Bedknobs and Beanstalks, page 11
"The crown has survived many scandals. It will survive many more. I hope, Madame.” Sir Jasper raised one eyebrow, “you do not presume to make a threat upon the royal house?"
The prince's guard had stood by looking bored throughout most of the proceedings but now he smiled unpleasantly and laid a rough hand on the hilt of his sword. The mother and her daughters—though plainly with great reluctance—shut their mouths.
"Here.” Ashes took the slipper from his foot and handed it to Bianca. “I won't need this anymore. It should provide you with some money. More than enough to live comfortably, or open another inn if you like.” Bianca's mother and sister looked quite ready to snatch the gleaming slipper from her hands, but she held onto it tightly.
"Ambrose.” Ashes smiled at the coachman and handed him a stub of candle. “Ambrose? Would you be so good as to prepare our coach?"
"As you wish, m'lady.” The little man grinned. By now his pockets were stuffed full of squirming mice. He took the candle, picked up the pumpkin and trotted out of the room, Roland and Ashes close behind him.
Bianca squirmed as they left, clutching the slipper to her bosom. Ultimately, it seemed, she couldn't keep silent—or keep from smiling. “Ashes, where on Earth are you going? Where are you taking the prince?"
Ashes smiled at her over his shoulder. “Nowhere on Earth. We're going to the moon, actually. I believe Ambrose's team will make even better birds than they do horses. We'll have to see what my godmother says about that, won't we? But she's an open-minded lady. I'm certain she'll prove accommodating."
[Back to Table of Contents]
Handsome and Grateful
As told to Kilt Kilpatrick
Hello, I'm Udo Kier. Perhaps you know me from such films as Andy Warhol's Blood for Dracula, or Flesh for Frankenstein, or the classic Hexen Bis Aufs Blut Gequalt. This is the story of Hansel and Gretel. Would you like to hear it? Wunderbar. Let us begin.
Once upon a time in a modest hovel near the woods, there lived a poor woodcutter, his wife, and his two children. The boy's name was Hansel and his sister's was Gretel. Their life was decent but hard, and many a night the four had very little on their supper table. In the hardest seasons, the poor woodcutter could not even earn the daily bread to feed his family.
One night, he dwelt on their troubles with a heavy heart. “What will become of us?” he sighed. “I cannot even feed my children."
His lady wife scolded him, “Your children? What of you and I? What manner of man are you to let us starve so?” The wife was hard-hearted, for she was only the children's stepmother; their own mother had died many years before.
She devised a cruel plan to solve their dilemma. “This is what we shall do, Husband. Tomorrow we shall take the children deep into the woods, where it is thickest. We will make a fire, and bid them wait there for us by the fire. Then we will leave them alone. They will never find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them."
* * * *
What a dreadful woman she is, isn't she? I think she would surely be played by notorious drag queen Divine, were this story to be immortalized on film by John Waters. Not that their father is so much either. As you can see, he is a spineless, distasteful worm who I believe might also be played by Divine in our hypothetical John Waters film.
These two go back and forth for several more minutes over whether or not to abandon the children to be devoured by wild beasts of the forest, but since they are quite tedious people, let's skip ahead a bit.
* * * *
Unknown to the cowardly woodcutter and his plotting wife, the two children had not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their wicked stepmother had proposed to their father. “Oh Hansel, we are surely done for.” Gretel wept bitterly.
"Hush, Gretel,” said her brother. “Do not fret. I will think of something.” And when the parents had at last gone to sleep, he got up from his bed and slipped out the door. The moon shone brightly and all about, little white flint stones glistened on the ground around the cottage, like pieces of silver. Hansel filled all his pockets would hold. Then he went back in again, and said to Gretel, “Rest easy, dear little sister. God will not forsake us."
The next morning, the family set off into the forest to cut wood. When they had gone a little way Hansel stopped, and turned back towards the house, and this he did again and again, till his father said to him, “Hansel, what are you looking at?
"Oh, Father,” said Hansel, “l am looking at my little white kitten, who is sitting up on the roof to bid me goodbye."
