The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Read online

  She walked toward the creek carrying the bucket. The snow was covered with a thick crust of ice that crackled under each footstep. Her foot sunk a few inches, but the snow was so frozen and her weight so slight that she walked over the deep snow as if she had on snow-shoes.

  Gretel stepped on the thicker ice of the creek and thumped the bucket hard on the ice in front of her. With two thumps the bucket broke through. She carried it to the hut where she set it gently inside the door. Then she went into the forest and crouched down to pee.

  Standing up, she broke off a twig from a limb and stared at it. The black of the twig was enclosed in a thick layer of transparent ice. She sucked it and the hardness of the ice grew even smoother in the warmth of her mouth. Every branch, every twig, was coated in a thin layer of pure, clear ice. The entire world was diamond-coated. There was an occasional rainbow high up in the trees or on the snow, a patch of color, the sun caught in the ice as in a prism. The smell of snow was astringent, like breathing in chilled alcohol.

  “I wonder if the ponies have ice in their hair,” she said. She could get wood later. The others wouldn’t wake up for another hour.

  Gretel moved as fast as she could. She passed the wide bend in the creek where the beavers were building a dam. The top round of twigs and mud was coated with ice, and the beavers were nowhere in sight. A raven in a treetop watched the child but didn’t call out.

  The fallen tree where Telek had found her sitting before was blocking her path, and she paused to admire it. The bark was so coated in ice, climbing on it would be impossible. She moved around it and went on through the trees.

  The ice on everything glittered, and it was magical, but it confused her. She knew that Telek had moved north when he showed her the ponies. She kept the sun on her right side and walked faster.

  The child had gone about a half mile farther when she heard the sound. Stopping, Gretel listened. It was the crunching of the ice layer on the snow being broken by an animal.

  Delicately she licked her finger and raised it into the air. The air was still. Her finger grew cold, but there was no part colder than the other.

  Gretel frowned. She hoped that the ponies couldn’t smell her. The crunching noise was closer now. She stood perfectly still and waited. She wanted the ponies to glitter and chink with sound when they moved. But she heard no clicking of ice.

  “Dream ponies,” she whispered.

  The two men saw her before she saw them. Their ragged coats and pants were the color of the tree bark, but they didn’t shine with ice. One of them had a rifle in his hand.

  “Oh!” Gretel was startled and then disappointed. It wasn’t the ponies, was her first thought. She forgot to be frightened until the man with the rifle ran straight at her.

  She was lighter than the men and didn’t sink so deeply in the snow, but they were faster. She felt a hand on her shoulder and heard the panting of the man as he hit her hard on the back, knocking her down.

  She didn’t scream. She rolled on the snow and tried to get up, but he was on top of her, his weight pushing her through the ice crust into the softer snow. He put his hand over her mouth and lay on her, perfectly still. The other man stood over them, holding his rifle cocked.

  She knew that the two men weren’t German. Their coats were ragged and old. They had beards. They didn’t have any signs of any army, not Russian or German, and as the man lay across her she could smell him. He stank like men do when they haven’t washed in a long time.

  The man whispered in her ear in heavily accented Polish. “Alone?”

  Gretel thought. If she said yes, it would be dangerous. But if she lied, he would find out soon and then might kill her for lying.

  “Alone.”

  He rose to his knees and began to go through the pockets of her coat. He found a piece of bread she had left from the day before. Handing it to the man standing, he kept searching. He tore the coat off her, working with one hand while he held her mouth. He even felt the boots looking for any weapon, anything that might be useful.

  When he was done he stood and held his hand out to receive half the piece of stale bread. The men stood over Gretel, and she did not dare move. It was silent except for the chewing and swallowing of the men.

  The one holding the rifle looked around and then nodded toward a fallen log, the bark shining black with a coating of ice making it smooth and glittering. The other man lifted her with a wrench that hurt her arm, but she didn’t make any sound. He dragged her to the fallen tree and slammed her against it. She nearly bounced off the trunk of the tree, but he pushed her back.

