Baker's Magic (Middle-grade Novels)

by Zahler, Diane

  Wil considered this. “We’ve nothing to lose. What should we do?”

  “Pirates!” Bee called out. “You come from all over the world. Tell me—do you know of any dishes baked with leaves?”

  There was a general confusion. One of the younger pirates, Filmon, spoke. “In my kingdom, there was a dish, bibingka. It was baked with banana leaves. We did not eat the leaves, though—they are too tough. They held the bibingka.”

  “That doesn’t matter!” Bee said. “Do you know how it was made?”

  “More or less,” Filmon replied. “I think I can describe it.”

  “There are banana trees,” Ying-tao said. “I have seen them.”

  “And what else do I need?” Bee asked Filmon.

  “Coconut,” he said. “I’m pretty sure there is coconut in it.”

  “I am all bewilderment,” Captain Zay said. “What is this you are planning, Bee-girl?”

  “You tell her!” Bee instructed Wil. Then to Filmon, she said. “It has sugar in it, doesn’t it? What is it exactly?”

  “It’s like … like a muffin,” Filmon said uncertainly. “Baked in a banana leaf.”

  “Good. Butter and flour and sugar, then.” Bee took the ingredients and the bowl and spoon Mistress Weatherwax handed her and began to work as Wil explained to the others what happened when Bee baked. As soon as Captain Zay understood, she sent out her men in search of banana leaves and coconut.

  “Bananas are yellow!” Filmon called to them as they departed. “Long. Curved, like a scimitar. Coconut, it’s like a cannonball, only greenish.”

  When the pirates were gone, Captain Zay turned to Bee. “You are some more talented than I ’ave known, Bee-girl.”

  Bee stirred ingredients, her head down.

  “You are putting feelings into cookies and baked goods.”

  Bee said nothing.

  “A number of things is explained,” the captain mused. “For example, when you ’ave left the ship for the mages’ island, you give to me a bun.”

  Bee kept her attention on her mixing bowl.

  “What is in this bun you give to me?” the captain asked pleasantly.

  “Ummm … ,” Bee said, mixing away. “Maybe there was a little bit of … truthfulness.” She stared very hard at the bowl of ingredients as she stirred. The captain was quiet for so long, though, that she finally had to look up.

  Captain Zay had sunk into a chair at the table, and her head was in her hands. She’s furious with me! Bee thought in dismay. Then the captain smacked her palms on the tabletop, making Bee wince.

  “Oh, oh, oh, Bee-girl,” she gasped, chortling with glee, “so many offensive and tremendously ill-mannered things I ’ave said to my crew after eating that bun! And all of them utterly true!” Her laughter was so contagious that the little Weatherwaxes began to giggle without knowing why.

  “What did you say?” Anika asked, her lips twitching.

  The captain shook her head. “I am not nor ever ’ave been accused to be a lady, but I will not be repeating those words in front of these good folk and this royalty!” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “She told us we were rogues and rapscallions and should go to the devil—but only after she keelhauled us for our dastardly incompetence,” said Filmon, grinning. “And that was by far the nicest thing she said. Isn’t that right, Captain?”

  Even the king was hiding a smile now. The captain flushed and said, “If those words were my words, they were naught but the truth as created by a bun, and none of my fault whatsoever.”

  The Weatherwax children hooted with joy. They ran through the room shouting, “You go to the devil!” and “I’ll keelhaul you, you dastardly!” while Bee murmured, “Sorry,” to Mistress Weatherwax who shook her head, trying not to laugh.

  Then Bee and Filmon stirred and tasted and stirred some more, making up a huge batch of bibingka. It took longer than Bee had hoped before the pirates began to return, laden with thick green leaves and round coconuts.

  “Those trees had gone south, along with the other tropical sorts,” Haleem told her, wiping sweat from his brow. “We had to run miles to find them. They wanted a warmer place, I suppose.”

  The coconuts were a mystery. They were like rocks. Bee tried to cut one, then hammered it with a meat mallet.

