Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [24]
So she sat still, basking in the warmth and a steady, low sound that was like the humming of crickets, though it was long past the season when those tiny noisemakers rubbed their legs together to announce spring. It was as if everything around her—the small table, the fire in the hearth, even the bedrolls under the window ledge—was buzzing like bees, whispering in the language of birch or flame or sweet hay. Mother, the table said. Mother, spoke the fire and the hay. Mother.
When Hansel slammed through the door and staggered in under a mountain of cordwood, the whispering died and the angel melted away. "Are your ears stopped, girl?" he asked, spilling the logs by the fire, wiping his face with his sleeve. "I told you I would kick the door when I had the wood ready."
Blinking, Gretel willed back the angel, the tiny voices. But there was only Hansel, filling the room with cold air and resentment. "I did not hear you, Brother," she told him. "I was ... sewing."
"Ay," he said. "Inside, where it is dry and warm. While I was splitting wood with no gloves."
She wanted to make it up to him. She always wanted to make it up. "I saw something, Hansel. Something beautiful." If she could help him see it, if he could share the splendor, maybe he would feel warmer.
"And what was that, Sister?" He looked out the tiny window to make certain their parents weren't nearby, then threw himself, full-length, in front of the hearth. "Still more heavenly nonsense? More messengers with wings?"
She picked up her mending, told the cloth instead of him. "I could not see the wings this time," she said. "But there was such a feeling of peace in the house, Hansel. I know Mother was nearby, and I know Father will come back with good news."
Hansel rolled onto his stomach but sat up suddenly, his fingers to his lips. "Not a word of your visions, girl." He scrambled to his feet and set about stacking the logs of wood. "Do you hear?"
Gretel nodded, but as the door opened and their father and stepmother tossed empty bags onto the floor, she knew there was no good news. And the feeling she'd had, the glimpse of a mother she had nearly forgotten, faded. Their stepmother, bigger, louder, ten times more real, sighed theatrically, then unwrapped the straps of wool from her ankles and put her shoes by the fire. Their father walked to the hearth, rubbing his hands, his face furrowed with disappointment. "Not even beans," he said. "Not even a stale loaf."
It was the third time this week the pair had taken Gretel's sewing to market, the third time they had been turned away by merchants unwilling to part with food in return for the girl's dainty-work. "We cannot go on like this, you know." The children's stepmother was named Prudence, but she was more stingy than wise. "I have said it over and over. Four are too many mouths to feed." She glared at the children, who stood still and light on their feet, like birds ready to fly. "Especially when these two do nothing to earn their keep."
"I could help Hansel with the chopping, mistress." Gretel looked at her brother, so exhausted he could barely stand, at her own mending and sewing, folded into a careful pile on the table. "We could sell extra wood that way. Or I might stitch hats in place of aprons?" Despite all their work, her stepmother was bleeding anger, and Gretel needed to stanch the flow. "We will do better tomorrow." It was what her mother had said, day after day, when she was sick. I will be better tomorrow.
"Tomorrow," Prudence told her, closing her eyes against the heartbreak of their day, "we may all