Then the witch gave Gretel a push that drove her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh! then she began to howl quite horribly, but the witch ran away and the nuisance of a child was miserably roasted to death.
Gabrielle, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little stable, and cried: "Hansel, we are saved! The little urchin is dead!" Then Hansel sprang like a bird from his cage when the door was opened. How they did rejoice and embrace each other, and dance about and kiss each other!
"Oh Gabrielle, I'm so happy this worked out well. Gretel is such an awful sister. She's pathetic and relies on me to do everything and eats up all the sweets like a whore!" he burst out fiercely.
The witch laid a warm crinkled hand atop his head. "Shush, child, She's gone now. You'll have all the candy in this house to yourself."
"But Gabrielle, don't you want any? It's delicious," he slurped, mouth already dribbling with chocolate syrup from a nearby vase. His thin lips were pulled upwards into a muddy smile as he scooped his fingers into the warm liquid and raised them, letting large trickles splash onto the floor.
When he looked up, Gabrielle was different. She stood up straighter, was tall and graceful and miraculously forty years younger. Her eyes sparkled with clear green, her laugh rang free of gnarliness and she was so warm, so present, like she filled the little room with light. "There, isn't this better?"
Hansel blinked at the sight of this new vision before him, then accepted it as open-heartedly as he had accepted the candy cottage that night he and the little bitch had been stumbling through the forest, footsore and lost. "Oh. I always knew you were pretty. Anybody who's this nice has to be pretty." He resumed gorging, exhausting the vase and moving on to try the kettle.
Gabrielle eyed her new charge with something like approval, and smiled.
During the next month Hansel was quite spoiled in the house-in-the-woods and grew fatter on the labors of Gabrielle's craft. It was extraordinary what she could do behind the bars of her little cookery. Scarce minutes after entering she would come out all radiant, carrying platters of glorious sugary wonders. One day she'd have spirals of caramel chocolate, the next glossy rock candy windowpanes, the next yet a fantastic ball of wriggling gummy worms. Hansel yelled and darted away upon seeing this latest concoction, but Gabrielle assured him oh yes, they're dead alright and proceeded to pop a few demurely into her mouth. Post-humous reflexes. Her lips glistened with a vicious red sheen despite the sugar-white crumbs smeared along them. "Try some."
"Gabrielle," Hansel remarked loudly after returning from the bathroom, "where did you learn how to make all this stuff?"
She blew a wisp of golden hair out of her face and looked at Hansel very solemnly, a twinkle in her eyes. "I was an angel."
Eyes enlarged in wonderment, he dunked himself into the cotton candy sink. In his enthusiasm, fist-sized clumps of candy disappeared down his throat and he snorted, hoping to absorb even more sugar. "Really? It must have been amazing, can I—" He choked under the weight of his confectionary and started gargling terribly. Foamy bits were spat out of his mouth and he screeched in a muffled voice. Panic-stricken, he tried pulling wads of spidery lining out of his mouth and nose, but the strands remained stuck fast, grabbing hold of his doughy skin and clawing his face off.
"Perhaps one day, dear," Gabrielle answered silkenly, brushing aside the cotton candy mildy from the blue-faced boy. They fell off like butter from her touch. Hansel emerged heaving great gulps of air, his hands cradling his neck where faint gray patches still lingered.
"Still," he coughed impatiently, "I want to! Tell me all about it! It was wonderful, right, right, I bet God loved candy too, so that's why he sent Jesus down here. To en-ligh-ten us all about how to get candy!" he finished triumphantly, a piggish glow on the face now shining pink with excitement.
"Well," Gabrielle paused for the briefest of moments, and then the maternal glow was firmly back on her countenance. "Suppose I tell you all about it. But it's secret, alright?"
His eyes a shock of blue, Hansel shook his head vigorously up and down and sat down cross-legged on the floor, waiting to be enveloped in pleasant fiction. That was the first part of the story.
"I was born in a cradle soft as cotton high up in the clouds—much higher than men can see. Angels develop much quicker than human babies, you see, and the day after my birth I was flying everywhere and chasing the clouds. Never quite got them, though. Took me a while to sort out my wings. Even when I could grab hold they just puffed up more and shook me off. I even tried sucking on their thumbs, but it tasted all watery so I had to steal some sugar from Daddy's pantry and sprinkle it on them. The clouds liked that a lot. Apparently it tickles in a nice way. That's how i got the idea for cotton candy later."
"There were other things, other incidents and stories. Over time candy creation became my obsession. Started a little shop of my own way up there, attracted a few sweet-toothed folks. And you know the best part? Daddy didn't notice a thing. All the time I was attracting customers by the churchload and the shop was growing by a story a day, and he didn't see a damn thing! As long as I woke up bright and early to sing in the congregation he was happy and let me go for the rest of the day. Never really talked to me either."
"Didn't God love you?"
"Oh I'm sure he did, but parents have different ways of showing their love, honey. He probably just didn't want to interfere."
Hansel was unusually subdued. He looked down at his lap and fidgeted with his toes. "My Ma and Pa let us go 'cause they were poor. I think... I think maybe they never wanted us." His little face got scrunched up and traces of snot started emerging.
"I'm so sorry for you, Hansel. But God wasn't like that. He was wonderful, so kind and generous and purely devoted to helping mankind. He was absolutely the perfect father."
The boy looked up at his guardian angel, so composed, so sympathetic, earnest to tell him the truth. "So what actually happened?"
Her smile lost its grip and melted away. For a while she remained seated exactly as before, trying for mollifying confusion. And when the child remained undeceived, her face turned marble and her lips frosty. She gripped a handful of her dress and released it, leaving behind pink impressions on the snowy fabric.
"What happened," there were traces of red in her eyes again, like before, "made me this," she gestured to herself, repulsed. "Earthbound. Wingless. Trapped. For hundreds of years. The Almighty threw me out of the skies. Said I was corrupting his paradise. Hah!" her laugh was not so bell-like either, or more like one made from bark. "And here I am, handing out treats to orphans to feed myself."
Hansel breathed a sigh, watching this fallen angel with care. "You eat children who get lost, or who are abandoned, in the forest. So you don't grow old. But not me. Because I'm special, I'm not like other kids. Because you like me. Because..."
"Ego," she whispered. Gabrielle rose, all restraint and rosiness once again. "It's time."
"But wait, wait, I have to know, did you ever—?" Hansel scrambled up in dismay, throwing himself forward only to trip when strands of black licorice sprang from the carpet to weave around his ankles. He thumped to the ground and reached out with his pudgy arms, but missed the swirling silk of Gabrielle's dress by a palm's length.
"No."
It was now three mornings since Conrad and Frieda had left their uncle's house. They began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the forest, and if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness. When it was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird with curious gray bands around its head and feet sitting on a bough, which sang so heartbreakingly that they stood still that they listened to it. And when its song was over, it spread its wings and flew away before them, and they followed it until they reached a little house, on the roof of which it alighted; and when they approached the little house they saw that it was built of bread and covered with cakes, but that the windows were of clear sugar.
A/N: What can I say? Gabrielle needed another little birdie companion.