Hansel and Gretel: A Witch's Tale
My first memory was of making homemade soup for my Mother in a large black cauldron. I could have been no more than four years old, and I often reflect on the amazed look upon her withered face as she indulged in the first spoonful. Still reverberating in my ears since that day is the praise she bestowed upon me:
"You have a knack for cooking, girl."
She had said it with such enthusiasm, even in her quiet, dignified manner. I came to realize that this experience was the first and only time I had ever seen such fervor and hope brought into her brittle soul before she had died. Perhaps it was this experience that led me towards a life of culinary masterwork, even in a time of hardship such as mine. She had followed Father into the grave, which in turn had left behind only his family and a rickety log cabin amidst the heavily blanketed forest. Before her death, Mother had found bliss in the rare delights of candy and other sweets. It was the one aspect about her that led me to believe that there was childlike warmth in the pit of her spirit. When, at the age of 14, I was left orphaned in solitude, a good majority of my time was spent in the kitchen.
In these troubled times, it was considered rather common for children to be orphaned. Some parents simply found themselves too hungry to support children, and were forced to abandon their spawn. Others lived lives of turmoil, struggling valiantly to provide for their children before themselves, before expiring. By no means was this phenomenon particularly smiled upon, but it had become normality in the countryside. For years I toiled in the forest, relying on myself to fell gigantic trees for firewood, and harvesting berries for nourishment and ingredients. The nearest village was hours away on foot, and quite arduous as the forest was lush with danger. I learned to live using only the bare essentials, at the cost of my natural beauty and essential happiness.
It was at about age 32 when I delved into the riveting, colorful, and often sticky world of confections. I hatched a process over the course of months to steal honey away from bears and bees at precisely the right times so as not to incite a wrath most furry. Using berries, I created colorful candy delights that would attract the attention of my neighbors, if there were any around to impress. The old rickety cabin caused nothing but sadness and grief for me, as with each look I was reminded not only of my parents' passing, but of the meager standards of the times. For the rest of my life, I sought to brighten not only my own spirits, but those of everybody who would pass by for the remainder of time. I would leave my mark on the world by covering my decrepit old home with candy.
The process was certainly not an easy one. Every year I was forced to replace candy that had either fallen, gone rotten or stale, or simply been eaten by pesky passers-by. It took several years in itself to decorate the house in coatings of frosting, graham crackers, mints and chocolates. I remember one incident wherein a gigantic candy cane came crashing through the ceiling, nearly crushing me in my sleep. It caused irreparable damage to my treasured kitchen, and a major setback to my progress. Alas, deep into my elderly ages, my candy home took shape and became strong.
One fine morning, I set out to gather my honey from the bears for the week at dawn while they still slumbered. I passed by the crystal river, as tranquil as can be, and was caught off guard by my reflection. I paused and stared, lost in the mysticism of the moment. My hair had gone grey long ago, my bones light and brittle. Wrinkles had overtaken and conquered my once beautiful face, and boils had sprouted here and there haphazardly amidst my temples and chin. The thoughts of ugliness and beauty battled in my mind, horrified by my haggard appearance. And yet, I reminded myself of my Mother, and felt a quiet peace. With a wry smile on my face, I moved ever-closer to my sweet bounty, and procured my honey graciously.
In the cover of ominous night, I was awoken from my sleep by the rushing of graceful feet brushing against dirt paths and bushes. It had been about 2 years since my last visitor, and I was hungry for companionship. I leapt quickly out of bed, but arrived at the door too late. I did, however, catch a fleeting glimpse of a small silhouetted figure, with a basket in hand. Its bright red hood pierced the sickly camouflage of darkness as it scurried quickly away. I lay awake in bed for several hours, waiting and hoping for my guest to return down the road. It was there I sat reading candy cookbooks until morning, in familiar and absolute loneliness. I never did see that visitor again, but that night I was treated to the ferocious howling of a wolf, and the pained shrieks of what sounded like an elderly woman. I was sad to bear witness to the possible death of a fellow forest-dweller, but found myself heartened that, for once, the woods had come alive with the echoes of activity.
It would be several more years until I would next come in contact with other humans. I had no interest in making the trek into the village, as at this point, solitude had distorted my face so horribly that I appeared to be something of a witch. I was tied to my home, utilizing every spare moment not taking the precautions to survive to cover my house in an ever-growing amount of candy. Slowly as the years took hold and piled on, I gradually lost my grasp on what my parents had looked like. The norms of human appearance had been all but forgotten, and in my loneliness, I forged relationships with the surrounding animals. A gang of stray pigs had made a habit of frequenting the area around my home, taking time to lop up the caramel river I had constructed only yards away. In years past, I would shoo them away, and yet now it seemed as though there was no use in the matter. Slowly, tenderly, they grated upon my nerves and pushed me further and further into anger.
