The One About Hansel and Gretel

The young children of Earthling refugees, one boy and one girl, lose their mother during the Great Famine. Their father marries a beautiful but haughty elf as his second wife, believing her spellwork will keep food on the table. And for a time, it does. But then the magic runs out and the wicked woman demands that her husband sacrifice his children to Daoggdarc—one of the elder gods—so that she might regain the deity’s favor.

The children, who are called Hansel and Gretel, overhear this diabolical plan and run off before they can hear their father deliver and emphatic “No!” and dismiss the evil stepmother at once.

They lose their way in the forest and eventually come upon a house made of gingerbread and candy. But just as they are about to break a mouthful of sweetstuff off of the building to fill their empty stomachs, a blind old crone opens the door and bids them to come inside. “Sweets are for dessert, my dears,” is what she tells them. “Come inside and have your supper first.”

The crone feeds them a dinner fit for royalty and they children are so stuffed, and so weary from the day’s events, that they fall off to sleep. In the morning, however, they wake not in the beds they nodded off in, but instead rise in separate cages.

The crone continues to feed them but the children notice that she is not eating anything herself. Slowly, it dawns on them that she is fattening them up so that they—Hansel and Gretel—can be her next meal.

As it turns out, Hansel grows plumper faster. And so, one day the crone demands that Gretel put her brother into the oven. Clever Gretel, however, claims that she knows not how the oven works. The foolish old crone, delirious with hunger, bends over to show her. And that’s when Gretel kicks the hag into the oven, slams the door shut, and watches with satisfaction as the old woman burns.

Gretel finds the key to her brother’s cage and, with the help of a white-feathered duck, they make their way home—making sure to leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that they might find their way back to the house someday, assuming the famine is still on and food is still scarce.

The children find their father sitting on the doorstep, wallowing in his despair, but when they call out to him he leaps to his feet and gathers them into his arms. He tells them that he has sent their wicked stepmother away. Then they tell him that they have found all the food they need to get them through the famine.

Their father doesn’t believe them at first, but he follows them back along their trail of breadcrumbs just the same. And when they find the Gingerbread House once again, he weeps with joy and apologizes for ever doubting them. The three move into the Gingerbread Cottage and live happily ever after.

It’s a nice story, but as Gretel would tell you—if you were willing to listen—it gets a lot of things wrong. For example:

• There was no stepmother. The evil elvish stepmother was added by xenophobic humans for a bit of added drama.
• In reality, the Great Famine took the lives of both Hansel and Gretel’s parents. They died within a week of one another.
• A month passed between the death of their parents and the twins’ trek into the woods. In that time, Gretel did her best to hunt for game—as her mother had taught her to do—and Hansel studied their father’s notes on Edenian plant life to see which wild fruits might be safe to eat.
• The crone was not blind and she was not a cannibal. In fact, she didn’t eat at all. She was a siphon and fed off the joy of the children. That’s why she created the pocket dimension which exists inside the Gingerbread House to this day and filled it with sweets and amusements.
• It was only when the children longed for a life outside of the house and turned to despair that the trouble began.
• Gretel didn’t kill the crone by kicking her into an oven. It was a far more bloody affair and the first time she took another sapient being’s life. But how exactly she killed the woman is a secret she took to her grave.
• The being that helped them find their way home was no simple duck and his feathers were not white. He was a wolaríxkín, his feathers were yellow, and his name was Gordon Quackers III.