Jake & The Gingerbread Wars (A Gryphon Chronicles Christmas Novella) (The Gryphon Chronicles) (4 page)

She
unlocked it for him from the inside. It gave a low creak as Jake eased it open. Then he and Red slipped into the shop.

Time to hunt the
fairy.

CHAPTER FOUR

A Bittersweet Feud

As soon as he stepped into the dark shop, Jake gagged a bit, nearly overcome by the sticky-sweet smell after having gorged himself on treats all day. He shook off the nausea with a will, turning as Gladwin flew nearer.

“You tw
o look around out here,” she whispered. “I’ll go check the kitchen.”

Jake nodded
and she zoomed away, trailing golden sparkles down the center aisle and back behind the bakery counters.

“Careful, Red!
Mind your wings,” Jake scolded in a whisper as his big, lion-sized pet padded through the little, cluttered shop.

Jak
e shook his head and crept down the nearest aisle. He barely dared wonder who would take the blame this time if Red knocked over another of Marie’s creations.

Putting the
earlier mishap out of his mind, he concentrated on finding the fairy, or whatever sort of creature was lurking in this shop. Red also listened keenly, his small, tufted ears pricked up, his eagle eyes shining with a faint golden glow in the darkness.

Suddenly, Jake thought he heard the tiniest murmur of voices coming from somewhere near the end of the aisle.

He moved in silence, placing one foot carefully after the other, just like in his pickpocket days.

Yes, he definitely heard someone calling from just around the corner of the aisle. A very small voice, possibl
y that of a fairy. He couldn’t be sure.

It sounded
female. “Rollio, sweet Rollio! Wherefore art thou, Rollio?”

Jak
e furrowed his brow.

Holding his breath to avoid maki
ng even the slightest sound, he sidled up to the end of the aisle, where another
Croquembouche
stood proudly. (He moved extra careful around it.) Lowering himself to a crouched position beside it, he stole a stealthy glance around the corner of the aisle.

He kept his gaz
e up high, expecting to spot the mischievous fairy flying around in here somewhere. So the second little voice, and the flicker of motion down low on the floor, came as a surprise.

“Juniette! I am here!”

Jake lowered his gaze and looked straight at the speakers. He blinked rapidly, certain his eyes were playing tricks on him. But no.

The speakers were still there.

Down on the floor, mere inches high, two little gingerbread cookies ran to meet each other and shared a quick embrace.

“At last! Oh, Rollio!”

“My sweet Juniette!”

Jake’s eyebrows slowly
lifted. Red appeared by his side, stared at the gingerbread couple for a moment, and then turned to him, as if to say,
Explain.

Jake
shook his head in bewilderment and shrugged.

“Hurry
, my sweet!” Rollio said. “We must away!”

Noting the gingerbread boy’s
smart icing helmet, Jake was sure he recognized British Bob’s style of decorating his ginger-soldiers.

As for Juniette, her pink-frosting
hair certainly marked her as one of Mademoiselle Marie’s creations.

“Oh, how I’ve missed you!” the tiny girl co
okie cried. “Together at last!”

“
Come, my dainty crumb. We must not linger!” Rollio warned. “My brothers are climbing the battle ladders even now, and your father’s troops won’t be far off. We must hide before they find us!”

“If only our families did not forbid our love!” said Juniette.

“Hurry, take my hand.”

A gingerbread
person doesn’t actually have a hand, per se, just a nice rounded arm. But that didn’t stop the cookie couple. They held on to each other as best they could and raced away with tiny, tapping footsteps as they fled across the shop.

Jake could do nothing but stare in lingering astonishment as Rollio and Juniette disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

He had barely just recovered his wits after this impossible sight when a horrible thought gripped him.

Great S
cott!
The treats in this shop come to life?
He blanched and clutched his stomach, wondering if he had murdered sentient beings by eating all those goodies today.

“Becaw?”

Jake ignored the Gryphon for the moment and wildly searched the nearest shelves to see if any of the other edibles were coming to life. Thank goodness, he quickly concluded in relief that only the gingerbread display seemed to be affected. But how?

He needed a closer look. That fairy must have something to do with it, he thought. Fairy magic could be very mysterious.

Red followed as Jake tiptoed toward Marie’s gingerbread Versailles. What he saw made him freeze with such astonishment that Red could have knocked him over with one of his feathers.

