Tears of hope prick my eyes although I don’t trust the relief her words promise. I can’t speak, though the spell no longer stops me. Of course it doesn’t look like pain. It looks beautiful. But the cottage had not looked truly dangerous before. I don’t know how to trust anything anymore. I don’t know how to trust her.
The witch seems to sense that, because her gaze turns even kinder.
“It is not,” she says reassuringly. “This is healing.”
“Healing?” I choke out in blasphemy. I can’t deny that some of the time we’ve spent here has been healing. It was at least a gift I’ll be grateful for as long as I live. I didn’t even want to live this much before Hansel opened the door and let me inside. I would have been so lonely without him. “You brought us here to heal?”
“You brought yourselves here,” she answers gently. “But…I may have helped you along.”
“Did you—you left those stones at my house, didn’t you? You left them on the path, and you left them in my living room so I had to see them.”
“I did,” she confirms, looking only a little sheepish. “But I promise to you—I had no evil intent.”
My throat closes, and I can’t speak. I thought she was coming back. I thought I had brought her back to the village, and I couldn’t live with that. I’d already lost my father, and I’d lost Hansel, and I couldn’t lose what was left of my life again.
“I do have sorrow that I have caused you pain,” the witch says. It sounds like a true, sincere apology, with real sorrow in her voice. “I did not wish to frighten you. I only desired to right the wrongs that had been done.”
“You’re not her, then?” Hansel says brusquely. He doesn’t sound afraid although his voice is rough and low. He sounds as if he’s still ready to defend me from anything—even magic. I’m more in love with him than ever, and I’ve loved Hansel for as long as I can remember.
“I am not the witch who dwelled here before,” the beautiful witch answers. “She is dead, and will not return. But the damage she did to both of you has lingered, and deserves to be repaired. I felt that the two of you needed to return to this place to see that you had grown in spite of what happened here, and I feared that without a hand to guide you, you would never come to that conclusion on your own.”
“Repair?” I echo, my mind working slowly after the rush of adrenaline and fear.
“You are meant to be together.” Her bright blue eyes stare through me. “There is no one on earth who is better suited to either of you, and I cannot let that precious love die from the harms of that evil creature. It is my duty and honor to do what I can to offer true love a chance to survive, and to grow.”
Tears slip down my cheeks. I watch through blurry vision as the witch takes something from around her neck.
It is an amulet with a dark red gem shining on the surface. I recognize it immediately and all hope is paused. My heart misses a beat at the sight of it. The beautiful witch holds it up in the light, and as we watch, it snaps in two in her hands.
She drops the pieces to the floor, but they disappear before they land.
“Was that keeping her away?” I ask, my voice shaking with emotion. “You don’t mean for us to face her, do you?”
“She is gone,” the witch promises. “I have not lied to you. The amulet represented the harm she did in her living years, and now I hope you will be able to let go of the pain she caused you here. There is still good in the world, after all—and the most powerful magic is love. You carry that between you wherever you go.”
Hansel straightens, like he’s just waking up. “You aren’t here to punish us? There’s no one to fight?”
The witch steps closer and puts her hand to his cheek. She does the same to mine and looks into my eyes, then returns her gaze to Hansel. “You’ve been fighting all this time. The battle is over.”
Hansel makes a rough sound. “So you’ll let us go?” he questions.
She nods solemnly. “You were only children back then,” the witch says. Her eyes are so kind. There is nothing in her touch that speaks of the evil witch. “You can let it go now. You can have your happily ever after.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, and close my eyes, unshed tears spilling. Relief spreads through me although a part of me will not trust her until we are gone.
Hansel holds me tighter. I inhale, trying not to cry, and when I exhale, the heat of the witch’s hand is gone.
I open my eyes.
The witch is gone, too. The cottage is quiet around us apart from the cracking of the fire, and remains transformed. It’s bright and clean with a basket of apples on the table and a pastry cooling in a dish near the sink.
But it’s the glass jar on the windowsill that catches my eye. The firelight reflects off of it, and inside?—
“Hansel,” I manage to say. “Look.”
“What is it?” he says into my hair.
I turn both of us so he can look without letting go of me. Hansel’s eyes move over the room and all the transformations the witch made in the blink of an eye.
