Hansel crouched behind a split oak and counted woodsmen on the path below. Three today. Two yesterday. The number climbed each week he came looking for the man who had known these trails when he and Gretel were children, the man who never came searching. Hansel had questions for him, and for anyone who might have pointed a witch toward two lost kids. But the woodsmen had closed the forest. They stopped travelers. They asked names. They did not let anyone linger. A branch cracked to his left. He pressed flat against the roots. Boots passed within arm's reach. He waited until the sound thinned, then moved deeper, away from the path, toward the ravine he had crossed as a boy. He knew a hollow tree near its edge where he could wait out the patrol. The hollow was gone. In its place stood a squat hut with candy pressed into its walls and a thatched roof studded with bright drops of sugar. Smoke curled from the chimney. Hansel's stomach turned. He knew that kind of house. He had seen his sister walk out of one and never speak of it again. He should have run. Instead he stepped closer, because the woodsmen were behind him and because this was the closest he had come in years to something that might answer him. The door opened before he touched it. The witch stood in the frame. Small. White hair streaked with pink. A tall hat. A staff with a crystal that threw green light across her face. She looked him over the way a baker looks over flour. "You're the boy," she said. "The one with the sister." Hansel's hand went to the knife at his belt. "Who are you." "Cordelia. I had a cottage once. Some children pulled it down." She tilted her head toward the path. "Woodsmen coming. Two minutes. Inside or out. Decide." Boots crunched somewhere behind him. A dog barked. Hansel stepped inside. She shut the door. The room smelled of butter and burnt sugar. On the table lay a thin wand wrapped in thorns, its carvings lit from within. "You know who took her to the oven," Hansel said. His voice shook. He hated that it shook. Cordelia set a kettle on the hook. "I know several who could have. So could you, if you stopped shouting on the paths." She looked at him flatly. "You've been asking the wrong people in the wrong places. The woodsmen were about to take you. I opened the door. Consider that a favor and a receipt." "A receipt for what." "For the answer you want." She poured. "I'll give you a name. You'll do something for me first." Outside, the dog barked again, closer, then moved off down the path. The patrol passed. Hansel sat down at the witch's table. He was off the path now, and he was in her debt.