Page 207 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

After a half hour of making their way and hiding their tracks, Coffee gave a low whistle. Then a soft hooting came back, and a Gingerbread Man lifted a low pine bough and beckoned them in. After a whispered message, the Gingerbread Man motioned for the Nutcracker and Clara to follow, while Coffee took over his post.
After a bit more twists and turns and double backs to confuse anyone trying to find them, the Nutcracker and Clara walked into a very sweet hide-away. The Sweeties had fashioned licorice lean-tos, with sugar cube chimneys to keep warm, and were wearing confectionary coats and cotton candy earmuffs, and were toasting marshmallows for dinner. Franz was quick to realize that Mother Ginger had forced the Sweeties to do everything – except for the marshmallow roast – and he was glad to see her.
Glad wasn’t even close to how Mother Ginger felt, when she saw the new – and maybe not improved, but at least walking and talking – version of Franz as a Nutcracker. She was so happy she would have hugged him, except that his gigantic pair of jaws kept him just out of reach. So she contented herself with patting his back – which she continued to do the entire time they talked – which at first Franz was glad to have, but after a while it grew annoying, as he began to feel like a dog.
Mother Ginger explained all the things that had happened, after Franz was struck by Krakatuk and turned into the toy Nutcracker. How she’d snuck the Sweeties out the window by screening them with her skirts, and how they’d ended up making camp here. And then Franz learned the nasty answer of why it was snowing. It was “fall-out” from using Krakatuk – and the more the Mouse Queen whacked away,
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