  “Give to me,” Captain Zay said. She put the coconut on the floor and said, “Stand back, young people, if you place value on your body parts!” She raised her sword and brought it down with a resounding thwack, and the coconut lay in two halves. Beneath its green outer shell it was hairy and brown, and inside it was white as snow. It looked very disagreeable. Bee could hardly imagine that it would taste good, but Filmon gave her a morsel of the tender coconut flesh, and she was convinced.

  Filmon showed Bee how to scrape out the coconut and drain the coconut milk, and she added the ingredients to her batter. Then Bee placed the pirates and the Weatherwax children in a line, with the pirates forming rounded cups from the banana leaves and the children filling each cup with batter. At last Bee slid the trays of muffins into Mistress Weatherwax’s oven.

  “We’ll need more,” she said, and kept mixing. As soon as one batch came out of the oven, nicely browned and smelling delicious, she popped another batch in. She forced herself to keep her mind free of worry as she worked, and the hard work of stirring the stiff batter helped.

  “Take these,” she said to the pirates, holding out the bibingkas. “Place one at the foot of each tree.”

  “Each tree?” Haleem repeated. “But there are hundreds of trees!”

  “Then you’ll have to work fast,” Bee replied, dropping spoonfuls of batter into banana-leaf cups. “Or find someone to help you.”

  “What have you flavored them with?” Wil asked her, sniffing the muffins with appreciation.

  “I thought of the trees as I worked,” she said. “How beautiful they were. How precious, and how they are helping the land. I tried to bake in a love of the trees.”

  “So the beetles are to feel love for the trees?”

  Bee shrugged helplessly. It sounded ridiculous. “Yes. And the desire to protect them instead of eat them, I hope. I don’t know! I don’t know if beetles can feel anything beyond hunger. It was the best I could do.”

  “Then,” Wil said firmly, “it will have to be good enough.”

  CHAPTER 22

  By the time evening fell, Bee was drained. Her hair stood in spikes, sticky with coconut milk. Her face was flour-white, her clothes streaked with dried batter. Anika, who had stayed beside her to measure and mix, was just as grubby. Mistress Weatherwax’s kitchen was a disaster, with dirty pots and pans, flour and sugar everywhere. Sanna and her mother had long since given up on keeping up with the mess and had joined the others in placing the banana-leaf muffins at the base of trees.

  Bee sprawled in Master Weatherwax’s armchair, too tired to move. As the sun set, people began to straggle in, done with the day’s work. She looked up as she noticed that those who came in were not just the pirates and the Weatherwaxes. There was the cooper and the weaver, the tavern owner and the shoemaker. Sanna came in with Mistress de Vos, the old lady’s starched cap awry, her face flushed. For once the surly woman was almost smiling.

  Bee struggled to her feet. “What on earth …?” she said.

  “The whole town came out!” Sanna exclaimed, taking Bee by the waist and twirling her around. “Everyone who was there last night. And more than that. People from the outer villages came to find out what the trees were, and when we told them, they stayed to help. From miles around! And Ying-tao guided us.” Yes, there was the moss maiden in the midst of the throng.

  “Did we get to all the trees?” Bee asked her.

  “I believe we did.” Ying-tao smiled weakly. She, too, looked exhausted. “They stopped moving when they got sick, so none was farther than five miles or so away. I th
ink we managed to find them all. Now we must wait to see if the beetles eat what you have made. And if they take to your magic.”

  “Where is the nearest tree?” Bee felt a sudden surge of energy.

  “One has settled in the square just down the high street,” Sanna said. “Ying-tao says it is an oak.”

  “Come on!” Bee went to the door. Anika, Bartholomew, and the little Weatherwaxes followed behind. Usually at this hour, the street would be nearly empty, everyone home for supper. But now there were people milling about everywhere. Bee could tell they were not all from Zeewal. There were fishermen and their families in their customary thick wool sweaters and high boots, and villagers from places far less prosperous than Zeewal, thin and dressed in ragged clothing. But they all stood and talked together, and their eyes were bright with excitement.

