Bliss

by Kathryn Littlewood

  Rose stared up at Ty. “Where are we supposed to find the egg of a masked lovebird? Do we have to go to Madagascar?”

  Ty scowled. “I don’t know… Mom and Dad have all kinds of weird stuff in the kitchen. They probably have dinosaur eggs.”

  They walked down into the kitchen and into the walk-in refrigerator to investigate the eggs. Rose opened a brown cardboard carton labeled CALAMITY POULTRY: HAPPY CHICKENS MAKE HAPPY KITCHENS! Inside were a dozen ordinary white eggs—definitely not the eggs of a masked lovebird, whatever those looked like.

  “What’s this?” Ty said, and Rose stood on her tiptoes to see what he was talking about. Behind stacks of egg cartons was a knob shaped like a rolling pin. “Cool,” he said, “I love rolling pins!” He spun it hard with his hand, and a gust of wind blew into the refrigerator, which was already cold enough. Rose felt a sudden warmth at her ankles. She looked at the floor and saw that part of the tiling had slid backward into itself, revealing a wooden staircase that led into a cellar.

  A hidden passageway! Rose stared at Ty, who stared back in disbelief.

  “This is, like, the second secret room we found in this refrigerator this week,” he said.

  Rose grabbed a flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen, and she and Ty made their way down the stairs, which were crooked, unfinished planks of wood that seemed ready to collapse at any second. The glow from the flashlight was measly, and Rose could see only a few inches in front of her. She could feel her heart thumping heavily, but Ty’s footsteps behind her were steady and calm.

  When she got to the bottom of the stairs, Rose shuffled along the cold concrete floor, holding the flashlight up in front of her with shaking hands. She screamed at what she saw.

  Staring back at her from inside a blue mason jar was a face, like a human face, only much smaller.

  “What is that!?” Ty screamed.

  Rose winced and moved the light closer, so that the whole jar came into view. There was, inside the jar, what could only be described as a gnome. It was a little man, about half a foot tall, with a white puffy beard and a green cap. He wasn’t dead and shriveled, as you’d expect a gnome to be—he was breathing. Snoring, in fact. He had a dreamy smile on his face and his nostrils flared and then collapsed again as he breathed in and out. Rose was floored. There was a label at the bottom of the jar that read THE DWARF OF PERPETUAL SLEEP.

  Ty was speechless for a minute. “No way,” he said, peering into the jar at the snoring creature.

  Rose let the flashlight slide to the right, where another jar sat. This one appeared to be empty, except for a little red leaf that was swirling around inside like it was in the park on a fall day. This jar read THE FIRST WIND OF AUTUMN.

  Ty had spun around in the opposite direction to investigate a jar that was filled with a dusty glow. “What’s that one?” Rose asked him.

  “Light from a lunar eclipse,” he whispered. The light cast a blue tint on his nose. He peered at a jar on the shelf beneath it and gasped. “Look, Rose!”

  Rose spun around and placed the flashlight in front of a smaller jar. This one was not made of the same shimmering blue-tinted glass as the others—this one was made of green glass that was reinforced with barbed wire. The clasp on the jar was made of heavy rusted metal, and it was locked. Rose could barely make out what was inside—it seemed to be a slimy gray orb, about the size of a baseball. The label read WARLOCK’S EYE.

  Rose and Ty turned to each other in disbelief. They’d seen their father chase down wind and whispers and exotic birds—had he slain a warlock, too, and stolen its eye? Were there such things as warlocks? Would the warlock ever be back for its eye? Rose shivered at the thought. If there were Dwarves of Perpetual Sleep living in a secret room beneath the kitchen, what else was there?

  Ty tapped Rose on the shoulder and said, “Here, look! Masked lovebird eggs!”

  There, in one of the blue jars, were a dozen or so tiny red eggs, flecked with black. Ty grabbed the jar off the shelf and said, “Let’s go. I don’t want to know what else is down here.”

  For once, Rose had to admit that she didn’t really want to know either.

  No sooner had Rose and Ty set out the marble notebook on the kitchen counter than Lily, Sage, and Chip burst through the backdoor, carrying stacks of wooden crates filled with blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries.

