ACT 2: SCENE 1
Come with me.
Come through the haunted woods, full of strange shapes and noises. Somewhere out there are a man and a woman, trekking wearily through the undergrowth. They have been walking now for five days. Far beyond them is a little cottage in a clearing, all colour and merriment. On the outside. On the inside it is dark and rotten. Two young people clean it now, but the grime and dust stick there like bad memories. The scrawny boy and girl talk quietly over their mopping. Something the girl says makes the boy laugh nervously. A third person, a woman in black, sweeps past them both, purposefully. Maybe she lashed out a heel, maybe the boy is just clumsy, but as she passes he falls to the floor, tipping the mop bucket onto himself. The woman does not look back, but smiles and hops past the spreading soap water. The boy is helped to his feet by the girl, who gives him a sad, understanding smile. Wringing out his sleeves, he smiles back, sheepishly. The woman ignores them both and heads straight to a tiny cage in the corner of the kitchen. She kneels beside it. Inside the cage, a ball of hair and fabric stirrs. Two bright blue eyes blink open. The pink and bearded face of a large young man looks up at her slothfully. A flick of her sleeve reveals a large chocolate cake. The youth sighs and eyes the piece that the woman has broken off reproachfully. Nevertheless, he opens his mouth. The woman fits her hand through the gaps in the bars and places the piece of cake in his mouth, before gently pushing his jaw closed. The youth chews a little, then swallows as the woman breaks off another bit of cake.
"Aren't you full yet, Hansel?" asked Gretel, picking the Boy's mop off the floor.
"Absolutely," replied Hansel, swallowing, "I couldn't eat another bite." He openned his mouth again.
"Then why are you still eating?" Gretel retorted, "You know what she's trying to do."
"Be careful, Gretel," whispered the Boy, "try not to upset her. You don't know what she's like when she gets angry yet."
"Listen to the Boy," added Nettlewart without looking up, "He knows what's good for him."
"I want to stop," said Hansel, " but this stuff. It's just delicious. I can't stop eating."
"Mind control," whispered the Boy to Gretel, "happens to all of us here, you know. One way or another."
"Or maybe it's just really good cakes." The witch still hadn't looked up from feeding Hansel. "Don't you people have work to do?"
Gretel rolled her eyes and pushed the mop bucket through into the study with her foot. The Boy followed her, fretfully. Gretel slopped the mop in the remains of the soapy water and started work behind Nettlewart's armchair, silently.
"You oughtn't wind her up like that, you know," said the Boy eventually.
"Why not?" grumbled Gretel, "I'm not scared of her."
"You should be."
"She's never hurt me, you know."
The Boy snorted a humourless laugh. "I know. You're new. And fiesty. She doesn't know what she can get away with with you. Me, on the other hand..."
He waved a hand vaguely over a couple of fresh bruises on his face.
"She did that to you instead of me? No wonder you're so concerned." Gretel bit her lip. "Listen, I'm really sorry you're getting the raw end of the deal but I just can't let her..."
"It's not just that. I think she's holding out for something big. Something to break you."
"Like killing Hansel? Don't worry, I've got that well in hand."
The Boy stopped mopping.
"Oh no. You're not going to try to escape again?"
"Of course I am," replied Gretel, her voice calm but her mopping furious, "just like last night, and the night before."
"And it never works. If it's not Nettlewart it's the wolves, and Hansel's hardly in the best state to escape in, locked as he is in a three foot iron cube."
"Well," sighed Gretel, "maybe if I had a little help..."
"I..." the Boy flushed. "I don't think I can help you, Gretel."
"Neither do I. As a matter of fact I happen still to be holding out for that handsome prince."
The Boy looked skywards. "Not this again."
"What do you mean, 'not this again'? I've known you what, four, five days? I don't talk about him that much, do I?"
"Yes, Gretel, you really do. And for the last time, there are no princes left in Pantoland."
Gretel leaned her mop against the wall. "And how would you know? You've never even been out of the woods."
"Believe me, Nettie keeps me well informed as to the state of Pantoland these days. She revels in it. She's even suggested that it was her mother who was responsible. Besides... you can feel it, can't you? Something's just not there."
"Well, it is there for me. Because I've still got my dreams." Gretel started to go misty-eyed again. "I've got my dreams that some day, some day when I really need him, the man of my dreams will ride in, all shiny armour and fishnets, swordfight the baddie, pull me up onto his horse, take down my hair and say 'why Miss Trellis, you're beautiful' and kiss me. One of those kisses where he leans me over in his arms..."
"That's dangerous. You'd fall off the horse."
"Shut up. And then we'll ride off into the sunset, and go to his castle, where he'll marry me. I'd be a princess, and run around singing to doves in a big pink dress and a tiara."
"You're too sensible to be a princess."
"It's a dream, though, isn't it?" snapped Gretel. "Don't you have dreams, Boy?"
The Boy blinked at Gretel for a moment, then hurriedly started mopping again. "Yes," he told the floor.
"Well, somehow I find that hard to believe. Here you are, a bright, able young man, locked in a cottage serving somebody who you hate all your life and you never do a blind thing about it. I mean, why not? Why not escape with Hansel and me tonight?
