Baker's Magic (Middle-grade Novels)

by Zahler, Diane

  “Some of them can,” she said in her windlike voice. “The juniper, acacia, and eucalyptus. The black walnut and white oak and the shepherd’s tree. They are ready to try. But you must get off the island, for any extra weight will make it heavier and harder to move.”

  Haleem said, “We’ll go back to the ship then. When we set sail, have the trees … row? Paddle … ? Have the trees follow us.”

  Ying-tao nodded, and the rest went back to the shore, climbed into the dinghy, and rowed back to the ship. On board Captain Zay roared, “Anchors aweigh! Set sail!” A flurry of activity commenced, and before long the sails filled with wind and the ship leaped over the waves. Bee, Anika, Wil, Bartholomew, and the king stood in the stern and watched the island hopefully. It was hard to tell at first, but after a few minutes it became clear that the floating land was indeed moving. Not fast, but steadily, it followed behind the ship. The trees with the biggest, thickest leaves seemed to angle themselves so their leaves caught the wind, filling and fluttering like the Egg-Hen’s sails.

  “Oh, Bartholomew, it’s working!” Bee clapped her hands, thrilled.

  It was a very odd thing, sailing along with an island gliding behind. They moved slowly to the east, checking constantly to make sure the isle of trees followed. As the afternoon drew on, though, the wind picked up, and thunderclouds began to build over the water.

  “’Tis another autumn storm, I fear,” Haleem told Bee as he struggled with the wheel. “’Twill be a trick not to be blown off course.”

  The waves grew choppy, rocking the ship, and then bigger still. The Egg-Hen climbed each one and fell again, the island doing the same. Seawater washed over the railings of the ship and onto the island.

  The captain ordered them below, and they sloshed across the deck and down the stairs. In the hold, the ship creaked ominously. Bee went into the kitchen, hoping to bake, but Limmo wouldn’t risk an open flame with the wild rocking of the vessel, so they huddled together in the sleeping room, watching the hammocks wave above them. They could hear the crew shouting various incomprehensible things on deck—“Slack windward brace and sheet!”, “Square the sail!”, “Make all!”, and, most fearsome, “Bail! Bail!” Up, up, up the ship climbed, and then rushed down so steeply that all five slid across the room, tangling legs and arms together as they slammed into the far wall. They had only just managed to straighten out when the Egg-Hen tilted downward again, and again they skidded into the other wall.

  “Oh, I yearn for solid ground!” Anika moaned. She was an unnatural greenish color. She stroked Pepin, who let out little gasps and wheezes that made it clear he wasn’t happy. Bee was queasy too, and the others didn’t look at all healthy. As severe as the storm was, though, it passed quickly. Before darkness fell the sea had settled, and they made their shaky way up the stairs to the deck, gulping the fresh air thankfully.

  The pirates were busy, swabbing away the seawater, tightening the sheets, and repairing broken lines. Bee, Anika, and Wil ran to the stern. To their great relief, the island still floated behind them. Now, though, there was less land on it. The trees were at the edge of the soil, and their roots were visible, clutching the land as a child would grip a favorite toy that it feared losing.

  “Another storm, and those trees will fall,” Wil said.

  “Haleem!” Bee called. “How close are we to land?”

  The first mate, drenched and strained with exhaustion, shouted back, “Look yonder!” He pointed just south of due east.

  There, in the distance, was a dim shape, low and dark and steady on the horizon. A haze of smoke from kitchen hearths clearly showed where Zeewal lay, and Bee could just make out the tall outline of the palace towers off to the side of the town.

  It was Zeewal. Home.

  CHAPTER 19

  “We shall wait for the darkness,” Captain Zay proclaimed. Nobody argued. The thought of landing at the mouth of the canal, where ships of all kinds clustered to offload their cargo and large crowds often gathered, was to nobody’s liking. What would people think of a pirate ship and a floating island covered with trees? Master Joris would hear about it in no time, and he’d send his palace guards to investigate, Bee was sure. That is, if he didn’t already know.

  “Do mages see things that are happening? Or see the future?” she asked Bartholomew.