"Foolish boy,” said their stepmother, “that is not your kitten, but the sunshine on the chimney-pot.” Of course Hansel had not been looking at his kitten, but had been taking a flint from his pocket every now and then and dropping it on the road.
* * * *
Udo here again. I'm sorry, but you see where they are going with all this. Hansel leaves a trail of flint stones; the children are abandoned in the woods but they follow the trail back home, blah, blah, blah. Such telegraphing! I think we need to skip ahead a few pages. Let's see...yes, yes, yes...his little flint plan works out just fine...skip ahead a little further—okay, they get dumped in the woods once more, Hansel tries it again, but with breadcrumbs instead of flints, but that doesn't work so well. And we haven't even gotten to the gingerbread house yet! Mein Gott, this story is going to take forever! Sorry, liebechens, I forgot how truly tiresome this fairy tale is. No, don't go! Okay, I tell you what. I'm putting the book down. Let's start again, and this time, your Uncle Udo will tell it the right way...
* * * *
Once or twice upon a time, in a modest hovel near the woods, there lived a poor woodcutter, his wife, and his two children. The boy's name was Hansel and his sister's was Gretel. Now, for the purposes of our story here, the poor woodcutter's children were not so terribly young, but rather in the full bloom of their youth, and quite a fetching pair of young people, poised precariously on that first step towards adulthood. They were of marriageable age, but still full of childlike innocence and wonder due to their isolated upbringing. Suffice it to say they were at this age old enough to know several important things—but young enough to be quite unaware of others.
So then, when we last left our young protagonists, they had become lost in the deep woods a second time, and Hansel's idea to use a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way home, which had worked so well with flint stones, had sadly backfired and only served to feed the local squirrel population. So they were now quite, quite lost.
Gretel shivered from the cold and clung to Hansel, who was only a bit chilly in his sturdy lederhosen. But as the family was so destitute they couldn't even afford a full-length dirndl for poor Gretel, the maiden had to make do with a very short skirt, lace-up corset, and creamy white thigh-high stockings tied up with little red bows. She was often mistaken for a French maid.
It was about this time when things seemed most desperate and their hopes for rescue were dwindling, that the brother and sister came upon a wonderful sight, and our story finally gets going. It was a picturesque little cottage, built appropriately enough in a 1920s Storybook design style: a charming, one-and-a-half story bungalow with a whimsical faux Tudor half-timber exterior and a playful, somewhat Gaudi-esque visual esthetic. But most surprising of all—well, only surprising if you had never heard this story before—the entire cottage was constructed from a basic gingerbread structure with a roofing of crispy cream wafers, topped with great spiraled bundt cake gables and a huge rock-candy chimney. Its fine lebkuchen construction was reinforced with butterkuchen and zuckerkuchen, and honey-glazed, almond-sprinkled bienenstichkuchen, with the whole place festively decorated with a colorful assortment of every kind of cake, cookie, and sweet imaginable.
There were heavy beams of Toblerone and marzipan molding. Enormous waffles and wafers shaded windows cut from glassy sheets of transparent sugar glazing. There was ornamental brickwork of strudels and stollen dusted with confectioner's sugar. There were gummi bear gargoyles and window dressings of jellybabies and bonbons. The doors and blinds were sugar-glazed choco pfeffernusse, coated and drizzled with three kinds of dark chocolate, with a hard candy door latch and knocker. Rows of giant bittersweet chocolate Schluckwerder cream-eggs, covered in tiny nonpareil sprinkles, trimmed the eaves in four different colors and flavors—lemon, orange, forest-raspberry, and vanilla. There was even a beautiful rich chocolate schwarzwalder kirschtorte of prodigious size, over seven feet tall, soaked in cherry Schnapps and covered in cream, sprinkled with chocolate shavings and luscious cherries the size of cannonballs, which unfortunately did not smell quite as tantalizing as it might have, since it contained an outhouse.
Hansel and Gretel, now famished and exhausted, rushed to the miraculously well-preserved cottage and eagerly began to gobble up exterior fixtures and decorative elements to their heart's content. So distracted were they while trying to sate their ravenous hunger that the young pair did not notice the pfeffernusse door open, or see the black-clad figure observing the serious property damage they were causing.
