Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [26]
Now Gretel crawled across the shadows to Hansel's pallet. She shoved his shoulder and when he startled put her hand over his mouth to make him listen. They both heard it then. The plan to pretend a trip for better firewood, a trip that would end with the children abandoned miles from home, left to the mercy of God and wild wolves.
Neither slept, and sunrise found them pale and drawn. While Prudence hummed over a small knapsack and their father sharpened the axes, Hansel fumed. "How dare they?" he whispered to his sister. "Does all the wood I've chopped count for nothing?" His face was as flushed as if he had already been outside in the frosty morning. "Or the rabbits I caught last spring?"
"Do not fret, Brother," Gretel told him. "Our angel will save us." And before he could laugh, before he could daunt her with that scornful look of his, she told him about the dream. "Can you not see? If we drop stones as we go and wait until the moon comes up, our way home will be lit by heaven itself!"
He did not laugh. Instead, he lowered his chin nearly to his chest and squinted with the effort to imagine what she had described. When he raised his head to look at her, his eyes were narrow, calculating. "Mayhap," was all he said.
What neither of them had counted on, of course, was the storm their homecoming caused. That night, they waited until the moon was high enough to light the stones Gretel had sewn like seeds as their parents led them deeper and deeper into the forest. And when they arrived at the cottage well after dark, there was only one person glad to see them again. "Praise the Savior!" Their father hugged each of them in turn, grinning like a fool. "Look how Providence has seen fit to spare you!"
But Prudence saw less to celebrate. Much less. "What trick did you use?" She turned on Gretel and her brother as if walking home was devil's work, as if they had no right to share the roof under which they'd been born and raised. "Tomorrow we will go further. Tomorrow you will stay where you are put."
So there was no pretense now, no talk of gathering firewood, of the two adults leaving to gather it up while the children napped by the fire. Despite Father's pleas and the children's arguments, their stepmother was determined. "Whether you go or we," she said, "matters little. We will all be better off, with fewer hungry mouths to fill.
"But since your good father and I have kept you fed and dressed till now, it is only right that you be the ones to repay this debt by trying your fortunes in the world."
"Their fortunes!" Father sounded hoarse and sharp, a baited bear with no way out. "What fortunes can they find in a land wasted by drought and famine?"
"What if we won't go?" Hansel folded his arms and braced himself as he did when he chopped wood. "What if we refuse to be pushed into the cold?"
"Refuse all you wish," Prudence told him. "Stay here and watch your father starve." She rushed out of Father's grasp and turned on the boy. "You are certain to outlast him, you know. He is old and tired from working to keep you in firewood and soup." A flame fanned itself to life in her narrow eyes. "And mark me, when he weakens and dies, the two of you will earn a place in hell."
"Pru, you must not say such a thing," Father told her.
But Prudence ignored him and shifted her attention to Gretel. "Ay, you shall find yourselves near enough to the devil's throne to kiss his horny feet." Reluctantly, she unfolded the two bedrolls she had stashed by the hearth. As the girl bent to help her, she studied Gretel's small shoulders, down-turned head. "Make no mistake, ungrateful wretch. You will murder the good man as surely as if you took that ax"—she pointed to the long-handled ax in the hearth corner—"to his throat and did the job clean."
And so the four of them set out for the woods again next morning, the children lagging spiritlessly behind their parents. Neither of them scattered