  “Are you asking if Master Joris knows we are here?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I am not certain. They cannot see the future, but sometimes they can see things that happen elsewhere. It depends on whether or not they are looking. It takes a lot of energy to look that hard. And we are on the sea still, so my guess is that Joris is not aware of our presence.”

  “Good.” That made Bee feel somewhat better. She went down to the galley to help Limmo with supper. She knew the next few hours would be crucial, and she whipped up batch after batch of cookies, adding this nut and that spice, this flavoring and that feeling, until she felt she had done as much as she could. The cookies she’d baked with courage she handed out to the crew. In addition, she gave each a little packet of scones that she’d infused with love of Aradyn. That had been a challenge, since she’d felt no love for her kingdom for all the years she’d been fostered in Boomkin. But she thought of Zeewal as she baked, the tidy town with its clean streets and friendly people, and she thought longingly of Master Bouts and his broad smile and halo of white hair. She knew now that she loved the town, and she loved the baker. She hoped those feelings would translate into something more general to the pirates who ate the cookies, who might not know Zeewal or Master Bouts, but who surely knew love.

  As darkness fell, the pirates lowered the dinghy, and in groups they rowed to land. Then Bee, Wil, Anika, the king, and Bartholomew rowed with Haleem to the island and called softly for Ying-tao. She came to the ragged edge of the isle to meet them.

  “Ying-tao, can the trees not bring the isle closer to land?” King Crispin asked her.

  “Nay, Your Majesty. The mainland repels the floating island, as the floating island repelled the moss maidens’ isle.”

  “Like magnets with their north or south sides facing each other,” Wil mused.

  Bee stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “In the forge, we keep the little ones busy with magnets. Lodestones, you know?”

  Bee shook her head.

  “The lodestone attracts iron, so if you carry it around the forge, all the iron shavings will stick to it. Or it can stick itself to the metal tools. But if you rub lodestone on an iron pin, you can make the pin itself into a magnet. If you make two of them, they’ll repel each other. You can’t make them come together no matter what.” Bee’s blank gaze showed that she had no idea what he was talking about. He shrugged. “It’s fun, if you’re five years old. But …” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” Bee prompted him.

  “If I’m right about the magnets … well, every magnet has a north and a south. The north will attract another magnet’s south, and will repel any magnet’s north. If the land is repelling the island, perhaps if we turn it, north to south, it will attract instead.”

  “Turn the island?” Bee found this nearly incomprehensible.

  “Exactly.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  Wil looked at Bartholomew. “Can you do it?” he asked the hedge wizard.

  “Oh, dear me,” Bartholomew said anxiously. “I don’t think so. I haven’t that power.”

  “Of course you do!” Bee exclaimed. “You trained with the mages for years!” She hoped she was right.

  “Well,” Bartholomew mused, “I have indeed spent many years among the mages. They are old, it is true, and infirm, and have lost their vigor. But I’ve watched and learned. They have much to teach. And I have my own small magic.”

  King Crispin looked thoughtful. “Is it not true that a hedge wizard or witch can become a mage? I had h
eard that was how it was done. The mages age and retire. Someone must take their place.”

  Bartholomew flushed. “I am not saying I have the power of a mage, Your Majesty. Indeed not! But like the mages, we hedge wizards work with the land and its creatures. And what is this island but land?”

  “Then you think you can do it?” the king asked.

  “I can but try,” Bartholomew said. “But if it goes |wrong … well. Your Majesty, you and the princess should stay in the dinghy. Just in case. And Bee.”

  “I will not!” Bee said indignantly.

  “Papa and I will go,” Anika said. “But Bee should stay with you, Master Bartholomew.”

  Bartholomew looked worried, but he nodded. “If that’s what you want, Bee.”

  “It’s what I want.” Bee’s voice was firm.

  Wil went with the king and Anika. As he climbed into the boat, he said, “We’ll be right off the island. Be careful. Keep an eye on Bartholomew!”

