And Gretel—De Elizabeth

content warnings: brief violence, brief mention of off-page physical abuse from a parent, mentioning of dead animals (but no on-page animal death)

The tavern is marshmallow-sticky in the summer heat, and Gretel feels like she’s choking on rotten sugar as she drags a dripping towel across the counter. 

Sweat clings to her skin, turning her white blouse damp beneath an olive-colored apron. The dim room vibrates with deep voices, air thick with the fetor of closely-packed bodies. Gretel knows she could take her ten-minute break, could escape to gulp the starless village air. But instead, she wrings soapy droplets out of terrycloth and eavesdrops on the two huntsmen at the end of the bar.

She doesn’t usually listen to the customers’ conversations. There’s enough rattling noise in her own skull that she doesn’t need to add the vapid chatter of men. 

But earlier tonight, one of the hunters said the phrase harvest moon. 

The other, in a whisper, mentioned a cottage.

And then they spoke of a woman no one has ever seen, but whose name slinks into cautionary tales all the same. The Witch of the Wood.

Gretel dips the towel into the bucket, covering her hand with murky water. She eyes the first hunter, a handsome red-haired man with a scattering of freckles over his pale nose—crooked along the ridge, as though it was once broken. His mouth bends in a conspiring grin as he talks to his companion, an equally attractive broad-shouldered man with tan skin and longer, darker hair. Both are wearing cloaks with hoods draped behind them, crossbows slung at their spines. Their wide, tendon-laced hands clutch sweating mugs, and their voices are too loud for the secrets slipping from their mouths.

“I heard,” the red-haired one says, “that the house is hidden every day of the year except on the harvest moon.”

“Well, you heard wrong,” says the larger man. “It only appears to those the Witch has pre-selected as guests. Even if we were to travel into the woods tomorrow, there’s no guarantee we’d find it.” He downs the rest of his drink. “Besides. Everyone who’s ever gone looking has never returned.”

Gretel’s skin prickles. Her hidden smile twitches behind a shock of gold hair as she bends to drop the towel into a basin. The familiar whir of adrenaline burns in her veins. 

She won’t let them see. Not yet.

“But,” the redheaded man says, “if we did find it, and we were able to ensnare the witch—”

“—two large ifs—”

“Think of the reward, Alistair. A far greater prize than any wolf could bring us.” The first hunter’s light eyes grow cloudy with greed. “Not only that. We’d be legends.”

The dark-haired huntsman named Alistair seems to consider this. Gretel studies him as she reaches for an empty glass, a dry cloth in her fist. On the other side of the room, a dull roar floats on the heels of a newly-entered crowd. The humid air seems to thicken to jelly. 

And Gretel chews the inside of her cheek as she tries to work out the right time to offer her help.

She knew this day would come. Her memory crackles, conjuring the ancient voice that crept into her eardrums as she lay on a frigid, sugar-dusted floor nearly a decade ago. Little Gretel who lost her way, the invisible thing whispered, unseen claws in her hair. What if I told you that you didn’t? What if I told you that you’ve come home?

Afraid to answer, ten-year-old Gretel lay shivering beneath a patchy quilt as she blinked into a blackened umbra that reeked of rotten gingerbread. Unrelenting, the voice hissed and purred to her all night. Spinning words into a bargain, a promise, a deal. Gretel listened to the rustling of the shadows. The faint cry of an owl. And eyed the corner of the foreign cottage where her little brother Hansel slept in an iron cage. 

Even now, Gretel doesn’t remember much from the following morning. There was the rusted skeleton key, clutched in her fist. The click of a lock, the sound of freedom that would never be hers. Hansel’s small feet, kicking up sugary snow as he ran and ran and ran. The shape of him against white-tinged branches, the small press of his hug she knew she’d one day forget.

Because Gretel had made a trade with a nameless thing in the dark. A silent oath, a signature forged in whispers, underlined in future loss. I’ll tell you where the key is hidden, the voice said. Your brother will be safe. But you, Gretel. You will belong to me.

