be demons flitting in the shadows.

His father couldn't be seriously thinking about leaving them there - could he? But then, the woodcutter had never been a great lover of jokes. When he said something, he meant it.

With a shiver, he rolled to face the wall and pulled his blanket tighter around his body. It did little to warm him - there was barely anything left of it after years of wear. It was as threadbare as the tattered shirts of his father's that he wore underneath his jerkin.

Thoughts whizzed around his head of what tomorrow would bring. Images of himself and Gretel lying emaciated in the snow found themselves at the foremost point of his imagination. Every time sleep began to embrace him, another picture of two skeletons abandoned among the trees would flicker in his vision.

Wearily, Hansel closed his eyes. This would be a long night.