Five little fingers laid out on a table

Two are for you, three are for me. Maybe the other hand could do us some good,

Sprinkle on pepper and sesame.

You can have one, but you must save the other

Earth’s hungriest men are known only for hunger.

—

Mealtime with my family; my grandparents have gotten older, so they tend to eat dinner earlier and earlier. This night, dinner’s at five o’clock sharp, and though I’d rather wait a while longer for dinner, I decide I can’t object to their desired schedule. I have to be courteous while I’m around them, mother told me, and I’ve done well understanding and keeping with that rule.

Grandma’s been fine through the past week. I saw her out in the garden when I arrived, and she showed me the new flowers and plants she’d gotten around to growing all along the property. She told me she had gotten into a bit of a tulip craze (mentioning more than once that her being Dutch must have something to do with it) and had gone wild for squash and tomato plants, of which she had multiples. The garden had been laid out sprawling across the entire perimeter of their lawn, and mixed into those top interests of hers were other flowers she had gotten into caring for. She toured me around the lawn in a proud manner that lead me to only be able to congratulate her accomplishments and tell her that I was proud of all she had done. She seemed overjoyed to show it all off to me.

Grandpa, sadly, remained rather worse for wear. From the moment I walked inside up until now, he’s been in bed. He’ll get up occasionally but only really for the bathroom, for a meal, and then back to bed. Grandma told me that he moved around much more than usual last Friday when he walked to the shed and fixed up its busted doorknob. I couldn’t help but realize that even an activity such as that required almost minimal effort; grandpa’s scaring me, and I know he doesn’t mean to but his condition’s gotten much worse than assumed. I hope he’ll be okay. I miss when he would take me fishing and out about the town to gas stations and to lots where he’d make money for tree branches he’d send in. He’s got that heart still, I know that much, but his physicality, that’s where it hurts most.

Every time I visit their house, it seems to grow smaller. I’m sure this has to do with the fact that I’ve gotten older and taller, but it’s still so strange being here and seeing all the furniture. The space is so limited in comparison to how I remembered the place. When I could run around and climb up these metal poles they have in the basement and wander up to the attic without even having to duck my head down. I truly must have grown, must’ve grown a lot. Of course, that’s what grandma told me when she saw me, before showing me around the garden. The second thing she asked, of course, was about my left arm.

“My, my, what happened to your arm?”

For the past four months, my left arm’s been placed in a sort of cast, a cast specifically tailored to me. Of course, it’s embarrassing to talk about and even to think about, so I had them get me a cast I could wear so I wouldn’t have to be seen out in public without a hand, even after healing. And obviously, I hadn’t thought to tell my grandparents. I couldn’t have them know about it; grandma would probably make fun of me or something.

“I fractured my hand playing a game at school,” I lied to her. “I have to be in this cast for a couple of months while it heals.”

“Oh my, that’s awful,” she responded with some tone of disgust. “How long ago did it break?”

“A few weeks ago; it hasn’t been very long.”

“I see,” she said. And then suddenly, “May I see it?”

A thousand thoughts ran through my mind, most thought-provoking of all, what do hospitals do with amputated limbs like that? Do they just throw them away immediately, or..? But I was also completely confused about her wanting to see and told her that my hand would be that much better kept in the cast and not moved around too much. She seemed content with the answer and didn’t bring it up anymore. Instead, she turned to plants and said:

“Look what I’ve done!”

Hansel and Gretel are dead. The nearby town is littered with posters, amassed in gutters and garbage cans, carefully taped in shop windows and tacked onto trees. A photo of the siblings smiles eerily beneath two words, written shakily in block letters: “missing children”.

The kids in the town, schoolmates of the late Hansel and Gretel, whisper on playgrounds and in classrooms in soft somber voices: “a witch took them” and “they got lost in the woods, following a trail of sweets” and “they’re trapped in a house made of candy”. The stories spread quickly, insidious.

Hansel and Gretel lay hand in hand, cold and beginning to rot, in the basement of a cottage deep in the forest. The cottage is not made of candy. The woman standing over them, her dress covered in smatterings of dark blood, is not a witch.

It is easier to make believe, to live in a fairytale. It’s easier for the weary police chief to sigh heavily and dismiss the children’s mother with “they’re just runaways. They’ll come back in a couple of days time. No need to make a fuss.” It is easier for her to go home, repeating those words to herself like a prayer as she lays quietly in bed, not sleeping, in a house unusually void of bickering and laughter, until the sun rises.

It is easier too for the woman who is not a witch, beads of sweat building on her forehead as she drags two small bodies towards a hot wood burning stove, to know that she will never be found out. The eventual police report will be put on a shelf reserved for the town’s many runaway children and never opened again, becoming colder as the years drag on. Hidden deep in the woods, her unassuming little cottage that is not made of candy will never be searched. The fire that reflects in her dark eyes will never give up so much as a shred of evidence.

And in the nearby town, Hansel and Gretel’s posters will soon fade and fall, to be replaced by new children’s photos. The other kids will make up silly rhymes and sing songs about a candy house and a wicked witch. Their parents will warn them to stay out of the woods. They will exist in the ignorant bliss of their fairytales, all while breathing in the sickly smell of smoke that drifts into town on a breeze from a chimney deep in the forest - all that remains of their lost children.

Years 1315 to 1317 saw almost nothing peak out of the earth

As the Baltic world bathed in a soaking wet dearth.

Soon youngsters rested on tongues as their bones rested in matryiums,

They had been haunted by hunger and devoured by familial delirium.

Sacrilegious acts or purely primal,

Parents took their offspring into woodlands for survival.

Ever-ailing gardens led to a second attempt,

The siblings took each other's hands feeling their maker's contempt.

Gaunt birds probably ate those crumbs as they went on ahead,

Thinking a rickety wooden house was made of gingerbread.

Trust me when I say,

Hansel and Gretal did make it back home that day,

But blame the famine for the illusion

For even mothers can seem like witches when they attempt to feed on their only children.