ACT 2: SCENE 2
There was the distant hoot of an owl. Gretel sat up and looked around herself. A small fire still flickered in the grate, casting strange, moving shadows throughout the dim kitchen. Copper pans and caudrons gleamed momentarily. Lights and colours danced faintly over the floor and over the foetal shapes of the two sleeping boys. She could make out Hansel's large form through the bars of the cage. The Boy was harder to see, being in the opposite corner of the kitchen and mostly covered in hay, but she could hear the rhythmic breathing and occasional whimper that meant he was asleep. She sat still, watching and listening. Used as she was to sleeping with great wads of cotton wool only slightly muffling her mother's nocturnal cacophonies, she was amazed at how many sounds the night actually had. There was the wind in the trees and scuffling creatures outside, the crackle of the fire, the creaking of walls and floors, the rustles and mumbles and sighs of the sleepers in the kitchen. She strained to hear a noise coming from the study. There was nothing for what seemed like an age. But then she heard it. A light, ladylike snoring. She exhaled in relief. The witch was asleep.
As quietly as she could, she made her way out of her makeshift bed and across the stone floor to the fire. She took a slim candle from the mantlepiece and, holding her breath, pushed the wick gently into the flame. When fraction of the fire had leapt onto the candle, she gingerly withdrew it, holding a cupped hand over the light. So far so good. Usually the wolves would have started by now. She tiptoed over to the cage. Kneeling by the door, she set the candle down, took the hairpin from her pocket and shakily slid it into the cage's lock. A sudden howl went up in the woods outside. Hansel jolted awake and there was a stirring in the pile of hay in the far corner. Gretel cursed under her breath but continued. The wolves hadn't woken Nettlewart before. In fact, they probably made her sleep more easily.
"How long have you been going?" whispered Hansel.
"I've only just started," replied Gretel.
"The wolves are late, though."
"Not really," sighed Gretel, "they knew what I was doing. I think they're toying with me."
Hansel closed his eyes again. Gretel continued to fumble with the lock as the howling grew louder and closer. Her eyes watered in the flickering half light.
"Hansel?" she whispered, "are you asleep?"
"Yes," answered her brother.
There was another pause. Gretel cracked her knuckles and tried yet again.
"You know, Hansel, I don't see why you can't give this a..."
A hand fell on her shoulder.
Gretel gasped and span around on her knees. The Boy's face looked strange in the candlelight. It showed up the lines around his mouth and hid his sad eyes in deep, black sockets. It picked out the hollows in his bruised cheeks. He looked like a skeleton.
"Oh," sighed Gretel, "it's only you, Boy."
"Gretel," whispered the Boy, "this is wrong."
Gretel scowled at him. "You're not going to tell Nettlewart, Boy. Because if you do, you may think your life is miserable now, but I can..."
"I'm not going to tell Nettie."
"So what can you do, Boy? Go back to sleep."
Gretel turned back around to the cage. The Boy caught her wrist and twisted her around to him again.
"I can help you."
"What?"
"Because this is wrong. I mean, you're doing it all wrong. I know this place. I know her. I know how to do it right."
He leaned towards her, out of the eerie candlelight. The skull melted back into a human face. He held a bunch of keys towards her. She stared at him.
"She keeps them in a drawer in her desk." The Boy's eyes were bright with life for the first time. He smiled at her. "I... I nicked them!"
Gretel took the keys from his upturned hand.
"Thankyou."
They smiled at one another for a moment. She couldn't remember a time when she'd seen him smile like that before. It split his battered face with joy and showed her flashes of that elusive Something Else which she knew was inside. He almost seemed to be glowing.
"And you'll come with us?"
The Boy nodded gratefully.
"If I may," he whispered, "although I won't know anybody to stay with in Pantoland when I get there."
Gretel tried the first key in the lock of the cage. It didn't fit.
"Right now that's the least of our worries," she replied.
She tried another. Still no good.
"We'll work something out once we're home."
The third key slotted in perfectly. She turned it. There was a click.
The wolves outside went bezerk.
Gretel swung the cage door wide open, amazed at the simplicity of it all.
"That's it," she whispered, "we're free. You're free, Hansel."
She leapt to her feet, overjoyed, and took the Boy's hand.
"And it's thanks to you, Boy..."
