At the edge of a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his two children, Hansel and Gretel, and their stepmother. Times were hard, and one lean year the crops failed and the flour ran low, until there was scarcely enough bread in the house for one, let alone four.
One night, when the children were meant to be sleeping, Hansel heard the stepmother speaking low and urgent by the fire. “There is not enough for us all,” she said. “In the morning we will take the children deep into the wood and leave them there.” The woodcutter protested, for he loved his children dearly, but he was weak with worry and hunger, and in the end he gave way.
Hansel lay awake. But he did not despair, for he was a clever boy, and when the house was quiet he crept out into the moonlit yard and filled his pockets with small white pebbles that shone like silver coins.
In the morning they were led out into the forest, and as they walked Hansel dropped his pebbles one by one along the path. When the fire was lit and the parents had gone, and the children found themselves alone in the dark, Gretel wept. But Hansel took her hand. “Wait for the moon,” he said. And when the moon rose the pebbles gleamed like a trail of silver, and the children followed them all the way home.
The stepmother was not pleased to see them. And when the hunger grew worse, she pressed again, and again the father gave way. But this time the door was locked, and Hansel could gather no pebbles, and so he crumbled his morsel of bread instead and scattered the crumbs behind him as they walked.
But bread is not stone. The birds of the forest came down and ate every crumb, and when the moon rose there was nothing to follow, and the children were truly lost.
They wandered two days, cold and hungry, until they came upon a sight so strange they thought they must be dreaming: a little house built all of bread and cake, with windows of clear sugar and a roof of gingerbread. Half-starved, they fell upon it and began to eat.
The door opened, and out came a very old woman, leaning on a stick. “Dear children,” she crooned, “however did you come here? Come in, come in, you shall have all you like and a warm bed besides.” And she fed them pancakes and apples and put them to sleep in little white beds.
But the old woman was a witch, and the house was a trap she baited for children, for children were what she liked best to eat. In the morning she seized Hansel and shut him in a cage, and set Gretel to work, and each day she bade Hansel poke a finger through the bars so she might feel whether he had fattened. But the witch’s eyes were dim, and clever Hansel held out a thin chicken bone each time, so that week after week she marvelled that he stayed so lean.
At last her patience ran out. “Fat or thin, I shall eat him today,” she said, and she lit the great oven. “Climb in,” she told Gretel, “and see if it is hot enough.” But Gretel saw well enough what the witch intended, and she played the fool. “I do not know how,” she said. “Show me.”
“Simple girl,” snapped the witch, and she stuck her own head into the oven to show her. And Gretel gave her a great push, and shut the door fast, and that was the end of the witch.
Gretel freed her brother from the cage, and the two of them found the witch’s house full of pearls and precious stones, and they filled their pockets to the brim. Then they made their way out of the forest, and across a wide water on the back of a kindly duck, and at last they came again to their father’s house.
Their father wept for joy to see them, for the stepmother had died in the meantime and he had grieved for his children every day since. And with the witch’s treasure their want was over, and the three of them lived out their days together, and never went hungry again.
The forest is full of sweet houses and sweeter voices, and the child who keeps her wits will outlast them all.