Brown, work-hardened, hands gripped a meat cleaver menacingly as a grimace grew on the face of the cleaver-wielder. Her face looked bitter. The trees were frosted with the snow that had fallen the previous night and it was a bleak, empty day. The only sound that would fill the day would be that of Margarete’s stepchildren; Hansel and Gretel. They would be asking for food, food that didn’t exist, at least not within their area of reach. Not in the Bedürftige home. Though the food scarcity was a nationwide disaster, it hit poor families, like the Bedürftiges, harder than the aristocratic families. 

Gretel came running out of their run-down house saying, “Mama, what’s that you’re making?”

“Gretel, I have asked you not to call me that,” Margarete responded, attempting to keep the bitterness out of her voice. It’s not her fault you have a hard life. It’s her father’s. 

Gretel sensed the harshness masked by the exasperation in her tone. She said, in an injured voice, “I’m sorry, Frau.” She turned to walk into the house.

 She hastily tried to explain, “Oh, Gretel, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that. I…just don’t want you to think of me…the way you think of your father.”

“Mama…I mean Frau, I would never ever think of you like that. You love me more…more than Dad does.”

“I do love you, Gretel.”

More than anyone, not including Hansel.

More than her father, anyway.

Gretel childishly ran to her, knowing she would be loved by her mother, whether she called her “Mama” or not. Margarete laughed, looking so different when she laughed. She didn’t laugh enough, but Gretel joined in the brief merriment. For a while, it was just them, enjoying life, like Gretel should be doing at her age; she had matured too quickly for a girl of ten. Margarete saw herself in Gretel too often. She wanted her to have a childhood. She wanted her to have things that ten-year-old girls should have. But those wishes couldn't come true because they had been stolen away from her by her drunk father. Gretel never complained, though. It was what she had always known. How Gretel desperately needed a mother figure. 

“You can call me ‘Mama’ if you want to, Gretel.”

Gretel’s wide smile reconciled her to it at once.

…

Later that night, as Margarete sat by the pitiful fire in the hearth patching clothes, she thought back to her life before marrying Emil Bedürftige. It had been hard, much like Hansel and Gretel’s life. When she had married Emil, she had barely turned twenty, while he had been twenty-nine, nearly thirty. Back then, he had been a respectable woodcutter, a father of two, and a widower. The bride of his youth had died three years prior, leaving him to take care of a five-year-old and a two-year-old. Emil and Margarete had lived happily with their children for a few years. 

Then Emil had made the sudden decision to move from the small, happy town of Annaberg-Buchholz, to the middle of a forest by the Elbe river. He had no real explanation except that ‘the town’s getting too crowded’.

So they moved. To the middle of nowhere.

Hansel had loved it at first. His boyish heart had been thrilled to the raw wilderness of the woods. He had longed to explore everywhere, which was dangerous at first, because he would often wander alone, without telling anyone. The feminine half of the Bedürftige family enjoyed the solitude, but not as thoroughly as Hansel. They had everything they needed. For a while. Soon, their hunting scared off the easy-to-catch food, and Emil, being a woodcutter by trade and not a hunter, allowed their food supply to dwindle. Then, the famine hit.

His relationship with his children and wife became increasingly difficult. He yelled at Hansel, mocked Gretel, and sulked with Margarete. Then he’d disappear for days at a time. They thought he was hunting, but they found out he had merely been going to the tavern, drinking away the little amount of money they possessed.

 That’s probably where he is right now, Margarete thought, returning to the present.

The rickety door creaked open. Emil walked in and quietly shut the door. Did he look…sober? That was unusual. Already, Margarete could feel something was off. Emil gently walked over and caressed her hair. This was such a forgotten sign of tenderness, so strange and unused that Margarete cringed and drew back. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with you?” she whisper-yelled.

“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong. Why would anything be wrong?”

“You never do that. Not anymore. You can’t just do that and expect me to be fine with it.”

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He looked sad. Almost human. She almost forgot for a second all the horrible things he often said to her and the children. She frowned.

“There was no food for dinner, so you’ll have to go find a deer or something,” she said scathingly.

“I have an idea,” he said as if he didn’t hear her.

Margarete rolled her eyes. His last idea was to move here.

“I have an idea,” he repeats as if Margarete didn’t already hear.

