It
was autumn, an afternoon golden and crisp, and they walked hand in
hand by the house with the lollipop trees and the peppermint-striped door.
An
old woman beckoned with an apple green finger, and the boy and the
girl had been warned, but they were hungry, and the house smelled of gingerbread and cider.
Inside
was a fireplace, orange crush flames rolling and leaping,
and sleeping and dreaming on a china blue pillow, was a cat black as midnight named "Snowglobe".
The
boy turned to the woman. “We're hungry”, he said.
“Pie's
good today. Apple crumb.” A waitress with jeweled glasses handed
the boy a menu. “Here ya go, Sugar”, and she gave the girl a
laminated list of the daily specials.
A man in a maroon jacket said, “Pie's good. Meatloaf's terrible.
Don't get the meatloaf.”
“You
need to hush,” the waitress said, laughing. She looked at the boy,
and the girl. “You want some pie?”
“Yes
ma'am”, said the girl.
The
waitress sliced into a mile-high confection of apples and honey and buttercrumb topping. “On the house”, she said, shaking a can of DreamWhip.
It
was evening and winter and morning-glory purple, amber moonbeams shot
through the sky like searchlights.
They
walked over stones and squealing things darted, they walked past dark trees that
beckoned with evergreen fingers.
“Keep walking,”, the man in the
maroon jacket said.
The
boy and girl walked to the apricot dawn, then a wind began churning
and crystals were turning, the cat arched its back and shook its
black head.