The gingerbread Versailles
was in an uproar.

Preparations for a battle were u
nderway—and just in time, too.

For,
as Rollio had warned, British Bob’s ginger-soldiers presently invaded somehow from downstairs.

Marie’s ginger-courtiers
received the first wave of the attack with typical French aplomb. The gingerbread folk rushed into battle, British Bob’s little knights charging, Marie’s frou-frou courtiers fencing with the gusto of the famous Musketeers to defend their homeland.

They
launched a barrage of candy cannonballs from their cookie cannons. They dueled with swizzle sticks and hurled spurts of red icing at each other.

“How…can this…
be happening?” Jake whispered in a daze.

Red shook
his feathered head. “Caw…”

Jake glanced at the Gryphon. He had never seen the noble beast looking so confused before.

The only logical explanation he could think of was that the fairy he had detected here today had put some kind of magic spell on the gingerbread displays.

Maybe they only came to life at night, for Jake was certain the gingerbread folk had been motionless—normal, inanimate, baked goods—when they had visited earlier today.

All of a sudden, he and Red heard a frantic cry from the direction of the kitchen. “Help!”

Jake gasped
, snapping back to awareness. “Gladwin!”

They ran
, abandoning the mystery of the gingerbread war in progress, and rushed toward the kitchen.

As he ran
to Gladwin’s aid, Jake took care to watch where he was going. He wasn’t sure where Rollio and Juniette were hiding, and he dreaded the thought of accidentally stepping on them.

He dodged around
the shop counter and charged through the doorway into the bakery’s kitchen.

It was darker in the back, wit
h only one window over the sink, but the smells changed from the cloying sweetness of baked goods to a hint of cleaning fluids in the air. Marie’s staff had left their work areas in ship-shape for the morning. But unfortunately, whatever sort of scuffle had gone on between Gladwin and the fairy hiding in the shop had caused a mess.

“Gladwin, where are you?”
Jake whispered loudly, glancing around in the doorway, with Red right behind him.

He hea
rd a little cough and splashing coming from a spot near the wall, and ran to where Gladwin was angrily pulling herself up out of a milk pail.

“
Blimey. Are you all right?”

She sputtered, her wet
wings sagging. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Oh, that ungrateful brute!” she spluttered. “I don’t like him at all!”

“You met the fairy?”

“Don’t be absurd. A fairy would never behave in this barbaric fashion. He’s an elf,” she fairly spat as she climbed out of the bucket and squeezed the milk out of her wings. “But even so, I can’t imagine what’s got into him! He’s not normal. All I wanted was to ask him a few questions!”

“An elf?” Jake echoed as he handed her a little kitchen hand towel to dry herself off. “
Then why has he got a sparkle-trail?”

“Oh, i
f you go back far enough, fairies, elves, and leprechauns are all different branches of the same family tree,” she said impatiently. “Archie’s Mr. Darwin would have a field day with that one.”

“
Gladwin…” Jake waved off her news about the elf, for he had news of his own. “You won’t believe what just happened out there. The gingerbread men have come to life, and they’re fighting each other!”

She paused in drying herself and frowned at him like he was a loon-bat.
“
What
?”

“The gingerbread display! There’s a whole battle going on between Mademoiselle Marie’s French courtier cookies and British Bob’s
ginger-knights from his cookie castle downstairs! They’re at each other’s throats!”

She stared at him in confusion,
then started laughing. “Oh, you almost got me there, you rascal.”

“I’m not joking!”
But before he could tell her about the gingerbread sweethearts who were apparently eloping together, Jake caught a glimmer of red-and-green sparkles in a dark corner of the kitchen.

He thrust the matter of the gingerbread battle aside, homing in on their quarry.
“There,” he murmured ever so discreetly to his companions. “I see him. In the corner.”

Red’s ears pricked up.

“He’s spying on us.” Jake sidled over to the kitchen door and closed it behind him. Then he locked it so the little miscreant couldn’t escape.

Nobody shoved their
favorite fairy into a milk pail and got away with it.

Jake glanced at Gladwin. “I trust you have no further objections
to me capturing him?”

“Hardly!” She let out
another huff. “If he had nothing to hide, he would’ve answered my questions. Whatever he’s doing here, he’s obviously up to no good.” She tossed the towel aside and flew a few feet up into the air, a little unsteady on her still-drying wings.

