as they saw giants and trolls and witches and conspiracies in every doorway and alley. They eventually died, only ten years after leaving the witch, when they came across a lion who they believed would help them to defeat evil with his magical golden mane.
The lion, of course, was not magical. Nor was he in the mood to befriend young humans. He was, in fact, quite hungry having been kept in a circus cage for over 9 months and fed only scraps and so that was the end of Hansel and Gretel, although the lion did look particularly lazy and well fed for his performance the next night. Much to the annoyance of the ring master who had quite a lucrative wager running on whether the lion would eat one of the clowns or just take the leg off one of the acrobats.
Dympna did not burn to a crisp in the stove. The fire had been hardly alight and, as Hansel and Gretel had fled, she had been merely unconscious which, thankfully, led to amnesia about the cause of her fall into the stove so helped her retain her belief of the general goodness of mankind. She remained in the stove for a week and a day until her daughter Elspeth arrived. She had come to visit and to meet the wonderful children that had brought her mother’s heart back to life but all that she found was a now sad and frail woman locked in a stove.
When Dympna had recovered from her shock and malnutrition she began to worry about the children. Thinking only good of the world she thought that the children must surely have been kidnapped and she set about finding them. After wandering the forest for several weeks she finally grew too tired to carry on and returned to her cottage. Dympna had lived a long life and was now very old.
Too tired to continue any longer Dympna set about the business of dying and, knowing that she would soon be reunited with her beloved Sebastian, she put on her best dress, plaited her long white hair and sat by the fire in her rocking chair. It was here that she died with a smile on her face.
***
Author Bio
D.N.Smith has worked as a Feature Writer for website Suite 101 and as a freelance ghostwriter. Dulcinea’s short stories can be found in books from Wyvern Publications, Rebel Books LLP and Bridge House Publishing. She also works as an editor for Wyvern Publications and runs a forum for writers and illustrators called Pen and Palette. Dulcinea can be found at https://www.dulcineanortonsmith.co.uk where you will also find links to her work both online and in print.
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