Hansel and Gretel

They called it Angel’s Lattice when the webs grew on one’s face. The plague was worse in rain, worse still in sunlight, forever eager to gnaw on the flesh. It danced from hand to hand, lover’s kiss to dying breath, and once settled could not be excised. Invisible it was, yet lethal as a honed blade. The first signs were pallor, weakness, a rustling in the veins. Then came fever and gray-tinted eyes, and finally, the lace. Across the body the murky patterns would sweep. Thin like spider’s legs and elegant, too. They trembled along with the victim, sprouting against no will but their own, to remain etched until death, merciful, interfered. Thus was how it began, and as long as Gretel’s eyes remained open, thus was how it would end.

Gong. The plague drums echoed dully throughout the town. Carts rattled to a halt, children stopped in their play, and an eerie quiet crept over the world. The girl holding Gretel by the hair released her, dumbstruck, and did not move as Gretel struck the earth. Both of their gowns were filthy from fighting. It pleased Gretel that they could not be told apart, but then again, it was only for a second, because at that moment Sassa was yanked away.

Gong.

Sassa’s mother pulled her hurriedly by the hem. “Idiot child. Idiot! Get inside and don’t touch her again.” Gretel watched in flashes as they scurried home, then wiped the blood from her lip. It was obvious now who laid in the mud. Brown hair, near-empty basket, no mother come to her side. Nothing but a poor girl in the mud, to be left for dead lest she walked herself.

She shivered as she got up, just as another strike of the drum hit. By now people were screaming. She could barely hear them. Doors slammed shut, activities were abandoned in the dust. Gretel grabbed her basket and trudged home. She couldn’t care less of the mud splattered, or those who yelped as they brushed her. She was only leaving those who’d wronged her, and all the hatred they’d knocked out.

When she opened the door to her dismal house, Hansel leaped into her arms. No conversation came from his mouth. She was glad of this, because were her throat soft, she would curse everything to be named.

Her little brother wiped the blood from her arm. He looked up at her with his beady doe eyes, and she shook her head. It is nothing. In response, he held her tighter.

That was when their mother entered. She froze at the sight, clearly caught between two acts, then dropped her cloth. “You have not been near the Färberg girl, have you?”

Gretel paused.

"Where were you? What happened to your face?"

"It is fine."

"You didn't touch her, did you?" When Gretel refused to answer, her mother clutched the wall. "What have you done?"

“I haven’t-”

“Quiet!” she growled, fear quaking in her voice. She picked up a pan from the table and thrusted it at her daughter. “Do not dare near me.” Gretel obeyed, clutching Hansel’s hand in hers. Her heart pounded against her chest. Sound had not yet returned; Sassa’s blow still lingered on the side of her head. But she could understand enough. Enough to make her scared.

“Hansel did nothing. He left when I told him.”

“He has touched you. Do not think me to be so blind. The Boerd’s spoke of a brawl with the Färberg child, and I see now you were the one. How could you be so stupid? Have I taught you nothing?”

Gretel swallowed. “The drums-”

“Lords, I’ve heard the drums! Every child 'til the eastern forest has heard them! That is why you should have stayed. We were warned, I told you. We were warned. But this....” The pan shook in her mother’s grip. “I do not want this to be. I cannot deserve this."

Hansel started for her, but Gretel pulled him back. He was on the verge of tears. “Mother?”

Her fingernails dug into the wall she was gripping. “They warned us. One breath and the lace sinks in."

"That does not mean he is sick!" burst Gretel.

"It does if you touched him.”

"But-"

"If you stay, they'll drag your bodies to the grave before you've yet to burn. There is no mercy when the drums sound. You must leave."

"We won't."

Her mother threw a pan at them, and Hansel screamed as it hit the doorframe. “Get out of my house! Get out! Go!”

“We’re not sick!” cried Gretel.

“You touched the girl whose father was! Leave!”

Gretel’s heart stopped in her chest, and she felt the world dim. No. No.

Her mother threw a second pan at them, one which hit Hansel in the leg. He began crying. “Leave! Both of you, leave, else fate tempts me further!”

Gretel picked her brother up and stared, eyes shimmering. What had she done? How could she have done this?

“Look at the maggots in her bread,” Sassa had whispered to her friends, behind Gretel’s back. “She must grow them when her crops fail. Look, she picks at it like an animal.”

Sassa hadn’t seen the punch coming. But once it had landed, when crimson had streamed from her nose, there had been no turning back.

Gretel swallowed the memory and ran. She ran even as Hansel wailed, pounded her shoulders, begged her to let him go. She ran as her mother whispered a final plea, as the phrase taunted her, then as it followed her into the forest at the edge of town. She ran until she no longer could. Not for her mother, not for escape from the Angel’s Lattice, but to shield Hansel from her mother’s words. Leave, frail Elke De Veend had said after them, so that I may live.

Gretel had not the faintest idea when death would strike. When the plague would. Yet she was certain she would force herself to outlive the others, and the town who’d disgraced her. She vowed to bring her brother to the other side.

Eventually, when the shadows lengthened and her feet numbed, Gretel set Hansel down against a hollow spruce. Her back ached from where he’d clawed and bit her. Lacking the meager feast dinner would have provided, her stomach growled as well.

