Page 4 of Hansel and Gerhardt
He ran as deep into the forest as he dared, flung Gerhardt to the left to be hidden by a tree, and stepped behind another.
The cabin door banged open, and his whole body shot rigid. Gerhardt’s breath came out shaky, tears streaming down his face, but Hansel was too much in shock to cry. He couldn’t believe he’d done it—that he’d attacked his father like that.
But it had been Gerhardt or him.
And now they were both to die.
Behind them was thick silence as their father took the lay of the land. Searching for any sign of them, listening for any sound.
Hansel prayed he’d turn back, just go inside to his drink and his fire.
Perhaps he already had?
As the seconds ticked by, he became desperate to look, desperate to take one quick peek over his shoulder.
His head turned slow, he edged towards the curve of the tree, and a small whimper came from Gerhardt’s throat. Hansel locked eyes with him, and Gerhardt gave a terrified shake of his head. Then he tilted it the other way, and Hansel followed his line of sight.
He looked straight into the midnight black of the Dark Forest.
The impenetrable shadow between the trees, only metres away, formed an evil and visceral delineation between the world of humans, and whatever horrors waited on the other side of that grim threshold.
Panicked eyes flung back at his stepbrother. Had he gone completely mad? No wonder if he had. But the Dark Forest was no means of survival. That way wascertaindeath, only long and agonising, death by supernatural hands with no care for the suffering of mere humans.
He heard their father’s tread on the grass, approaching, sticks cracking beneath his boots. Gerhardt gestured frantically towards the dark, and Hansel shook his head back at him.
Death this way, death that way, but behind them, the death was sure and fast. Not picked apart by wolves, not morphed into some ungodly disgrace by evil fairies, damned to walk the earth for eternity, just as hungry and scared as he was now.
No. Since birth it had been drilled into him that the forest was a place of dark magic, a place children were lured with the promise of food, then gobbled up by hungry witches.
His mother’s voice, an almost forgotten ghost, rose to the front of his mind.Never, never—no matter what happens—never set one foot in the Dark Forest.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” their father sang into the wilderness. He’d recovered from his indignity, as drunks so quickly do. Now all that remained was cruelty, and a thirst for revenge.
Gerhardt’s head fell back against the tree, his eyes squeezed tight, tears forcing their way through.
A stupidly heroic urge took Hansel. If he gave himself up, would that give Gerhardt a fighting chance at escape? He should never have been there. It wasn’t his birth father doing these things. It was Hansel’s. And Hansel should be the one to face him.
“Ungrateful little shits!” their father shouted. The sound was punctuated by the thwack of an axe into a tree just metres behind. Then came the scrunch and chip of the blade, wrenched back and forth until it slipped from the gaping wound in the trunk.
Hansel, pulse racing so hard he felt dizzy, looked to Gerhardt, but his eyes were set on the forbidden void of the woods.
Thwack!The axe hit another tree, and the brothers jumped. He was close now, wielding it blindly, smashing around corners with no thought of anything but their deaths. He would get one or the other soon enough unless they did something.
“I’m going to skin you boys alive,” he called. “You’ll make a fine coat for winter.”
Thwack!Closer again, and Gerhardt threw across a panicked look. And that was it. Something in his eyes—the surety of his death—snapped Hansel’s heart like a twig. Hansel refused to see another day of his suffering.
He gave Gerhardt one last, slow nod, trying to communicate that he should run. This was his only chance.
Gerhardt’s head shook in response, but Hansel never saw it.
“Father, stop.” He stepped from his hiding place, and in the very moment, he knew it had been a mistake.
The man’s scarlet face scrunched into the essence of hatred—red, twisted, black eyes so malevolent that even after all those winters, it felt like a spike in Hansel’s heart. Why couldn’t this man have loved him? Why, ofall men on earth, didHanselhave to be bornofthis man’s flesh and blood?
The axe came for him, fast and blind and brutal. But not as fast as Gerhardt.
The hard arm under his ribs smashed the air from Hansel’s lungs, and he was falling, falling. Then everything was pitch black.
