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The first time I grew up was when I was four, when Hans fell into the Rhine. He was nine at the time, mebbe ten. It was his fault. I mean, I told him not to go near the water, and I turned away only for a second to look at the display in the bakery window. Next second, sploosh! No, not even a sploosh. He went down without a single sound.

Our Mama was shopping at the butcher’s when it happened, and she was mighty displeased when I told her. “MAR-GA-RETE,” she shrieked, and then I knew I was in for it, ‘cus she never calls me by my whole first name ‘less I’s in big trouble.

We found him farther down the river, caught between some logs and squalling like a stuck pig. In fact, that’s what I thought he was until our Mama ran into the water, wailing bloody murder, and began tugging at his chubby body. Of course, this just made him more stuck and more miserable and more pig-like than ever.

What a sight the two of them made! On one hand, there was our Mama, blotchy red and eyes popping and stubbornly yanking poor Hans every which way, with no success. Her dress and hair were soaked through, and it was hard for her to move under all that heaviness. Hans looked even worse, wetter and blotchier and his hair all covered in mud and blood. His crying face looked so silly, I couldn't help but laugh as I watched them, until our Mama yelled at me to come help her. Well, it's not like anything I could do would help, but I couldn't disobey our Mama, so into the water I went.

Call it my luck, but as we was splishing and splashing and screaming, an old woodcutter came by and helped pull me and our Mama and Hans out of the mess we’d gotten into. As we stood there, dripping wet and Hans bawling out his misery, the woodcutter smiled and said, “Anyone else want some sweets?” And that was how we met our future Papa, though we never did get no sweets ‘cus our Mama was spitting mad at me and Hans wanted to go home to change out of his wet things.

But you see, it was at that moment when I realized that though Hans is bigger and older than me, he needs taking care of, even more than I do. And besides, after he fell into the river he’s become even slower than before, and that's really saying something. So I’ve been taking care of him ever since. Well, who else is going to do it? Not our Mama, that's for sure.

And that’s another thing. I don’t think our Mama ever quite forgave me.

The second time I grew up was when I was nine, when I heard our Mama say she didn’t want me anymore. You can imagine how shocked I was. I hadn’t expected to grow up a second time ‘til mebbe a couple years more, when I turned old enough to work and marry and the like. That’s when all the other girls I’d known grew up.

Hans, he was fifteen then, for all that he hadn’t grown up once. I think it was fifteen. His birthday had been only the day before, though our Papa forgot about it and our Mama had no cake for him, what with the famine and all. Hans fussed like anything and pitched a tantrum right at the dinner table ‘til I had to hush him, and ‘cus he wouldn’t let go of me, our soup burned. Well, it’s not like there was much to burn anyways, but our Mama did hit me awful hard, ‘til my ears ringed and ringed. So of course I thought I was mebbe just hearing funny the next night, when I came downstairs to let Cat out and accidentally overheard our Mama talking. Or mebbe I’d been expecting it all along. After all, she had never quite forgiven me.

The reason, she said, was ‘cus of the famine. There just wasn’t enough food, she told our Papa, then started in on how I was clumsy at chores and burned what little food we did have, and that I was a girl and Hans was a boy, so of course Hans came first. Not that it would matter to our Papa anyway, him not being blood-related to us and all.

Our Papa, of course, whined and fretted but gave in at the end. He’s not such a bad man, just stupid and fat and cowardly, and balding at that. Besides, no one can stand up to our Mama when she’s got a mind on something. Like what came next, when she started groaning for some venison. Fresh, she said, and alternatively begged and hollered until he agreed to go the five miles to the nearest town. In the middle of the night, too – what she expected him to find, I wonder, with the butcher shop closed until dawn and the deer all sure to be sleeping. But off he went, ‘cus like I said, no one stands up to our Mama. I felt somewhat bad for him; our Mama can hit awful hard.

I was about to creep back to bed when I heard someone say, “Greta?” It was Hans, rubbing his eyes and yawning hugely. I noted, practically half-asleep myself, that Hans’ clothes needed some mending, but I figured our Mama would have to fix it herself if she was getting rid of me. I told him I was in the middle of important grown-up business and that he should go to sleep, but as I tried to pull him back to his room, his arm accidentally knocked over a bottle on the counter, and the goop inside spilled all over the floor.

It was our Papa's special rat poison, I noticed with horror, which was rather odd as our Papa was always careful to keep the stuff out our reach on the highest shelf. He was always worrying that one of us would get into the stuff that was, according to him, so poisonous it would kill even the mold off the floor. I tried my best to clean it all up without letting it touch me or Hans – which was pretty tricky, if I may say, as Hans was clinging to me so that I could barely take a step without tripping over myself. So I got no sleep that night, nor had no time to make a plan neither. I went to bed too tired to think about anything ‘cept how I was our Mama was throwing me away for good the next day, and how the rat poison had been misplaced. I wondered if mebbe Cat had gotten into it, and I hoped I was wrong. I liked Cat.

In the morning, our Mama packed a hunk of fresh bread for lunch and called for me, all innocent like. I was turning to go to my doom when suddenly Hans grabbed me around the middle and refused to let go. Our Mama shook him and scratched at his fingers but his only response was to hug me tighter ‘til my organs felt close to bursting. “Greta,” he wailed, and our Mama was forced to bring him along. I felt kind of bad for her; she had always liked Hans better than me, but Hans had always liked me better than her.

So off we went into the woods, our Mama and me and Hans holding my hand so tight I couldn’t feel my fingers. Along the way, he kept stopping to shovel handfuls of white pebbles in his pockets. I wondered how he could fit them all in there.

