Writercize Challenge - New Fairy Tale Ending

Alana at Writercize has a Weekend Challenge: New Endings, where you write a different ending to a popular fairy tale.

Here's my entry:

Hansel and Gretel – The Real Ending

Source: thewondrous.com

Gretel did indeed trick the old witch at her own game. She slammed the witch in the oven when she was showing Gretel how to stoke the fire that would soon cook Hansel. When the witch’s screams stopped, Gretel let Hansel out of his cage. They searched the hag’s gingerbread home and found a small stash of rubies and emeralds, a fortune that would buy them all the food they’d ever need in this land of famine.

Then the two sat down to decide what to do. They could go back to their father, the woodcutter’s home, but even if their nasty step-mother were still alive, they would have to live with the fact that their father had abandoned them to die in the forest. No. They decided it would be better to make their own way in the world. 

They lived in the old hag’s cottage until they were grown and then, selling some of their jewels, they set out together to find suitable marriages.

Hansel married a fine woman who cooked him the richest of foods. He was plump and happy the rest of his life. Gretel married the town’s confectioner (for the famine was no longer in the land) and helped him in the shop. The one thing though, that she refused to let him sell was gingerbread. Of that, she could not abide.