"I can't escape." He was beginning to run out of floor to clean.
"Rubbish!" Gretel waited expectantly for the Boy to say something back. He didn't. She tried another tactic. "Who told you that? Her?"
The Boy stopped mopping but kept his sight fixed on the ground. "You might have a chance. You're clever and Hansel's strong and you have your mother to go home to but me... I've got nothing. I am nothing."
"No you're not," said Gretel softly.
"I am. You know I am. You hate me for it."
"I don't hate you." Gretel moved over to him. He turned his face away from hers. "I hate what you do, I hate that you helped her capture us, I hate what she's trying to turn you into, but I don't hate you."
"Do you forgive me?"
"I wouldn't go that far." Gretel sighed and put a hand on the Boy's shoulder, "But I don't hate you and I know you're not nothing. You're good inside, I can see that. You just have to see it yourself. Believe in yourself."
She lifted his chin and looked kindly into his eyes.
She lifted his chin and those sad, noble eyes gazed into hers.
There was no hint of music this time. No stars, no bluebirds. No whisper of excitement from the outside world. A jackdaw continued to squalk outside and yesterday's rain continued to drip ponderously from the eaves. But there it was between them again, that same magnetic pull as the night they'd met. Her lips parted slightly. His breathing deepened. Her fingers on his chin slid gently up his cheek and into his hair. She was vauguely aware that she was slowly moving in towards him, as inevitably as the buttered side of a dropped piece of toast is drawn to the floor. She put her free hand up against his chest. She could feel his heart beating hard through the thin flesh and fabric covering it. Their lips were nearly connecting. She could taste his breath. It was sugar sweet. She closed her eyes.
"Oh dear oh dear oh dear."
Gretel's eyes snapped open to see the witch standing in the now open door. In the shadowy recesses of the kitchen, she could make out her brother watching her with angry dismay. Automatically, she pushed the hand against the Boy's heart violently away. He stumbled backwards a little before catching his balance and then purposefully backing up against the wall. "Like a lizard," thought Gretel, wringing her hands and flushing with shame.
"Mistress Snapdragon I... I..."
"Oh Gretel." Nettlewart's voice was warm as she slid over to Gretel and caught her fretting hands. "What's been going on?"
"Nothing."
"It didn't look like nothing." The witch smiled at her. "Not that I mind my two servants falling in love. I think it's quite sweet. Believe me, that boy needs a girlfriend..."
"...I'm not his girlfriend..." muttered Gretel.
"...but I thought you were holding out for something better," continued Nettlewart, "that Handsome Prince you're always banging on about. I thought you've been waiting all your life for him and now, here you are, in the ideal situation for some gorgeous bit of fishnet to whisk you off and you're canoodling with this... this nobody."
The witch waved an arm halfheartedly at the cowering Boy. He wasn't looking at either of them, but biting his lip and staring into the middle distance. Pretending he wasn't there in the hope that they'd start thinking it too.
"The pathetic henchman of your mortal enemy," Nettlewart cooed sweetly, "somebody who locked you up here, who would murder your only brother. A boy who snivels and cowers and will never amount to anything more than an insect. A cockroach. A worm. Now, it would suit me just fine for you to find a comfort and a kinship with him, to become a vile crawling creature just like he is. It would make my job a damn sight easier, believe me. But I don't think that's what you want, is it? I think you'd see that as selling yourself short. Don't you?"
The Boy was staring miserably at Gretel now. She looked him up and down as he leaned limply against the wall.
"Yes."
"But you do love him, don't you?"
There was something so pleading, so needy about him. Somehow, it appealed to her. Maybe it was looking after an impractical mother and an idle brother all her life. Her fist clenched inside Nettlewart's warm, clasped hands.
"No."
There was an audible exhale from the Boy. Gretel risked a look in his direction. He was sagging like a deflating balloon. He caught her gaze and turned his head away. They seemed to stand like that for an age, in a cold silence. The magnetism between them had been reversed, pushing them away from one another. She could see him trying to sink into the stone wall. She felt that she should leave the room, but the witch hadn't finished watching them squirm. Nettlewart's hands around her's were soft and kind but the cool green eyes that fixed on her danced with malice.
"No?" Asked the witch eventually.
"No."
Nettlewart released her hands and opened her mouth to speak.
"And you don't need to tell me that there are no Handsome Princes to wait for," interrupted Gretel, "I know it's just a dream. But I also know that there are such things decent, ordinary men in this world. You've got one of them locked up in the kitchen but there isn't one in this room. It isn't that your boy's not a Prince. It's that he's a worm. And he disgusts me."
She didn't look for a response to her outburst, but twisted around and ran into the kitchen.
"Gretel..." sighed a voice from the little cage.
"Not now, Hansel," whispered Gretel tersely. She picked up a rag and began to dust the closest available surface furiously.
