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melodytreeTitle: Dessert Properly Prepared
Fandom: Hansel und Gretel (fairytale)
Pairing/characters: Witch
Rating: T
Contains: Horror, implied cannibalism
Summary: Once, she had owned a candy shop. (Witch backstory)
Notes: Written for Healy for Trick or Treat 2016. Title stolen from this semi-relevant quote:
"The dessert, properly prepared, contributes equally to health and comfort; but 'got up' as confectionery too often is, it is not only distasteful to a correct palate, but is deleterious and often actually poisonous." - ‘The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker’ by Eleanor Parkinson (1864)
Once, she had owned a candy shop.
What a nice place it had been - in the middle of the city, on a high-traffic street, painted like gingerbread and with dolls sitting at a tea party in one corner. The children had loved it, always coming in to buy penny candy. Siblings fought over caramels and sugar-candies and ginger sweets, candied fruits and candy canes and marzipan.
In winter she had built elaborate gingerbread towns, complete with church and shops and paving stones. The children fawned over them and begged their parents to buy a piece for the family, and eventually, it worked on at least some of them; piece by piece the towns would disappear, and for a while the children would be satisfied.
They always came back when the snow started to melt, looking quite plump, asking for more.
The problem was twofold: first, the competition. Sugar was too cheap nowadays, flavorings too easy to find and manufacture, and she was hardly the only one in town who could put together a gingerbread house replete with frosting and decorations, then sell hard candies to the little ones who came by to see it but couldn't afford the whole thing. It was hard to keep a business going when her prices had to go down, down, down in order to keep up, and the other confectioners didn't put in what she did.
The second was the police. Too suspicious nowadays, not quite as willing to believe the word of an old woman who ran a candy store. So what if the missing children had all bought sweets there? So did half the children in town. So what if they had been her most fervent customers? It was only because their families were wealthy enough to buy it all.
Oh, well. It had been time to move on anyway, try somewhere new. Get out of the city for a while and enjoy the fresh air of the countryside. Her sister who hated the crowded streets could come to visit her, and the children out here were easier to catch.
In fact, she thought, as she finished rolling out her latest batch of gingerbread (she was thinking of putting together a shed for the gardening tools, maybe a second guest bedroom), that sounded just like a child or two gnawing on her roof right now. Good, good; she'd put so much energy into the icing, then spent an entire week putting it on in perfect ripples, and without a meal in so long her pantry was quite empty.
She put the gingerbread in to bake, adjusted her glasses, and went to meet her new guests. Out here, it was too much to hope that they would be nice and fat already, but never the matter; she wasn't so hungry that she couldn't whip up some buttercream or rock candy to make them edible.
Fandom: Hansel und Gretel (fairytale)
Pairing/characters: Witch
Rating: T
Contains: Horror, implied cannibalism
Summary: Once, she had owned a candy shop. (Witch backstory)
Notes: Written for Healy for Trick or Treat 2016. Title stolen from this semi-relevant quote:
"The dessert, properly prepared, contributes equally to health and comfort; but 'got up' as confectionery too often is, it is not only distasteful to a correct palate, but is deleterious and often actually poisonous." - ‘The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker’ by Eleanor Parkinson (1864)
Once, she had owned a candy shop.
What a nice place it had been - in the middle of the city, on a high-traffic street, painted like gingerbread and with dolls sitting at a tea party in one corner. The children had loved it, always coming in to buy penny candy. Siblings fought over caramels and sugar-candies and ginger sweets, candied fruits and candy canes and marzipan.
In winter she had built elaborate gingerbread towns, complete with church and shops and paving stones. The children fawned over them and begged their parents to buy a piece for the family, and eventually, it worked on at least some of them; piece by piece the towns would disappear, and for a while the children would be satisfied.
They always came back when the snow started to melt, looking quite plump, asking for more.
The problem was twofold: first, the competition. Sugar was too cheap nowadays, flavorings too easy to find and manufacture, and she was hardly the only one in town who could put together a gingerbread house replete with frosting and decorations, then sell hard candies to the little ones who came by to see it but couldn't afford the whole thing. It was hard to keep a business going when her prices had to go down, down, down in order to keep up, and the other confectioners didn't put in what she did.
The second was the police. Too suspicious nowadays, not quite as willing to believe the word of an old woman who ran a candy store. So what if the missing children had all bought sweets there? So did half the children in town. So what if they had been her most fervent customers? It was only because their families were wealthy enough to buy it all.
Oh, well. It had been time to move on anyway, try somewhere new. Get out of the city for a while and enjoy the fresh air of the countryside. Her sister who hated the crowded streets could come to visit her, and the children out here were easier to catch.
In fact, she thought, as she finished rolling out her latest batch of gingerbread (she was thinking of putting together a shed for the gardening tools, maybe a second guest bedroom), that sounded just like a child or two gnawing on her roof right now. Good, good; she'd put so much energy into the icing, then spent an entire week putting it on in perfect ripples, and without a meal in so long her pantry was quite empty.
She put the gingerbread in to bake, adjusted her glasses, and went to meet her new guests. Out here, it was too much to hope that they would be nice and fat already, but never the matter; she wasn't so hungry that she couldn't whip up some buttercream or rock candy to make them edible.
