The Gingerbread House Hunt

The smallest gingerbread biscuit had disappeared from the baking tray.

There would have been nothing unusual about that, except for the trail of icing across the table and the soft tapping behind the sugar bowl.

Nubo put down the rolling pin.

“Can our biscuits walk?”

Orumi peered under the table.

“They couldn’t this morning.”

Fira lifted the sugar bowl. A little gingerbread man was dragging a length of ribbon across the tabletop. Behind him slid half a walnut shell, carrying two raisins and a crumb of cinnamon.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m looking for a home. Preferably with a view of the Christmas tree.”

Orumi sat on the floor to get a better look at him. Earlier, while decorating the biscuits, he had pictured this little fellow stretching after his long rest on the baking tray. He had imagined it so clearly that the world had apparently decided to give it a try.

“Have you found an address yet?” he asked.

The gingerbread man pointed to a large upside-down mug on the windowsill.

“There. Only I couldn’t find the way in.”

Nubo lifted the mug. The gingerbread man walked underneath it, took a few steps and came straight back out.

“Dark.”

Nubo turned the mug onto its side.

“Now you’ve got a doorway.”

The mug rolled into the flour. The gingerbread man managed to jump aside, but the belongings in his walnut shell disappeared beneath a cloud of white dust.

“And there’s your winter garden,” Orumi observed.

Fira brushed the flour off the little house-hunter.

“Wait a moment. Where would you actually like to live?”

The gingerbread man thought about this for a while.

“Close to you. But in a place of my own. With room for a table.”

Fira moved the empty flowerpots along the windowsill and found a space beside the Christmas tree. From a drawer, she took a wide teacup that nobody used. Its rim was chipped, but it still smelled of tea and oranges.

Nubo examined its rounded side.

“It’ll roll.”

He made supports from two pieces of cork and a low threshold from a scrap of wood. He fitted everything together so carefully that the teacup did not move even when Orumi accidentally knocked the windowsill with his elbow.

Orumi thought of a tiny light. A lamp the size of a pea appeared beneath the curved ceiling of the teacup. Then he began cutting out paper curtains. The first was bigger than the whole house. The second fitted a window that did not exist yet.

“We can hang it by the doorway,” the gingerbread man decided. “Then I’ll have a curtain with a big view.”

Fira lined the inside with a dried petal and brought an acorn-cup bowl. Nubo made a table from a button balanced on a short cotton reel and fitted it beside the bowl. He kept peering inside as he worked, checking that the little resident would have room to move around.

“Leave a little space by the door,” the gingerbread man asked. “For visitors.”

When Christmas Eve came, the three friends sat down at their own table. On the windowsill, a tiny lamp shone in the doorway of the teacup. From inside came the tapping of a little spoon against a button.

“Do come in!” called the gingerbread man.

Nubo knelt down first. Fira lowered her crown of petals, and Orumi lay on his tummy to peer inside. Three tiny pieces of orange peel were waiting on the table.

“For you,” said their host. “I prepared them myself.”

The smallest star on Nubo’s face shone brightly.

“Very spacious.”

“I know,” the gingerbread man replied. “And tomorrow I’m putting in a garden.”

Orumi looked at the rest of the windowsill.

“How big?”

The gingerbread man held a hand to his forehead and gazed towards the flowerpot.

“As far as that mountain, to begin with.”

He was pointing at a tangerine.