Chapter 4 - part 2: chapter 1

Hansel's fire had smouldered nearly to ash, and his mug of ale was empty. He tugged off his boots, rose stiffly from his chair, and climbed into his bed in the corner of the room. Lying on his back in the dark, listening to the crackle of embers, he thought of the sunlight in the forest that day, and the excitement of their return home.

Their father had been overjoyed to see them, if disconcerted by the change in Hansel's appearance. He hadn't really believed their story. They had stuck to it stubbornly, and he hadn't pressed them any further, happy simply to have them home.

Sometimes, though, Hansel caught his father looking at him strangely. Other people stared at him quite openly, or made blunt comments. His family rarely saw many other people in those days, but everyone they did know - or were likely to meet - was as poor and skinny as they were. To be fat was to be strange, to invite curiosity, sometimes wariness. He could always feel their gaze on him, he couldn't hide from it.

Still, the fat fell from him in less than a year. His family's fortunes started to change for the better; he learnt to chop wood and started to learn how to shape it. As he grew up tall and lean, he also grew determined, independent. He vowed to himself privately that he would never again let anyone take advantage of his hunger.

Still... sometimes, even for years afterwards, he had woken up at night and looked down at his tall, lean body and felt a peculiar sense of loss. Remembering the brief time he had been fat was always strangely wistful, as if he had experienced a brush with the ghost of a possible self, one that had vanished before he had begun to understand it.

In the dark, Hansel put his hand on his chest, and then his stomach. An owl screeched outside. He turned over in bed. In his heart the decision had been made, but since he knew it was foolish, he had tried to ignore it. It was no use.

Hansel woke early the next morning, and instead of heading to his workshop, he saddled his horse and rode towards the forest. In the early morning hush, the dawn light streaming through the trees, listening to the scamper and rustle of animals in the undergrowth, Hansel rode onwards, slowly, wondering to himself about his strange decision.

He felt oddly excited. He had no idea what he was expecting to find - he couldn't even remember the way. In the years since that time, neither he or Gretel had ever ventured deeply into the forest.

The impulse that he had been unable to ignore was simply to search for the house again, as if in finding it he would find the answer to a riddle about himself that he had never been able to put words to. He didn't know what he would do if he didn't find it, or if he only found the charred remains of where it had been, or even - the thought made him nervous - if it was still standing, the same as it had when they had left.

The deeper forest was unfamiliar. He kept his horse treading steadily onwards, looking about him all the time. As the morning drew on and became a beautifully warm spring day, he still did not know where he was going, he just felt drawn ever further into the woods.

He was starting to feel foolish, and was considering turning back and forgetting the whole endeavour, but then he spotted a path that tugged at his memory. He followed it. Yes, it was familiar. He felt his heart beating faster. At the end of the path, the trees fell away behind him, and opened out into to a glade, and he saw it.

There it was. The house.