I do not own the Brothers Grimm stories.

And this is not actually that anyway. Not quite.

The Wicked Witch in the Gingerbread House

The child is lost and well alone.

Deep in the dark and dangerous wood.

She can turn around, back the way she came.

But that is not her path now. Though she does not yet know it.

She has wandered far for such a small child, blond hair dirty and astraggle. Sky blue eyes, leaking tears.

Whether by scent, or calling, or sheer random luck, or maybe the strange cat she follows, she happens, after hours of hours of steps of fading hope, to come upon the small clearing.

The break in the trees, the silver lining in her looming cloud.

And there it is.

A magical place, a thing of beauty and perfection and wonder and glory.

If naught else, to a child who has never before beheld its splendor.

The candy cottage.

Gingerbread fitted walls and white frosted gumdropped lined roof.

Windows and door perimetered in marshmallow.

Candy cane path girders and lollipop lampposts.

All in all, every lost and lonely child's fantasy in the sugar dusting.

Drawing in the lonely little lass from her pitiful, aimless wandering.

Dirty, bruised, tear-soaked thin face gazing in a bewilderment at the glory laid out before her.

Stepping forward tentatively, hesitation learned well from swinging fists and shouted admonishments.

But drawn, drawn, nevertheless, toward the curious abode adorned and carved and structured completely out of all the rare and exquisite confectionary delights a child's blackened, swollen, red-rimmed eye could behold.

Siren call of the sweet toothed, lost, hungry child.

Just as it is meant to.

Draw the unassuming, vulnerable one in to the waiting clutches of . . .

"Good eve, dear child. Art thou lost?"

. . . the hook-nosed, green skinned witch.

The crone is old, wrinkled and withered.

And not really green skinned so much as first thought.

Moreover, a being of the wood so completely enveloped by the nature of her surroundings that she simply emanates them from her very core.

Reflecting them even as light through the sun dappled leaves.

Thinning, white hair caught up and hidden away under an old, worn, black cap.

Fittingly topping the woman herself, adorned neck to wrist to ankle in cloth of gray.

Overlay with a long, dusty black apron.

Feet throughly booted and laced.

Body rail thin and still wiry with daily chores of domesticity.

All of these things, the child senses and absorbs and accepts because they simply are and not up for discussion.

For she is alone. And hungry.

'Art thou lost?' had been the presented question and the child simply nods her affirmation in wide-eyed wonder and more than a hint of disquiet.

But disquiet and lingering fear are the child's only bread and butter, both figuratively and sometimes, when times were especially tough, literally.

And so she simply accepts this new danger into her fragile existence.

Having never really known safety at all since swaddling clothes.

"Speak up, child, my ears dull with age."

"Aye, lost."

Thin, reedy voice.

So young. So fearful. So alone.

And the witch herself, as well, is famished.

"And a bit peckish too, I'll warrant?"

Affirmative nod, no strength in her spirit for brave untruths.

"Well then, come into my home, dearie," welcomes the witch. "And we'll see if we can put some meat on those bones."

Turning, the old woman hobbles toward the cottage, front door opening into the maw of the darkness within.

And the child, shaking like a brittle, desperate leaf in a rising gale, follows.

This story would not be without the Pinterest prompt which inspired it.

So thanks to whoever posted it, I haven't slept in four days. ;)

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