ACT II: SCENE 4
Nobody sleeps well tonight. While Mrs Trellis dreams of screaming portraits and floors covered in dust and glass and maggots, The Witch has nightmares full of candied apples and sugared almonds.
A dark haired, green eyed child, about ten years old. Bony hands on her throat, pushing down. Her torso and head cold and wet, her hands gripping the sides of the tin bath. She cannot breathe. Her legs kick a little, and then give up. The hands wrench her up out of the bath and she splutters to catch her breath. A cruel, sharp face blinks into focus.
"Please, mummy..."
"This is what they'll do to you. They'll do it til you're dead."
The child is shaken.
"When will you learn?"
"Mummy..."
"When will you learn?"
She tries to speak but her open mouth is met with cold water again.
A skinny tot in rags screams with hunger. The green eyed girl is in her teens. The cruel faced woman is older than she should be, all ashen and spent. She slumps in the armchair and mutters strange words as green eyes brings her tea.
"It's all yours," croaks the old woman.
"What?"
"Take this." The old woman painfully holds her large staff towards the girl, who takes it, mouth agog. "It will help you. I have seen to it."
"But..."
"And the house, the books, the title. They belong to you now. And you belong to them."
"But... what about you?"
The old woman stares straight forwards, looking at nothing, seeing everything.
"I'll be around, girl. I'll be around..."
Void. And emptiness. And flames. Flames in the crooked old woman's very soul...
The teacup smashes.
Nettlewart looked around herself, startled. She spotted the broken cup on the floor next to her foot, seeping last night's herbal tea into the floorboards and cursed. Morning again. She eased herself out of the armchair and stretched, cracking as many joints as possible. She lit a fire in the grate, gave her thick, black hair a quick comb and de-smeared her makeup. She made it halfway to the door before she turned back and picked up her staff. She made it halfway to the door once more before she turned back again and went to her desk drawer for her keys. She stopped. The slim thread of cotton she had attached across the drawer had been broken. She opened the drawer. The keys were still there, but the key to the front door wasn't at right angles with the key to the privy any more.
"So it begins."
Nettlewart frowned at the broken thread for a moment before she realised that she hadn't said anything.
Hansel looked blearily up at the two young people arguing quietly in the far corner of the kitchen. He wasn't sure how, but there was something... different about them. About the way they held themselves in front of each other.
"You are not!" hissed the Boy.
"I bloody well am," retorted Gretel.
"It's insane."
"It's the only way to get us all out of here in one uncaged, uncooked piece."
"It's a surefire way of getting us all killed. Or worse." The Boy looked pleadingly at Hansel. "Can't you talk some sense into your sister, Hansel?"
Hansel chuckled grimly. "You're failing to understand. You don't have any siblings, do you? And you certainly don't understand anything about women."
The Boy smiled to himself a little and murmured a "Hmm." Gretel cleared her throat.
"Look," continued the Boy, "Nettlewart is the last in a long line of powerful witches and has been studying magic for years. You, on the other hand, have no magic in your blood, and have been studying magic for no time whatsoever. Who do you really think would win if you fought witchcraft with witchcraft?"
"I'll cram it," replied Gretel calmly. "I'm a fast reader and I have a great memory."
"And that's assuming that we so much as get hold of the magic book," added the Boy. "I'm pretty certain that she keeps that in her safe in the attic, but I can't be sure."
"Well then tonight we can look in the safe and if it isn't there then..."
"Well?" said the Boy.
"Then we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Besides," added Gretel cheerfully, "There might be something even more useful in the safe."
"Like?"
"Maybe she's got a handsome prince locked up in there."
She giggled at him. He brushed a hair from her mouth and smiled at her.
"Why are you so stupid?" He asked.
"Why do you care?"
"Why do you care why I care?"
"Shut up." She punched him playfully in the stomach. He sucked in through his teeth.
"Ooh, sorry. Was that a bruise?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry."
Gretel gently stroked the Boy's stomach where she had punched the old wound.
"Is there something going on between you two?" asked Hansel.
Gretel rolled her eyes. "Hansel, what do you th..."
The study door glided open quickly and Nettlewart strode into the kitchen. Gretel and the Boy shot apart and started to dust opposite parts of the kitchen as innocuously as possible.
