Mr. Crackle grimaced. He hitched up the dessert box, and he, Albie, and Emma waved goodbye to Mabel as they swung open the spice-shop door and climbed back up the tunnel to their own world.
They emerged from the flour barrel to find the last rays of sunset disappearing from the kitchen windows.
Albie glanced at the clock. “Yipes! I need to get home—my parents will be worried.”
Mr. Crackle rested the ingredient box on the counter. “Albie, do you think your parents would mind if you spent the night here? We’ll need to start making the elixir early tomorrow if we’re going to have it ready by noon.”
“Well, my dad might ask for some free cookies.…”
“Done.”
“Great! I’ll give them a call.”
While Albie phoned his parents, Mr. Crackle and Emma went to the attic and dug up a sleeping bag and an inflatable mattress for him. After eating a quick dinner, with crème brûlée for dessert, they settled in for the night. Mr. Crackle tucked Emma and Albie in and read them a story from a slim book called Top Ten Cooking Disasters. Halfway through a story about a wayward blueberry coffee cake, he stopped with a jolt. “Well, what an odd sensation. I can’t feel this book anymore. There goes my sense of touch.”
The two children stared.
“Albie and Emma!” Mr. Crackle said sharply. “If your eyes get any bigger, they’re going to pop out of your head.” He flipped a page of the book. “Don’t worry, you two—if I can still turn pages, I can still make recipes. If I go blind, that’ll be tricky, but since the next sense to go is my hearing, you two won’t have anything to worry about. I’ve always been a little deaf anyway.”
And he went back to reading.
That night, Emma dreamed of floating colored speckles and being chased by a gigantic coffee cake.
Early the next morning, Emma and Albie woke to the smells of tea and toast.
“Good morning!” Mr. Crackle appeared with a breakfast tray and placed it on the table for them. After Emma and Albie wolfed down their meal, he gave them the translated recipe he had typed out the day before. “Take a look at this, then come downstairs. I’m going to sort the ingredients in the kitchen,” he said, and headed downstairs.
Emma and Albie read the translated page:
Blend together two burberry beans, a curled-up squid, and five guzzle spleens. Liquefy ten whingbuzzit legs, a sack of sogs, and three biddle hegs. Lightly fry the mizzle of a jug-jug tree. Burn to a crisp the spizzle of a shick shack shree. Chop, dice, mince, then puree ten tooby tibs of timtam tea. Crush a wibbly cobbyseed; heat a skibbly hoppy mead to boiling; add a splash of juice and a dozen fribs. Mix everything together.
Go outside and check the weather. If it’s raining, catch six drops and add to six gobs of trops. If it’s sunny, catch a ray and shine it in three dozen drops of blay. Add to the burberry mixture, stir twelve times clockwise, twelve times counterclockwise, turn upside down twice, and shake. Heat the mixture to boiling, then add the gloamy foamy ball of a chixed-up, fixed-up spider shawl. Stir until the liquid turns brown; cool 2.6.3 degrees. Pour into a spiky hat, kick the hat three times, then sift the mixture through a red tickler’s thread. Add lifflets until Emma and Albie like the taste.
Emma squinted. Mr. Crackle had written something at the bottom of the recipe in strange, scrawly letters. She had to tilt her head and shut an eye to figure out the handwriting but eventually made out the extra note:
Don’t eat at noon.
Finished reading, Emma and Albie went down to the kitchen and found that Mr. Crackle had spread the jars and packets of ingredients out on the counter. Emma hadn’t had time to see them properly in the spice shop, but now she gazed in wonder as the morning light reflected their bizarre colors and shapes. Burberry beans gleamed bright purple next to the pink, blobby biddle hegs. The spizzle of a shick shack shree looked like a twisty silver-flecked ribbon, wiggling in its packet. Whingbuzzit legs were lumpish and gray, and the wibbly cobbyseed had thousands of tiny grooves etched into its turquoise shell.
When Emma finally lifted her eyes from the counter, she found Mr. Crackle rummaging through a cupboard above the oven. With an “Aha!” he pulled down a massive blender with wickedly sharp blades. “Emma, do you know how to operate one of these?” he asked.
Emma nodded. “Yup. Every Tuesday, Uncle Simon makes me mix up five butter and lard milkshakes for his afternoon snack.”
Albie gagged. “Butter and lard milkshakes?”