Gretel faltered and stood dumbstruck for a moment, searching for something fitting to say. Finally she gave up, and settled on flinging her arms around him in a bear hug. She squeezed him with a sisterly tightness, but still felt him press her shoulders towards him gently. As she pulled away, she planted a butterfly kiss on his cheek. Alarmed by the heat of his skin against her lips, she avoided his eyes as she turned back to Hansel, who still hadn't moved from the cage.
"Come on, Hansel!" she hissed.
There was a pause. Hansel still didn't budge.
"Hansel?"
"I can't move," came the moan from the openned cage.
Gretel and the Boy kneeled back down beside him.
"He's been cramped in that cage for days," muttered the Boy, "his muscles could have frozen or something."
"Come on, Hansel," Gretel soothed, and reached a hand through the open cage door.
And hit a bar.
She gasped, and drew her hand back as though it had been stung.
"What is it?" whispered the Boy.
Gretel ran her hand gingerly along the hole where the door had been. Her fingers bounced off invisible bars.
"The bars are still there." Gretel pushed at them wildly. "The door's open, I can see it's open, but it's not."
The Boy slumped. "Because there's more than one door. More than one lock. Or one cage. There's the real one, and there's the magic one."
"And the magic one is just as strong?" asked Hansel.
"Maybe stronger."
The wolves were beginning to die down.
"Do you hear that?" whispered Gretel.
"I suppose they don't have anything to worry about," sighed the Boy, "I suppose it means we're going nowhere."
"I suppose so," muttered Gretel, "for tonight."
"Gretel, there's no way that you can..."
"Yes there is, Boy." Gretel closed the cage door again and ruffled her brother's hair. "Even if I have to become a witch myself, I'll get that other cage open. And then we'll get out of here. Or we'll all die trying. You with me, Hansel?"
A large hand caught hers.
"Absolutely."
She turned to face the Boy.
"You, Boy?"
The Boy looked up at her. A noble soul shone within his sad eyes. He took her free hand.
"Absolutely."
* * * * * * * * * * *
The wolves had stopped a long time ago. Gretel looked up briefly from her pile of blankets as soft footsteps tiptoed in from the study. She lay her head back down and watched the shilhouette of the Boy against the glowing grate as he crept back to his heap of straw. There was a brief rustling, and then silence.
"You got the keys back OK?" she whispered eventually.
"Yeah," he replied, "she'll never know they were gone."
There was a pause.
"So does she sleep in the study every night?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Why?"
"I don't know," whispered the voice from the pile of hay, "she's got a bed in the attic. She just reads, or rants and raves, until she tires herself out, and then she falls asleep. I think it's just one of those generic Witch things."
"But you stole the keys out of the study."
"Yes. From her desk. "
"When she was asleep?"
"Well, obviously. It's the only time they're not on her."
"But what if she'd woken up? Or had only been pretending to be asleep? What if she'd caught you helping us?"
"I don't know. I mean, I'd be punished, but I don't know how."
There was another pause.
"Listen," whispered Gretel eventually, "your help means so much to us. Really it does, but... I know what you're doing it for. And I don't want you to get hurt. Physically or otherwise."
"I'm doing this because it's the sort of thing I should do," replied the Boy, "I'm sick of being her insect all my life. Besides, you're doing what you're doing for love..."
Gretel flinched at the word
"...so why can't I?"
Gretel was silent.
"So it doesn't really matter that you don't feel the same way about me," continued the Boy, "I understand that. If Hansel despised you, you'd still love him, still risk your life to save his, wouldn't you."
The Boy pulled hay over himself and shivered. Gretel got up, and tiptoed with her blanket over to the Boy's nest. She sat next to him in the hay and threw the blanket around his shoulders as well as her own. She pulled her corner across her lap and accidentally touched the Boy's knee. They both snorted a quiet, embarrassed laugh.
"Is it me," whispered Gretel, "or does that fire not actually make any heat?"
"It makes plenty if you're close enough to it," smiled the Boy grimly, "believe me."
The Boy was still shaking like a leaf. Gretel huddled closer into him.
"Don't do that," he murmured.
"But you're still shivering," replied Gretel, "you must be freezing."
"Gretel," sighed the Boy, "if your brother trembles when he's under a blanket with you, he's cold. I'm not your brother."
He looked at her sadly. She sighed too.
"Please don't fall in love with me, Boy."
"Too late. I fell in love with you before I met you."
