Those were dark times. The spectre that is the Plague had reached out a grizzled hand and touched many lands across the Old World. Smoke snaked towards Heaven from the continuous bonfires that consumed the bodies of its victims. It seemed that there had been no summer and yet the summer that wasn’t had increased the pace of Death’s cull.
Hansel watched his mother’s final moments from the doorway of their small house.
‘Come no further Hansel,’ she said, ‘lest you breathe the tainted air which surrounds me, but you must heed my words and do as I bid you. Take your sister and go from this town into the forest. You must carry on until you find shelter.’ Her words were cut short as coughing wracked her. At last she continued.
‘Watch the animals with fur and eat only those berries and plants that they eat. From time to time, make your way back to the edge of the woods and look for the smoke from the fires. When it no longer fills the sky, wait one full cycle of the moon and then return.’ She closed her eyes and Hansel thought her soul had departed and tears filled his eyes just as hers opened for the last time on this earth.
‘Never forget the ways of our Lord, Hansel,’ she said.
There was no time for grief. Hansel took his sister and they began their journey. Within a day they reached the edge of the forest.
‘Are there not bears and wolves?’ asked Gretel.
‘God will protect us,’ said Hansel.
‘He did not protect mama and papa,’ said the girl, and Hansel gripped her hand tighter.
Deeper and deeper into the woods journeyed Hansel and Gretel until they arrived at a clearing in which stood a strange house. The mud walls were smooth and reddish brown and around the doorway, coloured stones were pressed in patterns. In the mossy roof was a chimney which exhaled a narrow ribbon of smoke.
‘Hansel,’ breathed Gretel, ‘the house looks as though it is made of gingerbread.’
A plump woman came out of the house. She wore a dress and tabard of a woven fabric as black as soot, and from a belt of twisted fibres hung herbs and other plants.
‘Hansel, Gretel, be welcome,’ she said and she drew a circle on the ground with her foot. ‘Take shelter with me, but first I will bring you broth to drink which will drive the plague from within your bodies and I will build a fire in this circle, whose smoke will drive it from your clothes and skin.’
‘How do you know our names and why we come?’ asked Hansel,
‘I know what I know,’ was all she said.
For forty days and forty nights, Hansel and Gretel stayed with the woman. By day they helped to collect food and all manner of plants. Gretel cleaned the house and Hansel tended the cauldron. By night they slept on rush mats. As the summer drew to a close and the leaves began to change colour in the forest, the two children pulled their mats ever closer to the fire.
One morning when they awoke, there was a thick mist and when it cleared Hansel saw that mushrooms encircled the whole house. The woman bade Hansel pick them and then she told him to climb a tree whose branches overhung the roof and to place them around the chimney to dry in the smoke.
Sunset was earlier now and Hansel realised that he had not done as he had been bidden by his mother, he had neither returned to the edge of the forest to watch for the smoke nor had he practised the ways of the Lord save for the love which he showed towards Gretel and respect for the woman.
Hansel felt bad and so he started to pray. It seemed that in answer to his prayers the wind began to sing to him in the long evenings.
‘Witch, witch, witch,’ it howled, ‘eat you, eat you, EAT YOU,’ it screamed. Hansel looked at Gretel and realised that she had become plumper. Perhaps, he thought, the woman is fattening us to eat.
More mushrooms and more mists came, the leaves started to fall from the trees and snakes and squirrels prepared for the long sleep.
One day the woman said,
‘Tonight is the eve of Samhain, we must build a fire outside of the house and eat food that we have saved for this night.’
‘Do you pray to the dead?’ asked Hansel,
‘Don’t you?’ asked the woman, then in a softer voice, ‘Followers of the cross call it Hallowmas. Perhaps you will see your mother. We will make an offering to the spirits to make it so.’
At dusk a cloud of bats arose behind the house and roosted in the trees as though waiting for something. The woman lit the fire and brought food out for the three of them, some meat which they rarely ate, fish from the stream, berries and dried mushrooms. There was broth from the cauldron with roots and herbs. As they ate the woman seemed to be talking to the forest.
As the fire sputtered and smoked, Hansel thought he saw his mother’s face, no longer emaciated, but as he remembered her from before the plague had come.
‘Beware the witch,’ she seemed to say, ‘save Gretel and yourself, bewaaaaaaare.’
Hansel’s head felt light, she has poisoned us, he thought, and he could not stand properly. He watched as the woman held her hands, palms upwards towards the flames. Just like when the priest celebrates Mass, thought Hansel, she is preparing her sacrifice and her sacrifice is us.
She turned slowly towards him, smiling,
‘You will see your mother now,’ she said. She must mean to kill us now, he thought.
The wind blew suddenly, whipping the soil up, whistling through the holes in the roof of the house, swirling dead leaves into the air and causing the fire to flame. The bats all rose as one and squealed. Hansel saw the woman move towards Gretel.
‘Gretel,’ he said, but his voice was lost in the howling of the wild wind. This is my fault, he thought, I should have remembered my prayers, I should not have helped the heathen with her plants and spells. Now we will die far from any priest or church.
‘Hansel,’ said his mother’s voice from the fire again, this time clearer than before, he turned and saw her face, ‘this woman is not what she seems, remember those who have died in faith,’
Hansel drew all his strength, he stood and lurched towards his sister.
‘Stay away from her,’ he said, then, ‘Gretel, get up, we must go.’
‘No,’ said the woman, ‘not tonight, it is not safe, there are bad as well as good spirits abroad on the Eve of Samhain.’
‘Do not use that pagan word,’ said Hansel, putting himself between the woman and Gretel. An owl hooted in the forest and Hansel thought he saw a snake slither from the fire.
‘Get away,’ he shouted and putting both hands on the woman’s shoulders he pushed her with all his weight, backwards towards the fire. She fell just as the wind dropped and he heard a crack of bone as her head hit one of the firestones.
There was a shrieking of an animal he could not name, or of a soul being torn from its body. Then the sound of the flapping of a million wings as the bats returned and hovered in the air.
He looked back to where the woman lay. Her eyes were open and staring into the darkness, blood had spread like a glistening raven across the stones and the woman’s hair was crackling as fire crept up it.
He crawled towards her and heaved her body into the fire and as he did so it seemed as though some spell were broken.
‘What have you done?’ asked Gretel, ‘oh Hansel, what have you done?’
‘She would have killed us, eaten us maybe,’ said Hansel.
‘But she saved us from the Black Death Hansel, and she protected and fed us all this time, why would she eat us when we had so much to fill our bellies? Now her body feeds the fire just as the diseased ones fed those we left behind, what shall we do?’
Hansel sat with his head in his hands. The wind rose again and he felt afraid of the very woods that had sheltered them both all this time, he saw eyes shining between the trees and a howling started from deep in the forest.
When he looked back into the fire, the woman’s body was no longer there, but on the wind he heard her now familiar voice.
‘Take Gretel and go to the town Hansel, use the knowledge of plants and the cleansing power of smoke and fire that you have gained from your time in the forest and you will save more lives than you have taken. I could never do this, for the townsfolk ever chased me from their streets, crying ‘Witch, witch,’ and I feared for my life.’
The wind died down and Hansel and Gretel gathered up all the woman’s plants and herbs and started on their journey home.