Hansel, well aquainted with his sister's patented Angry Dusting, fell silent again and watched her. Neither of them looked up as the Boy scuttled at speed through the kitchen, eyes downcast and hugging himself to the front door, bumped into into it, fumbled with the catch and hurried out. They still didn't look up when the front door opened again seconds later and the Boy came back in for his forgotten broom, tripped over it, knocked over a pile of books, tried to put them back up, gave up after they fell over again and, broom in hand and red with humiliation, slammed the door behind him. The sound of sweeping started up outside. And then there was a stirring of long skirts against the ground. A woman's footsteps walked slowly over to the study door and gently closed it. They were alone. Gretel's dusting slowed, and finally came to a stop. She put her duster back down on the table. The dust rose in a little mushroom cloud from the rag and settled gently on the table again.
"What a mess," she sighed to herself as she sadly sank next to her brother's cage. She put her hand through the bars and stroked his hair.
"You're telling me," replied Hansel.
"Listen, about the Boy..."
"You don't love him, do you?"
"No! Absolutely not!"
"I saw what happened there, Gretel. And the way you look at him. It's as though you're looking through him. At something else."
Gretel frowned. "It's nothing like that. It's just... I don't know. There's something in his eyes. He shouldn't be here."
"None of us should be here."
"I know. Maybe I just feel sorry for him."
"I feel sorry for them both."
Gretel stared at her brother. "Really?"
Hansel nodded.
"You feel sorry for her? But... she's evil!"
"So's he."
"He's being controlled."
"How do you know that she isn't?"
Gretel fell into a stunned silence. Hansel usually never gave other people another thought, let alone people trying to eat him.
"There's just something very sad about her," continued Hansel, "like Jake the Fool, you know, back in the days before everybody stopped just laughing at him and realised he was actually mentally ill. You remember the way he used to argue with himself before they put him on those pills that make him dribble?"
"So you're saying we should put her on Jake's pills? Leave her to dribble and wet herself?" Gretel scowled at the big stove at the other end of the kitchen. "Sounds like a plan. Now all we have to do it break out of here and break into Jake's. And then break back into here to spike her drink. And then break back out again..."
"I don't know what we should do, Gretel." Hansel pinched at his swollen belly. "Maybe if you gave me a twig or something, and I could persuade her that it was one of my fingers, then she'd think I wasn't putting any weight on and she wouldn't kill me."
"Hansel, that wouldn't fool anybody, let alone the Witch of the Western Woods. It wouldn't fool Jake."
"What do you say, then? Try Plan A for the umpteenth time?"
"Plan A is sensible. We've got a hairpin, that's part one done, and I'm bound to be able to pick that lock sooner or later. Perseverance and elbow grease, like Mum always said."
"And if you do manage to get the cage open this time, we've still got the front door to get through..."
"We can climb through a window."
"...and a dark forest that we can't navigate teeming with wolves that start going nuts the minute you start work on the cage."
"Well it's got to be better than this place. And we can throw the Boy to the wolves. That should keep them busy for a couple of seconds while they suck the skin off the bones."
"And what if Nettie catches us?"
Gretel smiled. "What can she do? Kill us?" She paused and thought for a second. "You're calling her 'Nettie' now?"
"There just has to be a better way," continued Hansel, ignoring the last remark, "there have to be keys at least."
"I've told you before," hissed Gretel, "I've looked everywhere. She must keep them on her. And I... I just can't think of any other way."
"Maybe if you got a decent night's sleep tonight you might have a clearer head tomorrow to think of a plan that'll actually work."
Gretel rubbed her forehead. It was true, her mind had been so cloudy since she'd come to the cottage. She knew that there had to be a better plan than the same one she percevered at every night until sheer exhaustion or frustration foiled her, but she just couldn't think... she was sure that the stove was laughing at her.
"We don't have time to lose a night," she replied. "I'll start as soon as she goes to sleep tonight."
She took her hand out of Hansel's hair, kissed her fingertips and pressed them against his cheek.
"I love you, Fuzzychops."
Hansel caught the fingers and kissed them back, sadly. "Love you too, Uglymug."
Gretel sighed and took out the stolen hairpin. It was twisted and weak from the many hours of desperate lock picking the nights before. Just like her. There was no way it could work. She knew that. But she had to try. The door to the study started to open again, slowly but purposefully. Gretel sprung back to her feet and slipped the hairpin into her pocket. Nettlewart emerged at the doorway, a basketful of cakes in one hand, the mop bucket in the other.
"You left this," said the witch as she passed Gretel, "it's filthy. Don't do that again."
Gretel took the bucket from her, taking care not to spill any more of the murky water. She looked up at Nettlewart as she did so. Just for a flicker of a moment, she felt as though she was looking into a mirror. The resentment that she felt, her hatred of the cottage and her own helplessness seemed to flash across the woman's face, and then dissapeared. Gretel blinked. What if Hansel was right? What if everybody was under a spell, even Nettlewart? She was suddenly aware that she was still peering curiously at the Wicked Witch of the Western Woods.
"Yes Mistress," she replied.
The witch nodded and continued with her basket over to the faintly groaning Hansel. Gretel took the bucket, opened the door and, ignoring the Boy' half-hearted protests, threw the contents onto the cobbles outside.