Page 26 of Hansel and Gerhardt (The GriMM Tales #3)

Feast of the Damned

H ansel’s arm smashed back into action with a crackle of toasted almond flakes scattering about the floor.

He’d been mid-punch, and his arm flung out long, but there was nothing there to meet it.

Herr Candy had taken Gerhardt to the kitchen, and by the time Hansel ran around the corner, Gerhardt was seated at the table, his plate piled up high, and his mouth stuffed full.

“Hansel,” he moaned over far too much food as his eyes flickered up, “you must join us. This is… This is to die for .”

A castle of baby potatoes, round and roasted, ruffled and golden on the edges, was accompanied by a cascade of garden fresh peas, sitting bright green beside a purple mountain of braised red cabbage.

Heavy dumplings, plump with cheese and onion, sat steaming, swimming with gravy.

Bright yellow k?sesp?tzle, soft, creamy and unctuous, against yielding stewed apples.

Bread, risen high and bursting from its tin, two thick slices laid decadently against Gerhardt’s mountain of food.

But amongst all this, any sort of meat was conspicuously absent.

Not for Herr Candy.

His plate displayed long strips of pink, rare and fatty, drizzled with gravy, prominent in the centre of all the other richness. He sat at the head of the table, cruel eyes dead on Hansel, his strong-lined face lit eerily by the light of the candles he’d set amongst the huge display.

“Sit,” said Herr Candy, and it wasn’t a polite request. Hansel knew failure to comply would likely spell disaster.

For the second time that day, he fell into a seat opposite Gerhardt.

His stomach screamed for the food on his plate.

The smell invaded every pleasure centre, weakening his resolve.

His mouth watered, his hands shook. The heat of the semi-dark room pressed in on him, and his eyes fell on an enormous black oven, scalding hot from all the work it had done to create this feast. The huge iron door was clamped shut, lit by a small window glowing orange from the fire within.

Herr Candy stabbed his fork into his meat, talking casually in regard to the object Hansel’s eyes had settled upon. “I had it brought in especially. All the way out here in the middle of the Dark Forest.”

Hansel regarded him coolly. “Why would you do that? A fireplace always sufficed for us at home.”

“It would have,” said Herr Candy, as disparaging as ever. He took a sip of wine, then lightened his tone. “As you can see, I like to cook. A lot. And that oven is the only one I could find that would handle such big loads.”

Hansel looked down at the mound of food on his plate.

Just as generous, just as luscious as that which Gerhardt shovelled in.

And the sounds Gerhardt made, the pleasure he got from eating it…

Hansel wondered how much of his enjoyment was magic, and how much was just the sheer joy of eating good food freely.

Were the potatoes enchanted, too? Was it only the candy? If Hansel ate, would one small bite really be enough to quell a hatred as strong as that which he felt for Herr Candy? Could he be calmed the way Gerhardt had?

“So,” said Herr Candy, pouring more wine into Gerhardt’s untasted glass. “Tell me a little more about yourselves. I so rarely keep anyone around long enough to talk.” Here he laughed, a little maniacally, and Gerhardt met it with a sweet laugh of his own.

“There’s very little to tell,” he said, lifting the wine. “You know we are woodcutters running from a mad father. You know we are— were —” Gerhardt caught himself “— were going to a city. We’re so happy we found you instead.”

“How kind you are,” hummed Herr Candy, watching him drink his wine with a devouring look in his eyes. “But that’s not really what I meant. The two of you… You have a… peculiar bond.”

“Peculiar?” Gerhardt raised his pretty eyebrows.

“What makes you say so?” asked Hansel. His stomach rumbled so loudly they all heard it.

“You are hungry,” Herr Candy observed. “Yet you do not eat.” That hard ‘t’ in his speech again.

“I’m not hungry,” Hansel lied.

Herr Candy narrowed his sharp eyes. “Yet I’ve cooked all this food just for you.”

“Do eat something, Hansel, for God’s sake,” Gerhardt hissed. “You’re being very impolite.”

Hansel noted the way his fingers pressed into his cutlery, the way he had begun to rock in his chair, just a little, so he reached out and took a bread roll from a pile in the centre of the table.

It was hot. So hot it hurt his fingers to hold, and he was relieved to have the excuse to drop it onto his plate.

“And what about you?” he asked Herr Candy, by way of distraction. “Have you always lived here?”

“Oh, good lord, no.” He punctuated the sentence with a chuckle. “Out here in the middle of nowhere?” He glared towards the window. “No. I had been living in the Royal City.”