  The one with the rifle raised the gun toward her head. Gretel watched the barrels coming closer, the perfect holes of steel, dark inside and shiny.

  The rifle hesitated at her head and then the man jabbed it suddenly under her jaw. Gretel’s head tilted back, the cold metal pushing into her throat.

  The man who had thrown her down lifted her and pushed her backwards onto the curved tree trunk. With a twist of his hand he ripped off the long pants of Magda’s that Nelka had taken in to keep her legs warm and then the cotton underpants. She felt the frozen bark on her bottom.

  Her head tilted back against a broken limb, and she could see both of them. He shoved open her legs and grabbed her thin hips. There was a pause while he pulled at his pants, and then something shoved against her where she peed, where she was private. It shoved harder and she screamed out. He was inside her and she was in pain as he shoved in and out. She knew it was his penis. The Stepmother had warned her about strange men doing this.

  Gretel’s first scream turned into a whimper. Then the man finished and stood away. Her legs fell onto the frozen tree, and she felt something trickling out of her. She couldn’t remember what the Stepmother had called this. She knew the word, but her mind couldn’t find it.

  The man pulled his pants together and buttoned his coat. The other man said something that Gretel didn’t hear, and the first man laughed.

  Then the other man grabbed her legs, giving the rifle to the man who had hurt her. He leaned close to her face, his breath stinking of onions, and shoved inside her. Gretel moaned. The first man put the rifle tip against the side of her head.

  “Be good. We not kill,” he said in the funny Polish.

  But Gretel knew he was lying. They would kill her. She was dead now, and she knew it. Her own death filled her mind and everything else was driven out. Her mind became an empty hole with no memories, no words, just the gun and the bullet that was going to kill her. She didn’t try to think anymore. There was nothing in her head but space and sunlight and the glitter of ice.

  And then a lot of things seemed to happen at once, but very slowly—slowly—as if she was not in her own head watching.

  The man with the rifle jerked it away from Gretel’s head and turned. The man shoving inside her pulled back and opened his mouth, and Gretel knew that he was screaming—but she couldn’t hear a thing. The whole world had gone silent.

  The blast of the rifle broke through the silence of her shock. She knew she had been shot. Gretel lay with open eyes and waited to feel the pain, but the only pain was between her legs where she burned as if she were on fire.

  The man who had been between her legs was gone, and so was the man with the rifle. Gretel stared up into the forest, and it was silent except for someone moaning a long way off. The girl was light-headed, and she couldn’t remember where she was.

  When she tried to think it was like being in a room and running into walls wherever she turned. She lay there for a long time, but her mind had become a single, light-filled room that kept her very still. After a while, she remembered Magda and then Hansel, and that seemed to be enough. And she began to remember things from the past, the distant past, but all the last months and hours were blank except for the names of Magda and Hansel.

  She began to sing then.

  “Flowers, flowers, they are in our garden. They smell sweet when the wind blows.”

  The child
half-lay on the tree and sang and never wondered where the men had gone. She heard another sound as she sang. It was the gasping of someone dying, but she didn’t know what it meant, or where it came from, or why it was there in the glittering light of the forest.

  When she had sung every song she knew, she hummed to herself. It was lovely. The bright sun. The flowers all around her. She was in the garden and it was warm. He opened the gate and came in, smiling at her. He raised his finger to his lips so her mother wouldn’t know.

  Gretel pressed her finger to her lips and smiled. It was their secret. She held out her hand into the air, and he leaned toward her. She watched while he put a perfect orange into her hand. He leaned forward and his white beard, smelling of sweet tobacco, tickled her cheek, and she accepted his kiss smiling. Her Zayde.

  It was a good morning. Gretel smiled. She looked at the orange and raised it to her nose. Scratching the peel, she sniffed deeply. She hadn’t had an orange in so long because—because—her eyes closed. She didn’t know why. She opened her eyes and began to peel the invisible orange.