  Bee and the others ran down the street to the square. In its center, where on market day booths were set up to sell goods from nearby villages and hamlets, there was now a tree, a tall oak. But it drooped, its leaves in a pile around its trunk. It looked like an old man too weary to hold his body upright.

  Bee walked cautiously to the tree. At its base she could see a bibingka in its banana-leaf cup. Only the leaf wasn’t green, it was black—black with polka dots. It was swarming with hemel beetles.

  “They’re eating it!” Bee whispered. She didn’t want to startle the beetles, to send them back up the tree trunk. Other people crowded around Bee, but she held them back with outstretched arms.

  “And look,” Anika said, low. One of the beetles crawled off the bibingka. It started back up the tree trunk, and Bee gave a little moan. Then it turned, its hornlike antennae waving in the air. Bee held her breath as it scuttled off the tree and across the square. It was working!

  “Where is it going?” someone asked.

  “I thought of the Egg-Hen as I baked,” Bee told Anika. “I thought about how we were rescued on it, and how nice the hammocks were, and how we liked it. So … maybe they’re going there.”

  The beetles were swarming down the tree trunk now. They stopped for a nibble of the bibingka, and then they followed the first beetle across the square and along the high street.

  “All those beetles … ,” Anika said. “All of them descending upon the pirate ship? Oh, Captain Zay is not going to appreciate that.”

  “We won’t tell her unless she asks, will we?”

  Anika shook her head. “Indeed we will not!” Behind them, people clapped as the beetles scurried away. Already, the oak looked stronger. A child ran up and cried, “The beetles are leaving the other trees! I stepped on one, and it squished.” He looked very pleased with himself.

  “You’ve done well,” Bartholomew told Bee, ruffling her sticky hair. “Now you should rest—and bathe.”

  “I’m going to stop by the bakery first,” Bee said. “I want to tell Master Bouts what we’ve done. I’m sure he’s never heard of bibingka!”

  She and Bartholomew walked Anika and the children back to the Weatherwaxes, then turned up the high street and headed to the bakery. But something was wrong. The shades were down; the door was locked. A passerby shook her head at Bee and said, “No bread this morning!”

  Worried, Bee slid the spare key out from its hiding place on a ledge atop the front door and opened the shop. The tinkling of the bell seemed to echo in the silence. There was no smell of fresh-baked bread or sweet, warm pastries.

  “Master Bouts?” Bee called. She and Bartholomew walked cautiously through the shop and into the kitchen. There, bowls of dough overflowed onto the marble counters, risen all night without being punched down. There was spilled flour on the floor, shards of broken pottery underfoot. Floury footprints marched from one end of the room to the other. Kaatje paced along the marble tabletop, mewing piteously.

  “Oh no,” Bee moaned. “Where is Master Bouts? What’s that evil creature done with him?”

  Bartholomew picked up pieces of plate and chunks of dough. “Dear me. This does not look good,” he said.

  “Listen!” Bee said, holding up a hand. She could hear a gentle tapping at the front door.

  “It might not be safe,” Bartholomew warned, but Bee ran through the shop to the front door and peered out. Skulking nearby was Master Arjen, the hedge wizard who was Master Bouts’s friend. His hood was pushed back and his dark hair stood on end as if he had run his hands through it over and over. Bee’s heart leaped to her throat as she opened the door and took in his frantic expression.

  “Master Arjen! What’s wrong?”

  The hedge wizard looked both ways and then slipped into the shop. He stood flapping his hands anxiously. “Oh, Mistress Bee, it’s Master Bouts! He’s in terrible trouble. The mage’s guard has taken him. He sent me to you before the guard hauled him away. He said to tell you what has happened—but truly I don’t know what has happened! I only know he is gone.”

  Bee and Bartholomew stared at each other.

  “I don’t understand,” Bee said, her lips trembling. What would the mage do to Master Bouts?

  “Nor do I,” Master Arjen said. “I do not know what the mage plans, and I do not care to stay to find out. I have … business to take care of elsewhere.”