  “How are we gonna cook with them in here?” Rose asked Ty quietly.

  A devilish grin crept across his face. “Let me go talk to Leigh.”

  He disappeared upstairs, then reappeared, Leigh following wide-eyed in his wake. “It’s on,” he mouthed silently.

  “Hey, guys?” Ty called to Chip and Lily. “Can you two watch Leigh today? The old hermana and I need to concentrate on baking.”

  Chip approached the glass front door of the bakery. There was already a loud line of hungry townspeople in the early-morning sun, waiting impatiently for their morning pastries: the fibbing dressmaker Mrs. Havegood, the impossibly tall Sheriff Raeburn, the quiet librarian Miss Karnopolis, and a dozen others, all clamoring for baked goods.

  As Chip propped the door open, Leigh ran through, screaming, “Hide! Seek! Hide! Seek!” She bounded down the street.

  “Leigh!” Chip screamed. “Get back here!”

  Lily grabbed Sage by the hand and ran out the door after Leigh. “We’ll catch her!” she shouted, already halfway down the block.

  Chip called out, “I’ll take care of the customers!” He would have no choice but to leave Rose and Ty alone, for the time being.

  In the kitchen, Rose opened the marble notebook on the counter. She was finally going to have a chance to bake something—not just a usual something, but an extraordinary something! From the Cookery Booke! So why were her hands shaking? She felt like she was about to perform a concert for millions of screaming fans—filled with pride and excitement, but also petrified. What if she made a mistake, and everyone booed? Or worse, what if someone got hurt?

  Sir Jasper Bliss did grate one large green squash while chanting the names of the lonely customers thrice.

  Ty washed a zucchini and pushed it up and down along the rough surface of a cheese grater, and wet ribbons of green dribbled into a pile of messy pulp.

  “Don’t forget to chant!” said Rose.

  Ty groaned. “Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle.”

  “Louder!”

  “Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle! Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle!”

  Chip poked his head through the saloon doors. He was breathing rapidly, and his face was red and sweaty. The line outside had doubled. “You kids okay?”

  “Sure,” Ty stuttered, turning red in the cheeks, “we were just … trying to remember the words to … a rap.”

  Chip scowled. “Just like your mother, always talking nonsense while you’re baking!” He disappeared behind the doors again; Rose and Ty breathed a sigh of relief.

  Sir Jasper did pass through a metal sieve one fist of flour and one fist of sugar.

  Rose furrowed her brow. “A fist. What the heck is a fist?” She made a fist and held it next to her mother’s metal measuring cups, which nested neatly inside one another like Russian dolls. Her fist was about the size of one cup.

  Ty held up his own fist, which was the size of a grapefruit, then held up the one-cup measure, which was tiny in comparison. “Well, mujer,” he said, “people were smaller back then. Let’s go with one cup.” He dipped the cup measure into the burlap sack of flour and shaved off the excess with his finger, then sifted the flour through a metal sieve that looked like a shallow butterfly net.

  Then he did fold within the batter one egg of the Masked Lovebird, Agapornis personata, which Sir Jasper did acquire from a mystic who had collected them from the primordial forests of Madagascar.

  Rose carefully opened the blue mason jar, making sure that Chip didn’t see what they were doing. She cracked the egg into the center of the batter, and a yolk the color of a red rose plopped into the white batter.

&
nbsp; The yolk began to tremble and shake in the bowl, then disappeared beneath the batter. It reappeared a second later on the other side of the bowl, then dipped down again, then reappeared. It moved faster and faster until it began circling the dough, kneading the batter into a ball in the middle of the bowl.

  And then the yolk exploded in the batter: The mixture crackled and sizzled, sparks of purple and blue shooting up into the air like miniature fireworks and falling back down. Before their eyes, the batter turned a light, delicate shade of pink. Then the noises stopped, the mixture settled, and it was like nothing extraordinary had ever happened.

  Rose shivered. These were no Betty Crocker zucchini muffins.

  She was finally becoming a kitchen magician. Even Ty wore a look of awe.