"Believe me," purred the witch as she passed, "I have no interest whatsoever in what the two of you were prattling on about. Doubtless Gretel, you have an ingenious scheme to get yourself and your big fat brother out of this place and doubtless the Boy has an equally ingenious scheme to get your pretty little body into his grotty little bed. Neither of these bother me since I know that the first of these plans will fail and I really do hope for your sake Gretel that the second one will too."
Nettlewart turned and smiled at the Boy. He was pressed against the wall, his eyes on the floor, the tops of his ears burning red.
"Don't worry, Boy," she added, "you can still see her naked. She has to have a wash sooner or later."
"Would you like a cup of tea, Mistress Snapdragon?" asked Gretel, flatly.
"I shall make some for myself later, Gretel. Meanwhile, there's firewood that needs collecting and a gutter that needs repairing."
Gretel bobbed a minimal curtsey.
"Yes, M'm."
"Oh, and Gretel?" called the witch.
Gretel turned from her attempt to leave.
"Mistress Snapdragon?"
"What I said about you having a wash? Take the hint, girl. There's hot water on the stove."
Gretel bit her lip, took the bubbling kettle from the stove and carried it outside. The Boy watched her leave from the corner of his eye.
"Oh, stop moping, Boy" snapped Nettlewart. "Go and polish something."
The Boy scuttled off into the study. Nettlewart smiled at Hansel in his cage.
"Just you and me then, Hansel," she said, picking up a large, iron candlestick. She knelt next to him and passed the candlestick behind her back.
"Just you, and me and... oh look!" She brought the candlestick back. it had turned to gingerbread. "Your favourite!"
Hansel lay back muzzily and accepted the cake being passed through the bars. He watched her as she calmly broke the candlestick into pieces.
"There goes my future", he thought as each portion broke. "There goes having babies. There goes making love."
He thought about his sister and the Boy. How they had spoken to each other, how they had smiled. The look in the Boy's eyes when she had stroked his stomach. He thought about this strange woman in her strange cottage, about her soft, white fingers and long black hair. About her caramel voice and her cherry smile and her eyes - green with sorrow, black with rage and always shining bright with... with what? A tortured spirit? An impotent angel? How could he feel sorry for somebody who wanted to kill him? Were these feelings all part of being under her spell? Was the Boy in on it too? He watched her eyes some more. He could feel no hatred at all. Witchcraft. An ebony eyelash fluttered from above her eye and rested, unnoticed by her, on her pale cheek. She was an enchantress in every way.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"Because," replied the witch, "your mother never fed you enough and I need you to be nice and big and fat for when I cook you and eat you."
"But why are you doing that? Thee cooking and eating, I mean."
"Because it's the sort of thing we witches do, Hansel. You know the stories. The cannibalisation of the innocent is a Snapdragon thing. A calling card, I suppose. Been going on for countless generations..."
"Am I your first?"
Nettlewart stopped in her tracks.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Am I your first? Have you eaten a human being before?"
Nettlewart paused, then put the gingerbread down and leant in close to him.
"You won't tell anyone?" she asked, softly.
"When would I be able to?"
"You are the first. It's the sort of thing that changes a witch, apparently. Makes one really strong. Really black, like all the others who went before her."
"So you want to be like the ones who went before you."
"Of course."
"But you're not."
"What?" snapped the witch.
"But you're not like the others now," explained Hansel, "that's why you're doing this. I wonder how you're different."
Nettlewart sat back from the cage again. She could feel her staff behind her twitch and crackle. A slap across her face. Fingernails in her shoulder. Freezing water in her lungs. She put her hand to her forehead. "Um..."
Hansel pushed a couple of podgy fingers through the bars of his cage and gently touched the edge of her dress. "I don't think this is what you want, Nettie. Have you been told to do this?"
Twitch. Crackle. "Um..."
"Who by?"
Slap. Nails. Water. "Um..."
"I think you're lost like the rest of us, Nettie. I think you're lost behind that staff and those robes and that darkness in your eyes. I think you're lost in the witch."
"I AM THE WITCH!!!!"