As a grown woman now, there are times when Gretel manages to bury the memory of the voice and its whispers, shoves it deep into the coils of her brain. She fills her days with the darkened heat of the tavern, her nights with the soft mouths of beautiful women, and sometimes the hard kiss of a man. Ilse. Annabeth. Eric. People she could have loved, people she couldn’t convince to stay. But Gretel buries that too; she swallows the hurt and serves drinks to strangers. She won’t let herself think about romance that could have blossomed, the same way she won’t let herself think about the forest, about a brother whose name has turned to dust on her tongue. 

But in the tavern tonight, Gretel has no choice. Her skin tingles with the awareness of a promise that must be kept. She stares at the two hunters until finally, the red-haired one senses her gaze. His lashes flutter over her barkeep uniform, taking in the low dip of her blouse, the snug cinch of her apron. 

Her pulse skips with the knowledge of how fucking easy this part will be.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” Gretel says, elbows on the bar. She tucks a golden curl behind one ear and leans forward, drawing both men’s stares to her low neckline. 

Alistair’s gaze snaps back first, narrowing his eyes. “And?”

“And,” she says, “I know that house. It’s real. I’ve been there before.” She smiles, drinking in the surprise that scatters over their faces. “If you let me hunt with you, I can show you where it is.”

Little Gretel hadn’t meant to lose her way, but the forest was dense and tenebrous, and the tangled trees seemed to mirror one another. A thorny maze, designed to mock her confusion. Above, the stars were arranged without reason, like constellations that fell apart into a scattering of celestial ash. Hansel’s hand was slippery in hers, and she wondered if their father’s bones were aching with worry. If he’d gather the villagers in a search. If he’d light torches and call their names in the cricket-laced air.

If eventually, he’d stop looking.

Her basket felt so light, down to the last bit of bread, and her hope felt that way too. A fleeting, empty thing. Broken into crumbs, lapped up by hungry birds, impossible to replace. Spare morsels hardening in the night air, becoming a dense loop of anger instead.

The harvest moon throbs in the graying sky the following evening. Twigs snap beneath Gretel’s boots, and she trails ahead of the huntsmen along a winding path. The red-haired one, she’s learned, is named Larkin. He’s younger than Alistair and his blood seems to itch with impulse, where the older hunter exudes a wisp of caution. Both Larkin and Alistair are from the royal city to the north, and serve as official hunters to the court. But despite their fancy titles and heavy weapons, Gretel knows that the men will only smell like prey.

Gretel pauses amid a clearing, glancing at her palms, bare and smooth. This time, there’s no need for breadcrumbs. She fleetingly wonders where Hansel is now, if her brother’s veins swim with syrupy happiness, if the word Gretel is a distant echo of the past. 

If he’s forgotten he once had a sister who traded her soul for his.

“Well?” Alistair says, gaze sweeping the clearing. “I don’t see anything.”

“Have you tricked us, girl?” Larkin accuses, green-flecked eyes narrowing.

“Relax,” Gretel chides as she runs her hand through the cold teeth of a fern. “It’s just up ahead.”

Larkin squints. “Where? All I see is more trees.”

“No.” Alistair peers into the dark. “Look—there’s smoke. From a chimney.”

A smile tugs on Gretel’s lips. The dormant thing inside her starts to purr.

“Dear gods,” Larkin breathes as the cottage comes into view. “It’s real.”

It’s exactly as Gretel remembers it. Dark brown exterior, lined with saccharine white. Dewy purple and pink gumdrops, curved in an arch. Peppermint canes along the hedges, and a creaking door with button candy for a knob. The sloped gingerbread roof drips with ivory, and the skinny, frosting-covered chimney exhales puffs of sugar into the starless, unforgiving sky. 

After all these years, the Witch’s house still looks sweet. 

But Gretel knows that even one bite into the cottage’s façade would only taste rotten. Like the fuzzy curl of mold on a stale piece of cake. A mouthful of fondant that’s teeming with iridescent maggots. A hardened snap of gingerbread, buzzing with flies. She could sink her teeth into a gumdrop, and a cluster of squirming worms would fill her mouth instead.

Larkin tightens his grip on his crossbow as he starts for the cottage.

“Wait,” Gretel says.

