Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman Page B

comedy of the three little men, has a quite different tone. I gave the three dwarfs a little more to say than the Grimms do.

NINE
    HANSEL AND GRETEL
    At the edge of a great forest lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children, a boy called Hansel and a girl called Gretel. The family had little to eat at the best of times, and what’s more there was a famine in the land, and often the father couldn’t even provide their daily bread.
    One night as he lay in bed worrying about their poverty, he sighed and said to his wife, ‘What’s going to become of us? How can we keep the children fed when we haven’t any food for ourselves?’
    ‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘This is what we’ll do. Early tomorrow morning we’ll take them into the thickest part of the forest, make them comfortable, light a fire to keep them warm, give them a little bit of bread, and then leave them there by themselves. They won’t find their way home, and we’ll be rid of them.’
    ‘No, no, no,’ said the husband, ‘I won’t do that. Abandon my own children in the forest? Never! Wild animals would tear them to pieces.’
    ‘You’re a fool,’ said his wife. ‘If we don’t get rid of them, all four of us will starve. You may as well start planing the wood for our coffins.’
    She gave him no peace until he gave in.
    ‘But I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I can’t help feeling sorry for them . . .’
    In the next room, the children were awake. They couldn’t sleep because they were so hungry, and they heard every word their stepmother said.
    Gretel wept bitterly and whispered, ‘Oh, Hansel, it’s the end for us!’
    ‘Hush,’ said Hansel. ‘Stop worrying. I know what we can do.’
    As soon as the grown-ups had fallen asleep, Hansel got out of bed, put on his old jacket, opened the lower half of the door and crept outside. The moon was shining brightly, and the white pebbles in front of the house glittered like silver coins. Hansel crouched down and filled his pockets with as many as he could cram in.
    Then he went back inside and got into bed and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, Gretel. Go to sleep now. God will look after us. Anyway, I’ve got a plan.’
    At daybreak, even before the sun had risen, the woman came in and pulled the covers off their bed.
    ‘Get up, you layabouts!’ she said. ‘We’re going into the forest to get some wood.’
    She gave them each a slice of dry bread.
    ‘That’s your lunch,’ she said, ‘and don’t gobble it up too soon, because there’s nothing else.’
    Gretel put the bread in her apron, because Hansel’s pockets were full of pebbles. They all set off together into the forest. From time to time Hansel would stop and look back at the house, until finally his father said, ‘What are you doing, boy? Keep up. Use your legs.’
    ‘I’m looking at my white kitten,’ Hansel said. ‘He’s sitting on the roof. He wants to say goodbye to me.’
    ‘Stupid boy,’ said the woman. ‘That’s not your kitten, it’s the sun shining on the chimney.’
    In fact, Hansel had been dropping the pebbles one by one on the path behind them. He was looking back because he wanted to make sure they could be seen.
    When they got to the middle of the forest their father said, ‘Go and fetch some kindling. I’ll make a fire so you won’t freeze.’
    The children gathered some small twigs, a whole pile of them, and their father set them alight. When the fire was burning well the woman said, ‘Make yourselves comfortable, my dears. Lie down by the fire and snuggle up warm. We’ll go off and cut some wood now, and when we’ve finished we’ll come and get you.’
    Hansel and Gretel sat down by the fire. When they felt it must be midday they ate their bread. They could hear the sound of an axe not far away, so they thought their father was nearby; but it wasn’t an axe, it was a branch that he’d tied to a dead tree. The wind swung it back and forth, so it knocked on the wood.
    The