Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
We can turn back, I remind myself. We can always go home again.
Except there is no home. Not the way it used to be. Not since everything happened.
“The fires.” Gretel moves even closer as she speaks. I don’t want to talk about the destruction that came to our village, but she steels herself. “She made them happen.”
“She was dead.” The witch didn’t do those things. It was bad luck. I lean forward a little, trying to see through the fog. Doesn’t help.
Gretel looks ahead, too.
I can see my horse’s mane, but not much farther. My whole body is sore from how tense I was all night. I wanted to go to her, even if it wouldn’t fix anything.
"How do you explain them, then?" Gretel asks. "All the bad things that happened to our town.”
So much happened.
When we got back from the witch's cottage, we told everyone who would listen. At first we were met with skepticism but when we cried and showed the scars and brought them back to the house, fear spread like the wildfire would.
The next night, alone and scared, I knocked on her door. I was broken, still hurt, and all I could think to do was grab her hand, pull her to me and kiss her. I could taste the salt of her dried tears. I promised myself, if we stayed together, we could protect each other from the terrors of what happened.
I put my arms around her under the full moon and I let myself do something I’d never done before. I kissed her and she kissed me back. With a desperation to forget the pain and simply be loved by someone who knew every piece of you and still loved you.
But right then the door opened, and her father was standing there with bags slung over his shoulders and a look on his face that didn’t mean anything good.
"We're leaving," he barked. "See yourself home, Hansel.” He shoved me back, whatever moment was there, was broken.
“Father,” Gretel protested. “It’s dark. We can’t—”
"We're leaving," he repeated, his voice stern but also full of dread, and shifted the bag to his other arm so he could pull Gretel along with him. The tale of what we went through had spread through the town and fear was potent. It drifted from her father as he rushed them away.
I followed them, numb. He already had their horse harnessed to their small, rickety wagon and more belongings packed inside. They didn’t have much to begin with, but seeing it all piled in the wagon like that made my stomach clench.
“Where are you taking her?” I questioned and he ignored me. The man was already gone by the looks in his eyes.
“Hansel,” she cried out as she looked back, her eyes shining, but her father steered her into the wagon.
And then she was gone. Stolen away in the middle of the night. Taken from me.
The very next week, the fires came.
I don’t know how Gretel’s father heard about the fires. Everyone must have known. I didn’t know he had come back to help fight them until someone found his body.
He was pinned down at the far corner of one of the fields when the flames backed him into a wooden storage shed meant to hold tools for the harvest. All the work we did fighting the fires came to nothing. They burned too hot, and too fast. The whole village together couldn’t stop them.
When the sun came up, Gretel was an orphan.
Nobody could tell me what happened to her.
Weeks past and I suffered alone, some doubting what happened, others fearing what I would bring next. They blamed me, some even hated me. I stopped trying to find her.
I was drowning in the pain from the witch’s cottage. Sometimes I’d hear rumors about how she was with this relative, or that one. This village or that one. But she didn’t send a letter. I didn’t hear from her.
I started to think maybe she blamed me too. Maybe she hated me too.
The only other time I saw her was when she came back to her father’s old house, which had sat empty after she left.
By then it was too late. I was bitter, and felt betrayed, and I wanted nothing to do with her. The famine had already hit hard. It was a struggle to find work. And a very deep part of me didn’t want her to stay. Not when this life was waiting for her. She had a chance to run. If only I could run with her.
I didn’t recognize myself anymore. Gretel didn’t seem to recognize the person I’d become, either.
“Let’s play a game,” she blurts out, as if she’s been thinking the same thing and decided those memories are too painful for right now. “Never have I ever.” Her voice is oddly uplifting for the mood I find myself in.