I saw the pigs in my dreams, destroying my candy house with their bulky, gluttonous snouts. There they worked, indulging, decimating everything I loved. With each nibble they erased another chapter of my life, spreading the dirt of the Earth upon my once pristine candy cane shingles and chocolate siding. In this dream, which visited me habitually, I was rendered immobile by the shackles upon my ankles, confining me to a fence not far off where I was forced to watch with terror as my life's work was stripped down by monsters.
Each night, the pigs visited me. Over time they grew names, personalities, and a hierarchy of wickedness. To see the pigs in the waking world was no longer relevant; it became what was represented by the beasts that plagued me. At the dawn of each new day, I could not face the sun in knowing that somewhere underneath, my chubby tormentors stalked the fields with bellies full of my work. It was among the worst feelings imaginable to me to feel so helpless. In this capacity, I resolved to kill the pigs. I had always loved and felt a certain warm affinity for every animal, and yet never was I so vexed by one. At great cost, I devoted much of my free time to devising elaborate traps, putting my labor of culinary love on hiatus. I began humanely, concocting a foul smelling spread out of bear droppings and poison oak with which to cover certain parts of my home's exterior. The pigs had surprised me with their intuitiveness.
They smelled the danger and fear on the outsides of the gumdrops on the ground. While one or two pigs indulged themselves and quickly dropped dead, several more heeded the silent warning and fled. I decided to utilize a pig corpse to scare the others by hanging it on a wooden pike in the front yard by the path. I hung a scantily written sign below which read, in messy red raspberry pulp:
STAY BACK, YE GREEDY SOW.
It had not dawned on me for several days that the beasts were likely incapable of reading, and yet, I felt a sense of comfort in leaving the sign hanging. It would stay, staunch and intimidating, until long after the example pig had decayed and been reduced to bone meal. Yet at even that time months later, my home was still dogged by the curious, injurious filth of pig kind. The sensation was nothing short of maddening.
Years passed. My skin began to sag and my face began to lose its color. My hair, weak and debilitated from generations of stress and worry, began to fall out. My once chipper and optimistic personality was muddied by a rivalry with a group of enemies I could not reason with. My home slowly rotted away from its former glory, the battlefield of an interspecies war. It became a forced habit to run outside wielding a farming sickle, screaming and shooing with the rage of ten thousand men whenever I caught even the faintest glimpse of a pig. The conflict rose to a point when I was less angry at the pigs, and more astounded that they could live so long, and at their extraordinary resolve in bothering specifically me. I began to blame myself, as though the pigs were a divine punishment to sway me from my mission.
Later still, a new dream most foul crawled into my sleeping mind. It was the culmination of what seemed like an eternity of antagonism. It began with a reflection of my childhood. The candles in the bare log cabin seemed to burn brighter as I sat blissfully at a beautifully crafted wooden table. My Mother and Father stood over me, gently stroking my back as I enjoyed a bowl of porridge. I made an effort to gaze upon both of their faces, for the first time in almost a century. I scrutinized every detail and strove with every fiber of my being to commit their now-youthful appearances to memory. For the first time in years, even in a dream, I was happy.
Just then, a deafening crash could be heard overhead. A gigantic and foreboding black mass broke through the ceiling, directly over my family. I rushed to push out of my chair and push them aside, but found myself seemingly glued to my seat. Once again, the feeling of helplessness returned as the face of my Mother contorted and became awestruck. Her youthful face took on an appearance of horror, and the same helplessness to which I was a victim. In a state of powerlessness, both her and Father were crushed by the monstrous black hammer of the sky. As tears streamed from my eyes while glaring at my family's crushed remains, I slowly turned upwards, expecting to see some divine celestial body that had punished me for all these years. My eyes met those of an atrociously large pig, which loomed overhead mockingly. It laughed a porcine laugh which rattled my very foundation.
I awoke in an unquenchable rage. The appearances of my long-lost family I had tried so madly to remember were fading in a distant mist. As though fortune was smiling a sick smile on me, I heard the growling and snarling of my enemies outside, waiting like barbarians at the gate. Sickle in hand, I ran outside with the fury of a woman gone insane.
Blood seeped into the caramel river – thirteen pigs met their fate that day.
In a matter of weeks, each swine challenger who had been visiting for the past decade that made the voyage once again did not return home. I made no effort to clean the yard of pig corpses, and as time passed, they simply decayed away. Hours of my time were spent glaring out of a taffy-rimmed window, on the prowl for my former predators that had become my prey. The pugnacious beasts began to come less frequently, and soon, not at all. Peace had gradually enveloped me once again, that alien sensation that changed ones entire view of life; and yet I could not retire from my ever-vigilant post. The days of candy making had come and gone, and the days of militaristic conquest had arrived. My home was slowly dissipating in quality, and was still quite the sight to behold by the extraordinarily uncommon passerby. All things – time, memories, and self-worth – dissolved away each morning and returned again each night. During the daylight hours, I was simply a shell of a human, encased in a skin of thoughtless action.
