Hansen and Gracie by Olivia Snowe

Author:Olivia Snowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hansel and Gretel, Olivia Snowe, Michelle Lamoreaux, 978-1-4342-9150-9, 978-1-4342-9831-7, 978-1-4342-9146-2, Twicetold Tales, Stone Arch Books, fractured fairy tales, fairy tales
Publisher: Stone Arch Books
Published: 2014-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

~10~

We walk until the sun is coming up in front of us. There’s a wide river on the city’s east side, so we walk along the river road until we reach a high, lighted bridge, alive and shaking with early-morning commuter trains and highway traffic.

We hold onto the railings of the pedestrian path as we cross, wary of the shaking steel that is holding us up.

“It’s supposed to shake,” Hansen says, and we believe it, but it doesn’t help to know.

On the far side of the bridge, the city is gone, and there are trees and small homes and gas stations and a post office, just like there had been in the suburb before the city.

The road bends around and becomes a highway. We can’t walk safely there, so we take a turn after the post office and find ourselves on a narrow street, with cars parked all along one side.

There are little white homes with dark blue shutters and fences of wrought iron and white-painted wood.

We stop at the far end of the block, where the street becomes a wide cul-de-sac on a gentle slope.

At the top of the slope sits a house that we both recognize at once. The sight of it makes us catch our breath and grab one another’s hand.

The house is pale blue-gray, with bright white shutters and a door so boldly red against the snowy landscape that it makes our eyes water.

A gate sits open in the center of the wooden fence that encloses the front yard, which is covered in untrodden snow.

There’s the friendly-looking apple tree reaching toward the sun in the clear sky, waving its supple branches back and forth in the winter wind.

“It can’t be real,” Hansen says, his voice cautious. But it’s right there in front of us, just like we dreamed it.

“It is,” Gracie says, facing her brother and taking his hands. “We should go in. We should ring the bell!”

Hansen shakes his head.

We’re anxious. We’re afraid. But we feel excited. We feel jubilant.

“Something doesn’t seem right here,” Hansen says slowly, looking at the house suspiciously. “Dreams don’t come true like this, Gracie.”

“Not ever?” she says, her eyes pleading and her lips blue with cold.

We don’t have to decide. We don’t have to argue.

Because just then, the front door of our dream house swings open and a woman appears in the doorway.

She isn’t our mother. But she’s smiling, and her face is open and kind, and she says, “Good morning, children. Please, come in out of the cold.”

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