Read Online Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird by Vivian Vande Velde - Free Book Online

village, and she immediately agreed to marry him and take care of all of them.
    And beautiful children they were, Isabella thought when she and her new husband arrived back at the cottage, as beautiful as the carved marble angels over the doors of the cathedral. A boy and a girl, obviously twins, they couldn't have been older than six or seven.
    "Hansel," Siegfried said to the boy, "Gretel," he said to the girl, "say hello to your new mother."
    Isabella stooped down to hug the children, but Gretel said, "She's not our mother."
    And Hansel said, "Our mother's dead." Then he added, "Our mother didn't love us."
    And Gretel finished, "She wouldn't have died if she did."
    How incredibly sad,
Isabella thought.
Oh, the poor, sweet dears.
Her eyes filled with tears for the sad, sad children. "Of course your mother loved you," she said. "She didn't
want
to leave you. And I'm not here to replace her. Nobody could ever do that. But I'm here to love you and take care of you just the way your mother did."
    "How can you love us..." Hansel started.
    And Gretel finished, "...when you've only just met us?"
    The two children looked at each other. Their expressions never changed. In fact, Isabella thought, they really
had
no expressions: not happy, nor sad, nor angry. Just...
there.
    She said, "But your father's told me so much about you."
    Which wasn't true. All he had said was that their mother had died and that he needed help to raise them. He hadn't even said how their mother had died.
    Now the children were looking at each other again, in silence. Simultaneously their gaze went back to Isabella.
They know I just Lied,
she guessed. It had seemed such a kind and harmless thing to say.
    "Children," Siegfried murmured as though begging them to give Isabella a chance.
    Still without a word, the children turned to leave.
    "Wait," Isabella called. "I have brought you gifts."
    The children stopped. Turned. Waited.
    Isabella went to the small bag in which she had packed all her worldly possessions. "Hansel," she called, but both children approached. "Hold out your hand."
    Hansel did.
    Gretel watched with large, pale, unblinking eyes.
    Isabella put her father's gold pocket watch into his palm, letting the chain run through her fingers one last time. "This was my father's," she said. "His father was a famous watchmaker, and he made it."
    Hansel watched her with large, pale, unblinking eyes.
    "Hold it up to your ear," Isabella said, trying to get him to bend his elbow. "Listen to it tick."
    Gretel said, "We're too little to know how to tell time."
    "But you can learn." Isabella felt her heart sinking.
    Hansel said, "There's never anyplace to go in the woods. And no special time to be there." He moved to hand the watch back to Isabella, but she wouldn't take it.
    "Keep it," she told him. "You may want it when you're older." To Gretel she said, "I have something for you, too. From my mother." But now her hand shook. Isabella took Gretel's cold hand and placed her mother's wedding ring on one of the child's fingers.
    "It's too big," Hansel said as his sister lifted her hand and pointed her tiny fingers down, letting the ring fall back into Isabella's hand.
    "You'll grow into it," Isabella said, putting the ring back on Gretel's finger.
    "It isn't something to wear in the woods," Gretel said. Again she let the ring drop from her finger.
    And Hansel let the watch drop.
    Isabella stopped the ring from rolling under the bed, but the glass on the watch had cracked. "I'm sorry," she said, "there was no time to buy or make..." But when she looked up, the children had left and she could see them walking hand in hand out the front door. "I'm sorry," she whispered after them. She looked up at Siegfried, who shrugged as though he didn't know what to say either.
    ***
    The next days were not easy ones. Try as she would, Isabella could not get the two children to like her.
    The first day after her arrival, Isabella spent making a dress for Gretel from the pink cloth