Series: Willow Winters
Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Hansel scoffs. “Someone else could have—”
I step closer and lower my voice, but I want to scream. “They didn’t stay outside the door!”
“So you brought them in?”
“I didn’t! I—” I glance at the bedroom door. It’s still closed. “Either I’m going crazy, or she’s beckoning me back. I’m scared.” We left the small rocks to find our way back home. The rocks have come back to haunt me. Every night for over a week.
“You’re going crazy if you think—”
“She’s been leaving rocks in my living room! Exactly like the ones we left so we could find our way back! Straight to my door. Beckoning me here!”
His mouth drops open. “What?”
“I swear. They’re the same stones.” The chill captures my body and it has nothing to do with the winter outside.
Hansel shakes his head. “Stop it.” For a moment, his eyes flash. I know the pain he went through. He took the brunt of it. He saved me. He was everything I needed and then he decided we were nothing. Nothing but the past.
“I wish I could. I wish it would stop. But it’s not stopping. It’s been happening for weeks.”
“Stop it, Gretel. I don’t know why you came here, but it’s not—”
“I came here for this,” I hiss at him. “Because this is happening, and I can’t stop it without you. And I thought you deserved to know. She’s not gone. She’s back,” I warn him with tears pricking my eyes. I wish it wasn’t so. But the fear is unrelenting. “I wouldn’t come, unless I had no choice.”
He leans in, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed, radiating fury. My heart races until I think it’ll explode. I’m terrified he’ll send me away and shut the door behind me, but I’m also hopeful. Hansel’s face is full of fear and anger, but he’s looking at me. He heard what I came here to tell him.
I think, for a second or two, that he might even touch me. This is the closest we’ve been in years.
Hansel seems to recognize that at the same time I do.
He takes a sharp step back and huffs out a breath, then looks away, getting control of himself. Hansel relaxes his shoulders, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
When he turns back to me, it’s with the same flat expression as before, with only a slight glimmer in his eyes.
He gestures at the narrow hallway at the side of the room. It leads to two tiny bedrooms side by side. “Go to sleep,” Hansel says. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
Gretel
I don’t expect to fall asleep quickly, or even at all. But I climb into the narrow bed Hansel offered me, pull the worn blanket around my shoulders, and I’m dreaming within seconds.
I dream of the summer, as it was before everything fell apart. Soft, green grass under my bare feet. The stream running through the forest. Market days in the village that went late into the long summer nights.
I dream of dancing by the bonfire in the town square at midsummer and walking home with Hansel, laughing. Our feet ached so badly he had to pick me up and carry me the last stretch, but I would’ve kept dancing if he wanted to.
We were only children. We knew not what was coming.
I dream of birds singing in the morning and rain falling on the roof at night and the sound of people laughing at the tavern in the distance.
That was what our village used to sound like. It doesn’t anymore. The fog has driven people inside, and they only come out when they absolutely must. The bitter cold doesn’t help.
But in my dream, it’s warm and sunny, and everything looks how it should. The fog hasn’t taken over the village. The fields haven’t burned. There hasn’t been a famine.
Hansel still smiles at me. I can’t make out most of what he’s saying, but just from his expression, I think he’s talking to me about taffy.
He always wanted taffy.
We must agree to go get some, because at some point in the dream I turn around and find him eating a piece. He offers me some, and it’s sweet. I haven’t tasted sweets like this in so long.
In the dream, I close my eyes and savor it.
I don’t know when it ends. I don’t know if it does.
When I wake up, I think I’m still there. For a moment there is peace and hope. It’s been so long since I’ve felt that.
Still in the summer I dreamed of. I’m warm under the covers, and the pillow is soft under my head, and it smells like Hansel’s cottage. I can’t remember why I’m sleeping here. Did I run here for shelter from a storm? Did we stay up too late talking?
My heart sinks as the memories of last night come back to me. One by one, the memories school me.