"Ahem.” The stranger cleared her throat, for it was indeed a her. She was dressed all in black, as I mentioned, sporting a tall, peaked hat with a flat, round brim, and a long, slinky dress with an even longer slit up the side—the better to show off her long, slinky legs to good advantage. She was a handsome woman, her face a beautiful work of art with perfect silky skin, and the high, elegant cheekbones of a countess. Voluptuous waves of luxuriant golden hair spilled from under her hat and glittered like diamond dust. Her hooded, cat-shaped eyes regarded them with the languorous, dangerous interest of a panther.
"You seem rather large to be termites,” she at last remarked in a husky voice. The siblings looked up, startled and ashamed to be caught with their mouths full of candied cottage siding.
They dropped their ill-gotten handfuls and apologized profusely. “Oh, please forgive us, Lady,” they cried. “We didn't mean to eat your house. But we became lost in the woods and we're so hungry."
The woman-in-black's stern but alluring countenance softened slightly. “What are your names?"
"Hansel...and Gretel,” they replied courteously.
She raised one immaculately sculpted eyebrow. “Handful and Great Tail?"
It was a perfectly honest mishearing, but not without telling Freudian implications. They corrected her politely and she appeared to warm to them.
"Well, then, you must come indoors and stay with me awhile, my young Herr Hansel and Madchen Gretel.” Before you could say Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome, she took them each by the hand and led them into her little house. The pair, too innocent to even to recognize the traditional garb of a wicked witch, followed as meekly as little lambs.
"Hmm...” the witch said thoughtfully, tapping her full lips with a well-manicured finger as she considered her plan. “First of all, I think we must fatten you up, my ravenous little house-breakers."
She sat them down at her big oak table and, quick as a wink, conjured up a fine supper for them, the grandest they ever had. The overflowing table groaned beneath every manner of dish in all four of the proper German food groups: Sweet, Sour, Salty, and Smoky. There were big mugs of buttermilk and pancakes dusted with sugar; baskets of sour apples and roasted chestnuts; great slices of pumpernickel slathered in salted butter; trenchers of pears, beans and bacon; cheese spatzle dumplings with fried onions; racks of smoked eels; clay pots of baked potato hash with bauchspeck and leeks; and still more besides—along with a big silver tray of plum tarts for dessert.
Their kindly hostess sat between them throughout the bountiful meal, plying them with food until they could eat no more. At one point she turned to Gretel and offered her a briny treat. “Here, have an oyster, darling. I've shucked it for you."
Gretel's eyes grew big, and she balked; the simple country girl had never seen one before. The witch lifted it to Gretel's mouth. “Don't worry, my little sugar mouse. I'll show you how.” She slipped a hand behind Gretel's neck and gently but firmly tilted her head back so that the young woman's lips parted. “That's it,” the witch cooed, tipping the shell into Gretel's waiting mouth. “Now use your tongue and slurp it all up like a good girl."
The fraulein did as she was bidden, which pleased the older woman. “There now, wasn't that nice?"
Gretel blushed and smiled shyly.
"Don't you want to eat too, miss?” Hansel asked the witch.
She turned from Gretel and gave him a sidelong glance. “Not just yet, Hansel. But soon enough, my scrumptious little blutwurststrudel.” She rose from the table. “The two of you have had quite a night and morning. I think it is best I take you two little turtledoves to bed for a bit of a nap.” She put her hands on their shoulders and gently led the logy, stuffed pair down the hall.
She stopped at a door and ushered Gretel inside. “Here, Liebling, take this bedroom.” She took the sleepy girl by the hand and led her to the soft white feather bed. The witch sat down on the bed, unbuckled Gretel's shoes, slid them off one by one, and tucked her in. She leaned over and ran her fingers through Gretel's fine ash-blond Swiss-braided hair and gave her a gentle kiss. “Sweet dreams, little one.” The girl fell fast asleep in an instant.
The witch turned to Hansel, still waiting at the doorway. She regarded him with a cool ambiguous smile, which Hansel returned uncertainly. “Come with me, young man. I have plans for you."