We took an awfully twisty route, through parts of the forest I’d never seen before. I turned around once to check on Hans, and by the time I had turned back, our Mama had disappeared behind the trees as silently as Hans had into the river so many years ago.

“Our Mama’s just off chopping wood,” says I to Hans, cheerily as I could manage. Didn’t want to frighten him, after all. He was my responsibility, and it wasn’t his fault that he was too stupid to understand our Mama hated me, though it was his fault that he fell into the river and made our Mama hate me in the first place. But what could I do? So I told him, “She’ll be back soon, quick as thought,” and Hans smiled his slow, big smile, and I started to feel a little better. Just a little, mind you, it’s hard to feel very good when you’re stranded in the woods and you’ve only got a simple older brother to help you survive.

Evening fell, with Hans growing steadily more impatient. He wasn’t frightened ‘cus I was there, but he was hungry. Around this time at home, he would be playing with Cat after wolfing down some supper. Finally, I told him to take out some of them white stones he kept picking up and suck on those for a while. He reached into his pocket and promptly started crying. For a minute, I wondered if he’d gotten himself bitten by some buggie whose home had been under those rocks, but then Hans showed me the big hole right at the bottom of his pocket. Seams completely blown out. Well, I did mention that his clothes needed mending.

So I figured it had been a pretty lucky day and all, as we followed his little trail of white pebbles all the way back to the house. When we walked through the door I thought our Mama was going to throw a fit. Instead, she threw her arms around Hans and our Papa patted me on my head and said I was a good little girl to find my way home and promised me anything I wanted from the bakery, next time we goes into town. But I never got no cake or nothing, though the famine broke a week later.

The third time I grew up...

I was twelve and Hans was seventeen. It was during another famine, and I stayed up every night checking that our Mama didn’t want to get rid of us again. I say “us” ‘cus our Mama was none too pleased with Hans after he chose me over her, and I think she rather held a grudge against him, for some time at least. But I eavesdropped on no more secret plots, just our Mama nagging at our Papa for more food. She had suddenly become awful hungry, more so than before. I mean, she’s always been fond of her meals, but now, in the middle of a famine and all, she was quick with her fists if she didn’t have three hearty meals a day. And she always insisted on meat.

Well, she certainly did get rounder with every day that passed. Our Papa told us not to worry about her moods and to be patient with her, so we let her rest from the cooking and the cleaning and the other chores, which of course fell to me instead. Not like I’s complaining, though I did have to watch Hans and make sure he didn’t get underfoot our Mama, on top of everything else I had to do. Our Papa, sweet old man he is, couldn’t do a thing ‘cept chopping wood, and Hans was just plain useless ‘cept for smiling that dumb ol’ smile at anyone who walked by.

Hans was even more useless when he was crying, which he did pretty often now that Cat had run away. Imagine, loyal old Cat! Guess that just shows how hard times had gotten, that our dear Cat would just up and go. Such a shame, too, ‘cus the day he disappeared our Papa brought home what he said was a lucky shot, enough to satisfy our Mama and the whole family for that night’s dinner, and the next breakfast too, though I found it funny to be eating meat for breakfast.

By this time I’d gotten pretty good at taking care of Hans and the house, I’d had so much practice. So naturally, I was surprised to find our Mama only get more irritable as the days went by and her stomach got rounder. I mean, I thought I was doing a pretty good job. But she just got meaner and meaner and her eyes got beadier and beadier and her appetite got bigger and bigger.

One night, I snuck out as usual on my patrol when I ran into our Papa. At first I was worried ‘cus I thought he had caught me. Then I was worried ‘cus I saw that he was bleeding and all, from some nasty bite on his hand. There was a whole chunk of flesh missing, I realized, staring at the gaping red space between his thumb and the finger next to it. I could hear our Mama behind him, roaring her usual demands of meat.

“Greta? What are you doing here?” he said, and I didn’t want to tell him I was spying, so I said that I couldn’t sleep. Then Hans pattered in behind me ‘cus all the noise had woke him up. Our Papa said that Hans and me had to get dressed, for travel and all, and most importantly not to let our Mama see us. And so we did as we was told, though Hans threw some fuss while I quietly wondered for the reason behind it all. While I put on my travel things, I discovered a loaf of bread still in my apron pocket. It took me a moment to remember – from the second time I grew up. I had forgotten all about it the second I had tucked it away, too busy thinking was I about my then imminent abandonment. Luckily, it still looked edible, with no mold or rot on it, despite all the years. I tucked it back under my apron and rushed downstairs, almost running into Hans on the way.

Our Papa hurried us out the door to the sounds of our Mama’s yells to bring back something good this time. Hans reached down to pick up a white pebble, but our Papa yanked him back up and told him to keep on running. He looked like he was about to cry, so I gave him the bread in my apron pocket to shut him up.

When our Papa had run us so far that we had no hope of ever finding our way back without help, especially with the night all dark around us and all, he finally stopped, so suddenly that Hans and me ran into his back. Then he patted my head with his unbitten hand and told us to stay right there and that he was just going to get some game for our Mama and we were not move until he came back for us. With sudden emotion, he bent down and hugged us both tightly before rushing off back into the darkness.

So I sat Hans down, and we waited. And waited. And waited. When the sun rose and it was clear that our Papa wasn’t coming back anytime soon, I was knotted fit to kill. I should have seen it coming, I thought to myself, with our Mama in such a wolfish mood and all. But then, I would have never expected it of our Papa. He might have been a fat old craven wimp, and balding at that, but he could never have been smart enough to come up with such a plan on his own.