Hansel shot back in alarm as Nettlewart shook the bars of his cage. Her eyes were black and wild. Her breathing was short with rage. The fire in the grate behind her danced around her head like the halo of Lucifer. Evil was in her, and shone from every part of her. He could smell it on her, could taste it on the air, all bitter and billious. And then, as suddenly as it had come, it was gone again. Her eyes brightenned and her face cleared. She sat back for a moment, gathering herself, then stood up.
"Don't try to understand this, Hansel," she told him gently. "I'm not a poor, misunderstood, lost soul. I do what I do because I am what I am. And don't think that this is my destiny or anything. Don't think that this is Pantomime's fault, or the Narrator's. I saw to that. Pantomime would have me lose but it is nothing now, it's only a ghost in a jamjar. This is free will, so don't feel sorry for me. Because I'm going to win, and the Boy will remain in my power and your sister will crumble away to a shadow and you, my dear, will die."
"We'll all die, Nettie."
Nettlewart ran her fingers tenderly over the top of the cage.
"I know, dear Hansel. But you will die tomorrow."
"What?"
Hansel turned his head slightly to see his sister standing at the open front door, kettle in hand. Her face was a picture of freshly scrubbed horror.
"You heard," replied the witch. "He's very nearly ready. So I suppose the big cauldron will need a really good scrub. And tell the Boy to dig up plenty of potatoes and pick some greens."
"No!"
"You will do what I say, Gretel." Nettlewart put her hand to her forehead again. "I need to... I need to prepare myself. Invocations and, erm, that. I'm not to be disturbed."
With that, she swept out of the kitchen into the study. The study door was barely closed before it was opened again, the Boy was flung through it and it was slammed behind them all. The Boy hit the corner of a shelf of pans face first and fell onto his back. He was just about able to cover his head with his arms before the recently unbalanced shelf came clattering and clanging on top of him. Gretel dropped the kettle and ran to pick him free from the tumbled kitchenware.
"Did I hear right?" gasped the Boy as a large saucepan was lifted from his head, "We only have one more day?"
"We've only got one night," corrected Gretel, setting the shelf upright, "we can't do anything while she's awake. We have to waste half the time we have."
The Boy started picking pans up off the floor. "Why has she decided to do it so soon?" He gazed at Gretel guiltily. "Do you think she suspects we're up to something?"
"I think..." came a faint voice from the corner of the room, "I think I made her mad."
"That was you making her scream, Hansel?" asked Gretel as she went to her brother. "I thought only the Boy ever made her that angry."
"That's not entirely true," the Boy muttered, "sometimes she just makes herself angry. I thought that was what had happened."
Hansel shook his head. "I was just talking to her. I was being nice to her, and she just turned..."
"...dark?" interjected the Boy. Hansel nodded.
"Why were you being nice to her?" snapped Gretel.
"You're nice to the Boy," retorted Hansel, "and I just thought if I could reason with her good side..."
"Oh no no no," sighed the Boy, "never try to speak to her good side. Her bad side gets all jealous and kicky."
"She just seems so confused."
"I'll confuse her," glowered Gretel, "I'll have her thinking her feet are red hot iron. I'll make her gouge her own damn eyes out before she lays a hand on my brother."
"Gretel?" Hansel stared at his sister. The fire was flickering behind her hair the way it had with Nettlewart before. It made her face look dark. "Are you all right?"
Gretel blinked and smiled. "I'm fine, Hansel. Don't you worry." She squeezed his hand.
"So what do we do now?" asked the Boy.
"Now?" Gretel stood up and surveyed the kitchen. "Now we clean the big cauldron. And we dig potatoes and pick greens and fix the guttering and do everything we're told. And we wait for her to fall asleep. And that's when we have to really get to work."
Gretel took the Boy by the arm and led him away. They took one end of the big cauldron each and heaved it outside to wash it.
Hansel lay curled up and alone in his cage and thought. One more day. One more day and either he or Nettie would have to die. As much as it suprised him, he honestly couldn't decide which was worse. One more day... He remembered the darkness on Nettlewart's face, and the same look that had come over his sister. Then he remembered something else. Something that had been said. Something very important that neither he nor the witch had picked up on. He repeated it to the room in general.
"She's seen to it? A ghost in a jamjar?"