Hansel was trying to force a window open when Calypso Nyx tasted the front door.
He heard the snap of a biscuit, followed by a thoughtful silence.
Then a woman’s voice said, “A little too much ginger.”
He stopped pulling at the window latch.
Outside, a stranger in a fitted black dress stood beneath the candy-covered porch. Her long black hair fell almost to her hips, and she held a piece of the cottage in one hand.
“Help us,” he whispered.
Calypso looked up.
“Is the rest better?”
“The rest of what?”
“The house.”
Hansel stared at her.
Behind him, Gretel was searching the kitchen for the key to the back door.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
“Someone eating the porch.”
Gretel hurried to the window.
“Please,” she said. “Get us out.”
Calypso studied the two frightened faces behind the glass.
Then she looked at the biscuit in her hand.
“Does everything here taste like this?”
The cottage had looked welcoming from the forest path.
Its roof was tiled with gingerbread. Thick white icing traced the windows, and the fence posts were striped candy sticks.
Hansel and Gretel had been lost for two days when they found it.
They were hungry enough to overlook the fact that no ordinary house should smell like warm cake.
The Witch invited them inside.
She offered soup, bread, and a place to rest.
Then she locked the doors.
By morning, the food on the table had hardened into painted wood. The windows would not open. Gretel had discovered a heavy chain beside the kitchen oven and stopped asking what their hostess intended.
They waited until the Witch went into her storeroom.
Then they began looking for a way out.
That was when Calypso arrived.
Nobody had invited her.
She had followed the smell.
Calypso walked toward the front entrance.
Hansel pressed his hands against the window.
“Don’t come inside!”
She paused.
“Why?”
“She’s a Witch.”
Calypso glanced at the iced door.
“Does she bake everything herself?”
“Calypso,” Gretel said, reading the name embroidered faintly on a ribbon tied around the stranger’s wrist. “Please listen. She locked us in.”
Calypso tried the door handle.
It did not move.
She leaned closer to the biscuit frame.
Tiny sugar flowers covered the edges. Between them ran a pattern of symbols too neat to be decoration.
Calypso broke off one of the flowers.
Inside, the lock clicked.
Gretel turned toward the door.
Hansel heard it too.
“Do that again.”
Calypso smiled.
“Now that’s interesting.”
She reached for another piece.
The storeroom door slammed open.
“What are you touching?”
The Witch crossed the cottage with surprising speed.
Gretel pulled Hansel out of her path.
Outside, Calypso held the first biscuit near her mouth.
The Witch unlocked the front door and threw it open.
“Put it down.”
Calypso took a bite.
The Witch’s eyes widened.
“Not that part!”
Calypso looked from the biscuit to the doorway.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
That was an unhelpful answer.
It made her much more curious.
She reached past the Witch and snapped another piece from the frame.
A thin line of light flickered across the ceiling.
The Witch grabbed at her hand.
Calypso stepped back, holding the biscuit out of reach.
Behind the Witch, Gretel caught Hansel’s sleeve.
The front door was open.
Their hostess was looking in the wrong direction.
They ran.
Hansel brushed against the door as he passed. Gretel followed close behind, expecting a shout, a spell, or a hand around her arm.
The Witch barely turned.
Instead, she reached toward the broken frame.
“No, no, no.”
The symbols in the icing went dark.
Hansel and Gretel reached the trees.
Only then did they look back.
The chocolate shutters sagged.
One folded slowly over its own hinge, leaving a brown streak across the cottage wall.
A candy fence post bent near the ground.
Then the entire fence toppled in a bright scatter of sweets.
Calypso watched with genuine delight.
“Oh.”
The Witch pressed both hands against the door frame.
Light gathered around her fingers, then sputtered out.
“What did you do?”
“I ate it.”
“You broke the binding!”
Calypso looked at the biscuit again.
“The doorway holds the spell?”
“Yes!”
“The whole house?”
“Yes!”
A gingerbread roof tile slid loose and dropped into an empty flowerbed.
Calypso glanced upward.
“That seems unwise.”
The Witch stared at her.
“You built an edible house,” Calypso continued, “and made the important part delicious.”
“It was not meant for you.”
“Neither was the house, apparently.”
From the forest edge, Gretel watched the Witch struggle to hold the frame together.
Hansel tugged her sleeve.
“Come on.”
For a moment, Gretel considered thanking the stranger.
Then Calypso bit into the second biscuit.
Gretel understood.
The woman had never been trying to rescue them.
They had escaped during her tasting.
The siblings disappeared between the trees.
The Witch finally noticed.
She turned toward the path.
“Those two!”
Calypso followed her gaze.
“They’ve gone.”
“Catch them!”
“Why?”
“Because you let them out!”
Calypso considered that accusation while chewing.
The roof gave another soft crack.
The Witch spun back toward the cottage and caught a sliding section of icing before it tore away from the wall.
Calypso stepped aside to keep her boots clean.
“I think you have a more immediate problem.”
The porch began to lean.
The Witch wedged her shoulder beneath a supporting beam.
“You could help!”
Calypso examined the structure.
She might have stayed.
She had never seen a roof melt before, and the little sugar flowers were collapsing in an unexpectedly pleasing sequence.
Then something moved beyond the garden.
Above the trees, a set of brown windmill sails turned against the sky.
Calypso walked to the edge of the path.
The tower beneath them was gingerbread.
The sails looked like thin wafers.
She glanced down at the biscuit in her hand.
A different recipe, perhaps.
“Where are you going?” the Witch shouted.
Calypso pointed.
“Does that taste different?”
The Witch looked toward the windmill.
Her expression changed.
“Stay away from it.”
Calypso smiled.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know what it does.”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
The Witch struggled beneath the porch beam.
“Come back!”
Calypso had already started down the path.
Behind her, a shutter dropped into the garden with a thick, sticky thud.
Ahead, the windmill sails turned faster.
At the edge of the forest, Hansel and Gretel heard the Witch shouting at someone else for the first time since they had entered the cottage.
They kept walking.
Calypso reached the windmill just as a warm sugar scent drifted from its turning sails.
She touched the door.
Somewhere behind it, gears stopped.
Then a voice asked, “Who has been eating my sister’s house?”
Calypso looked at the last piece of biscuit in her hand.
“Was she supposed to share?”
