Kathryn Littlewood - Rose Bliss Cooks up Magic

“We don’t actually know that, Balthazar,” Albert protested, though Rose thought he looked more like he was trying to convince himself than Balthazar. Rose’s great-great-great-grandfather just harrumphed.

“Never mind any of that!” Ty shouted. “The solution to our problems is so obvious! All Rose has to do is one commercial for Kathy Keegan Snack Kakes, and we can all retire to Tahiti. None of us will have to approach an oven again. They’ll be baking for us !” He and Sage gave each other a high five.

“It’s not about the money, Thyme,” Purdy said, flicking her oldest son on the side of his head. “It’s about the people of this town. They need us. And we need them. Baking is our grand purpose.”

“Besides,” said her father, “we can afford it – for now. We’ve always scrimped and saved in case of an emergency. And this? This is as much an emergency as Calamity Falls has ever faced.”

Somewhere deep within her, Rose felt a tiny flame kindle, a fire of hope and a desire to do some good the only way she knew how. “What are we going to do?” she asked her mum.

Purdy smiled, and Rose felt the dreariness of the past twenty-seven days burn away like a cloud at sunrise. “We are now the Bliss Bakery Underground,” Purdy announced. “We will bake all day and all night, and beginning tomorrow morning, we will personally deliver the cakes and pies and muffins to everyone in town. The people of Calamity Falls stuck with us through our hard times, when we didn’t have the Booke . Now we’re going to stick by them.”

Albert tore the official government letter dramatically down the center. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard.”

Purdy moved Leigh to her father’s lap. She stood up and began pacing the cramped bakery kitchen. “Chip will make a major grocery store run,” Purdy said, looking at her burly assistant. “Albert – will you inventory our magical ingredients?” Standing tall, she added, “We shall not cease.”

“I’ll help,” Rose said, happy for the opportunity to reverse her careless wish and, for the first time in nearly a month, to cut loose and bake – no cameras, no reporters, just three generations of Blisses, doing what they had always done best.

Making kitchen magic.

It was three in the morning.

The heat in the kitchen was as thick as grape jelly. Rose cracked the red egg of a masked lovebird into a bowl of zucchini muffin batter to make a batch of Love Muffins for Mr and Mrs Bastable-Thistle, who, without the magical intervention of the Bliss Bakery, became shy strangers to each other.

“Mum, look,” Rose said as she mixed in the egg, watching the batter thicken and hiss as tiny hearts of flour exploded into the air.

But Purdy couldn’t hear Rose – not over the Malaysian Toucan of Fortune, whose confident squawk she released into a bowlful of pastry cream, then stuffed the cream into a batch of Choral Cream Puffs for the Calamity Falls Community Chorus, whose voices were meek and thin without them. “What was that, honey?” Purdy asked.

“Never mind,” Rose said, continuing with the muffin batter as Balthazar unleashed the gaze of a medieval Third Eye onto a batch of Father-Daughter Fudge for Mr Borzini and his daughter, Lindsey – after eating the fudge, each could more easily glimpse where the other was coming from. “You never want to look a Third Eye directly in its, erm, eye,” Balthazar told Rose. “It could blind you.”

Mental note, Rose thought. Don’t go blind .

The family had been at it for sixteen hours, and Purdy’s master list of baked goods was still only half complete.

The kitchen itself was strewn with blue mason jars filled with various sniffs and snorts and fairies and gnomes and ancient lizards and talking mushrooms and googly eyes and woogly flies and jittering, glowing bobbles of every sort. Hints of cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla swirled in the air, and all the various sounds coming from the kitchen made Rose hope the neighbours wouldn’t think the Blisses were running a zoo.

Albert had ferried jar after jar of magical ingredients from the secret cellar beneath the walk-in fridge – “Watch your heads, Blisses!” – until the dingy wooden shelves were practically empty.

Ty and Sage had long since gone to bed. At one point, they’d come downstairs for a snack, but they took one look at the magical mayhem, at the chomping teeth and flying rabbits and the explosions of colour coming from dozens of metal mixing bowls, then scurried back upstairs.

There were Cookies of Truth for the infamous fibber Mrs Havegood, Calm-Down-Crepes for the angry, overwrought Scottish babysitter Mrs Carlson, and Adventurous-Apple-Turnovers for the reserved League of Lady Librarians.

There was Seeing-Eye Shortbread for Florence the Florist, who was nearly blind, Frugal Framboise Cake for the French restaurateur Pierre Guillaume, who had a notorious shopping problem, and even something for Devin Stetson, the blond boy whom Rose had thought about at least twice a day for approximately one year, five months, and eleven days. She had made him Breathe-Easy Sticky Buns to help with his frequent sinus infections, which, as far as Rose was concerned, were the only things wrong with Devin Stetson.

By four a.m., Rose felt that the heat from the ovens was slapping her on the head. She told Purdy she needed to lie down just for a minute, and she nuzzled onto the bench at the breakfast table and promptly fell asleep.

Rose woke to bright buttery sunshine and the swatting and drooling of Gus the Scottish Fold cat. “Deliveries, Rose!” he said, batting her on the shoulder with his thick paw. “The list is complete!”

Rose bolted upright and found her mother, father, and Balthazar snoring on the floor. Every surface of the kitchen was covered in white bakery boxes tied with red-and-white-striped twine.

Ty and Sage had already started loading boxes into the back of the Bliss family van. Leigh helped by sitting beside the boxes and patting them with her frosting-covered hands. “Pat-a-cake,” she said over and over again.

Sage strapped her into her car seat and climbed in beside her.

“I’m driving,” Ty said proudly. He was fond of reminding everyone that at sixteen he was old enough to drive, and now he reached into the back pocket of his dark jeans and pulled out his licence. The picture on the front captured the full height of his red spiky hair, though it cut off everything below his top lip. “Phew,” he said. “Just making sure I had my licence. My driver’s licence.”

Rose rolled her eyes.

“Let’s go, hermana ,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

“Actually, I think I’m going to make a few personal deliveries on my bike, if that’s OK,” Rose said.

Ty looked at her sideways, then shrugged. “Whatever hermana wants, hermana gets.” Ever since Ty had taken Spanish in school, he added foreign words to what he said in an effort to sound foreign and sophisticated.

Sage called out through the van’s window. “You do know there’s no air-conditioning on a bike, right?”

“I know,” said Rose. While her brothers waited, she rifled through the back of the van and grabbed a few choice boxes. She loaded them in the front basket of her bike and carefully put one special box into her backpack. Just as she was about to set off, Gus hopped inside the basket, too.

“Onward!” he cried.

“Do stop at the Reginald Calamity Fountain, sweet Rose, so that I can catch myself some breakfast.”

The fuzzy grey blob of Gus’s head peeked out from Rose’s basket as she pedalled through the streets.

“Gus, there are no fish in the fountain,” Rose answered, “only nickels and dimes that people throw in there for good luck. It’s a tradition.”