Page 10 of Hansel and Gerhardt
“Perhaps downstream leads to an ocean.”
Hansel squinted at him.
So Gerhardt explained, “I’ve heard of those. They’re really a lot of water. Water as far as the eye can see, and it goes all the way around the Earth, connecting foreign lands.” Hansel continued to squint, so Gerhardt reduced the grandeur of the idea. “Or perhaps it leads to a peaceful lake with a village by it?”
“Or a swamp.”
“That’s true,” said Gerhardt. “And do you know who lives in swamps?”
“Ogres?” Hansel suggested, seriously and fearfully.
“Animals,” Gerhardt corrected. “Animals who have flesh and blood and organs that I can feast upon! But it hardly matters which way we go. Water always leads to towns, one way or another. It’s a fact I learned once.”
Dubiously, “Where did you learn that fact?”
“Who knows?” Gerhardt returned cheerily. “But the idea feels sound to me. Now, let’s go find something to eat.”
Gerhardt climbed to his feet and wandered on, for the first time ever, as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
Hansel dipped his hand into the water and took a small sip. Unlike Gerhardt, he was resolved to test a little first, to see that it was safe.
And it tasted every bit as wonderful as Gerhardt had described.
And, caution aside, Hansel had to admit, it was nice to see that unprecedented bounce in Gerhardt’s step.
Really, oddly, quite nice…
Herr Hare Here
“We’ve been walking for fucking hours!” Gerhardt whined, his constant complaining having reached fever pitch.
Hansel was ready to slap him. “You’re the one who wanted to go downstream. I said to go upstream.”
“What do you know about rivers?”
“Like you know so much about it. You and your mystical ‘oceans’.”
“Oceans are real, Hansel!” He accompanied this with a very angry finger wave and a wide flare of his nostrils.
“Sure, they are,” Hansel muttered, which he shouldn’t have done, but he wasn’t immune to hunger, thirst and physical exhaustion any more than Gerhardt was.
Luckily for them both, the moment Gerhardt snapped around to yell at him was the very moment the bushes beyond Hansel’s shoulder moved.
Gerhardt stopped dead, looking like a starving man who’d just been presented with a feast. Which is exactly what he was.
His inarticulate message to keep quiet smashed loud and clear into Hansel, and he stilled just as Gerhardt had. And there, before Gerhardt’s entranced eyes, a small puff of brown fur sniffed its way out of the leaves. Nose twitching, little furry feet hesitant on green grass, a hare displayed itself in full in front of two ravenous stomachs.
Neither knew what to do. One false move and the creature might disappear just as magically as it had arrived.
“Is that—” Hansel whispered.
A grunty breath came from the back of Gerhardt’s throat to quiet him. Gerhardt shifted a foot backwards with excruciating care, barely moving, but with fingers digging into Hansel’s shoulder to pull him along.
The creature took a small hop towards the water’s edge, evidently looking for a drink, which doubled Gerhardt’s urgency—a few small sips, and it would be gone.
“We need to trap it,” Gerhardt whispered. “I’ll go into the forest and move around the other side—”
“The forest?” Hansel cut in. “Are you mad?”
