Ebony and Ivory's adventure in the forest mf/F

[lasse672000]

This is a story, which is loosely based on the "Hansel and Gretchen"-story, as told by the Grimm brothers.

Once Ivory had fully regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was that he had been stretched out on a hard surface, like a bench or something. He tried looking around, but it was completely dark.
When he tried to pull one of his hands down, he noticed he couldn't, and that his attempts had been accompanied by a sharp, metallic sound. He tried pulling one of his legs up, with the same result.
"Hello?" the cry was only a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time: "Hello?". But the only reply he got was the echo bouncing off the walls of a big chamber.

A couple of floors above, the two women and a younger girl looked at a screen. They could see and hear perfectly clear, as they had Infrared cameras and microphones installed in the cell.
"He looks nice; doesn't he?" one of the women chuckled.
"Nice enough to eat!" the other agreed. The two women burst out laughing.
"You two are horrid, horrid people!" the young girl standing between sobbed. "I wish you were dead!"
"Well, thank you, my dear Ebony! No one's called us horrid people for ages," The old woman's voice was like nails on a black board. "because no one's lived long enough! As for us being dead; we ought to have died ages ago, were it not for what we're about to do to you and your brother.
You see; looking young and beautiful comes with a price. Every hundred years or so we have to find young people, preferably teenagers but anyone under thirty will do, to refill our "youth-supply".
Here's what we're going to do: We are going to take that mysterious thing that makes you so deliciously young and energetic, and put it in us. The up side from our point of view is that we'll be able to continue living our long, healthy lives. The down side from yours is that you, of course, won't.
Oh, it's not all doom and gloom, you know. We're kind enough to let you spend the last few hours of your lives together." She gave her sister a silent sign, and they grabbed one arm each, and led the poor girl to the same cell, where they had put her poor brother, made her stand against a wall, and chained her to it, with her wrists above her head.

"Is that you, Ebby?" Ivory asked in a faint voice, when the door closed.
"Yes, it is, Ivvy." You could tell by her soft voice, she was smiling gently. "But please; keep your voice down, and try not to move too much, as the walls have eyes and ears in this room. That is why I'm whispering."
She went on to tell her brother everything she had learned about where they were and what the old hags had in store for them. "You have been cuffed to a rack of some sort, and they've left me standing against a wall, with my hands cuffed above my head." she ended her story. "Are you able to move at all?" she then asked.
"Yes, I am. But I'm so stretched out, I can barely move from side to side, never mind up or down. So far I can take it, but my arms and legs are getting awfully numb."
"Mm, we could clearly see and hear your discomfort on the monitor upstairs, and the hags thought it was an amusing sight and sound."

"You say there had been three of them, but now there are only two; What do you think happened to the third hag?" Ivory asked, after a long, thoughtful pause.
"I don't know, and I'm not entirely sure I WANT to know." Ebony replied. "The mere thought of what they might have done to her, sends shivers down my spine. Let's just say she got tired of this and wasted away, rather than having to go through it over and over again."

Suddenly, a cackling voice said: "My dear, poor, children. I might be old, ancient even; but I'm far from dead yet, despite being the oldest of the three!"
A flame was lit, and a very wrinkle-faced woman came into view.
"Not bad looking for being half a millennia, eh?" she cackled. "Give or take a decade or two." The hag lifted her staff, higher into the air.
"Now; I know who you are, but not how you got here!"

The kids told her everything about their father and wicked step mother leaving them in the forest and how they had wandered more or less aimlessly around until they had found a house in the middle of the forest, which seemed to have been built of ginger bread.
"Not 'seemed to have been built of'; it IS built of ginger bread." the old woman said."It's about two hundred years old by now, but as it's charmed, it is still eat- and inhabitable. It even repairs itself when necessary." The old woman, who had introduced herself as Doris, looked up at the ceiling, with a quiet smile on her face. "It was such a joy to live in back then." she sighed. "I used to live alone here, you know. Whenever a child came along, I used to invite him or her in for a glass of lemonade and a nibble at my house, and break off as many pieces they wanted and put in their pockets. Then, THEY arrived!

Of course I was glad to see them at first, but that feeling soon wore off, as I noticed they had gone nasty since I last saw them. I had had enough of them, when I realized they had replaced the spell I had cast over the house, with one that not only preserved it for eternity, but also put anyone who ate from it to sleep. I tried to get rid of them any way I could, But them being two and a couple of centuries younger, they soon defeated and imprisoned me down here. But now, I have finally figured out a way to get out of here. But I will need your help."
"Our help?" Ivory asked. "In what way? In case you've forgotten; We're both cuffed, me to a rack, and my sister Ebony to the wall, so there really isn't much we can do."
"Oh, my dear child," Doris gently chuckled, "I'm a witch; remember? I can do pretty much whatever I want. Except turn back time. And a few other things. But let's not go there right now. I can, however, help you kids escape this dungeon."
"Have you done so before? Helped kids escape, I mean."
"I'm ashamed to say so, but; no, I haven't. It's just that I've finally had enough of them and their wickedness. And I'm not that sure they'll keep me alive for much longer.
Now, there is a door down here, that leads to an old mining shaft. By now, it's so old you can open it simply by giving it a good push. I will magically unlock your cuffs and the cell door, and you will run as fast as you possibly can, until you can run no more. Can you promise me that?"
Both kids promised, and when Ebony was free, she put her hand on Doris's shoulder and whispered:"Good luck!"

Ebony and Ivory ran as fast as they could through the tunnel, when they suddenly heard a rumbling sound, and a blood curdling scream:"NOOOOOOO!" that sort of slowly faded away. They looked at each other, with horror in their eyes, and started running faster and didn't stop until they reached the parking lot, where their father had parked their car.
When they had left the amusement park, his father asked "Ivory", if they had had fun, and if they wanted to go there again.
The siblings looked at each other, smiled and just nodded.