Like any unremarkable sister, Gretel forgets the moral.When the spruces introducethe wipeout-angel boy, all waxand eagle wing, she would like nothingmore than to lick himlike she licked the candy caneA-frame all those sleeps ago.Suck the kelp from behind his left ear.You smell like burnt soup, Gretel saysin lieu of licking. You smell like dyinggummy bears, Icarus replies.Salt-boy and sugar-girl sink together into the troughof underbrush. She tells him about her gingerbread troubles.The brother. The cage. He tells her about how it felt to split openthe sky. The gull-caw. The contrails.A de-ascension in watercolorwith no time to dry. Gretel wants to know if it hurt.Oh yeah, Icarus says. It killed.The apron has pockets, which meansthere are still good things. She shows himthe stashed bloodroot and black cohosh,picked special for tomorrow’s brotherstew. She meant to save roomfor the goldenseal. How are we supposed to knowhow much is too much? she asks Icarus,who has don’t-ask-me eyes and globules of waxon his cheeks that say, I am not to be trustedwith twinkly objects. But Icarus, too, is a child.Car chase of a boy. Lockjaw of a girl.How much & how close?This is how it has always been.So forget the chicken bone, he tells her. Forget the cage.And she does. She forgets. Forehead to foreheadin the briar patch, they forget,leaving Daedalus and the witch to the simple pleasuresof a dead child.