"Then you'll understand about me and Prince Charming..."
"That's a fantasy, Gretel."
"And this isn't? Falling in love with me is going to bring you nothing but more misery. If we all get out of here alive then we've still got nothing, just another mouth to feed, but what is more likely is that we're going to get caught very badly hurt. Maybe even killed."
Gretel was aware that their faces were inches away from one another. Their eyes were locked. She could feel the invisible magnet begin to pull again. She fought it.
"I've seen you in my dreams," protested the Boy, "you're going to save my soul."
"No, Boy, I'm not. I'm going to get you into trouble."
"I don't care. I love you."
She could see herself reflected in his pupils, lit up with the flickering firelight. Their fingers brushed together lightly under the blanket.
"But I don't," replied Gretel, "I can't. You're in league with the Wicked Witch, you're untrustworthy and cowardly and scrawny and twisted."
"You've got me there," shrugged the Boy, "I'm no good."
She couldn't see his eyes any more - somehow they had automatically tilted their heads to pre-empt the problem of banging noses - but she could smell his sugary breath. Any minute now, something or someone was going to interrupt them.
"I don't love you. I never will. And the fact that I happen to fancy the pants off you is not going to change that..."
Gretel could just make out the Boy's eyebrows shooting up. She cursed herself for letting that one slip. Still, any minute now...
"Hmm," murmured the Boy, "I think I can work with that."
Any minute, any second now, the interruption would come...
To Gretel's immense suprise, it was she who leaned forward the extra millimetre and gently kissed his bottom lip. His hand squeezed hers, and then lightly ran up her arm. She took his head in her free hand and kissed him harder, open mouthed, biting toothlessly at his lips one, two, three times before allowing his tongue to slide hungrily over hers. He tasted of chocolate and marzipan. There was nothing for several minutes but the sound of the crackling fire and their hard breathing and sweet, black obvilivion, pressing themselves against each other in the darkness.
First kisses in Pantomime are perfect and pure - little pecks between True Lovers against a backdrop of sunsets and slushy music. First kisses in real life are usually uncomfortable, messy affairs. Blind, groping expressions of lust between the inexperienced and nervous, completely unsure of what they're doing and what to do next. In Pantomime, the first kiss would be sandwiched between fights and songs, or in the middle of the finale wedding. There's no question of what to do next - you carry on fighting or singing or getting married. But when the first kiss is in a nest of warm hay in a quiet, sleeping, midnight cottage, when there is nothing to do and nobody to see for hours, what to do next suddenly becomes very very important.
The Boy had become almost unaware of the kissing. It was what his hands were doing now that interested him. They pushed their fingers through her soft, short hair, ran down the groove of her spine and stopped to admire the curve of her slim waist. He was vaguely concious that he was now lying down beneath her, with both of them completely covered under the blanket. It was getting very warm.
Gretel ran her hands gently over his chest as he caressed her back and hips. The entirety of his thin body throbbed with his quickenned heartbeat. His shirt was moist with sweat. There were only a few buttons on it - a couple of seconds work for nimble fingers used to darning and knitting. She pushed the shirt open and stroked his naked torso with the palms of her hands. Her kisses left his mouth and began to travel down his neck.
"Um..." said the Boy.
Gretel stopped abruptly and sat up. The Boy removed his hands from her waist and started to do up his buttons.
"Um..." he said again.
"Sorry," blushed Gretel, "it's just... I thought..."
"No. I'm sorry." The Boy wiped his brow. "I... you should sleep. We both should. It might be a long night tomorrow."
"OK."
Gretel got up. The Boy handed her the blanket.
"What..." she whispered, "...what just happened?"
"We just had our first kiss" smiled the Boy.
"So are we Going Out?"
"We're not allowed out," he replied.
"No," sighed Gretel, "I mean does this mean you're my Boyfriend?"
"Well," answered the Boy, "that's entirely up to you. But since I'm a Boy and I'm your friend, it seems perfectly reasonable to me."
Gretel smiled at him and went back to her bed.
"It does to me too."
"Then it's settled," came the whisper from the pile of hay in the corner. "Our only problem now is what Prince Charming will make of this arrangement."
"He'll probably kill you," yawned Gretel, "but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
The pile of hay giggled.
"Night then, Girl Of My Dreams."
"Good night, Boyfriend For Now."