Resigned, I woke Hans up and told him that we was going to have to look after ourselves now. His only response was that he was hungry. I told him rather waspishly that he could go eat the stale bread I’d given him the night before, ‘cus that was all he was going to get for a while. Of course, right away he started crying, and between sniffles he told me that he had fed it all to the birds on the way from home.

I slapped him for that. I think it must have been the angriest I'd been at him, ever. After all my hard work to keep us both alive, with no help from him or our Papa or anyone, this was how he repaid me - by wasting the only bit of food we had, for all that it was years old and sure to be hard as rock. But I was distracted from his stupidity and his incessant bawling when I noticed a peculiar path marked by birds all along the ground, most dead, some dying. They was mostly crows and sparrows and the like, but I noticed one robin with a lustrous red breast with its eyes all dulled over and even a beautiful white dove, coo-rooing weakly, as if it had eaten some bad feed or something.

Well, one man’s misfortune is another man’s good luck, so of course I saw this as a sign of Providence, and I told Hans not to worry, ‘cus God takes care of good little girls and boys, and God had given us angels to guide our way. Though I must say, I'd been more thankful if God gave us an easier sign to follow. What with the half-dead birds flapping here and there, it was mighty difficult to find the straight path when our markers kept wandering off. And of course, the farther we walked, the more wobbly the line became.

Hans was just getting grumpy when I suddenly saw the house. It looked exactly like our own dear house, but I knew that it couldn’t be, ‘cus the most delightful smell of baking bread was coming from it, as if it was a house made of gingerbread and sugar. “Cake,” cried Hans, and barreled full force towards the house, before I could warn him. Silly little pig. I walked through the door to find Hans gorging himself on pancakes and milk and fruit and, best of all, fresh meat, with a lady who looked exactly like our Mama standing behind him. Only I knew it couldn’t be her, ‘cus she was smiling. Our Papa wasn’t there, neither. So I figured she had to be a kind fairy who had taken pity on two poor starving orphans. I didn’t notice the red gleam in her eyes ‘til later, when it was too late.

It was a very pleasant life for a while. She fed us and clothed us and combed our hair. “Margarete, Gretchen, Greta, Gretel darling,” she sang, and I basked in her affection, something I’d never quite received from our Mama after Hans fell into the river. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Hans liked her too, especially when she called him ‘Hansel’, just as if he was still a baby. She let us do whatever we wanted; Hans mostly wandered around putting things into his mouth, while I climbed trees and tried to catch squirrels. We'd come back to find dinner already set out, always an extravagant feast the likes of which I'd never seen since our Papa's and Mama's wedding. The only thing we weren't allowed to do was to go into the basement, and I didn’t mind. I figured she kept her source of magical powers there or something, and best not to mess with those things.

One day I asked her, "Where's all the other folk?" I was meaning the neighbors. Whenever I climbed the trees, I could see some houses close enough away for mebbe a quarter hour walk, for someone with longer legs and a brisk pace. They looked like houses I knew, too - I half expected Christian the baker's boy to step out of the nearest one, on his way to a day's work in town. I knew him a little, once. But I didn't see him, and I figured he was a part of a life that was gone now, replaced with new things like fairies and never feeling hungry.

I explained all this to the fairy, who smiled gently. But she didn't say much, 'cept to say that "It's magic." Which was all right with me - it seemed perfectly natural to me that a fairy's house of sweets must stay invisible unless you just happened to be a pair of starving children lost in the woods. That's how it goes in all the stories, anyhow. And life was good, so why question it?

It was when the fairy kindly began teaching me how to bake when things began turning rotten. Now like I said, I gotten lots of practice with handling things around the house, but I admit I wasn’t none too good at cooking. Not to say that I’s bad at cooking and baking and the like, but I’ve had my share of spills and burns and things. At first the fairy only scolded me for wasting ingredients. Then she took to hollering, even throwing things at me. When she did, she looked an awful lot like our Mama. But then she’d quiet down, and I’d think, she’s not so bad. Whenever I messed up, she’d make me eat my mistakes which, I admit, tasted pretty nasty at times. Not terrible, you know, it was just small things like salt instead of sugar or a burned bottom or an uncooked top. But she always gave Hans her perfect concoctions.

Of course, what with the sweet things we was baking up, Hans grew steadily fatter as the months rolled by. She licked her lips as she watched him devour pastry after pastry. I told her she could have some of mine if she was hungry, but she always said no. Come to think of it, I never did see her eat, though she was already pretty thick round the middle when we first came to her, and she grew rounder each day, even faster than Hans. Sometimes she would press her hands to her stomach, as if she was listening to some secret message inside.

What with the way things were going, though, I thought things could only get happier. But the fairy kept getting more and more short-tempered, and Hans for some reason became quite sullen and miserable-looking. At the time I wondered why, seeing as he had more than enough to eat and we had a comfortable home with a nice lady to take care of us, and what else could he ask for? To be honest, those days I didn’t really see Hans around much. When I did, I never really paid much attention to him, too busy thinking about the next recipe on the list. Also I had my own room, so I never had to hear him crying at night. Once I did notice that his hand was wrapped up, like he got it hurt, but he refused to tell me anything about it so I figured he’d gotten himself scratched doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. When I asked him about it, he only said in a slightly dazed voice, “No more cake.” It seemed strange at the time, but I didn’t press him about it.

