I would give anything to go back to when his eyes were bright. Anything. But there’s no magic that will take me there. I curl my hands into loose fists to keep myself from reaching for Hansel.
“She cast a spell when they killed her.”
He looks away, his shoulders tensing, then looks back at me. “That was long ago. Why do you think she’s back now?”
I pace in the small kitchen and whisper, “I had a nightmare.” It makes my stomach hurt to think about it. The dark path. The black branches covering the sky. The sounds in the forest all around us. “I thought it was real. I thought I was back there.”
“A dream doesn’t mean?—”
“And when I woke up,” I interrupt, too loud, the dream back in my head. It’s not easy to shake it off and keep going. “There were rocks leading to my door.”
Hansel scoffs. “Someone else could have?—”
I step closer and lower my voice, but I want to scream. “They didn’t stay outside the door!”
“So you brought them in?”
“I didn’t! I—” I glance at the bedroom door. It’s still closed. “Either I’m going crazy, or she’s beckoning me back. I’m scared.” We left the small rocks to find our way back home. The rocks have come back to haunt me. Every night for over a week.
“You’re going crazy if you think?—”
“She’s been leaving rocks in my living room! Exactly like the ones we left so we could find our way back! Straight to my door. Beckoning me here!”
His mouth drops open. “What?”
“I swear. They’re the same stones.” The chill captures my body and it has nothing to do with the winter outside.
Hansel shakes his head. “Stop it.” For a moment, his eyes flash. I know the pain he went through. He took the brunt of it. He saved me. He was everything I needed and then he decided we were nothing. Nothing but the past.
“I wish I could. I wish it would stop. But it’s not stopping. It’s been happening for weeks.”
“Stop it, Gretel. I don’t know why you came here, but it’s not?—”
“I came here for this,” I hiss at him. “Because this is happening, and I can’t stop it without you. And I thought you deserved to know. She’s not gone. She’s back,” I warn him with tears pricking my eyes. I wish it wasn’t so. But the fear is unrelenting. “I wouldn’t come, unless I had no choice.”
He leans in, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed, radiating fury. My heart races until I think it’ll explode. I’m terrified he’ll send me away and shut the door behind me, but I’m also hopeful. Hansel’s face is full of fear and anger, but he’s looking at me. He heard what I came here to tell him.
I think, for a second or two, that he might even touch me. This is the closest we’ve been in years.
Hansel seems to recognize that at the same time I do.
He takes a sharp step back and huffs out a breath, then looks away, getting control of himself. Hansel relaxes his shoulders, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
When he turns back to me, it’s with the same flat expression as before, with only a slight glimmer in his eyes.
He gestures at the narrow hallway at the side of the room. It leads to two tiny bedrooms side by side. “Go to sleep,” Hansel says. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
Gretel
I don’t expect to fall asleep quickly, or even at all. But I climb into the narrow bed Hansel offered me, pull the worn blanket around my shoulders, and I’m dreaming within seconds.
I dream of the summer, as it was before everything fell apart. Soft, green grass under my bare feet. The stream running through the forest. Market days in the village that went late into the long summer nights.
I dream of dancing by the bonfire in the town square at midsummer and walking home with Hansel, laughing. Our feet ached so badly he had to pick me up and carry me the last stretch, but I would’ve kept dancing if he wanted to.
We were only children. We knew not what was coming.
I dream of birds singing in the morning and rain falling on the roof at night and the sound of people laughing at the tavern in the distance.
