BY LEAH FISHER

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the home, not a creature was stirring, not even a gnome; the candles were burned in the windows with care, in hopes that fair Hansel soon would be there. A curious thing had entered my mind, that soon we would friends and family find; but something was wrong when this homestead we neared, for everything was not as it appeared. “People who live in gingerbread houses,” they say, “should never throw bombs, by night, or by day.”

As Christmas Eve again approaches, I sit in my chair and remember these verses I penned after that fate filled Christmas. It remains in my memory, even as I watch the snow fall on my windowpane. The vague temptation to test the uniqueness of an individual flake by breaking it apart and seeing that it does not snap like a snack made to be dipped in my already perfect cup of tea with freshly steamed milk. I know the flakes melt when I touch them, but something of that day has left me with eternally imbued with a vague suspicion.

I remember it was Christmas Eve, the last one we all spent together. Hansel had been away on a business trip, and I had been enlisted to drive him back home from the airfield. He and Gretel had invited me and Dieter to spend the holidays with them; and of course, we joyously accepted. I thought I could use the long drive as an opportunity to become better acquainted with my host. So, I started hazarding some questions, which went about as well as could be expected…

“You know, I love this work I do with Dieter and the Herders, but the holidays always remind me of home. Sometimes, I wish I could return to those rolling hills and the endless plains of farmland, to stand with my father in the field and learn again from the wealth of his wisdom.” I glanced over at Hansel, who was watching anxiously down the road for his home. “What about your father? Is he coming? I don’t think I’ve met him.”

“No, you haven’t.” Hansel paused, his brow furrowed. “Neither has my wife, nor the children, nor anyone for that matter. He was a musician. He ran off with a dancer after what I am told was a particularly… impassioned performance of the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.”

I was so startled by this confession that I jumped. In my surprise, I jerked the steering wheel violently. Hansel’s hazel eyes turned wide when the car veered from the road. He cried out my name, astonished, then grabbed my arm in an attempt to correct our course, but all too late. I hit the brakes, but the car barreled gracelessly down the icy embankment and slid into the snow-covered forest until it crashed into one among the multitude of evergreens.

I was always under the impression that the automobile was the thing to break when one collided with sturdy trunk, but in our case, it was the tree that cracked. We took a good chunk out of the trunk where we hit it, and the pieces crumbled around the front of the car like a cookie would when crushed. As for Hansel and me, we were severely jostled, but unharmed.

He looked at me, his body trembling and eyes still flickering with fright. “You are never driving my car again.” He got out to inspect the front of the vehicle. “Of course, I’m not sure that anyone will.”

I went to join him, and when I did, I noticed the faint sound of some familiar music being played in the distance. I knew I recognized the notes dancing on the border of my hearing, but what they were I could not tell.

Hansel knelt down to inspect a piece of the bark that had fallen. Just as he did, a clump of snow dropped on the windshield of the car with a disquieting splat, and I caught the distinct scent of sweetness.

I reached out my hand to touch the sugary white glob and licked the sticky substance from my fingers. “Icing?” It was surprisingly good icing to be found in a forest.

Hansel rose with a piece of crumbling tree bark in hand. “It’s gingerbread.” He broke off a piece and offered it to me, then dipped his in the icing and smiled at it. “My children are baking again.”

Following his lead, I dipped my gingerbread bark in the white icing and took a bite. “Mmm—It’s good!”

Hansel got a proud look on his face. “Well, naturally! I said my children made it. This particular tree—” he took a bite “—was probably Stoffel. It tastes like his recipe.” He threw his chunk of tree aside and ducked into the car, emerging again with his briefcase and travel bag. “The car is stuck. I’m afraid it wasn’t made to handle icing. But grab your things. It shouldn’t be too far a hike from here to my house.”

I glanced down at my feet and noticed my boots had begun to merge with the soft snow, which clung to them like a mixture of powdered sugar and liquid butter, laid on thick. As I fought to pry my boots from the substance, I saw the car’s wheels were slowly sinking, trapped in the diabetes-inducing quicksand.

Alarmed, I turned to Hansel. Despite the never-before-seen weirdness, I couldn’t shake the feeling he thought this was all perfectly normal.

“A few days and it will harden,” he assured me, waiting anxiously to go.

I trundled over to him, and he led me in the direction of his home.

After we had been walking on road for several minutes, I asked, “How many of these trees do you suppose are actually gingerbread?”

Hansel shrugged. He let out a sigh, but he did not so much as glance at the trees. “All of them.”

“All of them?” I glanced around at the hundreds, if not thousands, of wavering branches. “But that’s incredible!”

He threw a smile my way. “Well, when Barrel bakes, she really goes all out, and then it isn’t long until she and her brothers get into a competition, and…”—he extended his arm towards the woods—“eventually, we end up with this.”

“This happens often to you, then?”