Emma sighed. “They’re awfully thick.”
Mr. Crackle said, “Your uncle is awfully thick. Well, why don’t you and Albie plug in the blender and take care of the beans, squid, spleens, legs, sogs, and hegs, while I deal with the tree, shick shack shree spizzle, and tea.”
While Emma and Albie blended and liquefied, Mr. Crackle fried and chopped, sliced and diced, minced and pureed. Colors whirled and crackled into one another as the three worked. A dark, sour, stinging odor filled the air, and violent blue smoke poured out of the frying pan into the kitchen. The spizzle of the shick shack shree hissed and spat in a gigantic pan, hopping and dancing like popcorn over a roasting fire.
“How’re you doing?” shouted Mr. Crackle.
“Fine,” Emma yelled.
“What?”
“Fine!”
“WHAT?”
“FINE!”
“OH DEAR, I’VE GONE DEAF! JUST TAP ME ON THE SHOULDER WHEN YOU’RE DONE!”
Albie and Emma looked at each other.
Time was running out.
They waited impatiently until the biddle hegs sloshed evenly with the whingbuzzit legs and sogs, then jammed off the blender. Albie dashed the blenderful of ingredients over to Mr. Crackle and nearly bashed into the stove in his haste. Emma put out a hand to steady him, then used her other hand to poke Mr. Crackle on the shoulder.
Mr. Crackle turned and grinned. “Excellent! Look for a mortar and pestle in the third cupboard to the left of the fridge. Once you find it, grind the wibbly cobbyseed to smithereens—the powder should be lemon yellow when you’re done.”
Albie collected the wibbly cobbyseed while Emma found the mortar and pestle. Albie dropped the cobbyseed into the stone bowl, and Emma raised the pestle high. With a WHAP! she brought the pestle down and broke the turquoise shell. Hundreds of tiny dark pink stones poured out. As she crushed them, the stones broke into smaller, sharp black shards, then were pulverized into a soft yellow powder. A rich, nutty scent drifted into the air, and the powder crackled like chestnuts snapping in a hot pan.
When the last of the black shards had crumbled into yellow, Emma tapped the pestle against the mortar to free the last bits of powder. She heaved the bowl up to the counter, then joined Mr. Crackle at the stove.
Huge blue flames danced underneath a copper skillet bubbling with a clear gooey liquid. Mr. Crackle had just put down a bottle labeled JUICE and had dipped his hand into a basket full of clicking balls that looked like marbles. “Fribs,” he explained as he tossed twelve into the skillet.
The fribs dissolved into the liquid, which started to swirl, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it whirled and rose up to become a two-foot tornado spinning in the exact center of the skillet.
“Quick! Hand me the cobbyseed!”
Albie gave the stone bowl to Mr. Crackle, who tipped the powder into the funnel of the tornado. There was a BANG! The liquid shot up three feet more, then fell back down into the skillet and began to simmer softly.
Mr. Crackle picked up a wooden spoon in one hand and a frying pan full of ingredients in the other. He tilted the pan’s gloppy, purply contents into the skillet and stirred. The mixture turned slime green and kept simmering.
As he stirred, Mr. Crackle shouted to Emma and Albie, “The next ingredient we need depends on the weather. Take a peek out the window and see if it’s sunny or rainy. If there’s sun, we’ll need to use a raycatcher. If it’s rainy, you’ll need to catch six drops.”
Albie gave Emma a fearful look. “Wha
t if it’s cloudy but not raining?”
Emma shuddered. “Let’s not worry about that until we’ve looked outside.”
They went to the window and opened the shutters.
Warm morning sunlight slanted onto their faces. They returned to Mr. Crackle.
“Sunny,” Emma mouthed to Mr. Crackle.
He nodded. “Sunlight and blay it is! The raycatcher is in the cupboard next to the spice cabinet. It looks like a wire whisk with a glass ball poking out from the top. Go outside and aim the glass toward the sun. Wait until it turns orange, then bring it inside.”
Albie went to the cupboard and yanked out the raycatcher. He and Emma ran outside.
“How much time do you think Mr. Crackle has left before he goes blind?” Albie asked as he aimed the raycatcher at the sun.
Emma stared ferociously at the raycatcher, willing the glass ball to change color. “I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out. Hurry, sun, hurry!”
