Part 5
Looking through the arch, it seemed dark, or blurry. But the instant we passed under it, I was assaulted by a thousand sights and smells all at once.
“Wow,” I said. It was all I could say. It was all I could do, I was frozen in place by the sight.
Mizha, on the other hand, was not. She let go of my hand and rushed forward to check everything out. I just stood there, trying to take it in.
It was a candy house and garden, like something out of a fairy tale. Only it looked nothing like any of the drawings or cartoons of this that I’d seen, and I’d seen a lot. It’s hard to describe exactly what the difference was, but I’ll do my best. First off, it was busier.
The yard and garden were packed with tall candy canes with vines of licorice growing out of them, and bushes made of spun sugar, and dozens of different flowers, all with petals and stems of different candies. Taffy sunflowers and white chocolate violets and poppies of some kind of sweet-looking paper. Each of them was as intricate and detailed as any flower I’d seen, and they didn’t look like something made by hand in a shop. It was all clearly naturally grown, as impossible as that was.
Some of the candy canes grew into each other, and the flowers had irregular petals and bits eaten out of them as if by bugs. There was a grow-bed near my feet of tomatoes and peas and some other vegetables, all seemingly made of pastry with frosting decorations, but they were in various states of having grown. Some of them were just shoots, and some of them were full grown plants. They had all of the chaos of a tended but slightly wild garden, only everyone was made out of something sweet.
Then there was the house itself, which was far more magnificent than the garden, if that’s possible. The house wasn’t gingerbread, but bricks of what it took me a second to realize alternated between malt and something else that I realized years later was seafoam candy. The bricks were caulked between them in something white—chocolate or frosting, I didn’t know, but it ran down the bricks in places like it hadn’t been carefully applied. The roof looked like it might have been gingerbread, hundreds of gingerbread shingles stacked against each other, discolored in places as if weathered by rain and sun.
The aroma was intense. I could smell candy and pastry and bread and chocolate and a thousand more things, all at once. It was like someone emptied the contents of a candy store and a bakery into a room, then smashed it all together with a hammer.
“Ugh!” I heard Mizha let out a sound of disgust near me and it pulled me out of my reverie. All of my gazing at the bizarre wonders around me had taken only a minute at most. But Mizha had wasted no time grabbing things and stuffing them in her mouth. I turned to see what had caused her to exclaim.
“Here, taste this.” She pressed a small red thing in my hand. It was a donut hole, only it was a tomato, with icing piped along the top as a leaf. It still had a piece of stem from where she had plucked it off the plant, and when I ran my finger along the stem , I could tell it was some kind of bread.
“I’m not eating that,” I said.
She giggled. “Your loss. It’s a tomato.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“No, I mean it tastes like a tomato. It’s a donut hole, and it’s sweet, but it tastes like a tomato. Oh look, raspberries! I wonder if they’re made out of raspberry?” She trotted off to try one. I stood there, not sure what to do.
Here I was, standing in a dream. I’d stepped out of the nightmare forest and into a dream, right out of a fairy tale. A house and garden made out of candy, supposedly the thing that every kid wanted most in all the world. I liked candy as much as anyone, but this was weird. I’d always sort of thought it was strange that Hansel and Gretel just started eating the food in front of them when they found the witch’s house. Sure it looked and smelled like candy, but who knew what it actually was? That’s when I put it all together.
“Witch’s house,” I said softly.
“Hmm? Wugijoozay?” Mizha’s mouth was full.
“This is a witch’s house,” I said, more loudly.
At that exact moment, as if on cue, the front door of the house creaked open, and something stepped out.
“Well well well,” it said in a crackly voice, “What have we here? Children, of meat and skin, if I am not very much mistaken.”
I froze. At first glance, it looked like a weird collection of goo in the shape of a woman. Then I realized it was a woman. Old and fat, wearing a plain brown dress and a white apron. Only she looked weird. Her skin was a pale beige color, and saggy all over. It was also mottled with warts all over her face and exposed arms. Some of them were black, but others were bright green, or orange, or red, and sort of translucent. Her hair was a single mass clumped to her head, and it was sticky, like it was soaked with hair gel. She was moving her fingers—which ended in point brown nails—in a creepy, witchy kind of gesture.
I wanted to run away, but Mizha swallowed the food in her mouth and marched right up to the witch-woman.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Mizha. This house is really neat.”
“Thank you, little girl. And you,” she turned to me, “little…child. What brings you and your tender young flesh to my domicile today?” She reached out to stroke Mizha’s face, and then pulled away as if burned. She leaned down and stared at Mizha’s forehead, and the mark she had drawn there.
“Who gave you that mark?” asked the witch.
“I drew it myself,” said Mizha proudly, pulling out her crayon.
The witch frowned, and her whole face seemed to droop down. “You didn’t just get lost in the woods, did you?”
“Nope!” Mizha exclaimed. “Mawbri lead us here.” She dipped down and patted the ground, and the shadow-creature bounded over to her from where he had disappeared in the candy bushes. He crawled up onto Mizha’s shoulder and squealed.