Jake nodded at the Gryphon. “C’mon, Red. Let’s get him,” he whispered. “You grab him, I’ll bag him.”

Red’s golden eyes gleamed in the darkness as he nodded back firmly, eager for the hunt.

CHAPTER FIVE

To Catch an Elf

“You might as well give yourself up!” Jake warned the unseen creature lurking in the kitchen. “We know you’re in here. We’ve got you cornered now. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“Look out!”
Gladwin cried as a cast-iron saucepan came flying out of the darkness at him.

Jake
deflected it just in time with his telekinesis; otherwise, it would have hit him squarely in the noggin. He scowled as it clattered to the floor.

“Shh
!” Gladwin scolded. “You’ll bring the constable running!”

Jake narrowed his eyes in annoyance, scanning the dark kitchen. “Nice try
, elf! You missed.”

He heard a
nasty snicker in response.

“
You’re only making it worse for yourself!”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t try throwing
any kitchen knives,” Gladwin mumbled, then suddenly pointed. “There!”

More red-and-green sparkles appeared, running along the kitchen’s top shelf.

By their glow, Jake could just make out a little figure about knee-high, eighteen inches tall or so. He had a pointy red hat with a white pompom on the end, a green coat, and candy-striped stockings above his curly-toed shoes.

But the Christmas elf was blazingly fast, dodging away
, as if he could not decide whether it was more fun to torment them a bit more, or if he should just try to get away.

“
We only want to talk to you!” Jake lied as he followed the fading sparkle-trail. Dash it, he had already lost sight of the elf. “What are you doing in this shop?” he asked into the darkness. “Shouldn’t you be at the North Pole making toys or something?”

“Santa will hea
r of this!” Gladwin warned. “This is
not
very Christmassy behavior!”

“I hate Chris
tmas!” a small, angry voice retorted.

I
n that instant, Red homed in on the exact spot where the sound had come from and pounced.

Alas, t
he Gryphon came up empty and suddenly started coughing. Jake and Gladwin heard another mocking laugh.

T
hen they smelled cinnamon. Red gagged and coughed, his golden eyes watering.

“Red, are you a
ll right?” Jake hurried over to his pet in concern. When he reached Red’s side, he realized the spiteful little elf had just flung a handful of cinnamon into the Gryphon’s eyes.

Red sputtered and sneezed,
wheezed and coughed, then shook himself, his golden eyes watering and suddenly blazing with indignation, as if to say,
That does it!

“Oh, you’ve got it coming
now, elf,” Jake vowed, pulling the folded up burlap sack out of his coat. He shook it open, giving Red a meaningful nod. “You shouldn’t have done that, whoever you are!”

“Caw!
” Red coughed again, but he was ready to continue hunting their quarry.

“I don’t see him,” Jake whispered after a moment. “Where’d he go? He can’t have got far.”

“Oh, I probably should have mentioned this before.” Gladwin flew alongside Jake’s shoulder. “But Christmas elves can kind of, well, make themselves almost invisible.”

“O
h, great,” Jake muttered.

“It’s a defense mechanism
—you know, so children can’t see them around Christmastime. Santa has it, too. But their sparkles still show.”

“Santa has a sparkle-
trail?”

“
A little bit of one, sometimes. He
does
have elven blood, you know. How else would he be able to do all he does without the help of magic?”

Jake frowned. He
had no particular regard for Santa Claus, but he’d had no idea that Christmas elves could make themselves invisible. Blimey, what else didn’t he know about them? “Can they fly?”

“No, b
ut if they get a running start, they can jump so well that it’s almost like flying—over short distances, anyway.”

Jake
growled under his breath, then had to tell himself to quit getting frustrated. He had battled much more formidable foes than one irksome little elf. Gargoyles, giants, Norse gods, a wicked sea witch, and a power-mad uncle, just to name a few. This should be but child’s play for a future Lightrider like him…

He
suddenly got an idea.

“Let’s block
the exits. If he sees he can’t get out, maybe he’ll give himself up. Gladwin, you hover in front of the lock on the kitchen door and hit him with your fairy dust if he tries to get past you. I’ll guard the window. Red, you block the fireplace in case he tries to get out through the chimney.”

The others agreed. At once, t
hey split up to man their posts, but the elf must have realized their intent, for there was a flash of red-and-green sparkles as he suddenly went wild, rushing around the kitchen, looking for any weakness.

They held fast.

