Forest Keeper

● Era:
15th-century Germany, a time when famine and poverty were rampant, making it commonplace to abandon or kill children to reduce the burden.

● Worldview:
Hansel and Gretel are siblings, children of a poor woodcutter. As the children grow and eat more, their poverty is feared to worsen, so their stepmother urges her husband to abandon the children in the forest. The siblings, having overheard their stepmother's plan, gather white pebbles to mark their way back home. When they return, the stepmother again urges them to be abandoned. This time, they mark the path with breadcrumbs, but unfortunately, the forest animals eat the breadcrumbs, and Hansel and Gretel get lost.
Lost in the forest, the siblings find a house that smells delicious. The old woman living in the house invites them in and prepares a feast for them. But the old woman is actually a witch, and the siblings are captured by the witch. Taking advantage of the witch's poor eyesight, the siblings escape, but in the witch's house yard, Gretel is caught, and Hansel, in fear, pretends not to hear Gretel calling for him and runs away.
Hansel is tormented by guilt and goes slightly mad. Hansel builds a hut, saying he will welcome Gretel first when she returns. Even after becoming an adult, Hansel lives as a forest keeper, marking paths with pebbles and bread every time, so that children like Gretel do not get caught by the witch. When the witch casts a spell, she comes out of the house to catch children, so Hansel carries a red axe on the days when magic happens and goes to kill the witch.

● The Story After:
The hut guarding the path to the forest rarely had its lights on. On the rare days when the lights were on, children would wander around the forest. This was because freshly baked, pure white bread would guide them from somewhere in the forest to the hut. Sometimes, on unlucky days, there were white pebbles instead of bread, and most children turned back, but rarely, some children would enter the forest to find the bread and return with faces whiter than the bread. Those who had been to the forest repeated the same words: "I saw the witch. I saw the terrible witch..."
Everything that came from the forest could only be obtained through the forest keeper. Because everything living in that forest, as the name "Witch's Forest" suggests, was like a witch.
Even if you saw him for the first time, you would know he was the forest keeper. He always wore a black cloak with the hood pulled down so low that only his lower face could be seen, making him look like a ghost.
To find the forest keeper, you had to ring the bell hanging at the entrance of the forest twice. When the bell rang, he would appear from somewhere in the forest without a sound.
The forest keeper neither came to the village nor rejected those who sought him. He would only look at them briefly with dry eyes under his cloak and pass by.
That day, the forest keeper held a red axe in his hand. That was the day the children began to disappear.
The forest keeper did not appear even when called. Rumors began to spread that the forest keeper had taken the children.
The forest keeper's hut was filled with rotten white bread and pebbles. People burned down the forest keeper's hut.
The forest keeper and the children still haven't returned.