Alydia Rackham's Fairytales by Alydia Rackham

Author:Alydia Rackham [Rackham, Alydia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542907576
Published: 2017-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

“Mumma, how did this happen to you?” Gretel demanded.

The three of them sat around the table of sweets—Lotta at the head, and one child to either side. In true childlike fashion, they had plied her with questions even as they stuffed their mouths with food, both with equal intensity. Each child held onto one of Lotta’s hands with one of their hands, and with the free hand, they ate. The feeling of their fingers grasped within hers filled Lotta’s heart to bursting, and she found it difficult to form any words at all.

“Tell me first what has happened to you,” she urged. “I have tried to watch you, but I didn’t dare come too near.”

“We’ve nearly starved to death all summer!” Hansel exclaimed around a mouthful of tart. “When Marta married father, everything got worse. She almost never cooked enough food for us, and when she did feed us, she told us we were greedy and would try to take it away.”

“And she gave the dog and cat to our neighbors, no matter how much I cried!” Gretel told her.

“And she would do things—break things—around the house, and then tell Papa that we’d done it!” Hansel went on, his face turning red. “And whenever he was being kind to us, or spending an afternoon or evening with us, she would come up to him and put her hand on him, and he would forget about us completely.”

“Like he was under a spell,” Gretel whispered tearily, looking at her brother. “She made him hate us as much as she hates us!”

“And now they’ve left us out in the woods to die,” Hansel muttered angrily, taking a swig of hot chocolate. “I know it was Marta’s idea.”

“What happened to you, Mumma?” Gretel demanded again.

“Yes, Papa came home one day and told us you were dead!” Hansel cried.

Lotta tried to smile, and squeezed their hands.

“I’m not sure I should tell you…” she murmured.

“You can tell us, Mumma,” Gretel urged solemnly. “You can trust us.”

Lotta smiled painfully again, then took a bracing breath.

“When I was a girl, and I met your Papa, we fell very much in love. But Marta loved your Papa, too. After Papa and I married, Marta became so bitter and cruel that no one else wanted to marry her, either. The day your father came home to tell you I had died…I had actually just gone into the wood for a moment, while you were in school, to search for mushrooms. Marta followed me. And she told me how jealous of me she had always been, how she had always wanted revenge on me for taking what she wanted. And she laid a curse on me.”

“She is a witch!” Hansel yelped. “We knew it!”

“Yes,” Lotta nodded. “She made me ugly and unrecognizable, and thus banished me from the village. And when your Papa came, she cursed him too, so he would think a tree had fallen on me.” Lotta took a shaking breath. “And when I saw my reflection in a pond, I knew I could never come home looking this way.

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