Page 23 of Hansel and Gerhardt (The GriMM Tales #3)

Splinter

H ansel’s tongue touched neither tea nor sugar, and Herr Candy waited only for the last crumbs of that strange biscuit to pass Gerhardt’s lips before he sent them to the back of his long and pretty yard to chop firewood.

“The logs are just there by the shed,” he called from the doorway. “Take it out into the yard so I can see y—I mean, so you don’t make a mess over there.”

It struck Hansel as peculiar that they should need to take the logs into the open, away from the woodpile, just to cut them. But all of it was strange, every single thing so odd that Hansel began to feel as though he’d stepped away from reality altogether.

Gerhardt, if he found it at all bizarre, gave no sign of the fact.

Showing strength that Hansel wouldn’t have thought his starved body capable of twenty-four hours prior, he lifted an enormous log, then dropped it directly in the middle of the yard.

He came back to the shed, where Hansel waited with his own log under an arm, the other gripping an axe tight, while he waited to speak with him. “What are you doing?”

Gerhardt looked him in the eye, the touch of a glare about him. “Will you insist on asking such stupid questions repeatedly?” He grabbed the axe from Hansel’s hand, turned, and left.

Hansel had to walk a little deeper into the shed to find another. He could see a handle, pale, up the back somewhere. Carrying his wood, he moved past the other thick logs stacked by the door, then reached for the handle. But as he did, his boot hit something that felt exactly like… his boot.

He stepped back, feeling as if he’d trodden on someone’s foot, only to find he almost had. The tips of a pair of boots stuck out from beneath an old blanket. Not so strange, to be sure, but with everything else so unusual about the place, the normal-looking boots threw him slightly.

He bent down, lifting the edge of the blanket. There were more boots. And more again. Perhaps twenty pairs, maybe more still.

His eyes were drawn to shelves deeper in the shed, and there he could see coats, shirts, breeches, dresses, all neatly folded. And there were weapons. A few swords, some knives. Even a crossbow.

Herr Candy’s house was large, two storeys. Why should he need to keep his things out here in the shed?

The idea made him look again at the boots. He pulled the blanket all the way back to survey the rows of shoes.

Worn. All of them. But… different styles and different… sizes. They couldn’t possibly all fit him. Some might have fit Hansel even, but some… some were tiny. Children’s shoes.

Something about it horrified Hansel, though he couldn’t rightly say what, so he fled fast, throwing his log down close to Gerhardt’s. “When are we leaving? You said we were going to find a town.”

“We hardly need to now, do we?” Gerhardt dropped his axe-blade into the log with a loud thwack . “We have everything we need here.”

“Everything?” Hansel repeated bitterly. “This is no different to what we just escaped from. What’s going on with you?” He placed a hand on Gerhardt’s arm, but Gerhardt shook it off, stepping away a little, raising his axe instead.

He brought it down on the wood, crack . “He’s nothing like our father.” With this, he raised his chin to the back window of the cottage, where Herr Candy stood, still drinking tea, watching them.

A cool shudder knocked down Hansel’s spine. He took a step away from Gerhardt and lined up his own axe. “I don’t trust him.”

Crack went Gerhardt’s axe, and he threw down a shard of wood. “He’s been very kind to us. You shouldn’t speak about him that way.”

Crack went Hansel’s axe, hewing rough wood from the log. “And why shouldn’t I? He can’t hear us from there.”

Gerhardt looked across at Hansel sharply. “Can’t he?” Crack went his axe.

Herr Candy’s smile seemed to widen a little when Hansel looked again, but, stubbornly, he said, “No.” And down his axe came. He smacked the new slice of wood onto the small pile they were making. “I think he seems a lot like our father. And I don’t like the way he puts his hands on you.”

Gerhardt readjusted his log. “Are you jealous?”

The question, asked point blank, drew heated colour to Hansel’s cheeks. Gerhardt didn’t even look up when he said it. He carried on as if it were nothing, just a playful jab like he might have once made about Hansel’s axe skills.

