The Wicked Ones

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TJo Angela Edwins S 111111111111 The Wicked Ones An ancient story. Imagine it this way: not the old woman, but the children running from another woman they swear to be evil. (Perhaps she is, but perhaps she only asked them to set the table, toss out dinner scraps, something simple to ease her heavy burden.) Here they come on pinched feet weary from treading half a mile on the forest’s green floor to arrive at what this lone earth mother built with sweat and sugar and an eye for the loveliest gumdrops, here, just far enough from busybody villages and the clatter of tins and gossip. And what do they do but help themselves without an ask or a curtsy, imagining, like so many pampered children, that everything they find belongs to them, that all the work of old female hands is good for nothing if not filling their shining hungers? Is it any wonder they climbed willingly into her silver roaster? Is it any wonder they thought her wide-bellied stove a glowing bedchamber made warm just for them? 111111111111111111111