When the incident began, it was pure Disney. But not for long. Cookie didn’t at once spring from the book and stand before her, ta-da, arms spread, sparkling with sugar or fairy dust. He didn’t speak to her in a cartoon voice. No, at first he turned his head slightly in the illustration, as if to assess Bibi more directly. She wasn’t even sure it happened, that sly turn of his head. Then Cookie winked, and Bibi’s eyes widened. Cookie’s smile curved into a lopsided grin. Bibi’s mouth formed an O of amazement; she let out the word “Oh,” and gasped it back in. This wasn’t an interactive book. The illustrations weren’t holograms that changed depending on the angle at which they were viewed. Suddenly Cookie turned three-dimensional, while the rest of the illustration remained as it had been, and he began trying to extract himself from the two-dimensional image, which was when it wasn’t quite so much a Disney moment anymore.
Bibi flung the book off the bed, to the floor, where it landed spine-up, standing like a tent, its fanned pages thrashing as the gingerbread man struggled to be born from them. She knelt on the mattress to watch, wondering but also fearing a little, perversely delighted but somewhat alarmed, transfixed by the sight of the book when it began to clatter this way and that across the floor, as if it were the A-frame shell of a large exotic bug.
Cookie was kind and funny and wouldn’t harm even the hungry dog that had wanted to eat him. Nothing bad ever happened to the children in the books that Bibi read; those kids went on great adventures with talking animals, with elves and fairies, with favorite toys come to life and silly creatures from other planets, but nothing harmed them. When Cookie was finished pulling himself from the book, he would be like Winnie-the-Pooh, and she would be like Christopher Robin, and they would be the best of friends. Most likely. But…But there was something about Cookie’s lopsided smile that disturbed her. He had winked at her with one glossy chocolate eye, and that had been okay. The wink had seemed friendly, like sharing a little joke. But the smile made her think maybe they wouldn’t be best friends forever.
The book fell over, flopped open on the floor. The gingerbread man rose from the pages, which beat around him like furious wings. He crawled out of the book, dark and strange and not much like the happy-go-lucky Cookie. He…No, it. It was not well formed, a lumpy and distorted figure, which staggered to its stumpy feet with effort. Not thin like a cookie but inches thick, six or eight inches tall. Twitching, jerking, graceless. It seemed to be tormented, white lips opening wide in what might have been a silent scream, rolling its misshapen head side to side, pulling at its flesh with mittenlike hands.
Flesh. Even from a distance of eight or ten feet, Bibi could see that this thing was not made of gingerbread. In the book, Cookie was made of gingerbread dough, rolled and shaped and baked. Of course that was silly. Even though she loved the story, Bibi had known that part was totally silly. That’s why magic was needed, a little Frosty the Snowman magic, to make Cookie supple, strong, and quick. Bibi didn’t know any magic. When she wished Cookie alive, she thought of him—if she thought at all about this part of his manifestation—as some kind of gingerbread animal, but what she got was all animal. Or it was less than an animal, elemental and primitive, as if a rotting mass of plant and animal tissue in a swamp had been lightning-struck and thereby animated with something less than life itself.
Still silently screaming, the thing picked up the book, which was bigger than itself, and flung it at Bibi. The whirling volume missed her but clattered against the bedside lamp, switching it off and knocking the shade askew.
Bibi would have fled if the minikin that she had wished into existence hadn’t been standing between her and the door. The only illumination came from the Mickey Mouse night-light her parents had recently installed, which until now she had found embarrassing, which she had plotted to dispose of one way or another. She was a child, yes, but not a baby in need of a night-light. She was years past being a baby. As the thing on the floor hitched out of the Mickey glow, disappearing in the shadows, Bibi didn’t want to scream for help, like a baby. Maybe she couldn’t have cried out even if she’d wanted to, because her hard-knocking heart seemed to have risen into her throat, so that she couldn’t easily swallow, and when she tried to say Go away to the minikin, no sound escaped her except a thin and tremulous wheeze.
Besides, if her mom and dad came running, maybe they wouldn’t be able to see the thing. In stories, kids were often able to see elves and fairies and all kinds of creatures that grown-ups couldn’t see because grown-ups didn’t believe in them. Then she would seem like a big baby, and they would never stop treating her like one. Worse, the thing from the book, the terrible not-Cookie, might hurt them. It was small, evidently toothless, but it was strong for its size, considering how it flung the book. If they were hurt, the fault would lie with Bibi. They would say it wasn’t her fault, “It’ll be what it’ll be,” but she knew the truth was that it would be because she had made it be.