“The Royal City?” Gerhardt sat a little taller. “We were considering… If we’d ended up going in that direction, we were wondering if we’d find employment there. Maybe at the palace.”

“The palace?” He threw back some more wine with bitter joviality. “My boy, the Queen would eat you alive.” Those eyes raking over Gerhardt so that Hansel wanted to stab them out.

Hansel cut in with, “Surely the Queen has thousands of footmen, cleaners, builders, servants of every type who never even come in contact with her. Seems like a decent job to me.”

The corner of Herr Candy’s lips pulled into a grin.

“She’d have one of her little helpers watching you.

Always, always someone watching. The Queen and her Shadow, everywhere, all the time.

And as soon as they get that shackle on your leg…

” He flicked a hand up into the air, like he was stabbing the barbed inner edge of a tether deep into Hansel’s wrist. “But not here. Not deep in the Dark Forest. Where I am, it’s safe.

” His eyes cleared a little, and he said, “For me, at least,” accompanied by another razor-edged laugh.

“Then what do you want from us?” Hansel asked in a low voice.

“ Me ?” Herr Candy responded, as though none of them had witnessed a single magical horror in that house.

“I ask only for good company and cheer. Only that you eat your fill and don’t throw my hospitality in my face.

It’s not often travellers pass through, and even less often I get to spend any time with them.

” He took a scoop of potatoes and tumbled them onto Gerhardt’s plate.

“But look at you. So skinny. We need to get some meat on those bones.”

Then why didn’t he feed him meat? Hansel studied the pink flesh on Herr Candy’s plate. Where had that come from?

Worrying it was what was left of their own boar, which he’d dropped just outside the perimeter of Herr Candy’s property, he asked, “What kind of meat is that?”

“Oh this?” He poked at it with a sharp knife. “Just something I found.”

“There’s very little meat in the forest,” Hansel pursued.

“Where did you find it?” A light sweat and a slight tremble took him.

Maybe it was hunger. Maybe it was tension.

It could be that this man’s motivations were no worse than those he’d expressed—the bizarre longings of a lonely warlock to have warm companionship and mirth.

But Hansel was not going to eat his food.

No matter how bad things got, he wouldn’t eat it, because Gerhardt’s eyes were swimming now.

“There’s plenty of meat in the forest if you know where to look,” said Herr Candy. “Take that rabbit on my lawn this morning, for example…”

Both men stiffened at the suggestion in his voice, even Gerhardt, in his hazy way.

“I didn’t see you kill it,” said Hansel.

“A little rabbit?” Herr Candy lifted a hand to his chest, his mouth a perfect ‘o’ in his supposed shock at the idea. “Why no, I could never kill such a sweet little creature. What kind of monster would do that?”

Gerhardt’s eyes turned down. Herr Candy watched him, each word sharpening, one upon another, as he spoke on.

“Imagine the depraved cruelty of a man like that. To kill a furry little creature just to save himself. Lacking in moral fibre. The product, no doubt, of barbarian parents. Like father, like son, isn’t that what they say? ”

There was no way Herr Candy could have known about the death of the hare, not as far as Hansel knew.

There was no way he’d have had the vaguest idea of Gerhardt’s biological father, or of his treatment of Gerhardt and his mother.

Yet it appeared as though that blade had been stuck expertly beneath Gerhardt’s rib, and the curl of hair Gerhardt let fall and hide his eyes showed that he had felt it.

“I think that’s a strange thing to say while you’re sitting there eating meat,” Hansel said sharply, pulling the man’s eyes off his brother. “It must have come from some animal, one way or another.”

“Ah, but not all animals are created equal, are they? Some are kinder, more intelligent than others. Some deserve our love, wouldn’t you say? While others…” He ran a peculiar glare over Hansel, then stabbed his fork into his food, cutting a piece off. “Others are food, plain and simple.”

A short, taut silence dropped over them all, broken only by the smacking of Herr Candy’s lips as he ate, the scrape of his knife on his plate, for Gerhardt had stopped eating. He remained inanimate in place, head dipped, staring down.

Herr Candy reached across and grabbed his plate. He set it on one of the very few empty spots on the table, then picked up a towering dessert. Four tiers high, gelatinous, shining, glazed with caramel, he settled it down in front of Gerhardt.

Gerhardt stared dumbly at it.

“Eat,” said Herr Candy.

Gerhardt’s fingers wrapped around a spoon.

Taken by that same inexplicable panic, “You’ve had enough,” Hansel cut in. “It’s enough, Gerhardt.”

Spoon mid-air, Gerhardt paused.

“Eat it,” hissed Herr Candy.

The spoon drifted a little closer.