  They rowed a little way out and then turned the dinghy. In the light of the gibbous moon, Bee could see them clearly. She waved, and Anika waved back. On the island, Bartholomew began his preparations. He bent and dug his hands down into the soil and then straightened up again, brushing off the dirt. He flapped his arms and mumbled some words. Then he traced a circle in the air, and another, and another. Bee kept her eyes on the dinghy. Slowly, it began to move to her left. No—it wasn’t the dinghy that was moving. It was the island. It was rotating clockwise.

  “I think it’s working,” Bee said.

  Encouraged, Bartholomew made still more circles in the air, faster and faster. And the island revolved more quickly. In a moment the dinghy was out of sight, and Bee could see only the horizon.

  “Good!” she cried. But Bartholomew was only getting started. Before Bee could advise him to stop, he whirled his whole body in a circle. The island spun with him. Faster and faster it twirled. There was the dinghy again, and then it was gone. There the horizon, there the land, there the dinghy. Bee began to feel woozy.

  “Enough,” she managed. The island speeded up. There was a carousel in a park in Zeewal that Bee had spent an hour watching once. She’d never ridden a carousel, and she’d wondered what would happen if it were ever to spin out of control. Now she knew. The force of the rotation made her feel as if she were about to fly off, and she grabbed a tree trunk. She couldn’t look out to sea anymore; the twirling landscape would make her sick. She tried to cry out, “Stop!” but her mouth was pushed into a grimace by the intensity of the island’s spin. No words could escape. Her feet lifted from the ground, and only her desperate grip on the tree kept her from being tossed into the air.

  Bartholomew, in the grip of his own power, was completely oblivious to what was happening around him. He didn’t bother to hold on, and that was what ended it. The centrifugal force picked him up bodily and threw him off the island, and he landed with a great splash in the sea. The turning slowed, and finally with a sound like the gnashing of gears, it stopped.

  Bee slumped to the ground. Her head still spun, and she had to gulp air wildly to keep from retching. When she could look up again, she saw that Haleem had rowed around the island and picked up Bartholomew. Quickly he maneuvered the dinghy to shore, and Wil leaped out onto the strand.

  “I told you to watch him!” Wil cried, running over to Bee and helping her to stand. She breathed deeply, calming her stomach, which still roiled.

  “He’s a little hard to control,” she managed.

  “Well, he did it, I think,” Wil said. “The other side of the island is facing Aradyn now. Come on.” He led her through the trees to the far side of the isle. Aradyn was close now—but was it closer than before?

  “The island is moving,” Bee said, amazed. And so it was. Inch by inch, it crept toward the land, pulled by the same magnetic force that had pushed it away when it was turned. There were twenty feet between the two, then six feet, then three feet, and then—

  “Stand back!” Wil shouted, pushing Bee backward so she stumbled. The mainland and island came together with an enormous crash, buckling the soil where they’d stood a moment before and throwing Bee and Wil to the ground. The trees around them shuddered with the impact.

  The others joined Wil and Bee at the seam where island met mainland, and they stepped onto Aradyn’s soil. Bartholomew, dripping and embarrassed, began to apologize, but Bee cut him off.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “You did very well. A little too well, maybe, but it worked.”

  Ying-tao joined them. “I will tell the trees to go,” she said. “They will be so glad to be home at last.”

  “We need them on the coast, and along the canals,” Wil said. “That’s where the land is eroding.”

  “They will go where they are needed,” Ying-tao said. She disappeared among the trees, and before long they began to shift.

  “Look,” Anika whispered. She pointed to a great oak, the tree nearest the mainland. When Bee stared straight at it, it didn’t seem to be moving, but if she took her eyes away and then looked back, it was clear that the tree had advanced. There was a pause when the oak reached the seam between the island and Aradyn, and they held their breaths. And then—how, no one could say—the oak was on the mainland. After it came a maple tree, with brilliant red leaves, and a group of smaller trees. “Fruit trees,” Bartholomew said. “Pear, I think and peach. Maybe apple?” By the time they had reached the mainland, the oak had disappeared.

  “Where did it go?” Bee asked, and Bartholomew shrugged.

  “Where it is needed, I suppose,” he said, echoing Ying-tao’s words.