Another time, I noticed his leg was all bandaged, and another time, his eye. I guess I reasoned in the back of my mind that the fairy was asking him to help around the house – he never was none too good at that kind of stuff, if you catch my meaning. Always seemed to find a way to run into sharp things. I sort of assumed that the fairy was taking care of him – after all, he did have fresh bandages, didn’t he? So I guess I sort of forgot about him, really. Which is perfectly reasonable, if you think about it, ‘cus really, how was I supposed to know we wasn’t safe? And I had taken care of him all these eight years, so it’s like I just took a little break, that’s all. It takes a mighty lot out of a person, to take care of a simple older brother for eight years.

Then one day, the fairy told me that we was going to bake a cake. I was fair excited, ‘cus I’d been begging for her to teach me for months now. I’d never eaten a cake before, not since before I was four, and I had forgotten its taste. We took out a bowl and a pan and a mixer and the flour and the sugar and the milk and the honey and the eggs, and we mixed it all up and poured the batter into a somewhat cake-like shape. I was just wondering what kind of cake we were making when I noticed scribbled in tiny letters at the bottom of the ingredients list, meat, fresh. It seemed like a funny sort of thing to put in a cake, but who was I to question the recipe? I supposed it added some flavor, or something. Besides, on one of her better days the fairy had made bacon and ice cream as a special treat for me, and I had to admit that it had tasted pretty good, as did anything she made.

The only problem was where to find fresh meat, as there was only a bit of dried jerky in the pantry and our Papa wasn't there to go hunting for anything. The fairy only told me not to worry, as usual. Then she told me to go downstairs, down into the basement which she told me never to go into, and that’s when I realized she was no fairy. She was a witch. I should have known the moment I saw her. Hadn’t our Mama always told us only witches had red eyes?

The first thing I noticed was the big oven. I’d say it was big enough to fit twenty people, if they crammed themselves in like sardines, and it was glowing hot as the sun itself. It was only when I heard someone mutter, “No more cake,” that I noticed the cage off to the side. It was not nearly as big as the oven, barely big enough to fit one person, and rusty at that. Hans looked very uncomfortable, squashed behind the bars.

I can’t imagine how I didn’t notice Hans’ sorry state during the last few months, though come to think of it, I don’t think I even saw him around the house for the past few months, ‘cept when the fairy – the witch – fed him her scraps after we was done baking. His leg looked as if it had been attacked by a vicious dog, his left eye was missing from its socket, and worse of all, the fingers on his right hand had been gnawed right down to the bone. “No more cake,” he told me, lips cracking. “No more cake no more cake no cake no more no more no more no

“Put the cake in the oven,” I heard the witch say behind me. I hadn’t even noticed her come in. “The meat is cut and added to the cake right as you put it in the oven, so as to keep it as fresh as possible before baking.” As she stood there, quietly holding her stomach with a dreamy smile on her face, she didn’t look like someone who made a pact with the Devil. Then she licked her lips and her eyes shone red, and I knew she had to be the own wicked Devil herself, to look on my poor Hans like that with such delight.

She padded over to his cage and told him to hold out his finger, which he did with reluctance, and she pinched it so hard he yelped. He didn’t cry though, which made me wonder how many times she had done it ‘til he got tired of crying. “Thin as a skinny old bone,” she cackled. “We must fatten you up, my dear little Hansel, else you’ll never make a good meal. Put the cake in the oven, MAR-GA-RETE.”

I did so instantly, burning my fingers as I placed it on the red iron grate.

She looked at me with an appraising eye. “Margarete, my sweet little Gretchen Greta Gretel dumpling, would you be a dear and check if the oven is hot enough?” I may have been careless with Hans, but I wasn’t about to recklessly put myself into such obvious danger. I saw what she was aiming at, and I wasn’t going to let her do it. Instead I pretended I was stupid, which I admit was very hard - not ‘cus I’s a bad actress, but ‘cus stupidity doesn’t come natural to me like - but I think I managed a pretty convincing act. “How does I do that?” says I, all innocent like. “Could you show me how, just once?”

The witch snarled that I was an imbecile, a dolt, a chicken with cake mix for brains and promptly strode over to the oven, shoved me away, and stuck her hand inside.

Quick as a flash, I put my hands on her back and pushed with all my might. She didn’t have very good balance and with one great heave went toppling head over heels into the oven, that gorgeous oven that could have held twenty sardine men. She screamed like a pig on Christmas Eve, but I turned up the fire as high as it would go and shut the door on her. And I held it close, for extra measure. Held it close with all my might, though my palms were fair scorched off with the heat.

I’m afraid to say I didn’t feel bad for her at all. Not one bit. As I listened to her screams and watched my hands smoking and burning, I marveled at the tingling thrill that ran clean through me.

Just when I thought she’d never stop screaming, I realized that she had stopped. In fact she had stopped a long while ago, probably only a minute or two after I’d closed the oven door. It was Hans who was screaming now, screaming as if he’d never run out of breath, only he did, and nearly died trying to get it back. And once he did, he screamed and screamed and screamed until he keeled over again. I don’t know how many lungfulls of air he screamed out before I finally let go of the door.

So that was the third time I grew up. Most people never grow up a third time, you know, not once in an entire lifetime, but call me lucky.

But you know, Hans was actually wrong, as he usually is. There was always more cake, would always be more cake. In fact, that day we had a very fine cake, a little burnt on the edges and a tad misshapen, what with the witch falling on it and everything, but it tasted just fine. I finally had my cake – just in time to celebrate my growing up.

And of course, afterwards we escaped from the witch’s house laden with more jewels and gold than we could ever imagine and we found our Papa and our Mama again and they welcomed us back and gave us cake for ever after. And Cat was there too.

THAT WAS A JOKE HAHAHAHA. Did you laugh? Anyway, this cake is great. I simply love red velvet.

