Page 11 of Hansel and Gerhardt
“No, I’m hungry!”
“But that gnome thing—”
“Shh!” He hissed so sharply that the hare’s ears popped up. They waited in taut silence until the animal relaxed and moved a little closer to the water. “Then you run between the hare and the bushes. Scare it towards me.”
Hansel raised one eyebrow. “Why would it run towards you?”
“Because you’ll be terrifying, and you won’t fuck it up!” Gerhardt attempted to escape to the forest, but was caught by Hansel.
“Surely you don’t believe a hare that size, in a place like this, can be so easily fooled. Look at it. It’s huge. It’s clearly a survivor.”
With eyes that pierced straight through him, “And we’re not survivors unless you do this exactly right.” Gerhardt wrenched his shoulder away dramatically and crept off into the forest.
Hansel watched him until he’d disappeared behind a tree. He half expected him to cry out as magical vines twisted around his ankles, or when he was bitten by some cousin of that angry gnome thing.
He kept one eye on the woods, and the other on the hare.
He didn’t hear a sound for what felt like centuries, but just as he was about to try his luck in the forbidding darkness of those trees, he finally caught a flash of floppy, dark hair off to his left.
Gerhardt had come out some way from the hare, moving more stealthily than Hansel would have thought him capable of. But then, it was life or death now. Failure to catch and kill this beast could spell the end for both of them.
The animal had stretched its front paws down a small incline, and, with eyes wide open, scanning the area constantly, its fluffy cheeks and whiskers moved in rhythm with the water it sipped.
Hansel gave Gerhardt a small nod, Gerhardt returned it, and Hansel ran. He dashed in front of the bush, just as Gerhardt had told him to, but the hare was fast. At the first flash of its predator, it was around and dashing for cover. Hansel leapt, but missed it. It dodged straight past his ankle and half disappeared into the bush. But Gerhardt was quicker still. He crashed down on the grass, his shoulder hitting the ground with such force it made Hansel wince, yet his fingers grasped the hind leg of the animal, and struggle as it might, he wasn’t about to let go for all the world.
Hansel dropped down on top of the hare and snaffled it up in his arms. The hind legs beat against his empty belly, claws scratching at his arms, but he held tight until he heard the words, loud and clear, straight from the animal’s mouth: “Set me free this instant!”
By instinct, Hansel flung the creature away from himself. It flopped down on the ground with an angry look at Hansel such as Hansel hadn’t thought any hare capable of conjuring, but both his surprise and the creature’s ire were short-lived. Gerhardt’s arms snapped an inescapable prison around the animal.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Gerhardt yelled up at Hansel.
Hansel’s trembling finger extended towards his bounty. “It spoke. You heard that, didn’t you? It spoke!”
And if Gerhardt was about to deny the possibility that his lunch was sentient—nae, intelligent—he never got the chance, for the thing cried out loud, “Of course I spoke! I don’t want to be hare-napped. What is it you want with me?”
“Oh, dear lord!” Hansel cried, thrusting two full hands finger-deep into his stormy red locks.
Gerhardt, whose mind was reeling from both the strangeness of the predicament and Hansel’s clearly growing panic, only held tight to the animal.
But, “I just wanted a drink!” the hare wailed. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m sorry,” said Hansel, dropping to his knees to meet the animal eye-to-eye. “Only, do you know where we could find some food?”
“Don’t talk to it, Hansel!” Gerhardt yelled, pulling it away. “Itisthe bloody food!”
“Food?” the thing wept, and who knew hares could weep? “Food? You intend toeatme?”
Gerhardt redoubled his grip as the hare kicked desperately at him.
“What did you tell him that for?” Hansel shouted. “The poor thing. It hardly needed to know.”
“Get a rock and kill it,” Gerhardt replied, avoiding Hansel’s gaze.
“No!” screamed the hare.
“No!” yelled Hansel. “It’s a speaking hare! It speaks, and it thinks. We can’t kill it. That makes us no better than cannibals!”
Fingers digging into the writhing soft pelt, teeth gritting over the words, “And just what is wrong with being a cannibal? If this creature can think and speak as well as us, then it knows the pain of starvation—of looking death in the eye every single day. And I’m not going to do it another minute. I’m getting out.We’regetting out!”