“Wait?” he echoes, quirking a brow. “This is a hunt. We have to strike.”

She nods. “Correct. It is a hunt.”

Larkin slides a confused glance to Alistair. 

“You don’t have to come,” he says to Gretel. “You can wait here while we kill the Witch. We’re going to display her filthy head in court at dawn.”

Gretel’s smile slides like wet batter. “It doesn’t work like that. You need to bring a gift.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before we set out?” Alistair asks with a frown. “What sort of gift?”

“Something,” Gretel answers, “to taste.”

Larkin and Alistair exchange another look as Gretel moves closer, slinking through the fog that spills from the root-covered ground. That unseen beast stirs in her bones. Show them, it seems to whisper. 

“What are you doing?” Alistair asks, bristling as Gretel glides one hand along Larkin’s chest, the other on his.

“I’m thinking,” she mutters. “We can’t go in empty-handed. She’ll order us to leave.” Gretel cups Larkin’s jaw in one palm, resting splayed fingers on Alistair’s torso. “Last time, my brother and I arrived with a bit of bread in our baskets. But she wanted so much more than that. It would be wise to be prepared.”

“Your brother?” Larkin stutters as Gretel’s delicate fingers ghost over his lips. “Your brother has met the Witch too?”

Alistair narrows his eyes, unfazed by Gretel’s touch. “Where is he now?”

She doesn’t answer, offering another soft smile instead. 

“I know what to bring,” Gretel announces, leaning up. Her mouth hovers over Larkin’s. She lets her button nose brush his crooked one. “I know what she’ll like.”

Larkin exhales roughly as she tips the rest of the way, pressing her lips to his. For a moment, she wonders if he’ll pull back, but he releases a groan into her mouth instead. His tongue meets hers, his breath hot and sour. Her stomach turns, but she doesn’t let herself flinch.

“We have a task to d—”

Gretel rips her kiss from Larkin to swallow Alistair’s words next. 

He tenses against her, rigid and unsure. A trickier one than the red-haired fool, but not impossible. Gretel licks over the seam of his mouth. She presses her soft body into his hard one. She lets out a sigh that’s tinged with orchestrated need. And it’s only seconds before something crumbles inside him too, and her waist is suddenly ensnared in Alistair’s grip. He nips at her lower lip with his teeth, his facial hair rough against her skin. Larkin roughly maps her silhouette as she kisses Alistair, leather-encased fingers gripping her wide hips, the swell of her curves, her—

Larkin tugs her back to his mouth, her gold curls in his fist.

“Perhaps,” he growls, “you’d like to be hunted by us both tonight, pretty girl.” 

A giggle bubbles up from her lungs as his lips crush against hers again. Alistair’s mouth drops to her neck. And Gretel’s keening laughter vibrates and whips on the wind.

Easy, easy, easy! So fucking easy, so fucking stupid, these dumb little men.

The house watches from the clearing. It huffs a chuckle of sugar from the chimney. Its frosting-lined windows blink like eyes. And the peel of peppermint curves in a smile as Gretel bites down on Larkin’s tongue with all her might. 

Splitting it in two.

The hunter screams in anguish as blood spills between their mouths. It runs in rivers of ruby down Gretel’s chin, pooling in the dip of her collarbone, the soft cleavage above her dress. She pulls back and smiles, her grin a garish, crimson blade in the moonlight, and spits the throbbing, still wiggling tongue into her palm.

She tucks it, so very gently, in her basket.

“Thank you, sir,” Gretel says. “She’ll like this gift very much.”

Larkin continues his feral wailing, a palm covering his bloodied mouth. Alistair’s face is twisted in horror.

“What have you done?!” he growls, reaching for his crossbow.

Gretel raises a hand. The tips of her fingers glow silver in the dark, and Alistair’s eyes bulge at the sight.

“Walk away,” she cautions, “and I’ll spare you. Take your foolish friend back to the city, and show the others what happens if you hunt in this part of the woods.” Gretel narrows her eyes. “Come after me, and neither of you will return.”

And without looking back at the hunters, Gretel marches on. 

To the cottage where she once lost her way.