The witch extended her hand and Hansel hesitantly took it. She led him, trembling with the gormless excitement of Paris Hilton's Chihuahua, to another door at the end of the hall, and pulled him in behind her. Or rather, out, since this was the back door of the little cottage. A trail of giant gumdrop stepping stones serpentined from the porch to a festive blue- and white-checkered tent in the garden. “Be a good boy and wait for me in the gazebo now,” she gently commanded. He grinned and scampered off like an eager puppy. Her lips curled into a sardonic smile as he ran inside, and she pulled a nearby candy cane lever. The tent cover fell away as a sturdy chain hoisted the iron cage—for that is what Hansel had just stepped into—off the ground, and its door slammed shut and locked fast. A loud whistle blew, and a red banner unfurled atop the cage, which read DINNER IS SERVED.
The witch went back inside, pausing just long enough to call out “Yell for help all you like, darling. Gingerbread this thick is quite soundproof."
* * * *
Gretel awoke and imagined she heard a woman's voice purring: “Mmmm...Delicious...” She opened her eyes to find the witch leaning over her. She sat on the bed, softly stroking Gretel's cheek and shepherding stray locks of hair back behind her ear. “Did you sleep well, my little sugar mouse? You were so very tired, darling."
Gretel smiled, and stretched happily. “Mm-hmmm.” She sat up and looked around, puzzled. “But where is Hansel, miss?"
"Not to worry, my pet. He went off into the forest to play with the woodland creatures. I expect he'll be out all afternoon. But perhaps you and I can find a pleasant way to spend the time till he returns. In fact, there's something you can help me with right now.” She helped Gretel off the bed and into her shoes again, and led her into a pleasant sitting room with walls of bookshelves stacked with dusty old tomes and great plush settees soft as spider's silk. The witch wheeled over a tall bookstore ladder. “Darling, you can climb up and fetch something for me now, can't you? Of course you can. Such a clever girl."
Delighted to be of assistance, Gretel took hold of the rungs and the witch held the ladder firmly on either side—which also meant enclosing the girl closely in her arms. The witch leaned in quite close and told her, “I'll hold the ladder steady for you, my long-legged angel. Careful now, take your time..."
* * * *
Meanwhile, poor Hansel had no idea that the dinner bell had been sounded above his cage. He only knew he had been grievously mistreated and his beloved sister was still inside with their captor. And what sort of peril might she be in? After hollering for help as loud as he could for what seemed like hours, he finally despaired that any help would ever arrive, and cried bitterly. He was in such a sorry state that at first he did not hear the heavy footfall of some large animal approaching him, nor did he notice the ominous rustling in the bushes until it was quite too late, and he realized with a fright that he was no longer alone in the little clearing behind the cottage.
* * * *
Gretel felt a strange sensation grow in her tummy as she slowly, carefully, climbed out from between the witch's arms and went step by step up, up, up to the very top. The witch watched Gretel's footing very carefully to ensure she kept her balance.
"Oh! What am I looking for up here?"
"There should be some items just above you there. If you stand on tiptoe, I think you'll find them. Take your time, Liebechen. There's no hurry."
Gretel stuck her tongue out a bit as she reached above her head and fished around on the topmost shelf.
The witch was extremely patient with Gretel, and her gaze never wavered from the girl's legs.
"Ah! I found something. It's a long shaft with a thick head—Oh! It's a bottle!"
"Bravo, my lovely! Bring it down and we'll have some."
* * * *
Hansel wiped his eyes quickly when he realized something large had emerged from the underbrush. A great brown bear or a hungry pack of wolves would make short work of him, cage or no cage. He held his breath until caught sight of the new intruder. He gasped in surprise when he saw it was no fierce animal but a rugged woodsman: tall, bold of eye and strong-jawed, with a great axe slung over his shoulder.
"Sir!” Hansel called. “You must help me!"
The man sauntered over in no great hurry and took a long look at this strapping youth in a go-go cage. “Must I?"
* * * *
"You must,” the witch told Gretel firmly.
"But I've never—never tried it before,” the girl protested.