  Behind the trees, many feet from the child, there was another moan. The woman’s hair, black with heavy streaks of white was wet with red now. The blood poured out of the head wound. Her chest was sodden with red too, and her arm. The pistol lay in the snow beside her.

  The Stepmother knew she had done it. She had shot the one man between the eyes, and the other was dead too, but she hadn’t been quick enough. He had gotten off a round from the shotgun, and it had killed her. She lay staring up into the perishing glitter of the tree limbs and felt her heart pumping its blood out onto the snow.

  The girl was alive. Her beautiful hair and the smile she had. Her lovely girl would live. It made the Stepmother happy, and she smiled, her lips opening slightly and moving against the snow.

  Her mind was moving back and forth in time, randomly, and the joy she felt at saving the girl was confused with another child. A boy, younger than the girl. The Stepmother saw the boy toddle toward her, running over grass. She didn’t remember that her own child had been killed during the first days of the war. She didn’t see past the arms of the baby stretched out for balance. The two children, the lost and the saved, became one in her mind and both were alive.

  Her last thought was of her husband, the Mechanik. Of his hands on her breasts. His lips. She groaned uneasily as she remembered him. Something was wrong. There was a mistake somewhere, and she struggled to find it.

  Fighting to hold on to consciousness until the memory came, the Stepmother fought with her mind. And then she got it. She hadn’t told him. She had come alone to see if his children were all right. She hadn’t told him that they were alive. She thought of how she loved him. How good it felt to lie against him and see him smile with the left corner of his lips raising higher than the right.

  She hadn’t told him that his children lived.

  The ice above her head began to sway. The wind was rising. A wet storm was coming across the swamps from the east. The trees began to move and the ice rattled and chinked.

  The Stepmother lay and listened to the clink, clink, clink as the whole forest talked and the light grew brighter around her until the brightness faded and darkened and was gone forever.

  Gretel had promised him. She had promised twice, but Telek knew the glitter of the ice-coated forest was too great a lure. He ran, following her footsteps in the crust of the snow. Then he stopped looking for her prints. He knew where she was going. Back to the wild ponies.

  He couldn’t hear her singing because the wind had sprung up and the ice-covered limbs rattled above his head. It wasn’t safe being under the larger trees. The icicles could fall like knives.

  Gretel sat on the fallen tree trunk. Her legs were blue with cold, and a red line of blood ran from her bottom and was frozen on the icy side of the tree. The bodies of two men huddled in the snow. Telek drew a deep breath and looked around. Except for the rattle of the ice-coated branches and the child’s humming, it was silent.

  He went to the child, taking his coat off. Her thighs were covered with blood.

  “Oh Holy Mother, help us. Oh, Gretel,” he whispered.

  He wrapped the coat around her and she smiled at him. Her hands moved in some strange way in the air in front of her.

  “Look, Telek! He gave me one. He hasn’t come for so long!”

  “Who, child?” Telek looked into her eyes. She was so happy.

  “My grandfather, you know him. He comes every morning.”

  Telek stared at Gretel. “Tell me what happened—” he began, and then he stopped. He wrapped the coat around her tightly, leaving her sitting on the tree, and bent over the men. He didn’t touch them. They were both dead. One shot in the head. A beautiful shot. The other was shot in the gut and had crawled a little way before he bled to death.

  From the way they were lying, the shooter had been standing east. He moved softly through the trees, looking for footprints.

  He found her behind a tree. It was the woman who had been with the Russian’s group. Her hair was soaked in blood, but he could still see patches of black and white. He knew immediately what had happened. She had wanted to see if the children were safe.

  Telek picked up the pistol and slipped it in his jacket. She had nothing useful in her pockets. There wasn’t time to bury her now, and the ground was too frozen to dig. He’d take the child to Magda and come back and hide the bodies in the snow.

