(This is a fairytale parody and purposely mimics the style of a fairytale. It is based specifically off of the Brothers Grimm tale and although amusing if you don't know it, my parody makes very conscious choices of where to follow and where to diverge from the original tale. More than a passing familiarity with Hansel and Gretel enriches the experience. Enjoy~!)
Hansel and Gretel
Deep in a forest where the sun did not often shine, there sat a tiny cottage. In it lived two children, the elder Alfred and his little brother Matthew. They lived a happy life at first, but the older brother had quite an appetite and they came from modest means. Before long, it became hard to provide for the growing children. Their tummies grumbled like the bears and wolves just outside of the home. When it got so bad that they had to eat the crumbs normally for mice, Alfred went to his parents.
"Why don't we have any food to eat?"
"We're hungry," Matthew said from behind him.
The children's parents looked down at them, sadness in their eyes. "Sweet children, I'm afraid we can no longer feed you. A famine is coming and all we have is a single loaf of bread. You children simply eat too much." With that, the children were sent to their room as the grown-ups discussed grown-up things. Little did they know, the children listened through the holes in the walls.
"If we keep these children, we will all die," their mother said.
The father, greatly distressed to hear this, tried to change his wife's mind. "But they are just children. How can we sentence them to death?"
The mother sighed. "I don't like it either, but promise me you'll reconsider if it gets any worse. I won't lose you too." She touched her husband's blonde hair and gave him a kiss. Then they went to bed, their hearts easy. The two children could not sleep though.
"Al, what are we going to do? I'm so hungry and we're all going to die!" Matthew whined. Alfred patted his brother on the shoulder where they lay on their straw mattress. Matthew looked up with wet eyes, but Alfred just smiled like he always did.
"Why, we'll go out and find some food of course!" the boy exclaimed. "We'll find enough to feed us all and then no one will die! Isn't that what a hero does?"
Matthew sighed. "Who decided you were a hero…?"
"Me, duh!"
And that was how they decided things. In the dead of night when their parents were fast asleep, the two children slipped out of the house. Since their plan lacked any real sense, the younger brother decided to rip off half the loaf and take it with them. At least when they failed, they wouldn't starve to death immediately in the forest. When the two reached the edge of the clearing, Matthew grabbed his brother's hand. "How will we know our way back?"
Alfred turned and pointed to the white roof of the cottage which shone in the light of the moon. "Look, white things reflect the moon. We'll just lay down a path and follow it back. Don't think I can't smell the bread your hiding!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "Give it here and we'll drop crumbs behind to light our path."
"Wouldn't that be wasting what little food we have?" Matthew asked.
"Hah? Of course not! You're the one who said we need to find our way back!"
So they walked with Alfred dropping crumbs every few feet. The high moon lit the crumbs like beacons in the night. Before long though, the forest swallowed up the children. They walked and walked, yet they still could not find more than a few berries and weeds Alfred swore were edible. It was then they ran out of bread. The two brothers stood there in the tall, tall trees, listening to wolves howl nearby.
"Uh…maybe we should go back," Alfred muttered. He turned and started looking around. They had only a few nibbles of bread as they walked and his stomach roared something fierce. Deep into the forest as they were though, the moon did not shine. "Where…where are the crumbs?!" He grabbed his brother and shook him. "Have you been eating them?!"
"Me?!" Matthew yelped back. "I bet it was you! I can't believe this! Now we don't have a way home or anything to eat!" He hit his brother in the arm, but the older didn't notice or feel bothered by it anyway. After a second, Alfred's bright child-face broke out in its usual smile.
"Don't fear, little Mattie. I'll find us a way home, just you wait and see!" With that, he grabbed his brother's hand and started off in a random direction. When they could walk no longer, they laid down to sleep, clutching each other close for warmth, for it was winter then. Though it refused to snow in these woods, like the pristine white had no right to be there, the wind carried a bite. One more night they repeated this. On the third day, when they could hardly walk from hunger, Alfred stopped dead in his tracks. A fat white rabbit tilted its head at them. A second later, it lopped into the bushes. The children took chase after it and the rabbit often stopped as if to make sure it didn't lose the much slower humans.
Just when they were about to give up, they came upon a clearing. "It's home!" Matthew cried out. But it wasn't. As they neared, they saw a most curious sight. There in the center of neat green grass sat a house of food.
"No! It's better!" Alfred exclaimed as he ran for it. He ripped off a bread-like windowsill and bit into it. His face twisted as did Matthew's after he licked the window.
"Isn't this kinda nasty tasting?"