Hansel laughed. “Of course! Why do you think our house always smells like gingerbread?”

I couldn’t tell whether he was serious, but I was dreadfully afraid that he was. And their house did always smell of gingerbread, so…

All at once, my guide veered off course. His pace accelerated from a swift stride into a jog, and then an all-out run. He stopped as abruptly as he’d begun and bent town to examine something sitting on the snow. He scooped it up and extended his gaze, looking out past the trees. It seemed to me a purple pebble in his hand. But before I got a good look, he was running off again, now bounding recklessly into the woods.

“Hansel!” I exclaimed, running after him. “Hansel, where are we going? We can’t go running through the woods, we’ll get lost!”

“No, we won’t!” he called back. “Oh, don’t you see them, Eber? Don’t you see them?”

I looked madly around, but saw nothing outside of the ordinary. And with that knowledge, I was certain he had gone delirious. Perhaps it was the accident. It didn’t matter the cause. The fact was that I was not willing to be stranded in the woods with him until we found a witch’s house. “See what?”

“The gumdrops,” Hansel said, looking down at the colorful trail which laid at our feet. He bent down and scooped one of them up gingerly, a pretty pink gumdrop which he cradled in his hand along with the snow on which it sat. His eyes studied it with love and gratitude. “Gretel always leaves them for me, so I can find my way home. They show me what’s real, and they lead me back to her.” He smiled and dropped his treasure back upon the earth. “If we follow these, we’ll find my house. Otherwise, we’re liable to end up at one of the children’s gingerbread houses, and we’ll never get home.”

I gestured for him to go on. There wasn’t much for me to say. Gumdrops never looked so good to me as they did then. “Lead the way. Far be it from me to keep you from your sugarplum fairy.”

Hansel passed me a quick nod and took off, following the trail of gumdrops in an outright sprint. “It can’t be far now!”

The music was still playing in the distance, louder now, and the volume of it increased with our every stride. Finally, I recognized it was Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy. Hansel was right; it wasn’t long before we came to the edge of the wood, promptly greeted by the welcome sight of his home by the frozen lake, and we both paused to admire it. The shimmering blue frost of the icy surface caused the dimming light to fracture into a thousand colors, as though the lake itself was the arctic sky upon which danced the fabled lights of the north. But these, I knew, were mere shadows of those.

“Home, Eber.” Hansel breathed the words and let the gumdrops fall into the snow. There were tears welling in his eyes like flecks of diamond, and he wore on his face the most genuine smile I have ever seen. “Let’s go in.”

Hansel was careful to follow the trail of gumdrops, even as we entered into the house and he dropped his bags at the front door. He followed the gumdrops into the kitchen, where his wife stood over a cooking pot with an apron wrapped around her.

“Gretel!” he called out in heart-felt joy and pranced over to her with all the confidence of a young hart. “Darling, I’m home! Thank you so much for the gumdrops.”

Hansel was still speaking when he grabbed his wife’s waist and planted a kiss upon her cheek. But his expression of joy melted to one of inexpressible horror. His kiss was given not to fleshly warmth and tender love but to cold icing and to gingerbread. Hansel flinched and recoiled, his face drained and ghoulish, like that of a soldier who watched his best friend die in his arms.

“Gretel…” He slowly backed away from the cookie impostor with a look of pain and fright. “Gretel!” He cried out her name, turning to a frantic search.

He ran from room to room and called out her name. Desperately, longingly he cried it. Up and down the stairs he bolted, falling on his face, because of the reckless force of his erratic movements. He dashed hither and thither without any sense, searching the whole house several times over, without a reply.

Eventually, he returned to me, still in a panicked state. He collapsed to the ground, staring at the floor in utter despair. Then, forcing himself to his feet, he grabbed hold of my lapels and pled. “My wife, Eber! I need my wife! Where has she gone? Why is she gingerbread?”

Again, he lost his strength. He sunk to his knees and wept, his hands sliding down the front of my navy suit jacket, leaving trails of red icing as he fell. I glanced around, unsure of what to say or do. All of this was new to me. I came from a world in which gingerbread was not nearly so emotional or problematic as this. And although Hansel was the one nearing hysterics, I was now thoroughly spooked by the accuracy of his children’s baking. It was impossible to tell what was real and what was dessert. I wasn’t alright with that. I might end up eating somebody.

“What about the gumdrops?”

“The gumdrops were a lie, Eber!” He broke one in half for me, showing it was gingerbread.

“Is there any other way to contact her?”

Hansel shook his head, defeated.

“Maybe she’s just out on an errand,” I suggested.

“No, it can’t be. The car’s out front,” he groaned. “The car! Oh, Eber! How glorious!” Hansel jumped to his feet. “The car. We’ll drive it to her parents and call from there. That way, she can give us proper directions. And I can hear her lovely voice! Oh, Eber! I can hardly wait.”

