#Gunsel and Gretel

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Gunsel and Gretel by Esther Friesner

Gunsel is an interesting piece of slang.

I’m kind of reminded of Nimrod, actually. In terms of how one popular work completely changes the popular definition.

Anyway, we have the witch from Hansel and Gretel as a lesbian private detective who fled Germany for America because of Hitler. She ends up getting involved in Nonsense and Shenanigans re: the goose that laid the golden egg when a dame walks into her office and the dame is Gretel.

Comic fantasy writers love them some fairy tale and nursery rhyme noir, geez.

The way the witch tells it, she had a soft spot for Gretel.

She and her brother were no babes in the woods, no matter how they twisted the story later. They might’ve looked like kids, small and scrawny on account of growing up at the Hard Knocks Hotel but they were both safely past the age of consent when they came nibble-nibbling at my door. And believe me, she let on like she would consent any day, if I didn’t pull a Betty Crocker on her. So that’s why he was in the cage but she had the run of the place. Oh yeah, she played innocent-but-willing-to-learn, and she played it good.

That’s why I believed her when she said she didn’t know how to tell if the oven was hote enough. That’s why I stuck my head in first, to show her how it’s done. My head was full of Stardust, dreams of her and me in that kitschy little woodland cottage, me with my feet up on the pile of kiddie bones, her by the oven, baking gingerbread, everything strictly Ladies’ Home Journal.

Next thing I knew, my face was full of live coals.

And then the shoving in an oven and them running off with her life’s savings. Dick move yeah but you’re not really an innocent victim here what with trying to eat her brother?

Anyway, Gretel spins a tale about her brother working for a Mr. LeGras and plotting to steal his Black Bird and then Hansel going missing. Gretel found his place all trashed up and got a referral to a detective for help.

Ms Witch finds that the story has holes so turns Gretel into a toad and rifles through her purse and finds a letter from Hansel that said he planned the theft because he was jealous that LeGras was paying more attention to his English valet Carlisle.

Anyway, the witch still has a soft spot for Gretel and decides to help her even though she knows she’s trouble. Which is when LeGras’ goons break into her office, bean her over the head and ransack her office. They’re there for Gretel but they accidentally take Bogey, the witch’s cat familiar because he had been in toad form at the time.

By the time the witch realizes, Mr. LeGras personally confronts her and he’s wearing a special enchanted ring that has a Reflect spell on it. Sticks and stones may break his bones but spells will bounce off of him and blow up her.

So she and Gretel are forced to return to LeGras’ house. Maybe Hansel will be more willing to talk if Gretel is in danger.

The witch offers another solution. She’s just got dragged into this so if LeGras hires her on as his new witch, she’ll magically track down the Black Bird. Of course, she’ll need her familiar to help work the spell. No tricks, just going to return him to his true form.

She doesn’t bother to mention that his true form is a huge demon and not a cat. Bogey the demon rips apart LeGras’ goons and the man himself and spits out the ring which the witch pockets.

She’s just finished turning Bogey back to convenient travel-sized  cat when Carlisle shows up and pulls a gun on her. Turns out that this was all a plot by Carlisle, Hansel and Gretel working together and using the witch to get rid of LeGras.

The Black Bird was hidden in LeGras’ disguised as a swan, purloined letter style.

But then Carlisle turns on Hansel and Gretel to take the goose for herself. Because Carlisle was another witch in disguise. A COMMIE WITCH. But also the witch that made the ring for LeGras. When she came to America, she found herself having to work for a pittance and figured she needed a big score to set herself up on easy street.

And now to fly off and leave the POV witch to have everything pinned on her.

The witch disagrees and explodes the goose. If she’s not getting anything out of this, neither is the other woman. Who I get the feeling is supposed to be someone too but I have no clue who.

This quite angers Not-Carlisle and she creates quite a huge fireball to throw at Gingerbread Witch. But she forgot about the ring. Boing fwip.

We cut to the witch back in her office, gluing the article about all of this into her scrapbook (its been blamed on a gas explosion). She figures she’s too old for this line of work and should retire, get a cozy cottage up the coast. Maybe get back into the bakery business with some babysitting on the side (please don’t) when another dame walks into the office.

“I need your help. It’s my stepmother. I - I think she wants me dead.”

And the witch completely forgets about retirement, knowing this was how her life was going to be “until the day they chucked my broom into the janitor’s closet at the LA morgue: one case after another, rubbing elbows with the dolls, and the deadbeats, the chumps and the chisellers, the gophers, gorillas and goons, with maybe a princess or two thrown in to keep the game interesting. A whole lot of fairy tales and not enough happily-ever-afters. But hey. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Or the gingerbread.”

[groezelgeel]

It was a hot, humid, L.A. afternoon, a day when the ceiling fan just stirs the air around slow, like a witch's brew, the kind of day that makes me ask myself why I ever left the cool shade of the German forests for this city, this office, this job. Lucky for me, all I had to do to find the answer was open the paper and see Hitler's smiling face. There are worse things in this world than muggy weather, hard-nosed cops, and overdue dentist bills.

I was about to meet another one.

I knew she was trouble the minute she ankled into my office. They always are, if they're coming to see me. Somehow I never seem to attract the sweet young things trying to get their own back from some kiss-and-tell toad or the frumpy hausfraus out to nail Prince Charming for getting horizontal in someone else's glass coffin; just the dames.

A pretty good story where the witch of Hansel and Gretel is a private detective.