After a minute, the raycatcher ball started to glint and glimmer. Yellow swirls clouded the glass. The swirls grew thicker and thicker, then abruptly burst into an orange glow.
With a whoop, Albie and Emma rushed back into the kitchen, the raycatcher blazing orange. Mr. Crackle had taken the skillet off the stove, and it lay cooling on the counter. The baker stood hunched over a saucer next to the skillet with an eyedropper full of amber fluid. A bottle marked BLAY sat next to his elbow. Carefully he squeezed thirty-six drops into the saucer. He took the raycatcher and touched the glass to the liquid. With a whoosh, a beam of light shot out of the glass. It shone straight at the ceiling for a moment, then bent and twisted down in a ribbon to curl around the liquid blay. The blay turned solid and began to glow.
Mr. Crackle picked up the glowing blay and plopped it into the skillet. He took his spoon and gave it twelve stirs clockwise and twelve stirs counterclockwise. The concoction had turned into a weird wobbly lime Jell-O with blue sparks dancing off the surface.
“Emma, hand me a cutting board!”
Emma took a board off a shelf by the oven and gave it to Mr. Crackle. He placed the board on top of the skillet, flipped the skillet, then flipped the board so the ingredients landed back in the skillet. He slid the contents into a wide-mouthed bottle, capped the bottle, and handed it to Albie. “Give this a good shake until you see bubbles.”
Albie shook the mixture until it became liquid and turned a frothy green, then gave it to Mr. Crackle. He uncapped the bottle and poured the contents into the pot on the stove, then turned on the heat. When the mixture was bubbling and boiling, he added a webby mass of a balled-up sticky spider shawl and started to stir. Once the liquid turned brown, he switched off the heat and stuck a thermometer into the pot.
“Emma, it’s time to make use of that prickled hat your parents gave you!” Mr. Crackle shouted. “We’ll need to pour this brew into it. I’m afraid the hat will be ruined.”
“Thank goodness,” said Emma. She flew upstairs to retrieve the hat, then brought it to the kitchen and placed it on the floor. Mr. Crackle gave the thermometer a final swirl in the potion, studied it, then swooped the pot off the stove and dumped its contents into the hat. He gave the hat three good kicks. The liquid popped and fizzled, and the cactus prickles on the outside of the hat turned silver.
He brought the hat up to the counter, where a tickler’s thread lay like a mesh over a small bowl. He tipped the hat over. Out spilled a cup of bright green mush. Mr. Crackle took a paddle and gently pressed the mush against the tickler’s thread. A copper-tinted liquid dripped down and collected at the bottom of the bowl.
“It is a rare sight, to see so many colors in one day,” Mr. Crackle said softly. “Sometimes I feel like an alchemist of years gone by, mixing the elements of the world.”
When the last of the liquid had strained through, Mr. Crackle slid the thread off the top of the bowl. “Time for the final ingredient! Have I ever told you two about lifflets?”
Emma and Albie shook their heads.
“Lifflets are tiny whorls of air that dance over Mipplymoo’s Bayou. Devilishly difficult to catch. It was years before I figured out how.”
Mr. Crackle went to the corner of the kitchen and began to knock a knuckle up and down the wall. “To trap them, you have to wait until one is right by your mouth, then—whoop!—you suck in quick, then—whoosh!—blow out into a bottle, and if you’re lucky, you’ve got one.”
His knuckle thunked against a hollow spot. “Aha!” He tapped three times on the spot, and two doors opened out, revealing a hollow in the wall. “This is where I keep my most precious ingredients.” Mr. Crackle reached in and drew out a blue bottle with an enormously long neck. Emma and Albie could see wisps of something bumping madly around inside.
“Lifflets add excitement to any dish you cook up,” said Mr. Crackle. “They whirl over your tongue like a mini-hurricane, and before long, your taste buds are dancing and so are you! I use them in lollipops for special occasions, like fiftieth wedding anniversaries. They make grandmas dance especially fast.”
Mr. Crackle opened a cupboard door and pulled out a long tube looped into dozens of coils. He reached back into the cupboard and fished around until he found a cap no bigger than the eye of a darning needle. “Here’s what we need to do. I’m going to cap one end of this tube, then open the lifflet bottle and stick the other end of the tube down the bottle’s neck. I want you to shake the bottle gently, as if you’re trying to wake up a sleeping butterfly inside you. That tiny bit of movement should dislodge only one lifflet, which will come whizzing through the tube. I’ll uncap the tube to let the lifflet through. Make sure you shake the bottle as carefully as you can, or you may disturb more than one lifflet.”