It was a warm springtime day. As the sun crept through the sky and shined down onto my skin, I breathed an air that I had not breathed for what seemed like countless years. Peace fell over me with the warmth of daylight, and I enjoyed my morning with my first love – the cauldron. As I lit the flame and began to heat it, I decided to sit and enjoy the tranquility of the moment, savoring it before it blew away. Thoughts danced through my head as to what I would cook, and how I would enjoy the cutting of ingredients, the addition of chopped fix-ins to the boiling cauldron, and the delectable smell it would produce. The cottage would once again feel the abundance of domesticity. It was then, that I regrettably heard the putrid footsteps of pigs.
For once, I decided to transcend the boundaries and shackles of sadness and misery. I instead jumped directly to fury, as I had been trained by experiences past. When I gazed upon the objects of my madness, I was quick to notice something quite odd about the beasts. There were two, one slightly stockier than the other. Both had an uncharacteristic slenderness to them that vexed me. Stranger still, they were dressed haphazardly in what seemed like potato sacks. They seemed oddly human, like small children, and yet their evil radiated from them like a shroud. They walked with a certain civility, as though they were not simply here to torture me. They were special. As they began to converse in a strange, high-pitched series of oinks and snorts, they began to behave as their brethren, much to my dismay. Their tiny mouths latched onto the outermost parts of my candy home, and began to consume. I decided to handle the situation tactfully, and as the smell of my heated cauldron overtook my senses, I played the role of the caretaker.
"Well well!" I said, summoning the jovial spirit of my mother at a younger age. "Haven't you little dearies a sweet tooth? Come in, come in, you've nothing to fear, little ones!" It was equally as maddening to wear this guise amidst my enemies, treating them with such gossamer hospitality. As the pigs squirmed with an unsettling mixture of distrust, happiness and awkwardness, I looked to my already boiling cauldron. I thought of how I must look to the pigs, a haggard and wilted old human, all clad in black robes. A wave of sudden rage passed over once again -
"Why, you're nothing but skin and bones, little piggy!" I said to the slightly smaller of the two. "I shall fatten you up and eat you!" My smile never ceased as I began to lock him in a small rusty cage I had once used for housing chickens. I heard the panic of the pig in its shrieks, and the sensation once again returned me to the happiness of the morning air. The other, I left to wander around the house, without its companion. It would be next on the menu, after partaking in a diet of its former friend. As night stole the morning and day away, each of us eventually found ourselves asleep.
The next few days went as planned. I cooked to my own accord and rhythm, leaving the scraps to my porcine prisoner. Every so often, I would check his stringy and pale hoof which, if only for a second, crossed my mind as odd. It was getting fatter and fatter, strengthening with each meager meal. Within a week, I was prepared to harvest the meat of my charge. I thought to bypass the cauldron, finding it slightly unfitting to the current situation, and instead used an oven. The candle was lit, and I absorbed a sensation unlike I had ever known from staring at the pig's horrified impression at this confrontation of fate. His companion as well, panicked and began to squeal. Their faces would, in ideal circumstances, be painted and immortalized upon the mantelpiece as the greatest triumph of my life. I pressed the edge of the cage up against the mouth of the oven and forced the victim within. My pride was overflowing as a smile took hold of my being. I began to laugh – even cry.
It was then that the inevitable occurred. I felt a sudden blow from behind, a blast from the torment of reality, as I was forced first against the open cage, and subsequently against the mouth of the oven. I turned as much as possible to see the pigs, one freed by the doings of the other, whose process I will never know. As I watched precious worry on ones face turn to strength, my mind began to sober and quicken. To my shock, the faces of the beasts began to twist and contort, slowly at first and gradually much faster, into those of small German children. A hellish blizzard of emotion came over me, some parts amazement, other parts shame at my own inhumanity, even more parts unbridled hysteria as the gravity of the situation took its course. Given no time to mince words, I was forced into my own oven, scraping my sagged and delicate skin on the hard bricks of the exterior.
Screams went unheard. I hardly felt myself become nothing as I was consumed by the flames of my very passion. I reflected on my entire life with those final moments, and decided that, most of all, I missed my dear Mother. Had everything I killed over the generations truly been just pigs? How many innocent lives had I taken who were only attempting to pay a visit to a lonely old woman? Were they all children? I worried for my afterlife, wondering whether or not I would find my beloved parents in the splendor of Heaven. I then thought, naturally, that I was bound for Hell. The all-consuming flames of my own oven reassured me.
It was my dearest hope with my dying thought that those poor children live happily ever after.