It’s only a second or two, but it feels like forever until Gretel’s fingertips touch me.
Her eyes come to mine, and then?—
It’s like she’s gone.
Frozen. A statue. All of her, turned to stone.
Gretel
Another bolt of lightning comes down. It’s so close to the cottage that it blinds me. All I can do is blink until the spots clear. My heart is a dull pounding, like everything has slowed. And yet it pains for Hansel.
Tears prick but don’t fall. Fear exists but it’s silenced.
I can’t move. I can’t move at all. This isn’t like being frozen in place by fear, or trying to stay still during a game of hide-and-seek.
This is being frozen by magic.
I don’t know how I’m still alive. I don’t know how a body can be this still and keep living.
Am I going to die?
I try to curl my fingers, then my toes. I can’t do either. I try to flex my hands. Not that, either. Time is slowed and yet I can do nothing.
Panic swells inside my chest, but it has nowhere to go. I can’t run to let it out. I can’t scream. I can’t do anything but stand here, barely touching Hansel.
But I can blink, and if I try, I can move my gaze to look around the cottage.
As I focus, the vision on the door becomes clear.
She’s a beautiful witch. Her gown is flowing and pale, and looks too light for the winter. At the same time, it looks sturdy and warm. I can’t tell which is real, or if the dress is an illusion.
Is she an illusion?
If she is, she’s a kind one. Her expression is kind, and her eyes are kind. There is no malice in her face at all. That might not mean anything. The witch had looked kind in the beginning as well. She had offered us sweets and shelter. She had seemed harmless until she shut the door and refused to let us leave.
But then her face had transformed, and all her hatred was there on the surface.
This witch though, her expression is calming. Even as I stand entranced, the fear dims.
I watch for signs of it on the beautiful witch’s face, but there are none. She smiles gently at us, then glances around the cottage, seeming to see it for the first time.
This witch looks nothing like the witch who hurt Hansel, and who I thought was going to hurt me. She doesn’t seem familiar with this place the way the evil witch had. This was her home, after all, so it would make sense that another witch wouldn’t know it.
Unless she’s pretending.
I can hear my pulse rushing in my ear. I need answers, and I need them badly, or else I might faint.
I’m not completely frozen, I realize. I’m still breathing. So is Hansel. We have our lungs, at least.
The beautiful witch doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to speak to us. I don’t know what that means. Is it because she has her prey where she wants us, or because we’re not prey at all?
God, I want to know.
The witch waves her hand and the flames dim, what once was burned comes back whole and finds it’s place around us. The damage we did is undone. In only a wave of her hand, the rage and harm against the cottage is reversed. In a blink of an eye, it’s as if nothing happened. The flames in the fire crack and then subside to a warmed inferno. A nonthreatening and comforting heat. She waves her hand again, still silent and observing.
The light from the oven’s open door brightens again. Whatever spell paralyzed me falls away, and I throw myself into Hansel’s arms. He folds them around me and holds on tight.
“Gretel,” he whispers, too quiet for the witch to hear and with no voice behind it. I don’t think he can make a sound.