  “Wait!” Bartholomew said. “We may need your help!” But Master Arjen flapped his hands in dismay one final time, and Bee could hardly blame him as he pushed back through the door and disappeared down the street, his head swiveling around like an owl’s to be sure he wasn’t followed.

  Bartholomew spoke from behind Bee. “What is that?” He pointed to a piece of paper on the counter.

  Bee snatched it up. “It’s a note,” she said. “It’s—oh. Oh no.”

  Bartholomew took it from her and read aloud. “The baker will die if you do not bring the king and his daughter to the palace by daybreak tomorrow.” It was signed with Master Joris’s name in a strange, spiky hand.

  “Die!” Bee cried. “He will kill Master Bouts? What shall we do?”

  “We must tell the king,” Bartholomew said.

  “But … but the king will not go. Surely Master Joris plans to exile him again—and Anika as well. Or kill them! King Crispin will never agree to put Anika in danger.”

  “It is the king’s decision to make,” Bartholomew said gently.

  Bee stamped her foot. “It is not. It is my decision. Master Bouts is my friend.”

  Bartholomew’s brow furrowed. “What would you do, then?”

  Bee tried to think. “If I bring Anika and the king to the palace and I don’t tell them it’s at Master Joris’s command, the mage will free Master Bouts. But … he would take them instead. And maybe kill them.”

  “That’s so,” Bartholomew said gently.

  “But,” Bee went on, “if I choose not to send Anika and the king, Master Bouts dies.”

  “Bee, you cannot make that decision,” Bartholomew said in distress. “That is too much to ask of one so young. Give the choice to me. I am your father. Let me take the weight of it.” His expression was pleading.

  Bee took a deep breath. If Bartholomew chose, it would be easier. Still dreadful, but easier. At least what happened wouldn’t be her fault. But then a terrible thought entered her mind. Would Bartholomew make the choice to save the king and Anika and sacrifice Master Bouts because he wanted to be her father—her only father? Because he didn’t want to share her with the baker?

  Bee was shocked that she’d even thought it. She had no reason to doubt Bartholomew. But it was so hard for her to trust. And why else would he want to do this thing for her?

  Bartholomew looked steadily back at her. His face was open and clear. There was nothing in his expression but love, and the pain that such a decision would cause him. She could see that he would take it on for her simply because he loved her.

  “Thank you,” she told him, gladness and anguish battling in her heart. “Thank you. Bu
t you know I must do it myself.”

  And so Bee made her choice.

  CHAPTER 23

  In silence, Bee poured a bowl of milk for the hungry Kaatje, and then she and Bartholomew walked back to the Weatherwaxes. Inside, the crowd had dispersed. Only the family, the king and princess, and the pirates remained. A fire burned cheerily on the hearth, and somehow the kitchen had been set to rights.

  Anika ran to greet Bee when she entered, but her smile of greeting faded when she saw Bee’s grim face. “What is it?” she asked. “Whatever is wrong?”

  Bee looked at Bartholomew, and he nodded, taking her hand.

  “I have something to show you—you and your father,” Bee said. With her free hand, she held out Joris’s note to Anika. The gesture felt irreversible, and Bee knew she might be condemning Master Bouts to death with it. She had chosen to allow Anika and her father to decide whether they would save the baker or not. She felt tears start in her eyes, but she forced them back.

  Anika read the note, then read it again. She took far longer than she needed to for so few lines. When she looked up at Bee, it was clear that she understood everything.

  “I will converse with Papa,” she said. “I think I can convince him that we must go.”

  Bee had to be sure. “If you go, Master Joris may harm you. He may kill you.”

  “If we do not go, he will kill Master Bouts,” Anika said. “I do not believe that Master Joris will maltreat us. You misremember that he was my guardian for a dozen years. All that time, he could have harmed me, but he did not. That must count for something—even with him.” Her voice was firm and certain. How she had changed, from the protected princess who had spent most of her life in solitude, to this strong, brave girl!

  “I’m sorry,” Bee said miserably. Anika gave her a quick hug and shook her head.

  “No need,” she said, and wove through the room to speak to her father.