Mr. Crackle put the lifflet bottle and elixir bowl next to one another. Delicately he opened the bottle and wedged the tube inside. He held the other end of the tube in one hand; the other hand rested on the cap. He gave Emma a smile and a nod.
Emma held the bottle and gave it a featherlight shake.
The tube shook violently. A lifflet wriggled through, quick as lightning. Emma held her breath. The lifflet shot through the loops and landed with a flump! in the elixir. Mr. Crackle flicked his wrist and capped the tube.
Emma peered into the bowl. The liquid had become a copper whirlpool. It spun so fast it whistled; then, with a soft thump, it settled and became still.
Mr. Crackle brought out an eyedropper. “Give it a taste.”
Emma and Albie dipped the dropper into the liquid, then squirted a tiny drop onto their tongues. Albie made a horrific grimace. Emma winced and shook her head. “Ugh. Flat soda pop.”
Mr. Crackle frowned. “Vats full of cod? That doesn’t sound right. Let’s see what your tongues look like.”
Emma and Albie stuck out their tongues. Mr. Crackle studied them.
“Hmm. Looks perfectly pink to me. Let’s add another lifflet.”
One by one, Mr. Crackle and Emma dropped lifflets into the elixir. Each time Emma and Albie took a taste, the mixture got worse. After flat soda pop, they tasted musty mothballs, a wormy apple, and burned plastic. There wasn’t the slightest speck of yellow on their tongues.
Then, while they were adding the fifth lifflet, the accident happened.
Emma didn’t mean to jiggle the lifflet bottle as hard as she did. It’s just that when you’re racing to save the best baker in the world, and you have the ugly taste of flat pop, and mothballs, and bad apples, and burned plastic in your mouth, you get rather annoyed.
It’s one thing to ask a child to taste different kinds of lollipops to see which one she likes best. It’s another to ask her to taste a potion that keeps getting worse.
Emma had more patience than most ten-year-olds, but the burned plastic was just too much.
“Rotten lifflets,” she muttered. “I’ll show them.”
When it came time to wiggle the bottle a fifth time, with a horrible taste in her mouth and a grim smile on her face, Emma gave the bottle a firm and vio
lent shake.
Every single lifflet shot through the tube.
“Uh-oh,” said Mr. Crackle.
He jammed the cap onto the tube.
The lifflets buried themselves against the cap, pushing with all their might to burst free. The tube grew bloated and puffy, stretching thinner and thinner and bigger and bigger.…
Pop! went the cap. Whoooosh! went the lifflets! Into the elixir they flew, bright strands of purple and gold that twinkled and shimmered and swirled and then … disappeared.
The elixir turned black. Foul green smoke poured from the bowl, and a vicious odor sprang up. Coughing and sputtering, Mr. Crackle ran to a window and wrenched it open. Emma and Albie followed at his heels, and the three of them gulped in the outside air.
“I didn’t mean to shake … well, I did mean to … but burned plastic … I’m so sorry!” sobbed Emma.
“My dear Emma, don’t look so forlorn,” wheezed Mr. Crackle. “Perhaps you saved us some time and gave the elixir just the right amount of lifflets with one good shake.”
They waited until the smoke cleared; then gingerly they peeked back into the kitchen. With a dreadful feeling in her stomach, Emma followed Mr. Crackle to the counter where the elixir was.
Mr. Crackle peered into the bowl. He started, then furrowed his eyebrows. “Hmm. Emma, Albie, take a look at this.” He lowered the bowl so they could peer into it.
The liquid had turned utterly still. It was as pure and clear as water.
“Let’s test it,” said Mr. Crackle softly.
He picked up the eyedropper and dipped it into the bowl. Slowly, carefully, he pulled up a bit of the liquid. He squeezed a single drop onto Emma’s tongue, then Albie’s.
Emma was floating, weightless in the delight of the most exquisite flavor. The potion twinkled like stars in her mouth. She breathed a slow, magical breath.
It was perfect.
Mr. Crackle went to a drawer and pulled out two small mirrors. Solemnly he handed them to Emma and Albie.
The Magic Cake Shop Page 8