  Rose and Ty poured the batter into muffin tins and baked them up, guessing when they needed to. Bake at the heat of six flames became 325 degrees, the temperature at which their mother usually set the oven, and for the time of eight songs became an awkward half-hour or so of singing through all of the Christmas carols they knew.

  After they made it through eight songs, Rose and Ty removed a dozen finely puffed brown-and-green-flecked muffins from the oven and set two off to cool.

  “What do we do with the rest?” Rose asked.

  “I’ll get rid of them,” Ty said, carrying the rest of the muffins out of the kitchen.

  Rose peered over the saloon doors into the front room and saw Mr. Bastable at the front of a long, rowdy line. He shuffled up to the counter, his white hair puffed up like the head of a dandelion. He was wearing a shirt that said I’M A FROG PRINCE. KISS ME.

  Rose rushed through the door, holding the hot muffins, and practically shoved Chip off to the side. “Mr. Bastable! Good morning! How can I help you?”

  Mr. Bastable stared back at her, confused. “Good morning,” he stuttered, making a show of choosing among the pastries. “I’ll have … a carrot-bran muffin.”

  Mr. Bastable turned around and noticed Miss Thistle next in line behind him, wearing a brightly colored jogging outfit.

  “Miss Thistle!” Rose shouted. “Step right up!”

  Miss Thistle looked around and then pointed to herself. “Me?”

  “Yes, you!” Rose said. “Step right up to the counter! We’re serving two at a time this morning!” Miss Thistle shuffled up to the counter and stood beside Mr. Bastable. They looked at each other for a moment and smiled, then both turned away, red faced.

  Rose had seen the same thing at the sixth-grade dances. The pairs that liked each other stood at opposite ends of the room, smiling at each other, then looking at the floor. She was surprised to find that adults did the same thing.

  Miss Thistle tried to speak, but it seemed like her throat had closed. “I’d like a carrot-bran muffin,” she managed to squeeze out.

  “Funny you should both ask for carrot bran, because we’re out of those!” Rose fibbed. Her palms were sweating, and her voice felt weak and unsteady. “But we made a batch of zucchini muffins that are dynamite! Just out of the oven!”

  She held up the two muffins, steam still piping out of the tops like chimneys. Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle both looked at the muffins, wide-eyed, then nodded in tandem.

  “Good,” Rose said, plopping the muffins into separate white paper bags and handing them off to Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle. “It’s on the house!”

  Both walked mechanically out of the shop, then rushed off down the sidewalk in opposite directions, just as Leigh rushed back inside. She zigzagged among the legs of the rest of the customers, who at this point were tapping their feet impatiently and miffed that Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle had been offered free muffins.

  Aunt Lily and Sage came rushing in after Leigh, who had already escaped up the stairs. Rose didn’t mind the chaos in the bakery. She was having too much fun with her big brother.

  “Rose! Come here!” called Ty from the kitchen.

  When Rose popped through the saloon doors, she saw Ty holding a faded pink index card covered with grease stains and their mother’s ornate handwriting. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s a conversion chart. I found it in the freezer.”

  It read:

  Fist = half cup

  Flame = 55 degrees Fahrenheit

  Song = 4 minutes

  Acorn = teaspoon

  Walnut = tablespoon

  Rose winced. “This means, when it said one fist of flour, it meant one-half cup, not a full cup!”

  “Well, it sure seemed like it was working. If anything, they’ll just love each other more.” Ty cringed and shivered at the thought of it. “Gross.”

  Rose winked. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

  Three hours later, Rose and Ty sat crouched behind some shrubs on the lawn of Calamity Falls Elementary School, peering into the classroom where Miss Thistle taught her Magic of Science class at summer day camp.

  “Where the heck is Mr. Bastable?” Ty spat. “We’ve been waiting an hour. They should be over at his place by now, slow-dancing in the middle of a frog tank.”

