Gingerbread House In The Woods
by PainterArtist FIN
Title
Gingerbread House In The Woods
Artist
PainterArtist FIN
Medium
Painting - Mixed Media
Description
It was completely frosted over, with roof shingles in great swirls of chocolate frosting, and a chimney of caramel bricks. The house was on a kind of
tray, and surrounded with a complete yard. Flowers with gum-drop petals were carved for a marzipan windowbox for each window, and each window
and doorway had stick-candy frames and a slabs of milk-chocolate for the actual window shutters and doors. A path of rock candy led from the front
door, all the way around the house to a strange kind of structure in the back, sort of like a rabbit hutch or cage, made out of tough ropes of black
licorice. "Isn't that charming," said Mom. "Even a little home for the rabbits." And she placed the house in the middle of the big kitchen table, where we
eat except when there's company, as a centerpiece.
Two days later, as we were eating breakfast before school, and Mom was grabbing some coffee before work, we saw the witch who lived in the
Gingerbread house. She was only about an inch high, all dressed in black, and she'd just opened the front door of the Gingerbread house and stepped
out. My sister screamed, and I knocked my cheerios on the floor. "There's a little teeny ugly person living in the house!" I screamed at Mom. "I don't
see a thing," she said, staring at the house.
The witch looked up at us, not seeming to see us, and walked around her Gingerbread house, pushing the frosting back into place and dusting the gum
drops. "She's right there!" I shouted, pointing. Mom looked right at the witch, blankly. "I just don't see anything but the house," she said. "It's a good
joke, but we've got to go to school." It was then that my sister and I realized that we would have to take responsibility for getting rid of the witch
ourselves.
Not until the bus ride home did I realize how enormous that responsibility could be. "Listen," I told my sister, "What if it's the witch who captures Hansel
and Gretel." Her eyes got enormous. "We have to warn them," she said. So on the bus, we both made signs on notebook paper - "WARNING: WITCH
INSIDE HOUSE!" and "WITCH EATS KIDS." Then we taped them onto the table on each side of the gingerbread house. I also tried to squish the witch,
using a flyswatter, but as soon as I brought it down, she'd be somewhere else in the frosting yard. Mom figured we were just pretending, and left the
signs taped to the table.
But it did no good. The next morning, when we came down, a tiny boy, not much over half an inch, was trapped inside the licorice cage behind the
house. And a tiny girl was carrying logs of bitter-sweet chocolate wood, from the chocolate wood pile, to the house, and the ugly little witch poked at
both of them with a piece of stick candy. "We're too late," my sister sighed tragically, but I told her we'd wait and see what happened. Maybe the kids
would survive okay on their own, like in the fairytale.
Each morning at breakfast at the table, we looked to see if Gretel had killed the witch and freed Hansel. And every day, Hansel was still there in the
cage. When we tried to open the cage to let him out, he would disappear - and as soon as we put it down in the yard again, there he was, trapped back
inside. My sister and I tried yelling at Gretel to kill the witch, but she didn't seem to hear us. Then I got an idea. "We can't reach them," I told my sister.
"But we can send them a message. It just has to be in the world of the witch's house, not our house."
So I got a toothpick and carved letters in the snow frosting on the little yard, right where Gretel had to go to get the chocolate wood logs for the witch's
fire. P-U-S-H, I wrote, "Witch In Oven." Then we went off to school, hoping for the best.
We got home from school just as Mom was coming in the door. The most awful smell of burning filled the whole house, sort of like coal and tires burning,
only worse. The kitchen still had a haze of smoke in it, but even though we looked carefully everywhere, nothing seemed to be on fire. Except, of
course, the chimney of the Gingerbread house, which still had a wisp of smoke coming out. The licorice cage was open and empty, and the house
seemed to be deserted, and missing several gum drops off the sides.
"I hope it worked," I told my sister, anxiously. But she just smiled, and pointed to the chocolate frosting on the roof of the house. Someone had climbed
up and carved a message in the frosting, in neat print letters. My sister read it aloud:
"Thanks for the tip. Love, Gretel."
We never did find out who had sent the magical Gingerbread house. But sometimes I wondered where Hansel and Gretel had gone - were they living in
the woodwork like mice, hidden away beneath the floorboards, happily ever after?
Poem by The Magical Gingerbread House
by Unknown
Painting: The Gingerbread house in the woods by PainterArtistFIN
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COVER" and some of our other GALLERIES
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Uploaded
December 28th, 2013
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