Little Gretel stared at the flames licking the oven and wondered what it would feel like to burn alive. 

The cottage was still and quiet. Hansel snored softly behind iron bars, the Witch asleep down the hall. But Gretel was afraid to close her eyes, afraid of what might find her in the dark. So instead, she watched the fire. Instead, she contemplated heat on her skin, blisters and scars and lesions. An endless night, swallowed up by a flame.

It would feel warm and peaceful, she thought, to sleep there forever.

The house might be the same, but the Witch of the Wood is nothing like Gretel remembers.

Gretel stares at her, taking in her jet black hair cinched in a long braid, the crown of twigs and bones atop her head. Gone is her weathered, wrinkled flesh, her rotten gums and sour breath. This version of the Witch looks to be Gretel’s age, with creamy skin and full, ruby lips. She’s dressed in a black lace gown that clings to her torso and flows over her hips, cascading behind her in a train. A solitary onyx stone hangs from a ribbon around her throat, and her fingernails come to a sharp point, painted a shiny black. 

If it weren’t for the Witch’s eyes, Gretel could convince herself she’s staring at someone new.

But the young woman standing before her has milky, opal irises, just a shade darker than the whites around them. A telltale sign that the beguiling creature in the doorway is, in fact, somehow the old hag who force-fed rotten meat to her brother and locked him in a cage. 

Gretel swallows. She won’t let her eyes be poisoned by magic beauty.

“You’ve returned,” the Witch says. Her voice is a ribbon of silk. “I knew you would.”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

The Witch smiles. Her teeth are pointy and white. “Come in.”

The interior of the cottage smells like burnt sugar. The stone walls are teeming with ferns and wisteria, and shelves are cluttered with mismatched vials and jars. A closer look reveals an array of pastel powders, and when Gretel squints harder, she’s almost sure she can make out tiny legs skittering inside. Like little beetles and centipedes, spilling over one another inside glass.

On the far end of the cottage is the Witch’s oven. The arched opening is dark now, devoid of flame. It looms in the corner like a gaping mouth, hungering for something to put inside. Apprehension nips at Gretel’s spine as the Witch bends to the bin of firewood and silently starts gathering kindling.

“Do you know what I love most about living in this forest?” the Witch asks as she places pinecones and twigs into the oven. “I bear witness to every turn of the seasons. There is a cycle to every ounce of life; a beginning, and an end. When one thing dies, another is born anew.” 

She strikes a match and turns the kindling blue-gold.

“And is someone going to die tonight?” Gretel asks.

Her smile has no warmth to it. “You already know the answer.” 

The Witch’s silhouette glows in the gloomy light, taller than she should be. Arms like bones. Fingers like claws. The crown atop her head turns enormous in the shadows, as though she has a set of antlers spiraling from her skull.

“The night I was here,” Gretel says, “a voice spoke to me. We made a trade. Hansel was set free. But the voice told me I must come back in ten years, that I’d know when the time was right. That opportunity would pierce my skin like an arrow. It did.” She swallows, thinking of the hunters and their crossbows, the shriveling pink tongue in her basket. “I did everything you asked. Now what? Why am I here? What do you want?” She sucks in a breath. “Will you let me go for good?”

“Me?” The Witch crosses to her. “I am not the one who spoke to you that night, Gretel. It was the forest itself.”

Confusion clips Gretel’s neck. “What?”

The Witch smiles. She runs the back of her knuckles down the length of Gretel’s cheek. 

“Don’t you know you were chosen for a reason?” The Witch’s inky, pointed nails skim her lower lip. “Little Gretel wasn’t like other girls, was she? Never played with the village children. So strange, so odd. She wasn’t meant for the world she was born into. Wouldn’t you agree?” 

Gretel’s memory skips over images from years ago. The dark shadows that clung to the corners of her bedroom. The triangles and swirls she drew in the dirt that her father stomped out with his boots. The dead rabbits that appeared on their doorstep for an entire month, the bunny blood she could never wash out from her chubby fingers. The way she’d whisper with imaginary friends until her stepmother splashed her face with water and slapped a calloused hand across her cheek.