Description
The first time I grew up was when I was four, when Hans fell into the Rhine. He was nine at the time, mebbe ten. It was his fault. I mean, I told him not to go near the water, and I turned away only for a second to look at the display in the bakery window. Next second, sploosh! No, not even a sploosh. He went down without a single sound.

Our Mama was shopping at the butcher’s when it happened, and she was mighty displeased when I told her. “MAR-GA-RETE,” she shrieked, and then I knew I was in for it, ‘cus she never calls me by my whole first name ‘less I’s in big trouble.

We found him farther down the river, caught between some logs and squalling like a stuck pig. In fact, that’s what I thought he was until our Mama ran into the water, wailing bloody murder, and began tugging at his chubby body. Of course, this just made him more stuck and more miserable and more pig-like than ever.

What a sight the two of them made! On one hand, there was our Mama, blotchy red and eyes popping and stubbornly yanking poor Hans every which way, with no success. Her dress and hair were soaked through, and it was hard for her to move under all that heaviness. Hans looked even worse, wetter and blotchier and his hair all covered in mud and blood. His crying face looked so silly, I couldn't help but laugh as I watched them, until our Mama yelled at me to come help her. Well, it's not like anything I could do would help, but I couldn't disobey our Mama, so into the water I went.

Call it my luck, but as we was splishing and splashing and screaming, an old woodcutter came by and helped pull me and our Mama and Hans out of the mess we’d gotten into. As we stood there, dripping wet and Hans bawling out his misery, the woodcutter smiled and said, “Anyone else want some sweets?” And that was how we met our future Papa, though we never did get no sweets ‘cus our Mama was spitting mad at me and Hans wanted to go home to change out of his wet things.

But you see, it was at that moment when I realized that though Hans is bigger and older than me, he needs taking care of, even more than I do. And besides, after he fell into the river he’s become even slower than before, and that's really saying something. So I’ve been taking care of him ever since. Well, who else is going to do it? Not our Mama, that's for sure.

And that’s another thing. I don’t think our Mama ever quite forgave me.

The second time I grew up was when I was nine, when I heard our Mama say she didn’t want me anymore. You can imagine how shocked I was. I hadn’t expected to grow up a second time ‘til mebbe a couple years more, when I turned old enough to work and marry and the like. That’s when all the other girls I’d known grew up.

Hans, he was fifteen then, for all that he hadn’t grown up once. I think it was fifteen. His birthday had been only the day before, though our Papa forgot about it and our Mama had no cake for him, what with the famine and all. Hans fussed like anything and pitched a tantrum right at the dinner table ‘til I had to hush him, and ‘cus he wouldn’t let go of me, our soup burned. Well, it’s not like there was much to burn anyways, but our Mama did hit me awful hard, ‘til my ears ringed and ringed. So of course I thought I was mebbe just hearing funny the next night, when I came downstairs to let Cat out and accidentally overheard our Mama talking. Or mebbe I’d been expecting it all along. After all, she had never quite forgiven me.

The reason, she said, was ‘cus of the famine. There just wasn’t enough food, she told our Papa, then started in on how I was clumsy at chores and burned what little food we did have, and that I was a girl and Hans was a boy, so of course Hans came first. Not that it would matter to our Papa anyway, him not being blood-related to us and all.

Our Papa, of course, whined and fretted but gave in at the end. He’s not such a bad man, just stupid and fat and cowardly, and balding at that. Besides, no one can stand up to our Mama when she’s got a mind on something. Like what came next, when she started groaning for some venison. Fresh, she said, and alternatively begged and hollered until he agreed to go the five miles to the nearest town. In the middle of the night, too – what she expected him to find, I wonder, with the butcher shop closed until dawn and the deer all sure to be sleeping. But off he went, ‘cus like I said, no one stands up to our Mama. I felt somewhat bad for him; our Mama can hit awful hard.

I was about to creep back to bed when I heard someone say, “Greta?” It was Hans, rubbing his eyes and yawning hugely. I noted, practically half-asleep myself, that Hans’ clothes needed some mending, but I figured our Mama would have to fix it herself if she was getting rid of me. I told him I was in the middle of important grown-up business and that he should go to sleep, but as I tried to pull him back to his room, his arm accidentally knocked over a bottle on the counter, and the goop inside spilled all over the floor.

It was our Papa's special rat poison, I noticed with horror, which was rather odd as our Papa was always careful to keep the stuff out our reach on the highest shelf. He was always worrying that one of us would get into the stuff that was, according to him, so poisonous it would kill even the mold off the floor. I tried my best to clean it all up without letting it touch me or Hans – which was pretty tricky, if I may say, as Hans was clinging to me so that I could barely take a step without tripping over myself. So I got no sleep that night, nor had no time to make a plan neither. I went to bed too tired to think about anything ‘cept how I was our Mama was throwing me away for good the next day, and how the rat poison had been misplaced. I wondered if mebbe Cat had gotten into it, and I hoped I was wrong. I liked Cat.

In the morning, our Mama packed a hunk of fresh bread for lunch and called for me, all innocent like. I was turning to go to my doom when suddenly Hans grabbed me around the middle and refused to let go. Our Mama shook him and scratched at his fingers but his only response was to hug me tighter ‘til my organs felt close to bursting. “Greta,” he wailed, and our Mama was forced to bring him along. I felt kind of bad for her; she had always liked Hans better than me, but Hans had always liked me better than her.

So off we went into the woods, our Mama and me and Hans holding my hand so tight I couldn’t feel my fingers. Along the way, he kept stopping to shovel handfuls of white pebbles in his pockets. I wondered how he could fit them all in there.