  He glanced at the dead men. They were meat now. Lithuanians maybe? Escaped Russian prisoners? Polish bandits? Even Jews, but probably not. The Jews had been killed already. It didn’t matter. They were wolves. No. Wolves were innocent of the possibility of evil.

  Telek picked up Gretel and carried her. She smiled at him and sang songs that he didn’t know. She offered him a piece of her invisible orange, and he gently declined.

  “The flowers are beautiful, aren’t they, Telek? I thought it’d never be summer. Can we go look for the bison now?”

  “Soon we’ll look for him.” Telek felt the tears in his eyes and he blinked them back. She was alive. She was too young to get pregnant from this, he thought. Magda and Nelka would nurse her. The girl’s mind was gone, but it might be better that way. Why should she remember?

  The ice clinked above them all the way back to the hut, growing louder as the wind increased. Telek had to hurry. He had to come back and hide the three bodies.

  “Please eat a piece of orange, Telek. It’s so good.”

  Telek opened his mouth and she put an invisible segment of orange on his tongue.

  “Thank you, dear one,” he said. He had to hurry. It would snow again before midnight.

  Hansel

  Telek walked into the hut carrying Gretel. He laid the child on the sleeping platform, and whispered in Magda’s ear for a moment. He stood looking back and forth from the sleeping baby in its nest of blankets to Gretel.

  “It’s a boy,” Magda whispered, but she looked at Gretel as she spoke.

  “Nelka?” He moved to the baby and leaned over the tiny child. Gently, Telek touched the cheek that was so soft his finger barely felt the flesh.

  “The birth went well. Nelka is outside. She needed to walk a little.”

  Gretel lay very still and shivered, and she was singing but not paying any attention to Hansel who stood beside her. There was blood on her legs, and Hansel didn’t want to look at it.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Hansel flushed with anger.

  Telek slipped from the hut without answering Hansel.

  “Go out and play.” Magda was heating water on the stove.

  “It’s too cold. It’s ice everywhere.” Hansel stared at Gretel. He didn’t want to cry, but she looked funny. She had stopped singing, and the blood was bright red against her skin.

  “Go out.” Magda turned on Hansel and her face was dark and angry.

  He went outside banging the door to the hut and not caring. “Nelka,” he called to her where she stood whisperin
g with Telek. “Magda threw me out!”

  Nelka didn’t stop to hug him or talk but ran to the hut and went inside.

  “I want in,” he shouted. Hansel shivered and threw sticks against the side of the hut until Magda opened the door and shouted at him.

  “Don’t bother us. You can come in later.”

  The boy looked back to where Telek had been, but he had vanished. Hansel stuck his tongue out at the closed door. Just because Gretel had gone off and gotten hurt. Just because she was so dumb that she got lost and Telek had to go find her. Hansel scuffed his boot against a log and tried to be angry, but he kept thinking of the blood.

  “Raus, raus, raus,” he shrieked, picking up a stick and brandishing it over his head. But how could you play soldier all alone? He was cold, and they didn’t care.

  “I won’t be here when you open the door,” he shouted, turning and running fast until he was through the trees and onto the road and had put a bend in the road between him and the hut.

  He ran like a dog was after him, snarling and biting at his legs. He ran until he was out of breath. Then he stopped and walked on, waving his stick of a sword. The village wasn’t far and it wasn’t snowing. He’d find someone to play with and come home before Magda knew he was gone.

  He smelled the wood smoke of the village before he saw the first roof. Hansel walked past the houses until he came to a pig rooting in the frozen mud.

  “Pig, pig, pig,” he crooned. He’d never been so close to a live pig before. Carefully he touched the side of the pig with his stick, and it grunted and leaped away. Hansel was so startled that he jumped backward, tripped, and fell on his bottom with a thump.

  Getting up, he heard the laughter. It was two boys, one bigger than he by a head, the other the same size but with straight black hair to his shoulders.

  “The pig knocked him on his ass,” the black-haired boy said.

  “No it didn’t.”