Woods, Kids, and Gingerbread

   This here adventure starts out someplace inside Howard.  It gets kind of confusing in there since he’s such a big fellow, so I’m not exactly sure where I was at this particular point.  All I know is that I opened this one door, and it did not lead to a room. 
   “Whoa,” I said. “What is this?”
   “Et looks liek a foreest ta mah.”
   Wilfred got it in one.  The door opened into a forest.  Dead serious.  The side of the frame I was on had a wood floor; the other side was grass and trees.  I walked through the door, and I swear, it was like I entered a whole new world.  There were little birdies chirping, butterflies flapping by, and I think I heard a creek flowing along somewhere nearby. 
   I turned around and looked back through the door.  It was nothing but a doorway.  Just a doorframe in the middle of a forest with nothing around it.  Yet I could still see the hallway inside.  It was really weird.  Kind of like looking into the TARDIS from outside, except this was just the doorway, no box part (I’m sorry for all of you who did not get the reference.  Truly I am.  Go watch Doctor Who.  Seriously.  It’s awesome). 
   “Dude, is this awesome or what?” I asked Wilfred.
   “Et’s pretty amazing a’right.”
   “Come on.  Let’s check it out.”
   “Hold up ther, laddie boy.  How are we goin’ ta find thes ‘ere place agan?”
   “Oh I’m sure Dave can do some magical thingy that’ll get us back here.  Right, Dave?”
   Probably.
   “Ach, ‘probably’.  Ah’m soo reassured.”
   “Good, now let’s go.”
   I started walking, glancing back every now and then, but soon the door was lost to sight.  It was so peaceful in those woods.  Nobody around for miles.  Just me, Wilfred, Dave, and those two kids there.  Ah, so nice.  Wait.  Hang on a sec.  Two kids?  I stopped and stared.  Sure enough, there were two kids.  They were walking somewhat aimlessly a ways in front of me, and they appeared to be leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs.  Not that it was doing them any good though.  There was a tiger walking along behind them, eating each crumb as they dropped it. 
   I’m glad that tiger was there, because for a moment I had the completely outlandish idea that I had somehow wandered into that old Hansel and Gretel story.  Y’know, the one where those two kids run away from home or something and leave that trail of breadcrumbs?  Oh wait, no.  Their stepmom hates them and tells their dad to go out and dump them in the woods, right?  That’s what the breadcrumbs are for.  It’s a pretty depressing kids story all in all.
   Anyway!  The point is that this couldn’t possibly be that story because everyone knows it was the birds that ate the breadcrumbs in that story.  Here we have a tiger, so it’s a whole different kind of ballgame.
Seeing as how it was, I decided to do the decent thing and warn the kids that there was a ravenous tiger behind them that was about to eat them as soon as they ran out of breadcrumbs.
   “Hey kids!” I yelled. “Watch out for that tiger behind you!”
   The kids spun around, saw the tiger, and screamed really loud.  The tiger jumped at least a foot in the air and streaked off into the woods as fast as he could.  Kind of like my cat at home, actually, when he gets freaked out.  Huh.  Guess all kitty cats are alike. 
   Once it was gone, the kids ran over to me and hugged my legs (they were really short).
   “Thank you thank you!” they said, pretty much simultaneously.  “You saved us.”
   I shrugged. “Aw heck, it was nothing.”
   “Et reelly wasn’t.”
   I decided to ignore Wilfred at this time.  “So what are you kids doing out here all alone?”
   “Our daddy left us out here,” they began, again almost simultaneously.  The fact that they were just a little bit off was really annoying. “Because our stepmum doesn’t like us.  Now we’re trying to find our way home, but we don’t know where to go because it is very confusing out here.”
   I frowned. “Hang on a second.  Your daddy left you out here because your stepmom doesn’t like you?”
   They nodded.
   “Ooooookay then.  I guess I’ll just have to find a way to get you home.”
   “Or we could go and look at that gingerbread house.”
   I frowned some more. “What gingerbread house?”
   They pointed.  I looked.  There was a gingerbread house, large as life, about a hundred feet away. 
   Now that’s just weird.

   To be continued…