  “But the land is filled with tulips,” Bee said. “Is there room for the trees?”

  “The trees will sink their roots where they wish, and the tulips will die, or they will live.” Bartholomew smiled at Bee. “One life form succeeds, another fails. It is the way of nature.”

  The crew and Captain Zay joined them, and they watched wordlessly as the trees left the island and moved away in the darkness. It was a strange progression, a cross between a stately dance and the march of an army. As the last tree moved in its imperceptible drift from island to mainland, Anika gripped Bee’s arm.

  “What is that?” she hissed. Bee turned to see a line of flickering lights moving toward them, down the canal from Zeewal.

  “Men, prepare for battle,” the captain said in a low voice. The pirates spread out, moving in front of the king and Anika. They unsheathed their swords. The moon had set, and now there was only starlight to see by. Bee couldn’t make out what the lights were. She imagined a legion of soldiers sent by Master Joris, a terrible magical force that would surround and destroy them.

  Then Wil cried out, “Da!” He ran forward, stumbling a bit in the dimness. The person carrying the first light—for it was a person, not a magical creature—held it high, and Bee recognized the blacksmith. Behind him was Master Bouts with his own lamp, and the cooper, the tanner, the seamstress. In the glow of the lanterns, Bee could even make out Mistress de Vos, her permanent scowl firmly in place. The whole town, it appeared, had come down the canal to them.

  “Wil!” Master Weatherwax put down his lantern and threw his beefy arms around his son. Mistress Weatherwax and the older children crowded around them. “We’d hoped it was you—that this strangeness had something to do with you. Oh, son, you were gone so long—we feared for your life!”

  “Stand down, men,” Captain Zay advised the pirates. They sheathed their swords.

  “Strangeness?” Wil said, thumping his brother Geert on the back. “What strangeness?”

  “The plants. Someone came running from the canal shouting that huge plants had rooted along its banks, and everyone came out to see. And it is true, son! It’s remarkable. Plants far taller than any man, all along the water. Dozens of them!”

  “Yes,” Wil acknowledged with some pride. “They�
�re trees. We brought them.”

  “In one night?” Mistress de Vos asked skeptically. “All those plants? Don’t be absurd.”

  “It’s … it’s hard to explain,” Wil said.

  “Bee, my girl!” Master Bouts had finally made his way to the front of the group. He lifted Bee and twirled her around. It reminded her stomach a little too much of the spinning island, and when he set her on her feet she stumbled and sat down hard. Bartholomew knelt beside her.

  “Are you all right?” His face was anxious.

  “I’m fine—a little dizzy. From the island.” Bartholomew grimaced, and Bee laughed as he helped her to her feet.

  “And who is this?” Master Bouts asked, looking uncertainly from Bee to Bartholomew.

  Bee hesitated. “This is Bartholomew—Master Bartholomew,” she said. “He is a hedge wizard.”

  “Ah,” Master Bouts said. “Very pleased to meet you. Have you aided my girl in her quest to find the mages?”

  My girl. The words confused Bartholomew, and he stammered, “I—I—well, yes. I suppose I did.”

  “Bartholomew is my father, Master Bouts,” Bee said. In the lantern’s glow, she saw Master Bouts’s eyes widen. Again he looked at Bee, then at Bartholomew.

  “I see,” he said at last. “Yes, there is a family resemblance—”

  A sudden shout cut him off. “The king! Look, it is the king!” The pirates had moved aside, and now King Crispin and Anika were visible in the light from the lanterns. Though no one had seen the king for a dozen years, his people recognized him.

  The crowd hushed, and those in front went down on one knee. Others followed, like a wave, until at last everyone knelt, Bee and Master Bouts and Bartholomew among them. King Crispin stood before them, illuminated by the glow of a dozen lanterns. He looked very little like a king ought to look. There was no crown on his head; he was whisper-thin, his beard ragged, his borrowed pirate clothes hanging off him. Like his daughter, though, he held himself tall and straight, and while Bee knew his leg hurt him, he didn’t flinch under the gaze of the hundred or more of his subjects.