Work Text:
The house attracts ants and beetles and while we curl together in our bed, we hear them slowly eating away at the only solid thing we have left. It’s constant, unstoppable, and it makes me want to jam something into my ears to block it. (It’s no good. I hear them even when I’m away from the house now, deep in the forest scavenging for something that isn’t made of sugar, hunting for meat without the sweets. Even for children, there's such a thing as too much and only so much we could devour. And when it’s your shelter, you have to think practically. Even children are capable of practicality when they must.)
I lost my sweet tooth years ago. I was once the girl that father would have to chide to keep out of the honey jar and now it all turns my stomach. On hot summer days we go sleep far away from the house, the smell of it following us for miles. Or maybe it’s just that our clothes are infused with gingerbread, our skin tanned with liquorice, our limbs pervaded by white chocolate, our hearts sticky and sickly-sweet.
Some days I think I can smell burning hair as well, but I don't say it, I never mention it. It’s better that way.
Hansel had such terrible dreams in those early days, after the witch and after our parents. He wanted to forgive our father for what happened, but how could we? How do you forgive the man who tried to kill you?
Father did beg though. You should know that part because I make sure to remember it myself. He begged and cried while I stoked that fire. He told us that he loved us and that he was sorry, but I could still feel the skin of an old woman under my nails. He made us do that, just as he made us kill him as well. We only ever did the things we had to do. Hansel slept with his head on my lap that night and I watched until that fire burned down to coals. If there’s truly a heaven, I don’t believe father will be allowed within.
(Only... sometimes I have a gnawing fear that I won't either.)
Our stepmother I had to go searching for. I didn’t much like to leave the forest then - and I hate it even more so now - but loose ends can’t be left. Hansel said we should let her go, but in the end he loved me most. Just like I love him most, just like I can read him without words, just like I know what he needs from me even when he doesn’t. He’s the only thing that matters. I wiped the blood off his face with a handkerchief and he smiled, because I’m his big sister and because I know best. All that I do is only because it needs to be done, because it is right.
(Is... is it right?)
The roof leaks, mostly because of the birds. They come in and peck out holes that sometimes let in shafts of sunlight, the bright beams that manage to filter their way down through the high green canopy above. Hansel says they’re messages from mother, but he doesn’t remember her. I don’t really remember her either, but I don’t think sunlight brings any message. It just brings warmth to make our walls wilt and lean. Every year I think it will be the last this house sees, but it keeps standing. I try to strengthen it, to shore up walls and roofs with branches and vines, but the house rejects these things. It will shift itself free of anything unsweet, but still it chooses to devour the forest that comes too near. Birds occasionally nest but by morning there’s no sign of them. Spiders build webs in corners before disappearing.
Our little gingerbread house hungers for more substantial things, but it loves us. We sleep through the night without harm. (A pauper once came knocking but the only food we could offer him was sugar, and although he slept the night to escape the cold, by morning we found nothing but his clothes.)
Does this twisted cloying house think we’re the witch? Or is it that the chocolate skirting and candy-cane girders don’t care who they own? I don’t ask. Hansel is the only one who talks to the house but he never tells me what it says. It used to be that the house made him cry, but now more often than not he curls himself so close against syrupy walls than when I hug him I can feel my skin cleaving to his.
I think mother would be pleased, to see how well her children have grown. To see that we are fair and kind of heart and at one with the world. There is so much sourness in the world but we are sweet, with skin that grows slippery in the river water and hair that breaks and dissolves into our tea. Hansel’s golden eyes look like honey to me, but that’s why he closes them to sleep. It keeps the insects out.
Sweet house and sweet children and everyone sleeps deep and sound.