“Does mother hate us?” murmured Hansel as he settled himself. He was too innocent for this world, and too young to know the better. But Gretel could never pity him for it. She could only pray to share a drop of his hope.

“No,” she said. “She hates the drums and the demon they signal.”

“What demon?”

“A sickness that should not have been released. She was frightened because it touched the Färbergs. But we will be alright.”

Hansel watched her and rubbed the tear stains from his cheek. He was awfully pale. Gretel could see the veins beneath his skin, dark like liquid iris. She did want to look at her own. She feared what she might behold. “Will it find us here?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Nothing can hurt you. Be at peace, for we are safe.”

By midnight, he was tucked in a quiet slumber, and Gretel could see the lace.

Crystal trees of starlight shone throughout Gretel's dreams. They were peaceful, but deathly still. She wondered why none had viewed them before, then realized the trees were the dead.

Hansel screamed.

Gretel shot up from the grass, panting. Her brother was stricken in place and sweating. “Hansel,” she croaked. “What is the matter? What has happened?”

Her brother didn't respond. He couldn't.

The lace had spread. It marked his face and limbs with sickly gray, the sight a recurring pattern of horror. He was shivering, but so hot his skin stung.

“Hansel,” she repeated, shaking him. Her own arms were beginning to tickle, but she didn’t care. “You must hear me. I'll find help, I promise. I’ll find help. You’ll be alright.”

His brown eyes darted to hers, alarmed. She caressed his face. “You’ll be alright. I'll return.”

“Gretel,” he choked.

She stood up, fell once against the oak from weakness, then left, just as she had her mother. Just as she had home.

Plague had always been a story, a tale told to children on a cold winter’s night. Plague could not be real. Plague could not seep into reality and set off the drums. There had been no widespread disease for generations. It simply could not be. It could not.

Gretel wandered recklessly through the forest, fixing her brother’s location in her mind. She memorized the oak and the rock beside it. She made sure not to go astray. And then, as her lungs near collapsed, Gretel spotted a brick cottage.

Without thinking, she rammed her fists against the door. Hard, loud. A startled shriek emanated from within. “Please!” she called. “My brother is ill, he needs medicine. Please, if you would help us!”

Slowly, the window curtains opened to reveal a woman’s face. Upon spotting Gretel, her eyes widened.

“Please,” said Gretel. “You must help.”

The woman shook her head. “I have nothing to give.”

“But you must.”

“No plague shall set foot before my hearth. No demon spawn of this earth and the next. I shall not live to see it.”

Gretel moved against the window, and the woman shuddered away. “You must.”

“I cannot. I cannot.”

“He is dying!”

“Then best leave him for the dead. I have nothing to give.” And with that, the woman snapped the curtains shut.

Gretel howled. She beat against the door, kicked at the walls, and paced. She screamed her heart empty a thousand times over. Still the woman did not return, and Gretel remained alone.

At last, when her energy waned, she reluctantly returned to her brother. She found him shivering underneath the oak and with pus leaking from fresh wounds. He did not notice her presence. Not when she shook him, or yelled his name. A pulse still beat inside; however, it was fragile and dropping.

That was when, under the dark confines of the trees and through the hours, Gretel lost herself. That was when the glass which had for years bottled her up, broke. That was when she left the oak again, and this time as a stranger, fueled by the coals of rage. She left as the person who had shattered Sassa’s arm.

The cottage was hushed that night. It was easy to slip through the window and into the kitchen. It was simple to grab the herbs and silver vials from the table. And when the woman woke, threatened Gretel with a poker hot from the fire, it was effortless to take it and push her into the hearth.

Drifting away, waking up when the deed was done - all of it was bliss. By the time she reached the oak once more, she couldn't tell day from night, reality from dream. The Angel's Lattice had ripped the cords of her sanity, and now was searing through.

“Here,” breathed Gretel as she stumbled beside Hansel and cleaned his wounds. The stolen gauze was soft and well-knit; she wrapped it tenderly around her brother’s small form. If she gazed at him under a certain light, with the moon between the branches and his arms shadowed, she could believe he was simply asleep. Out behind their house, tired from observing the stars.

Satisfied, she clutched him in her arms and propped his head against her chest. He would heal now. He was safe.

Then a voice tricked over from behind.

“He is dead, you know.”

Gretel spun around. A man stood before her, garbed in a gray cloak and thick wolf’s mask. He was slender yet sturdy, dreamlike, even. Gretel feared him to be a servant of the dead.

“I found him not so long ago. He is passed since the second ray of noon. ‘Tis the Angel’s Lattice. See, there he is tainted by its scars.”

“He is not,” said Gretel slowly. “He is tainted, but now healed. He is my brother.”

“Ah, but plague does not choose between friend and foe. Neither does death. It is simply the end of what could have been and the beginning of what is. Leave him, or the pestilence will find a host in your flesh.”

Gretel looked away. The man must not have recognized the lace in this light. “It already has.”

He tilted his head. “How long be the signs?”