  In Rose’s head, Mr. Bastable would arrive and stand outside the window of Miss Thistle’s classroom, wearing a handsome black pinstripe suit and a fashionable haircut. He would knock on the window and say, “Miss Felidia Thistle, I have loved you from the moment I saw you!” Her face would light up and her eyes would gleam with unshed tears of joy. She would climb through the window and walk off with him, arm in arm, leaving the first graders sitting with their jaws open.

  The whole scene was very similar to what Rose wished would happen between her and Devin Stetson, if she ever found herself teaching science at a summer camp.

  But Mr. Bastable was nowhere to be found.

  Rose sighed. “I guess it was ’cause we messed up the measurements.” She felt like ripping out her hair, or crying. Or both. “But now that we know what all the measurements mean, we can get it right next time,” she ventured, hoping there would be a next time.

  “Ech, I don’t know,” Ty mumbled. “This seems like a waste of time. I just really wanted to show Aunt Lily that I—we—can do magic.” Ty stood up again. “And if we can’t, then I have more important things to do. Like video games. Or sleep. Get Sage to help you.” He brushed the dirt and leaves off the front of his shirt and walked off.

  Rose walked home behind him, sighing in defeat.

  That night, Rose sat in the booth with an exhausted and filthy but happy Leigh on her lap.

  Aunt Lily sat next to Rose and patted Leigh’s head. “I was so worried about you!” she said.

  Aunt Lily had prepared pizza for dinner—a beautiful expanse of thin, sweet dough, wonderful tomato sauce, and fresh mozzarella cheese and olives. Chip had opted to return home, exhausted from a day of manning the front room by himself.

  Mrs. Carlson waved a finger in Leigh’s face. “I’d have found her,” she said firmly. “I used to be a spy.”

  Lily announced that she had to go to the bathroom and disappeared into her guest room in the basement, which was equipped with a tiny sink, shower, and toilet.

  The phone rang, and Rose hopped up to answer it. It was her mother.

  “Darling!” Purdy cooed.

  Rose’s pulse quickened. She wanted so badly to confess that she had been in the storeroom and cellar and had copied the recipes and played with magic and tried to get Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle together. Most of all, she wanted to tell her mother about Aunt Lily’s arrival, to ask if Lily was telling the truth about being part of the family, to ask if she was fishy.

  But she realized she shouldn’t. She could get all of them into trouble—and really, all Lily had done was help out and mind the shop while her parents were away. Was that so bad?

  Still, she should say something to her parents, right?

  Rose opened her mouth, but as soon as the name Aunt Lily popped into her mind, her tongue went limp, as if her mouth couldn’t actually form the sentence. Then, before she knew it, the thought disappeared from her
head altogether.

  “Honey?” Purdy called through the speaker. “Rose? Are you all right?”

  “I meant to say something about something, but it flew out of my head. Just tired, I guess.” Rose ended the conversation and hung up the phone.

  Sage gnawed on his pizza crust like an animal. “Rose, speechless? That’s a first!”

  Lily reappeared and sat down in the booth. Leigh climbed into her lap, and Lily laughed. Rose watched as Aunt Lily joked with Leigh and her brothers, saw the way their eyes lit up whenever she tossed her head back and flashed a smile. It was difficult to imagine a time when Aunt Lily had not been there, helping at the bakery and polishing her motorcycle and softening Chip like you’d soften a stick of butter.

  Still, Rose felt a little flutter of unpleasantness in her stomach. It had been there since Lily arrived.

  Yes, there was definitely something not right about Lily. Rose felt it in a place in her gut so deep, she’d never known it existed before now—and yet there it was, panging away, sounding an alarm.

  This woman had a secret. Something dark, if not outright sinister. And Rose was determined to find out what it was.

  CHAPTER 7

  Recipe the Second:

  Cookies of Truth

  After all the lights were out, Rose went down to the guest room in the basement to say good night to Aunt Lily—or at least she told herself that’s what she was doing. Really she was going to rifle through Aunt Lily’s bags to confirm her suspicions of, well … suspiciousness.

  Rose tiptoed down the carpeted steps and saw a ribbon of misty yellow light from beneath the door of the tiny bathroom. The whole basement was filled with steam and the scent of lavender body wash. No wonder Aunt Lily always smelled like a garden.