Alfred chomped down on some of the roof, hoping for a different flavor. "Totally, but I'm so hungry I don't care!" The two children continued to eat until a whisper-voice broke their silence.
"Nibble nibble, nom nom. What's that chewing on my home?"
"Uh…we're just the wind. Don't mind us!" Alfred let out a nervous laugh.
"Oh very well, I do love the wind!"
When nothing happened, the children went back to eating. In their haste, Matthew broke the window so he could stick large pieces in his mouth. Alfred climbed onto the roof so he could swim in the slightly stale icing and scone. How tasty it was to their poor famished tummies. Just when Alfred's tiny shoe broke through the shingles, the cottage's door swung open. Alfred flailed, falling. The man who regarded them did so with a raised busy eyebrow. Though the children were scared, he clasped his hands together and smiled a great big smile.
"Why, it's not the wind at all, but two little children! You should have said so! Come in, come in and I'll feed you soup. Weren't my scone shingles so wonderful? If you like them, I'll bake up a new batch just for you!" the man exclaimed in excitement. He stepped back and waved for the children to enter his home.
Matthew and Alfred traded looks. "Uh…well…" they each said with a wince. Matthew punched his brother in the arm though, so he smiled. "Yeah, soup sounds great!" This was the first kindness they found since leaving home and they would take what found them. As the door closed behind, the children danced and smiled, having no idea that they had entered a witch's abode.
See, no other witch in those days was more fearsome than the British Empire as the man called himself. Even more than the fear of his cooking, was his penchant for gobbling up any creature he came across, especially young and foolish children. These two were more foolish than most, so the witch fed them soup until their tummies almost burst, then put them to bed in matching little cots. He then watched over them with unblinking green eyes like acid.
In the early morning hours when the children still slept, the witch wrapped Alfred up in a blanket and carried him to a shed. The boy woke when he hit the ground. "Hey? What?!" Alfred yelped. The shed door slammed shut before he could scramble to his feet. "Why are you doing this?!"
For a second, the witch just regarded him. "Because little children need guidance. You think you can eat my home and get away with it? See, children eat and eat until there is nothing else around them. But don't worry, I'll feed you lots of yummy food. And when you're nice and fat again, I'll consume you!"
Alfred banged his fists on the door. "I don't want to hear that from you! Hypocrite!"
"Don't say words you don't understand!" the witch hissed back. With that, the man whirled away and left the child alone to suffer in the dark.
Matthew woke to someone shaking his shoulder. But rather than his brother, it was the witch. Arthur no longer wore his smile, but a fierce expression. "Come here. You will help me bake from now on. Get on with it! Heat the oven!"
"But where has my brother gone!?" the boy cried out. He clutched at his apron as the witch shooed him into the kitchen. In there lay a monstrous oven and counters taller than he stood. But Alfred was not there.
"I've got something special planned for him. I'm sure if I feed him, he'll become the fattest and loveliest child ever. Won't that be nice?"
Matthew didn't think so, but he had no choice but to work the great bellows that heated the ovens. Day after day he did this, never knowing what became of his brother. The witch kept Alfred in the shed and this Matthew knew, but to what end? As always, the witch with the mysterious smile would say nothing to him, as if he didn't matter. He fed Alfred heaps of food and then checked his finger to see if he'd grown fatter. Alfred did not though because he could only eat enough of that food to keep himself from starving. Many a night, the witch paced his kitchen, trying to understand. He worked on his recipes to little avail as hungry eyes watched him. Little Matthew, who looked unimpressive at the start, became even less so. For all the food that Alfred got, Matthew got none. He was in fact, tossed to the wayside.
It was on one such day that Matthew thought and thought, as he often did. For what else did he have but his mind? Arthur banned him from the kitchen earlier. Curious at this odd behavior, Matthew watched from under a table. The witch of course, never noticed him. Though the witch talked to himself often, Matthew couldn't understand the words. So when Arthur left the room, he scrambled up onto a stool to see the result of his baking.
"Scones?" But when he looked closer, he realized they weren't just any scones. Matthew let out a cry of horror. Each little scone had been baked into the shape of a person so realistic that their anguished expressions lay frozen on their icing faces. Mushy arms reached out, ten or fifteen of them. So many faces! Frozen, baked up people and there at the bottom of the pan, a space about the size of two children. Before Matthew could run, a hand grabbed hold of his wrist. The witch's predatory smirk flashed at him.