Gretel’s world twisted again. The haze in her eyes thudded, sending waves of fire through her body. It was like when the drums struck their first beat; all sense was lost. “He's dead?"

"Yes, my dear. I'm afraid he is."

"But he can't be."

"This is the truth. You may deny it if it comforts you, but eventually, acceptance is the only path to understanding."

"You don’t understand, though,” Gretel rasped. “I fought for us. I brought us from our mother and all this way. I buried those we crossed in their own betrayal. Yet he is dead and I still live.”

“Why do you believe that may be? Fate or luck, or another path entirely?”

“You have not seen what I’ve done.” She wrung out the words like poison from cloth.

“Yes, I have not, and you I. But here we are, a doctor and a sister, met by the whims of the world, perhaps never to cross paths again.”

Gretel noted Hansel’s doe eyes, and how perfectly frozen they were. Was this how swiftly death's tide came in? Was this all it took to alter a life?

“Why do you do it?” she asked. “You cannot possibly escape the disease entirely, nor can you cure all who ail from it. Your mask is not impervious.”

“Why was it you killed the woman, hmm? I heard her cries. The cottage was a stop on my travels, and I was the one to find her. Can you explain such a decision, the blood on your hands?”

“No.”

“Then why should I? ‘Tis our positions and the differences between us. Mortals we may be, but thinking creatures, too, who yearn and love and sacrifice. Whatever path you descend upon, it is your doing. As is my own.”

Gretel was silent. While the doctor spoke, she became increasingly aware of the iciness of Hansel’s arm. Was her mother touched as well? Was Sassa’s father dead? Was Sassa?

The man bent down. “What is your name, child?”

“You need not know it. You have already seen my face.”

“You will never see mine.”

“Well, that is a lesser evil, then.”

If his face was visible, Gretel would have sworn the doctor frowned. "As you wish," he said.

Troubled, Gretel whipped through the past two days, frantically searching for an answer. Was she truly in that cottage? She could imagine the rod in her grasp, the sensation of returning to the world the pain it had brought her. And then she processed what the man had said. That the woman was gone.

The woman was gone.

The man stood up. “I must go.”

“Where?”

“To Blufelden, at the edge of these woods.”

Blufelden, Blufelden. “You can't."

"Ah?"

"You can't.... I - It is there I have spread the disease. Hansel, he and I-” her vision blurred - “they are all likely dead.”

“I know.”

She swallowed. “And I will die before my legs can bring me home.”

“I know.”

The man’s gray cloak billowed in the wind. The sun was rising in the east, unveiling a clear rose sky, the color of which matched Gretel’s favorite dress. She had claimed for years that red was to her liking, as it was bold against the choices of the other, purer girls. But pink was different than red; it was the color of the spring peony, and the clouds on a morning sky. She had hated a lot of things, she realized, and doused her mind black.

Heat suffused her body then. Gretel stumbled onto the ground, beside her brother. She glanced at herself, for the first time since she left home. The sight made her ill, but she did not succumb to the sickness. Instead she leaned her head against the tree and closed her eyes. Tears squeezed out of the cracks. “This cannot be."

"Yet it is."

The woman was gone.

"But you see, I knew not who she was, and that made the act easier. Now, however… I have wiped clean a slate none shall ever know was full. And the knowledge of such a person, which should have passed to me, is nothing. It is gone.”

“Many pass under the same conditions,” said the doctor. “But that does not mean they were forgotten. They left their mark, one way or another.”

Gretel stifled a scream as fever rushed through her head. “Hansel,” she whispered.

“Hansel?"

"Yes."

"That was his name, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will not forget it.”

She clenched her jaw. "You are a good man."

Could she see his face, he might have smiled. "I only do what I can, and if that is enough for the both of us, then I am content."

“Go then," she whispered. "Go to Blufelden and my people.”

“I will.”

“And do not bury us. Do not touch us.” She opened her eyes, stared into the heavy wolf mask and the man shielded beneath. “I still know not your name."

"And I yours."

Gretel's lips quirked slightly. "Then it does not matter. Go. Leave, so that they may live.”

The doctor nodded. Gretel closed her eyes. While his footsteps faded into the distance, the sun glided up into the sky, and she dipped deep down into herself. She imagined every one of the stories where things would have gone right, where she had gone home and Hansel had lived. She imagined being under the stars and sharing a basket of bread, and walking to the cottage in the woods. A quiet life. A good life. She pictured this, but she also remembered what was. A true life. It was not a tale that would be passed down. It was not one that would be heard by those who knew her and those who didn't. It was hers, and Hansel’s; the woman’s and the doctor’s. It was what had been, and in a way, it was right, too.

Gretel was not aware when the doctor placed a daisy from his mask before her. She was gone by the time he reached Blufelden, and she was melded with the land by the time the flower sprouted into a patch. But somewhere, sometime after, in a faraway field, there laid a single stone outside a simple house. Every now and then, a man returned there from his travels to clean the stone and rest. He seldom stayed long, but to him, the break was enough.

The stone, a weathered landmark cracked on the sides, read two names. One, that of a young boy driven from home, and the other, that of a girl, whose name was learned in a small wood town.

To others, the story was brief. Divergent. Fading.

To them, this was enough.