We took an awfully twisty route, through parts of the forest I’d never seen before. I turned around once to check on Hans, and by the time I had turned back, our Mama had disappeared behind the trees as silently as Hans had into the river so many years ago.

“Our Mama’s just off chopping wood,” says I to Hans, cheerily as I could manage. Didn’t want to frighten him, after all. He was my responsibility, and it wasn’t his fault that he was too stupid to understand our Mama hated me, though it was his fault that he fell into the river and made our Mama hate me in the first place. But what could I do? So I told him, “She’ll be back soon, quick as thought,” and Hans smiled his slow, big smile, and I started to feel a little better. Just a little, mind you, it’s hard to feel very good when you’re stranded in the woods and you’ve only got a simple older brother to help you survive.

Evening fell, with Hans growing steadily more impatient. He wasn’t frightened ‘cus I was there, but he was hungry. Around this time at home, he would be playing with Cat after wolfing down some supper. Finally, I told him to take out some of them white stones he kept picking up and suck on those for a while. He reached into his pocket and promptly started crying. For a minute, I wondered if he’d gotten himself bitten by some buggie whose home had been under those rocks, but then Hans showed me the big hole right at the bottom of his pocket. Seams completely blown out. Well, I did mention that his clothes needed mending.

So I figured it had been a pretty lucky day and all, as we followed his little trail of white pebbles all the way back to the house. When we walked through the door I thought our Mama was going to throw a fit. Instead, she threw her arms around Hans and our Papa patted me on my head and said I was a good little girl to find my way home and promised me anything I wanted from the bakery, next time we goes into town. But I never got no cake or nothing, though the famine broke a week later.

The third time I grew up...

I was twelve and Hans was seventeen. It was during another famine, and I stayed up every night checking that our Mama didn’t want to get rid of us again. I say “us” ‘cus our Mama was none too pleased with Hans after he chose me over her, and I think she rather held a grudge against him, for some time at least. But I eavesdropped on no more secret plots, just our Mama nagging at our Papa for more food. She had suddenly become awful hungry, more so than before. I mean, she’s always been fond of her meals, but now, in the middle of a famine and all, she was quick with her fists if she didn’t have three hearty meals a day. And she always insisted on meat.

Well, she certainly did get rounder with every day that passed. Our Papa told us not to worry about her moods and to be patient with her, so we let her rest from the cooking and the cleaning and the other chores, which of course fell to me instead. Not like I’s complaining, though I did have to watch Hans and make sure he didn’t get underfoot our Mama, on top of everything else I had to do. Our Papa, sweet old man he is, couldn’t do a thing ‘cept chopping wood, and Hans was just plain useless ‘cept for smiling that dumb ol’ smile at anyone who walked by.

Hans was even more useless when he was crying, which he did pretty often now that Cat had run away. Imagine, loyal old Cat! Guess that just shows how hard times had gotten, that our dear Cat would just up and go. Such a shame, too, ‘cus the day he disappeared our Papa brought home what he said was a lucky shot, enough to satisfy our Mama and the whole family for that night’s dinner, and the next breakfast too, though I found it funny to be eating meat for breakfast.

By this time I’d gotten pretty good at taking care of Hans and the house, I’d had so much practice. So naturally, I was surprised to find our Mama only get more irritable as the days went by and her stomach got rounder. I mean, I thought I was doing a pretty good job. But she just got meaner and meaner and her eyes got beadier and beadier and her appetite got bigger and bigger.

One night, I snuck out as usual on my patrol when I ran into our Papa. At first I was worried ‘cus I thought he had caught me. Then I was worried ‘cus I saw that he was bleeding and all, from some nasty bite on his hand. There was a whole chunk of flesh missing, I realized, staring at the gaping red space between his thumb and the finger next to it. I could hear our Mama behind him, roaring her usual demands of meat.

“Greta? What are you doing here?” he said, and I didn’t want to tell him I was spying, so I said that I couldn’t sleep. Then Hans pattered in behind me ‘cus all the noise had woke him up. Our Papa said that Hans and me had to get dressed, for travel and all, and most importantly not to let our Mama see us. And so we did as we was told, though Hans threw some fuss while I quietly wondered for the reason behind it all. While I put on my travel things, I discovered a loaf of bread still in my apron pocket. It took me a moment to remember – from the second time I grew up. I had forgotten all about it the second I had tucked it away, too busy thinking was I about my then imminent abandonment. Luckily, it still looked edible, with no mold or rot on it, despite all the years. I tucked it back under my apron and rushed downstairs, almost running into Hans on the way.

Our Papa hurried us out the door to the sounds of our Mama’s yells to bring back something good this time. Hans reached down to pick up a white pebble, but our Papa yanked him back up and told him to keep on running. He looked like he was about to cry, so I gave him the bread in my apron pocket to shut him up.

When our Papa had run us so far that we had no hope of ever finding our way back without help, especially with the night all dark around us and all, he finally stopped, so suddenly that Hans and me ran into his back. Then he patted my head with his unbitten hand and told us to stay right there and that he was just going to get some game for our Mama and we were not move until he came back for us. With sudden emotion, he bent down and hugged us both tightly before rushing off back into the darkness.

So I sat Hans down, and we waited. And waited. And waited. When the sun rose and it was clear that our Papa wasn’t coming back anytime soon, I was knotted fit to kill. I should have seen it coming, I thought to myself, with our Mama in such a wolfish mood and all. But then, I would have never expected it of our Papa. He might have been a fat old craven wimp, and balding at that, but he could never have been smart enough to come up with such a plan on his own.