Why don’t you walk to the market, her father had said That Day, handing her a basket. There’s a shortcut, through the woods. I’ll tell you the way so you don’t get lost. 

“Hansel wasn’t supposed to go,” Gretel whispers as the Witch strokes her jaw. “I asked him to come so I wouldn’t be lonely. But my father knew—he knew I’d go missing. He never wanted me to be found.”

An ache spreads in her chest, thinking of the way her father’s eyes would glaze with disappointment every time he glanced her way. How she tried to get him to stare at her the way he did Hansel, like there wasn’t something poisonous and broken inside her. How she never quite got it right, was always one step short of being the daughter he’d hoped for. 

How the woods felt, strangely, like coming home.

Gretel drags her tear-plucked gaze to the Witch’s cloudy eyes, suddenly aware of how close the young woman has gotten to her. Her ruby mouth is curled in a sympathetic smile, warm breath falling onto Gretel’s skin. For a moment, Gretel contemplates what it would feel like to kiss her. If she’d taste sweet like sugar-spun candy, if her entire body is as smooth and soft as it looks. 

Or, she wonders, would the Witch’s lips slip back into their previous form? Withered and rotten, with sour, dead things rattling between blackened, toothless gums?

The Witch decides for her, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of Gretel’s mouth.

“It’s a terrible thing,” the Witch whispers, “to be an unwanted girl.”

Gretel stares, discordant thoughts slamming inside her. The wretched woman who ripped open Hansel’s jaws and stuffed insect-filled slabs of liver inside. The hissing voice in her skull that night. The ethereal siren standing before her now, a shadow of black lace and matching wounds.

Before she can change her mind, Gretel grabs the Witch’s dark braid and drags her lips to hers.

Her kiss tastes like poison and regret, stale candy and dull magic. It’s a vanishing house in the woods, a path that leads to nowhere. The Witch’s tongue snakes out to swirl with Gretel’s; her sigh vibrates down the piping of Gretel’s throat. As if breathing a spell into her mouth, expertly cast with long fingers tracing the lines of her neck. A potion for lost girls and the anger that gnaws inside them with teeth. 

Gretel bites at the Witch’s mouth, gathers lace in her fists. Chaotic longing pools inside her, the awareness that no one—not women from the village, not men from the court—has ever kissed her like this. Like it’s both the first and last time, like nothing matters, like the earth could swallow them whole at any moment. Heat spins in her stomach, between her thighs, in—

Pulling back from the Witch’s mouth, Gretel realizes it: 

Actual heat. The flames, lapping at the wide rim of the brick oven. 

She searches the Witch’s opal eyes, looking for a glimmer of that hunger from so long ago. But, tonight, there’s only resolution.

“You know what you have to do,” the Witch whispers, untying the ribbon from her neck. 

Tears sting at Gretel’s lashes. “I never wanted this.”

The Witch smiles, but it only looks sad. “We all must take our rightful place at the turn of the seasons.” 

She fastens her onyx necklace around Gretel’s throat, and the gesture puts a stone of understanding between Gretel’s ribs. She swallows, and her mouth burns with cinnamon.

“I have had my time,” the Witch continues. “You must now begin yours.”

Gretel sets her jaw. She clenches her teeth. She presses her palms on the Witch’s shoulders—

And shoves her straight into the burning mouth of the oven. 

The Witch never screams. Not even once.

The sugar-spun warmth of summer slips into a chill overnight. The cottage turns thick with smoke, with the tangy smell of charred flesh. Gretel sits in a rocking chair, a basket resting in her lap like a cat. She thinks only of the sweetest candy, of meringue, of honey. She blinks into the dark and tries to remember the name of the brother she once loved, what his small hand felt like, sweaty and pressed into hers. She wonders if her skin has withered yet, if her gums have grown black and rotten, her eyes cloudy and white. She wonders if she’s still beautiful, even like this.

Outside, two children traipse up the path, chubby fingers dusted with breadcrumbs. 

Outside, the sky flattens to a starless black.

And Gretel stares and stares at the crackling fire, a newfound fist of hunger uncurling in her belly.

photo by Donald Giannatti and Niilo Isotalo (via unsplash)