Still, she couldn’t stop the tears from forming as she thought about how she’d said goodbye to her nan too soon. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking anytime she thought about Honeycomb and who was at the front taking orders this holiday season.
It should’ve been her.
A single, pearlescent dollop welled onto Eliza’s cheek. She caught it just in time as it slid down her face and into the dough. The moment it touched, the mixture shifted.
The recipe wasn’t very clear on what, exactly, she was supposed to be recreating. She knew it was gingerbread, considering the classic nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom spices. But there were no specific notes on which biscuit cutters to use, or any shapes at all. Eliza took the liberty of cutting out ones shaped to look like a house, each one a small tribute to the magical cottage that kept her coming back year after year.
This place was full of memories, good and bad. Old and new. Watching Isadora’s story unfold was bittersweet, and even though Eliza could assume how it ended, she wanted to keep baking to find out. She felt a strange bond with the woman, like she was reading about her favorite heroine and hoping that they would find happiness in the end.
Once the gingerbread biscuits were done and cooled, Eliza took a bite, and the cottage flickered around her like the hazy edges of a dream. She knew the feeling too well. She was no longer in her own story. She was in Isadora’s.
And there she was: Isadora, hollow-eyed and wild-haired, kneading every ounce of anger into the pile of dough before her. With every knead, her fury seemed to soften into something more like despair. And from despair to hopelessness. Beside her on the counter was the letter from Ernest, unfolded and blotched with ink patches.
He’d left without a word. Only a letter left behind to account for all their years together, everything they’d suffered through. Everything was wrapped up with the words “sincerely”at the end.
The dough received the brunt of Isadora’s grief, her knuckles turning white under her grip as she worked it with force. There wasn’t a single trace of love in her baking now, only regret. Bitterness. Heartbreak rolled into spice and flour.
The scent flooded Eliza’s lungs, cinnamon, sugar, clove, and molasses, but it was laced with the heaviness of sorrow.
“No one will know how much this cost me, but they’ll feel it,” she whispered, tears brimming in her eyes. Her voice was broken and ragged, like she’d been crying for some time, and this was her only consolation—this kitchen.
“Let this place remember,” she said, speaking over the house as if she were cursing it. “Let this house carry the weight of what we had and the great loss. Sweet endings will never belong here.”
She laid the gingerbread mixture out, rolling it out with swift movements. The pin moved back and forth like a metronome, a steady rhythm as she pressed all of her grief into the dough.
With trembling hands, she reached for the cutters. It was an odd set, not the typical ones shaped like stars or stockings. They were strange and curved. Eliza couldn't quite make out what Isadora was making until they were on the baking sheet.
As soon as she put the cutouts in the oven, the house shifted, the air becoming more stout with magic.
Then, shooting from the oven like a cannon, came a familiar creature. Golden brown and still steaming.
Eliza blinked. She didn’t recognize him at first, but then she knew. There were undeniable pink and blue icing wings, batting experimentally, and two lavender gumdrop eyes.
A delicate snout huffed powdered sugar, and sparks flew, hitting the copper pots like a pinball, each of them gonging a loudding.
Puffcake.
He was smaller, no larger than the size of a danish, and somehow more adolescent, as if magical gingerbread creatures could grow over time. But it was unmistakably him, Eliza’s cantankerous, fire-breathing cracker companion. Brought to life eighty years ago, not out of joy or a magical whimsy, but out of heartbreak.
Had Puffcake found his way back here due to sensing Eliza’s own heartbreak?
Isadora leaned over the counter. The sorrow in her eyes softened for a moment as she beheld the little creature. At last, he settled down in front of Isadora on the island. “There you are,” she said in greeting, reaching forward to boop him on the nose. He hissed in his usual cranky tone, and Isadora laughed sadly.
“Even my own creations dislike my company.” She blinked away her tears and tried again, stroking his spine. “Tell me you’ll stay, won’t you? You can’t fix a broken heart, but surely you’ll keep me company.”
Puffcake curled into her hand in answer. Something in Eliza’s heart silently broke, not only for Isadora, but for Puffcake, too.
Where was his lifelong companion now?
Then, she stood straighter, with authority. Her voice lowered, every syllable ringing out with the ancient weight of old magic. She spoke words that simultaneously created and changed everything.
“Let love not last here if mine cannot.”
The spell rippled outward, sinking into every icing-piped rafter, every gingerbread wall, every sugar-spun flower and peppermint windowpane.
The house rumbled once, as if taking in its first—or final—breath.
Love hadn’t just died within these walls; it had festered. What once had been a sanctuary for connection was now only a sad, withering memory; a graveyard for devotion.
