Chocolate Trusses and Candy Cane Staircases

Bert, the carpenter, stood with arms crossed, squinting up at the dripping mess of the gingerbread gable above him. The syrupy runoff dripped lazily down into a rainbow puddle at his feet, what was once-pristine candy cobblestones now was nothing more than a sickly, sticky mass of gumdrops and sugarcane.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, pulling out his pencil to make notes on his clipboard. He’d been called to strange jobs before, but this, well this took the cake. Literally.

“What’s ridiculous?” came a voice behind him, smooth and sharp as a shard of peppermint. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Mathilda, the owner of the sweet, chaotic, candied house.

“The gutters are clogged again,” Bert said, tapping the clipboard with his pencil for emphasis. “I told you last year, Miss Mathilda, those licorice ropes can’t handle the seasonal rains. And the sugar lattice just isn’t holding up.”

Mathilda, draped in her layers of dark, velvety robes with a hint of powdered sugar dusting her cuffs, sighed theatrically. “But Bert, you must understand, the aesthetic …”

“The aesthetic!” Bert cut her off, exasperation curling his words. “The beams holding up your entire east wing are made of chocolate. Chocolate! Do you know what happens to chocolate in the summer?”

Mathilda’s eyes narrowed, the green irises glinting like boiled sweets. “Yes, Bert. I am well aware of the properties of chocolate. I work with it quite often.“

“Then why …” Bert continued, waving his pencil as if it were a sword in the war against impractical architecture, “… do you insist on using it as a support structure? You could use oak, or spruce, or pine. You live in a damn haunted forest. There is wood everywhere.”

“Oak and spruce aren’t nearly as enticing,” Mathilda said, her voice dropping to a honeyed whisper.

“Enticing?” Bert’s brow furrowed.

“Enticing to whom? Birds? Bees?” He glanced at a nearby window where a curious sparrow pecked at a sugar-crusted sill.

Mathilda folded her arms, her smile as brittle as the spun sugar that decorated her front porch. Before she could answer, the contractor, a burly man named Hugo who had the unfortunate job of overseeing this confectionery construction, stomped over. He shook his head, bits of frosting flecking his bushy beard.

“The marzipan columns won’t last another storm,” Hugo, Bert’s foreman, said while glancing at Bert with an unspoken shrug that meant, Good luck reasoning with her.

“I told her that,” Bert muttered, scribbling more notes.

“Oh, Hugo,” Mathilda cooed, sidling up to the contractor. “Think of the magic! The charm! What would the forest creatures say if this house were made of something so dull as plain old wood?”

“They’d probably say, ‘Thanks for not snaring us in your caramel,’” Bert grumbled.

Mathilda shot him a look, the glimmer of mischief replaced momentarily by something colder. Bert shivered, the air around him suddenly sweet with tension.

“You just don’t understand. If you think you’re not up to the task just say so. How does the expression go? A crappy worker will always blame his tools. ” Mathilda said, her voice tight. “The candy is necessary.”

He didn’t bother correcting her that the tools were not the issue. It was the concoction of candy materials that held the blame.

“Necessary for what?” Hugo asked, his brow lifting. “The local kids don’t come near this place unless they’re dared. And even then,” Bert added, “they leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back out.” He chuckled at his own joke, but Mathilda did not join in.

She exhaled slowly, the frost in her gaze thawing just a little. “It’s … it’s for my customers. They expect a certain… ambiance.”

Bert and Hugo exchanged skeptical looks.

“Customers?” Bert echoed.

“Yes,” Mathilda snapped, then softened her tone with a thin smile. “Travelers, wanderers… people looking for a taste of something different. I told you that you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try us,” Hugo said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Mathilda hesitated, eyes darting to the candy cane columns, the frosted eaves, the gumdrop-studded shutters. The house stood as a monument of to the whimsical or the mad, depending on who you asked. Finally, she sighed and gestured around her.

“If I build with wood, with stone, it’s just another house,” she said, voice low and almost wistful. “But with candy, it’s a promise. A whisper of enchantment. Something that sparks curiosity.”

Bert’s pencil stilled. For a moment, he almost believed her. Almost. Then he glanced at the sagging chocolate beams and the honeycomb rafters that were teeming with ants.

“Well, Mathilda,” he said, rolling his shoulders, “if we’re going to keep up your… ambiance, you’ll need to reinforce this entire structure. And I mean with something stronger than caramel cement.”

“But Bert,” Mathilda said, leaning in conspiratorially, “where’s the magic in that?”

“Right now,” Hugo said, pointing to the sagging porch, “the only magic happening is this place not collapsing while we’re talking.”

Mathilda pursed her lips, eyes narrowing as she weighed her options. Finally, she relented with a wave of her hand. “Fine. Reinforce the beams. But the chocolate facade stays.”

“And the gutters?” Bert asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Replace them with something sturdier,” Mathilda said. “Maybe—sugar-glazed iron.”

Bert’s sigh was heavy, but he nodded. It was a start. He glanced at Hugo, who simply shrugged for the second time today.

“Welcome to the witch’s house,” Hugo said with a grin. “Where logic comes to die.”

Mathilda smirked, the glint of a secret dancing in her eyes as she turned back to her candy kingdom.

Bert couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter how many beams he reinforced, some mysteries were better left unsolved. He finished the rest of his estimate for the bill for repairs and held them out to Mathilda.

She glanced at the cost then at Bert. “You wouldn’t happen to accept peppermints as payment would you?”

He gave her a stern look. “No.”

“How about a considerable donation of children’s cloths?”

“Children’s clothes?!?” Bert stammered. “You know what, whatever. We’ll load them up in the truck, the sooner I’m out of this damned forest the better. We will start the work next week when the materials arrive.”

As Bert pulled away, he glanced at the melting cottage in his rearview mirror. He couldn’t help but wonder what it was that Mathilda did for work and why she happened to have almost a metric ton of kid’s clothing, but work was work and he’d take on any job as long as he could make a small profit.