He darted out the door faster than I could form a thought around it.

I caught a glimpse of him through the window. He threw open the car door and jumped into the driver’s seat. That was when my stomach flopped: I had his car. I crashed it into a gingerbread tree. It was stuck in icing down the road. And that meant…

Hansel let out a terrible cry. It was a sound of pure pain, the deepest lament. The kind of noise an animal makes when it knows that it is dying and there is no more hope for it. He was a man caught in the perfect trap…and there was no way out. Not without becoming gingerbread.

I walked outside and found him in the car, looking as though he had perished by some unholy means. He was a man whose lifeforce had been stolen from him, gaunt and grey. Slowly, his eyes turned to me, and he uttered a single declaration, as though it were his dying phrase: “Gingerbread. Eber, it’s gingerbread.”

I pulled him back out of the car, supporting the weight of his body with my arm. I don’t know how I managed it. Hansel had no strength and leaned on me as though he had been starving in a desert and was now a withered husk. The seat had covered his back in icing, and stripes of lighter grey and white with which the children had painted their artistic lighting made his jacket resemble the black leather lining of the car we had left further down the forest road.

I picked up a gumdrop I spied by my shoe. Willing to God that it might be our deliverance, I rubbed it betwixt my fingers, applied pressure, and pinched. But alas, it snapped beneath the weight. The sweet, gummy treat and promise of home crumbled into gingerbread, just like all the rest of them. I thought to move forward and fell on my face. Hansel fell with me, tumbling on top of me, unable to stand on his own. “Where is my wife, Eber? My children?”

I groaned. The stupidness of the situation was getting to me. And where on God’s earth was Dieter? I was growing aggravated. He was such a practical joker that he would have recognized the trick immediately. If only he were with us, then by now we would have known the way out of this festive hellscape. Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy still played, and I buried my ears in the icing to avoid it. I had the weight of Hansel on my back, whining for his kin with his dispirited laments. I couldn’t take it. Wasn’t his own misery enough? Why had this blasted holiday horror show been added on top of it, perpetually piping in the background as though we had been sucked into some unending performance of the cursed ballet? Why wouldn’t the music stop?

“Why won’t it stop!” I cried, beating my fists into the sticky drifts of artificial snow.

“The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy,” Hansel muttered. “Of course!” He reanimated at once and pulled me up against my will. “Eber, you genius you!” He grabbed me by the lapels and kissed me, leaving marks of rose-colored lips on my mime-white cheeks. “The music is real.”

“Of course, the music is real, Hansel! It’s part of the torment!” I shouted, my anger finally boiling over.

“No, no! It’s real! The music is real. It’s not gingerbread.”

“I–” I blinked twice, stopping myself from erupting again without thinking. “It isn’t.”

He shook his head. “It isn’t.”

“Gingerbread can’t play music.”

“It can’t,” Hansel laughed.

“It can’t,” I repeated. And together, we lapsed into hysterics.

Following the sound, we soon found a house placed behind the façade of a nearby church on the lake. Naturally, the church and the lake were both made of gingerbread. However, the house was, much to our eternal delight, not. A trail of genuine gumdrops showed us the way to the door, which had a genuine bronze handle strapped to cherrywood. Lamps burned inside the house, lighting the rooms with a welcome glow, and the spiced smell of gingerbread came only from the soft fragrance of the heated oven, while a fire of genuine wood burned, filling the non-gingerbread walls with its warming comfort.

Hansel waltzed gingerly through the house, as though if he stepped too harshly, a floorboard might snap into gingerbread, breaking the illusion. It was as though to him the whole of the house and its inhabitants were dependent upon his refusal to believe until he had them in hand and confirmed that his precious hearth was no longer gingerbread. There would be no other by whom to prove all was flesh and truth but by Gretel. I followed him as he danced into the living room, where the gumdrops led and the music played, unaltered by the appearance of icing or the crunch of holiday treats. There stood Gretel, who raised her head and smiled at him.

Tears formed in Hansel’s eyes. He ran to her, taking her in his arms, and gave her an impassioned kiss. I willed myself to turn away, but couldn’t. It was too beautiful a sight. And tears formed in my eyes, as well. For finally, I knew… this was not gingerbread.

I had finally let my guard down when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and a shudder ran down my spine. Goodness! What was it now? I turned, and….

“Oh!” I let out a relieved sigh. Standing to my left was Dieter.

“Well, Eber, did you like the little prank we played on you?”

My eyes grew wide and red with rage. “You were the one responsible for all of this?”

Dieter grinned. “That’s right!”

“Next time, I’d rather you have me move a bomb to an airfield!”

He laughed merrily. “Why do you think I asked you to drive carefully when last you left Hansel off for his flight?”

I stood stunned for a moment, then blinked. “I don’t suppose the bomb was made of gingerbread?”