Hansel felt as if he was placing his heart on top of Gerhardt’s log when, in a low voice, he said, “Yes. I am. I don’t like how he’s looking at you.

I don’t like how you’re acting. I liked you , Gerhardt.

You in the forest, just before. Last night.

Just this morning in the dark. And now you feel different. ”

Smash and down came Gerhardt’s axe, directly on top of his log, cracking it in two.

“I’ve just grown up a bit. He can see that.

Why can’t you?” Then, his eyes disconcertingly fast on Hansel’s, Gerhardt threw down his axe.

He brought his lovely fingers to the string of his shirt and pulled it loose.

“What are you doing?” asked Hansel.

He made no answer as he bundled the white linen in his hands, wrenching it from his breeches, taking the lot over his head and throwing it down to the grass.

“It’s freezing,” Hansel cried, making for the shirt. “Put it back on!”

But Gerhardt had his axe in hand again, the other readjusting his log. “I’m hot.”

Hansel could see the goosebumps breaking out on his pale skin. Even as he lifted the axe high, the muscles tensed not only with effort, but with the chill of the evening air. He brought the axe down with a crack , then shivered as he threw the split wood aside.

“You’re cold. It’s dangerous to handle the axe when you’re shivering like that.”

“You need to eat,” said Gerhardt. He said it so quietly that Hansel was forced to ask him to repeat it. Gerhardt cracked another piece off, then, “You’re not eating. He wants you to eat.”

Hansel looked long down the yard, but Herr Candy’s eyes were stuck on Gerhardt as he lifted his axe high above his head, as the length of his fit, lithe torso stretched out in full.

“I don’t want you to eat his food,” Hansel said. “I think there’s something wrong with it. You know it’s magical, of course it is. And I think it’s doing something to you.”

Crack . “I think if you don’t eat—” Gerhardt threw down the split wood “—something very bad is going to happen to both of us.”

“Then you admit it,” Hansel gasped out. “He’s some kind of evil, and he’s done something to the food.”

“You need to eat,” was all the reply Gerhardt made him.

Hansel’s fingers clenched tighter on his axe. He stared at Herr Candy, drinking his tea, drinking in Gerhardt.

And he made for the house.

He was no killer. He would have been one of the gentlest men to walk the earth, had he been left to his own devices. And just then, he wasn’t even sure what it was he intended to do. All Hansel knew was that Gerhardt was in danger. They both were. And that man, somehow, was at the centre of it.

Maybe he was going to threaten him?

Maybe he was going to smash a hole in his wall so large he’d throw the pair of them out in a fit of anger?

Maybe he was going to kill him…

Whatever it was, Hansel was bringing his axe with him to the house, striding fast.

But then something very peculiar happened.

The axe, true and heavy, with a steel blade that had destroyed elm—with a handle of varnished oak that had catapulted all the strength of his arms into the log—that axe felt lighter in his hand.

He barely registered it at first. He kept on down the lawn, anger and fear scrambling his senses.

Then his fingers sunk deep into the wood.

He’d been gripping the axe so tight his fingers had been white, and they closed almost completely in on themselves.

Hansel stopped dead in the field, raising the axe, which wilted in his hold.

The whole thing had gone flaccid, and with it, changed colour.

The handle, once brown and lacquered, had turned red, a thick and twisting vine of strawberry licorice. The axe head, sunk deep into the tip of the candy, was nothing more than a delicate wafer.

Astonished, he turned back to Gerhardt, who stood tall and breathless as the cool of evening wrapped around his frigid shoulders. And Gerhardt shook his head. The slightest, smallest shake.

Feeling the eyes of a predator at his cheek, Hansel looked back at the window.

Herr Candy watched him a moment, almost as if he was making sure Hansel could see the sick satisfaction on his face—the knowledge that he had just prevailed over Hansel for the third time that day.

Then he reached forward, opened the window latch, and called, “Almost time for dinner, boys. Come wash up!”