Resigned, I woke Hans up and told him that we was going to have to look after ourselves now. His only response was that he was hungry. I told him rather waspishly that he could go eat the stale bread I’d given him the night before, ‘cus that was all he was going to get for a while. Of course, right away he started crying, and between sniffles he told me that he had fed it all to the birds on the way from home.

I slapped him for that. I think it must have been the angriest I'd been at him, ever. After all my hard work to keep us both alive, with no help from him or our Papa or anyone, this was how he repaid me - by wasting the only bit of food we had, for all that it was years old and sure to be hard as rock. But I was distracted from his stupidity and his incessant bawling when I noticed a peculiar path marked by birds all along the ground, most dead, some dying. They was mostly crows and sparrows and the like, but I noticed one robin with a lustrous red breast with its eyes all dulled over and even a beautiful white dove, coo-rooing weakly, as if it had eaten some bad feed or something.

Well, one man’s misfortune is another man’s good luck, so of course I saw this as a sign of Providence, and I told Hans not to worry, ‘cus God takes care of good little girls and boys, and God had given us angels to guide our way. Though I must say, I'd been more thankful if God gave us an easier sign to follow. What with the half-dead birds flapping here and there, it was mighty difficult to find the straight path when our markers kept wandering off. And of course, the farther we walked, the more wobbly the line became.

Hans was just getting grumpy when I suddenly saw the house. It looked exactly like our own dear house, but I knew that it couldn’t be, ‘cus the most delightful smell of baking bread was coming from it, as if it was a house made of gingerbread and sugar. “Cake,” cried Hans, and barreled full force towards the house, before I could warn him. Silly little pig. I walked through the door to find Hans gorging himself on pancakes and milk and fruit and, best of all, fresh meat, with a lady who looked exactly like our Mama standing behind him. Only I knew it couldn’t be her, ‘cus she was smiling. Our Papa wasn’t there, neither. So I figured she had to be a kind fairy who had taken pity on two poor starving orphans. I didn’t notice the red gleam in her eyes ‘til later, when it was too late.

It was a very pleasant life for a while. She fed us and clothed us and combed our hair. “Margarete, Gretchen, Greta, Gretel darling,” she sang, and I basked in her affection, something I’d never quite received from our Mama after Hans fell into the river. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Hans liked her too, especially when she called him ‘Hansel’, just as if he was still a baby. She let us do whatever we wanted; Hans mostly wandered around putting things into his mouth, while I climbed trees and tried to catch squirrels. We'd come back to find dinner already set out, always an extravagant feast the likes of which I'd never seen since our Papa's and Mama's wedding. The only thing we weren't allowed to do was to go into the basement, and I didn’t mind. I figured she kept her source of magical powers there or something, and best not to mess with those things.

One day I asked her, "Where's all the other folk?" I was meaning the neighbors. Whenever I climbed the trees, I could see some houses close enough away for mebbe a quarter hour walk, for someone with longer legs and a brisk pace. They looked like houses I knew, too - I half expected Christian the baker's boy to step out of the nearest one, on his way to a day's work in town. I knew him a little, once. But I didn't see him, and I figured he was a part of a life that was gone now, replaced with new things like fairies and never feeling hungry.

I explained all this to the fairy, who smiled gently. But she didn't say much, 'cept to say that "It's magic." Which was all right with me - it seemed perfectly natural to me that a fairy's house of sweets must stay invisible unless you just happened to be a pair of starving children lost in the woods. That's how it goes in all the stories, anyhow. And life was good, so why question it?

It was when the fairy kindly began teaching me how to bake when things began turning rotten. Now like I said, I gotten lots of practice with handling things around the house, but I admit I wasn’t none too good at cooking. Not to say that I’s bad at cooking and baking and the like, but I’ve had my share of spills and burns and things. At first the fairy only scolded me for wasting ingredients. Then she took to hollering, even throwing things at me. When she did, she looked an awful lot like our Mama. But then she’d quiet down, and I’d think, she’s not so bad. Whenever I messed up, she’d make me eat my mistakes which, I admit, tasted pretty nasty at times. Not terrible, you know, it was just small things like salt instead of sugar or a burned bottom or an uncooked top. But she always gave Hans her perfect concoctions.

Of course, what with the sweet things we was baking up, Hans grew steadily fatter as the months rolled by. She licked her lips as she watched him devour pastry after pastry. I told her she could have some of mine if she was hungry, but she always said no. Come to think of it, I never did see her eat, though she was already pretty thick round the middle when we first came to her, and she grew rounder each day, even faster than Hans. Sometimes she would press her hands to her stomach, as if she was listening to some secret message inside.

What with the way things were going, though, I thought things could only get happier. But the fairy kept getting more and more short-tempered, and Hans for some reason became quite sullen and miserable-looking. At the time I wondered why, seeing as he had more than enough to eat and we had a comfortable home with a nice lady to take care of us, and what else could he ask for? To be honest, those days I didn’t really see Hans around much. When I did, I never really paid much attention to him, too busy thinking about the next recipe on the list. Also I had my own room, so I never had to hear him crying at night. Once I did notice that his hand was wrapped up, like he got it hurt, but he refused to tell me anything about it so I figured he’d gotten himself scratched doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. When I asked him about it, he only said in a slightly dazed voice, “No more cake.” It seemed strange at the time, but I didn’t press him about it.

