Darkness.
“Where are we?” Joe asked.
“Shhh, I think I hear voices. Don’t move,” Angela replied.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Me neither,” Angela agreed.
“Follow that light,” Joe advised.
“Hey! That is my nose!” Angela wailed.
“Get off my toe, please!”
“Yuck, I stuck my finger in something sticky!” Angela griped, and then banged into something hard. “Ouch, I think I just found the door!”
“Hurry, open it!” Joe replied.
“I am,” Angela said.
A relaxed smile spread across her face as she met Joe’s eyes. She glanced past his head and instantly her smile became a look of horror, followed by a scream. As she instinctively covered her mouth with her hands, smearing the white sticky substance across her nose, she screamed again.
“What is it?” Joe said shakily, not moving his eyes from hers.
“Get it off my face, get it off my face!” Angela finally screeched, her arms fanning at her nose which was covered in whipped cream frosting.
Joe sprang into action, grabbing a dish rag. He worked briskly to remove the unwanted substance. When not a trace was left, he said, “It’s all gone.”
She didn’t reply and stared past him with a look of fright.
Joe reluctantly turned to look over his shoulder. With terror upon him, he saw one single cupcake perched in the doorway staring at him. He glanced to the side of the door and saw a light switch. He switched it on.
Both children gasped. There was an excellent reason for their fright. Angela and Joe were Candonite children. Candonites were sweets and there were many different races. Angela was a cookie Candonite and Joe was a lemon-drop Candonite. Before them was a large walk-in refrigerator holding hundreds of miniature versions of themselves and people from their land. Cupcakes, fudges, brownies, chocolates, and other tasty treats lined the shelves. Many had fallen to the floor. Neither child spoke for several moments.
“I don’t think we are in Maple Town any more. I don’t think we are anywhere near it,” Joe said.
“Obviously! This isn’t our home!” Angela scoffed.
“Calm down!” Joe said. “Let’s see if we can figure out what happened.”
They both were very nervous, realizing they were far from their own world, far from safety. They scanned the room which was now illuminated by the refrigerator lights. It was a kitchen.
“See what you have done?” Angela whined.
“Now you wait just a minute!” Joe said. “What do you mean, ‘what I have done?’”
“Don’t you remember? Peter and Lina had just saved us from that horrible Goaltan and the other Peblars.” She shook her head as she tried to forget the awful time that the four of them spent escaping from Goaltan’s dreadful lair. Thank goodness Peter and Lina came to their rescue. Otherwise, Joe and Angela would still be in Goaltan’s freezing, putrid castle. Angela shook her head harder, as if to shake the memory right out of her head and continued. “We were standing in front of the special delivery box that brought Peter and Lina from their world to Maple Town. They were on their way home. You reached out to bid Peter farewell with a pat on his back. I knew that wasn’t a good idea. I grabbed at your hand to try to stop you while they were saying the magic words to bring them home and—poof—here we are!”
“So you think we are in Peter’s world, Earth?” Joe asked.
“Yep,” Angela replied with a frown.
“I didn’t know this would happen; there is no use in blaming anyone. We should use our energy trying to figure out how to get back home,” Joe said calmly.
“And just how do you propose that? Should we jump in this mixing bowl and be on our way?” she said sarcastically.
“Angela, calm down,” Joe replied.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! I don’t know anything about this place except that they eat things that resemble us. Look at those poor miniature Joes stacked against the wall!”
Joe examined bags of lemon drops encased in their plastic tombs. He was horrified.
“And I am sure there are some positively helpless cookies with rainbow chips, resembling me, lying around here somewhere! I couldn’t bear to see that.”
“It will be all right,” Joe reassured her. “Now let’s take a look around so we can find out at least where we are.”
They scanned the room and saw three doors. One was open, while the other two were closed. They decided on the open door to the left.
Joe reached around and felt for a light switch. They released sighs of relief when they saw it was plainly an office, with nothing to be afraid of. Once inside, they saw a picture of an older human man with glasses on the edge of his nose. He was standing in front of a building. The building sign read “Papa’s Sweet Shop.” They made their way around the small room, which was cluttered with papers, file cabinets, and baking books. In the back of the room was a wooden desk with a worn leather chair. A piece of duct tape was placed snugly on one arm. Another picture sat on the desk. The same man they saw in the other picture stood next to a woman about the same age and a smiling young boy.
“Peter!” the Candonite children shouted in unison. He looked a few years younger in the picture, but there was no mistaking him.
“This must be Peter’s grandfather and grandmother,” Angela said.
“Great! At least we aren’t too off base. We will be home in no time,” Joe said, relieved. “There should be something here that can lead us to him.”
They rummaged through papers and flipped open books with handwritten notes in them without any luck. Joe began opening drawers. He reached into one drawer when a bottle caught his eye. “Imported from Indonesia,” its label read. He repeated the words aloud, wondering where on Earth Indonesia was. He adjusted the bottle so he could see its contents. Immediately he dropped it into the drawer and covered it up with a piece of paper before Angela could see that it contained quite beautiful rainbow chips. The middle drawer contained what they were hoping to find, an overstuffed Rolodex filled with addresses and phone numbers. Joe took it out and thumbed through it.
“Farmer…Fellows…Finney’s Market…Come on Fis….Here it is, Fischer! Peter and Tracy Fischer.” Joe was so excited at his find that he tore the card right out of the Rolodex. “Oops! I will give this back later,” he said. He smiled at Angela who was clapping her hands gleefully, her colorful chips shaking as she did.
“713 Mulberry Place. This is where we go,” Joe said.
“Do you think there may be a map around here somewhere?” Angela asked.
“It won’t hurt to look,” Joe answered.
Angela and Joe searched the desk drawers and looked in the file cabinet. After a few minutes, they found a town map. Joe wrote the house number on the edge of the map, circled Peter’s neighborhood, and left the address card on the table. The Candonite children gave each other a quick hug and headed back to the kitchen. There were two doors they hadn’t opened. They went to the nearer one, opening it cautiously and becoming more alert when they smelled the sweet scent of fresh-baked goods. Their bodies stiffened when they looked into the room, faintly lit by the fading sun. It was as though Angela and Joe were looking at a miniature version of their world. Only this version lay on plates and in jars and on shelves with prices for their lives displayed. The Candonite children were disgusted.
“I could never get used to this!” Angela hissed.
“You won’t have to. We will be out of here and safe at home in no time,” Joe reassured her.
A figure passed the window walking briskly and the children froze.
“Maybe we should wait until dark before venturing out to find Peter. We don’t know if everyone will be as friendly as he is. Besides, we don’t exactly blend right in, you know,” Angela suggested. Joe agreed as he looked around again at the mini-Candonite graveyard.
“Let’s make ourselves less conspicuous,” he said. “Maybe there’s something we can use to disguise ourselves.”