“He’s coming at you, Gladwin!”

She
hurled a glob of milk-sopped fairy dust at him. The elf ducked and thus avoided getting hit by its stunning effects, but in the blink of an eye, he tested Jake next.

Jake could barely see the elf
, he moved so fast. As the knee-high outline of the small, angry creature came speeding toward him, the sparkle-trail glimmered out behind him like long strands of gift-wrap ribbons stuck to his shoes.

The moonlight streaming in through the window over the sink gave Jake a glimpse of the elf’s wizened face, pointy ears, and re
markably big nose. Rushing out of the darkness, already in motion, the elf started to gather himself to jump over Jake’s head toward the window.

But
Jake was not about to let him pass. He threw up his arms to block him, then remembered at the last minute that he could use his telekinesis to bounce him back.

Pah!
He flicked his fingers in the charging elf’s direction…

But
sometimes, unfortunately, Jake got overexcited in the midst of some adventure, and on such occasions, he tended to use too much strength.

Bam!

The bolt of energy from his telekinesis hit the elf. The little creature yelped, zooming backward through the air. Jake gasped, afraid he had just accidentally killed the little fellow by slamming him too hard against the opposite wall.

T
hankfully, Red was already on his way. Mid-pounce, the Gryphon snatched the flying elf in his beak right out of the air, like a big dog catching a ball thrown by his young master.

Rather than being
relieved not to have had his neck broken, the elf started kicking and cursing as Red held him up off the ground, dangling him by his little red suspenders.

Jake rushed over, opening
the gunnysack wide as he ran; Red dropped the elf into the sack and Jake instantly closed it, knotting up its rough twine ties.

“G
ot you! Good catch, Red,” Jake said, even as the elf began thrashing about in the sack, unable to escape.

“Let me out!”

Jake lifted the sack higher and spoke to it. “Be still, you little pest! You’ve got no business in this bakery. I know it was you who got me thrown out of here today for knocking over the creampuff tree. More importantly, I want to know how you brought those gingerbread folk to life! How’d you do it?”

The thrashing paused. Another smug snicker emerged from inside the
burlap sack.

Jake fum
ed.

“You see how rude he is?” Gladwin exclaimed.

Red, meanwhile, still smelled like cinnamon.

“Let’s get out of here,
” Jake grumbled.

Carrying the sack in one hand, he unlocked the kitchen door with the other. As he opened it to let the other two go ahead of him, he glanced over his shoulde
r with a slight twinge of guilt at the mess they had left in Marie’s formerly tidy kitchen. She’d likely blame Bob for it somehow, based on what he’d seen, Jake thought.

He wondere
d what had happened between the two bakers.

Just as he and his
companions headed for the shop’s front door, Archie opened it and poked his head in, beckoning anxiously. “Hurry! We’ve got company! Night watchman’s coming down the street!”

“Gladwin, c
an’t you turn off those sparkles?” Jake whispered at once. “What if the bobby sees the light? You’re going to get us caught!”

“I can’t help it! They
only stop if I stop flying. Oh, never mind. Just go. I’ll wait in here and hide until the bobby passes. I won’t let him see me. You two go on. I’ll catch up later. Maybe I’ll tidy up the kitchen a bit. I feel rather bad about the mess.”

“Have
a look at the gingerbread battle while you’re waiting. There were two cookies that escaped.”

“Jake
, hurry!” Archie called in a loud whisper. “He’s coming!”

“Go!” Gladwin urged, shooing them
away before hunkering down on a shelf to avoid leaving a sparkle-trail, which would surely draw the bobby’s eye when he came strolling down the street on the night watch.

Red pounced out of the shop and Archie quickly climbed onto his back.
Jake pulled the bakery door shut silently, then joined his frantic cousin.

Holding on
to Red’s collar with one hand and clutching the gunnysack with the elf in the other, he mumbled that he was ready.

Red took a few gracef
ul running strides down the cobbled lane, and then lifted off with a whoosh of his powerful wings.

It was fortunate that the night was dark enough that the bobby didn’t see them flying away into the
starry, black sky.

The curi
ous constable did, however, pause in front of the bakery. He bent down, wondering what sort of dog breed could have left such large paw prints in the snow. Irish wolfhound, perhaps?

“Hmm!”
he said to himself before shrugging off the question and moving on with his patrol, continually scanning the darkness.

After all, crime never slept.