"Now that you've seen them, I guess I have no choice but to bake the boy up right now," he said with a smirk. With a yank, he pulled Matthew down from the stool and sent him sprawling. "I don't care if he hasn't gotten fat! I'll definitely eat that child today!" He pushed Matthew to the oven and told him to make sure it was working. The boy knew it was now or never. Standing in front of the oven and wringing his hands, he looked back at the witch with wide purple eyes.
"But I don't know how."
"Hah!?" the witch exclaimed, one of his eyebrows twitching madly. "Of course you know how! You just crawl in there and check. See, like this." He stuck his head and shoulders inside to mimic what Matthew should do. But the little boy already knew how to check the oven, just as he knew the second he did so, the witch would slam the oven door closed and bake him up too. So Matthew gave the witch's bottom a great shove and into the oven he tumbled. Screams fills the cottage as he slammed the door shut and took off running.
"What's going on?! Who's there?" Alfred cried as Matthew reached the shed's door. Using the witch's keys, he unlocked it and grabbed his older brother's wrist. "Matthew?"
"Quick! The witch is dead!" he cried out. Tears wanted to fall, but he held them back. "I've killed the witch."
Alfred's eyes went wide. For a second, he just stared in awe, then he threw arms around Matthew. "Thank you, thank you! You're so awesome, Mattie!" He grabbed his brother's hand once again and dragged him back toward the house. Together they raided the witch's home and found chests of countless treasures buried in the back. Jewels and gold, gumdrops of the sweetest sugar and dark chocolates, entire stores of delicate meats unlike anything they'd been served, and so many ancient swords and guns they couldn't carry it all. In the end, they ate and stuffed their pockets with as much as they could then fled the cottage. It was only when they reached a stream near the edge of the forest that the children paused to catch their breath.
"Look, from here I think we can make it home," Matthew said. The two stared across the bank to familiar woods. They stood so still they could have been the trees, but then Alfred shook his head.
"No."
"No what?" Matthew asked hesitantly. "We set out to find food and money for our family. We did. What's changed?" But his tiny voice was not so tiny anymore. Just quiet, always quiet.
"Everything," Alfred answered with a sigh. "Look at what we've seen out here. How can we go back?!" He grabbed his brother's shoulders so they could look each other in the eye. "We've defeated the witch and we're free now. Like, really free! We can go wherever we want. You can go home, but I'm going to take my spoils and be off." With that, he turned to follow the river to god knew where.
Matthew stood alone on the bank, his apron pockets heavy with his own spoils. For a long minute, he stared off in the direction he knew home lay. They were born there, raised there, were happy there. Why couldn't they go back? But even as he thought it, he knew Alfred spoke the truth. There was no going back after that.
"Wait! I want to be independent too!" Matthew called out. Alfred didn't pause in his step, but he slowed a bit, enough for Matthew to never loose sight of his back. Though still young, that boy walked with his shoulders square and his head high. And he walked like that for the rest of his life because he had none of the weight that pushed down his little brother's shoulders.
Because of that, Alfred was the first to question their childhood actions. "I think the witch wasn't that bad," he said one day with his head laying on his brother's chest.
Matthew looked at him without a hint of smile. "Why do you say that?"
"Well…England is so cool a guy now. We were such kids. So rash! We never saw how it would play out." Alfred let out a sniffle and clutched his brother tighter. Matthew just sat there and ran a hand through Alfred's blonde locks that could have been sunshine if they wanted to be. Matthew reached for that sunshine like a desperate soul because he himself sat in darkness. He didn't show it back in the forest and he wouldn't show it now either. No, he'd just comfort his brother's innocent fears because Alfred didn't know the truth. He thought he was the one that sat in darkness, plagued by his guilty conscious. The thing that plagued Matthew though was far worse—the lack of guilt and still, years later, the fear. Alfred never saw the truth because Matthew and Matthew alone killed the witch.
"But we can never take back the past, no matter how much we want it."
So day after day, the scones' frozen faces haunted Matthew, and the nightmares where he saw his brother's own, frozen in pain.
(Whew! I figured it was about time I used some of my fairytale studies. Although the German brothers might make more sense as Hansel and Gretel, I think these two fit the role better. I was secretly thrilled to cast Canada as Gretel as she's the one who seems weak at first and yet kills the witch. I want to see Canada learn to rescue and America to learn to be rescued.
Also, the ending was inspired by the poem 'Gretel in Darkness' by Louise Gluck. How do ya'll feel about it? I didn't want to just leave it at the end of the fairytale without somehow adding something to the experience, so hopefully it's not out of place.
Look forward to new fairytales from me too, kay! :D)