“What is your fantastic idea, Emil?”Sarcasm fairly reeked out of her voice.

“We have a shortage of food, correct?”

She barely stopped herself from inventing “duh” about 150-ish years early. Instead, she nodded curtly.

“Well, we don’t need more food, we just need fewer people!”

Then why are you still here? Margarete thought angrily.

Emil lowered his voice to a whisper. “We need to get rid of Hansel and Gretel.”

Margarete laughed. In his face. For at least two minutes,

“That’s funny, Emil. You haven’t joked in a long time,” she finally replied, traces of tears leaking out of her eyes. Was it mirth or sadness? Maybe a bit of both. She didn’t notice the shadow that passed over his face. He wasn’t joking. He thought getting rid of his children would solve his problems. Fix his life.

Before his first wife, Frieda died, he had loved his children dearly and was constantly spending time with them; feeding them, playing with them, and teaching them different things. Then, Frieda died, without proper warning, and without enough time for Emil to process. He had been devastated. He had turned to the ways of drinking. What Margarete didn’t know (Hansel and Gretel barely even knew) was that his life had been in ruins long before the famine. 

Then he married Margarete, a beautiful, charming young woman. Emil recovered from his depressive lifestyle almost immediately. But he wanted to leave. He had initially wanted to move because of the claustrophobic feeling he got while living in Annaberg-Buchholz. Everything made him feel trapped. Trapped in his old life. Trapped with memories of Frieda. He felt safe and at ease whenever he was at home, talking to Margarete. He loved his children. But, slowly, Gretel grew from a two-year-old to a five-year-old. Then a seven-year-old, and next, she was nine. She looked like Frieda. Too much like Frieda. Hansel looked like her, too, though the resemblance was strongest in Gretel. Emil began to resent it. To resent his children for something they could not control and wasn’t their fault.

Then, without rhyme or reason, he picked up his family and moved them to the Elbe Forest. 

It wasn’t that he had chosen to live by the Elbe because he was trying to get rid of his children. He just wanted the space to be away from them a bit more. But, slowly, the desire grew in his heart; an evil need to get rid of his offspring. He somehow envisioned a life without them, and in this dream, he saw an easy path of growing old, forgetful, and corpulent. With Margarete. As if she wouldn’t mind if her stepchildren went missing. But these were the thoughts of Hansel and Gretel’s selfish, sinister, father. 

…

Margarete went to bed, forgetting about what her husband had said to her about abandoning Hansel and Gretel. She didn’t think much of it and went to her room thinking it was drunken foolishness.

When she woke up in the dark early morning, Emil was not there. He must have gone back to the tavern, she thought. She rolled over softly to return to the land of dreams when a sudden remembrance struck her. Could he have been serious? About getting rid of his kids? She shook herself. He wouldn’t. She often doubted his love for Hansel and Gretel, but no father would go so far as to kill their children…right? Disturbed by this, she got up and noiselessly tip-toed to the door of the bedroom. She peeked out of the crack between the door and frame. Emil was sitting in a chair by the fire, muttering to himself, it appeared. 

She tried to make out what he was saying, but it was impossible to hear, with the crackling of the fire and the wind outside of the house. The fire in the hearth was dying down, and the light flickered creepily.

 “...her hut…good place to leave…” he moved out of her hearing range.

“Her hut”? Who’s hut? Why is it a good place "to leave"? Leave what? Thoughts raced through her head rapidly, confusing and disorienting her. But then she remembered their previous conversation. He can’t be serious. He wouldn’t…

Margarete waited until he went outside (for who knows what) to go wake the children. When she walked into their bedroom, Hansel was sitting upright in his bed. 

“Hansel, what are you doing up?” she said, forgetting she had been about to wake them. Motherly concern filled her.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Well, never mind, I was going to wake you anyway.” She softly moved to Gretel’s bedside. She gently lifted Gretel’s hair from her face.

“Don’t wake her up.”

“Why not?”

“She hasn’t slept well in the past week.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She didn’t want to worry you. She said you were already too…burdened.”

Margarete’s breath caught in her throat. “She did?”

Hansel nodded silently. Margarete walked away from Gretel’s bed. She lovingly tousled Hansel’s hair. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

He smiled. “Alright…mama.”