When I was small, my parents had to leave me with their brother and his wife to fight in a war. The war has never ended since, and it appears it never will; it's all shadows, mirrors and secrets that keep interrupting the everyday in the smallest of ways. I don't remember how old I was exactly when they left, but as soon as I was aware my parents weren't around, I told myself they were never coming back. Deep down I wished they would, and perhaps if I was a more fortunate soul they might have, but I am not.

I tried to be a good niece for my aunt and uncle's kindness, but I guess I ever stopped wondering what happened to my parents; they were all I could think about. I spent a lot of time in a daydream, and it was frustrating for my guardians. So when the witch stole their precious son, my spoiled little cousin, I was promptly offered as a trade.

"Too old." She croaned.

"Please, we beg you!"

I was eight, thin, and as far as the witch could tell, as good as any six-year-old boy if fed enough. Thus, she traded, and a witch must honor her trades. Only trouble was I just couldn't get fat. She fed me and fed me and fed me but I could only ever fit in a little food before I threw all the excess up. For fifteen years I remained essentially a vegetable, only capable of forming my own words. Everything else she made me do like a puppet with invisible strings. She made me clean at the well by her house, she made me collect dead animals and roots, she used me as bait for the children she would eat, and when money was needed I was any man's.

After a while of having no control over my own body, I resigned myself to experiencing life as a story being read to me rather than a thing I lived. My only freedom was in my words, it must have been harder to control my voice than my movements, but not impossible. The day Hansel and Gretel arrived I was shouting at her, calling her an old cow and a greedy beady-eyed, soulless black hole as I walked out the house, carrying a basket of bones of a freshly boiled child. I watched them over my shoulder while managing to clean away the bones without looking. I'm sure once my hand was raised for my eyes to inspect even though my eyes were far from my hands. He was dark haired, hers was darker and longer. Their clothes were leathers beneath animal skins for the cold. They were adorned in useful but cumbersome looking trinkets strapped to their ankles, arms, hips and thighs. Their faces betrayed how horrified the sight of me was to them but I couldn't do much to console them for what they were seeing. I literally had no control over my body save for my tongue. When the witch said to do something, my muscles obeyed.

The witch hunters both pointed guns at me.

"Shoot if you want I can't run." I snapped. They looked to each other. "Well get on with it, you'll be doing me a favour."

"Who are you?" Gretel commanded.

I couldn't answer; I didn't remember. "Why? Would you like to make me a wreathe of flowers for my grave?"

"You will do well to answer me." She cautioned as she came closer.

"You will do well to end my miserable existence thank you very much!"

"Are those children's bones?" she asked, horror rising in her throat.

I said nothing. I wanted to confirm her suspicions and say something derogatory as though I was used to this by now, but the truth was that I still worked hard to forget. Every child that whimpered and pleaded for help I couldn't move to give; every scream as they were murdered; her breathing and slurping getting heavier as she chewed; and my hands working on the little bones that appeared to get smaller and smaller as the years passed, when really I was just growing. Sometimes she would say she wished I would bear her a child so she could do some real magic.

"There have been reports of a witch in these parts. While you are not the witch we are looking for –

"I'm no witch, missus."

"While you are not the witch we are looking for, what was the part you played in the death of the child whose bones are now in your hands?"

My breathing became difficult to control. With the heavy iron mask around my face to keep me quiet without her using any magic, she had made my hands hold this one down, as I had been made to hold many down before, while she performed her ritual and cut the flesh from their skin until they stopped breathing. Gretel lowered to my level and pressed a knife to my chest. I would have leaned on it if I could.

"What was your part in the murder of this innocent –"

"No." I cut her off.

"This isn't a yes or no question –"

"Ask the village; I'm the ragdoll; the marionette; the harmless slave traded to the witch…" A tear escaped my eye and all I could do was let it fall. All I could ever do was let it fall. Hnsel approached his sister and drew her back from me a step or two.

"I've never heard anything like this before." Hansel muttered.

"She's in the house," I said solemnly, "If you want to kill me go ahead; I've been dead since she got me, just hurry up and kill her."

Since I never gained weight I was never freed from my suffering. I'd tried to bite my tongue before, drown myself in blood, choke on it; insult her until she killed me but there was nothing else I could do. So she kept me a slave, in case she needed someone to die for her, I suppose. Fifteen years was a lifetime of hell for me, but for her? Well, witches live a long time; I was just a blip in her life; a pet.

The brother and sister I had dreamed of coming to free me for so long hesitated. "Hurry up," I begged in a whisper. I didn't care if it was to hurry up and kill me or hurry up and kill her.

She screamed, she ran. They fired a few guns, ran after her. I heard the fighting in the distance as they danced the dance of cat and mouse until all of a sudden a weight I'd never realised was there lifted off of me.

My hands stopped scrubbing the bones. They went so limp that the scrub and the bones dropped into the well. The strangest sensation made its way up and out of my body.

Laughter.

Great bursts of laughter that brought tears along with them. I was free. I pushed myself off the ledge of the well and stumbled and fell until I was walking. Then I was jumping and laughing – hysterically! And then I had no energy for any of it and slumped to the grass. I held my hands up in front of my face and marveled at the sensation of twisting each wrist and wriggling each finger. I didn't hear the footsteps; I was pretty distracted. Hands slipped under my shoulders and pulled me to my feet. Gretel, her hair now disheveled, her furs discarded and her leather attire stained by blood and grass, pulled at my cheeks, twisted my head side to side and put her fingers in my mouth. I wriggled away from her and into Hansel.

"Do you mind?" I demanded as harshly as one can with a grin.

"Not a witch." she reported, past my face to her brother. He dropped me and I fell. The pair stood next to each other and looked down at me. I may have been laughing a tad excessively.

"I think she needs a doctor." Hansel observed.

"She looks healthy enough to me." Gretel replied.

"Not that kind of doctor." he explained.

"Ben could take a look at her."

"He's not a doctor."

"She's been living with a witch, he'll want to talk to her first."

Hansel sighed and turned to walk away, conceding to his sister's argument. Gretel outstretched her hand to me; I took it and she pulled me to my feet, hooking my arm over her neck and her arm around my waist. As we walked, the sensation of having to instruct one foot in front of the other completely new to me, I said something to her more sincerely than I had ever uttered a word in my life,

"Thank you."

She didn't look at me, but she looked ahead with a new smile.