Plumpy of “Gingerbread Plum Grove”'s Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Plumpy stood under the smiling gingerbread tree with plum juice on his chin and knew he had eaten another one he meant to save. The pit sat warm in his palm. He was the last Plumpa Troll in the grove, and the grove was quiet the way it only got quiet after King Kandy vanished from his castle. Plumpy had a plan to fix that. He was brewing a plum feast so grand the king would smell it wherever he was hiding and come running, the way he once came running for a single cobbler. The trouble was the brewing. A feast that grand needed a full cask of dark, ripe plums, and Plumpy's cask was not full. It was barely a quarter full. He could smell each plum before it dropped, and lately he smelled them straight into his own mouth. He knelt by his little plum table and counted what he had. Forty-two plums. He needed at least two hundred. At his current rate, half of every day's fall went down his own throat before sundown. He said it out loud to the tree so it would sound real. The tree kept smiling. That did not help. Plumpy tried a rule. One plum for the cask, one sniff for himself. He walked the grove and gathered. A fat one dropped near his foot, sweet gingerbread first, then the dark plum smell underneath. He picked it up. He smelled it. He ate it. He stared at the pit. The rule was already broken. He was still staring when two blue-haired kids stepped out from between the trees. They wore red sneakers and matching overalls and carried lollipops. The girl had a red bow. "You're eating your work," she said. The boy nodded. "We saw from the path." Plumpy opened his mouth to explain about the king, about the cobbler, about the smell. Nothing useful came out. Julie set her lollipop down on the little table and looked into the cask. "That's not enough for a feast," she said. Pip crouched by the tree and picked up three plums Plumpy had walked past without noticing. "You missed these." Plumpy felt his ears go hot. Julie tapped the cask. "Pip and I split routes. We can split this too. You gather. We hold the cask. You don't touch it until it's full." Pip added, "No sniffing." Plumpy started to argue and then he thought of the empty throne and closed his mouth. By dusk the cask sat between the twins, and Plumpy sat three steps away with his hands tucked under his legs. Forty-two plums had become sixty-eight. It was still not two hundred. But for the first time since the king left, the number in the cask was going up instead of down. Plumpy licked his teeth and did not move.