The witch’s eyes widened, and I think she mouthed the word “pure.” “You’re not an ordinary child.” She turned to me. “You are, I think.”
“Yes,” I said. “Perfectly ordinary. Please don’t eat me, Mrs. Witch.”
The witch threw back her head and laughed, a strange, gargled sound. “Me, eat you? Why would I want to eat children made of meat.” She turned her gaze to Mizha. “You’re not here to eat me, are you?”
Mizha paused as if considering. “I don’t see why we should.”
“You promise?” asked the witch. “You give me your word?”
Mizha nodded. “Yes, I give you my word.”
The witch sighed heavily. “I suppose that will have to do.”
Mizha took the witch’s hand, and looked her straight in the eyes. “No. I said I give you my word.” There was something different about her voice. She didn’t sound like a little girl.
The witch’s eyes widened further, and I thought I almost saw fear. But by the time she spoke the look was gone, and her tone had returned to mild amusement. “Well, you’d might as well come in and have some proper food, just in case you get any ideas. You may call me Mrs. Eplibrød, by the way. And please wipe your feet. I don’t want breadcrumbs on my nice clean floor.” She turned and walked inside.
Mizha turned to me and gave me an enormous grin, then followed. Mrs. Eplibrød into the house. I hesitated, and then followed myself.
The inside of the house was far less fanciful than the outside, but it was still the same. Everything was made out of something edible, only less of it looked so sweet and delicious. I saw tables and chairs of bread, pretzel-shelves, and throw rugs of woven bread-sticks. The shelves that lined the various rooms had the kind of powders, dried leaves, and strangely-colored concoctions I expected from a witch’s house. They also contained books. Not edible bread-books as far as I could tell. Just normal books. And not worm-riddled tomes lined with human skin. Most of them were paperbacks with white creases on the spines. They caught my attention because they were so out of place, because they were normal. I think they were mostly romance novels.
“Don’t get many visitors these days,” Mrs. Eplibrød was explaining to Mizha. “Not so easy to get lost in the woods, I suppose, and children have easier ways of getting sweets. Where are you from, children?”
“Aurora Lane,” said Mizha.
“Do they have parking lots on Aurora Lane? Are you from somewhere with parking lots?”
“Not on the street,” Mizha replied. “But nearby.”
Mrs. Eplibrod nodded. “I’ve always wondered about parking lots. I’ve heard about them but never seen one myself.”
The witch carried on like this as she gave us a tour of the house. Aside from the fact that everything was edible, it was a normal old lady’s house. At one point, a cat poked its way out from behind a couch.
“Kitty!” Mizha exclaimed upon seeing her.
“Ah, there you are Múli.” Mrs. Eplibrod reached into the folds of her apron and brought out a can. She opened it up and the oily smell of sardines assaulted my nostrils. The cat scampered forward and buried its face in the tin. Mizha knelt down and started petting the animal.
Despite my apprehension, I could never resist a cat, so I approached as well. She wasn’t black, as I would have expected, but a grey and brown tortoise shell pattern.
“She looks so normal,” I said as I reached out to stroke her fur.
“Of course she’s normal,” snapped Mrs. Eplibrod. “But she’s made of meat, if that’s what you mean. Straight from the land of parking lots.”
“How do you get food for her?” I asked.
Mrs. Eplibrod looked over at me and narrowed her eyes.
“Why do you ask that, child?”
“Well, cats need to eat meat, and everything around here seems like it’s made of, like, cake and stuff.”
The old woman nodded. “It’s not easy. I have to send my gingers out into the Sea, and the pools don’t always bring them back, the poor boys. Lucky they found an old factory that had come to life and eaten all of its workers just a few moons past, so I’m stocked with anchovies.” She turned to look the cat in the eyes. “But you would eat me out of house and home if you could, wouldn’t you, little mouth?”
She stroked the cat’s cheek, who rubbed her saggy fingers affectionately.
“Come along,” Mrs. Eplibrod said, standing up. “There’s only one room left, and it’s the one you’ve come to see, I gather. That cat’s not going anywhere, not if she knows what’s good for her.”
Mizha rose to follow. I stroked Múli the cat a few more times and then followed after. Our host tapped on a spot of wall, which stretched and distended, and before my eyes an elaborate bread-sculpture archway grew into being. I watched it bloom out of the center of the wall as uncooked dough, and then harden and darken into solid form. Once it was formed, Mrs. Eplibrod reached out and grasped the handle.
Then it struck me why the old woman looked so strange, with her drooping, beige skin, and the brightly colored warts all over her body. She was made of dough. Dough that had not been baked. The colored marks all over her were candied fruit, and the black ones were…raisins? Yes, I could see it now that I was looking. And her hair was some kind of danish, covered in glaze. That’s why it looked shiny and sticky.
The door opened, and heat poured out of the newly-revealed room in waves. Mrs. Eplibrod stepped in, and Mizha followed. I stood in the doorway, not wanting to enter.
Stealing All the Sevens 
Marvelous description. Makes me hungry for candy
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