Another time, I noticed his leg was all bandaged, and another time, his eye. I guess I reasoned in the back of my mind that the fairy was asking him to help around the house – he never was none too good at that kind of stuff, if you catch my meaning. Always seemed to find a way to run into sharp things. I sort of assumed that the fairy was taking care of him – after all, he did have fresh bandages, didn’t he? So I guess I sort of forgot about him, really. Which is perfectly reasonable, if you think about it, ‘cus really, how was I supposed to know we wasn’t safe? And I had taken care of him all these eight years, so it’s like I just took a little break, that’s all. It takes a mighty lot out of a person, to take care of a simple older brother for eight years.

Then one day, the fairy told me that we was going to bake a cake. I was fair excited, ‘cus I’d been begging for her to teach me for months now. I’d never eaten a cake before, not since before I was four, and I had forgotten its taste. We took out a bowl and a pan and a mixer and the flour and the sugar and the milk and the honey and the eggs, and we mixed it all up and poured the batter into a somewhat cake-like shape. I was just wondering what kind of cake we were making when I noticed scribbled in tiny letters at the bottom of the ingredients list, meat, fresh. It seemed like a funny sort of thing to put in a cake, but who was I to question the recipe? I supposed it added some flavor, or something. Besides, on one of her better days the fairy had made bacon and ice cream as a special treat for me, and I had to admit that it had tasted pretty good, as did anything she made.

The only problem was where to find fresh meat, as there was only a bit of dried jerky in the pantry and our Papa wasn't there to go hunting for anything. The fairy only told me not to worry, as usual. Then she told me to go downstairs, down into the basement which she told me never to go into, and that’s when I realized she was no fairy. She was a witch. I should have known the moment I saw her. Hadn’t our Mama always told us only witches had red eyes?

The first thing I noticed was the big oven. I’d say it was big enough to fit twenty people, if they crammed themselves in like sardines, and it was glowing hot as the sun itself. It was only when I heard someone mutter, “No more cake,” that I noticed the cage off to the side. It was not nearly as big as the oven, barely big enough to fit one person, and rusty at that. Hans looked very uncomfortable, squashed behind the bars.

I can’t imagine how I didn’t notice Hans’ sorry state during the last few months, though come to think of it, I don’t think I even saw him around the house for the past few months, ‘cept when the fairy – the witch – fed him her scraps after we was done baking. His leg looked as if it had been attacked by a vicious dog, his left eye was missing from its socket, and worse of all, the fingers on his right hand had been gnawed right down to the bone. “No more cake,” he told me, lips cracking. “No more cake no more cake no cake no more no more no more no

“Put the cake in the oven,” I heard the witch say behind me. I hadn’t even noticed her come in. “The meat is cut and added to the cake right as you put it in the oven, so as to keep it as fresh as possible before baking.” As she stood there, quietly holding her stomach with a dreamy smile on her face, she didn’t look like someone who made a pact with the Devil. Then she licked her lips and her eyes shone red, and I knew she had to be the own wicked Devil herself, to look on my poor Hans like that with such delight.

She padded over to his cage and told him to hold out his finger, which he did with reluctance, and she pinched it so hard he yelped. He didn’t cry though, which made me wonder how many times she had done it ‘til he got tired of crying. “Thin as a skinny old bone,” she cackled. “We must fatten you up, my dear little Hansel, else you’ll never make a good meal. Put the cake in the oven, MAR-GA-RETE.”

I did so instantly, burning my fingers as I placed it on the red iron grate.

She looked at me with an appraising eye. “Margarete, my sweet little Gretchen Greta Gretel dumpling, would you be a dear and check if the oven is hot enough?” I may have been careless with Hans, but I wasn’t about to recklessly put myself into such obvious danger. I saw what she was aiming at, and I wasn’t going to let her do it. Instead I pretended I was stupid, which I admit was very hard - not ‘cus I’s a bad actress, but ‘cus stupidity doesn’t come natural to me like - but I think I managed a pretty convincing act. “How does I do that?” says I, all innocent like. “Could you show me how, just once?”

The witch snarled that I was an imbecile, a dolt, a chicken with cake mix for brains and promptly strode over to the oven, shoved me away, and stuck her hand inside.

Quick as a flash, I put my hands on her back and pushed with all my might. She didn’t have very good balance and with one great heave went toppling head over heels into the oven, that gorgeous oven that could have held twenty sardine men. She screamed like a pig on Christmas Eve, but I turned up the fire as high as it would go and shut the door on her. And I held it close, for extra measure. Held it close with all my might, though my palms were fair scorched off with the heat.

I’m afraid to say I didn’t feel bad for her at all. Not one bit. As I listened to her screams and watched my hands smoking and burning, I marveled at the tingling thrill that ran clean through me.

Just when I thought she’d never stop screaming, I realized that she had stopped. In fact she had stopped a long while ago, probably only a minute or two after I’d closed the oven door. It was Hans who was screaming now, screaming as if he’d never run out of breath, only he did, and nearly died trying to get it back. And once he did, he screamed and screamed and screamed until he keeled over again. I don’t know how many lungfulls of air he screamed out before I finally let go of the door.

So that was the third time I grew up. Most people never grow up a third time, you know, not once in an entire lifetime, but call me lucky.

But you know, Hans was actually wrong, as he usually is. There was always more cake, would always be more cake. In fact, that day we had a very fine cake, a little burnt on the edges and a tad misshapen, what with the witch falling on it and everything, but it tasted just fine. I finally had my cake – just in time to celebrate my growing up.

And of course, afterwards we escaped from the witch’s house laden with more jewels and gold than we could ever imagine and we found our Papa and our Mama again and they welcomed us back and gave us cake for ever after. And Cat was there too.

THAT WAS A JOKE HAHAHAHA. Did you laugh? Anyway, this cake is great. I simply love red velvet.