by Erin Johnson
“Glenn!” Amelia shrieked, stopping him short. She flushed, hands balled into fists. “Yes, your dietary needs have been considered for meals, as I’ve already told you four previous times, and there is a small kitchen on the first floor next to the library. We’ve stocked it with snacks.”
Breathing heavily through her nose, Amelia turned her wide eyes on the rest of us. “Any more questions? No? Good. I’ll go put out the other eight fires I’m sure have started while I stood here talking to you lot.” Off she stalked across the lawn, speaking to someone through her ear device.
“How about we all eat together, outside?” Zeke spread his arms wide. “It’s beautiful out.” A breeze rustled the trees.
Wool and Hank conjured chairs from the kitchen, and I assumed, everyone’s rooms. They floated out the front door to the lawn, bobbing and hovering into a rough circle, and then plopped down on the dewy grass.
The sun had mostly set by this point, only a dull orange glow peeking above the water on the horizon. Wool held out his palms together and slowly drew them apart, revealing his flame between them. “Would you mind being our campfire for the evening?”
The fire jumped from his palm to a pile of logs Hank dumped in the middle and set them alight, crackling and popping and providing a pleasant golden glow. Everyone milled about, picking out their seats from the mishmash of armchairs and kitchen chairs.
I sat and waved Maple over. She took the seat to my left, settling herself between Wool and me. She gazed into his oblivious face. Like a moth to a flame.
Hank, scowling as usual, stalked up to what had apparently been his chair, but found Maple in it. He looked around, and finding the one on my right the only other empty seat, he plunked into it, his body angled away from me.
I twisted my lips to keep from smiling. I scooted closer to him and he inched away. “I don’t bite, you know. Usually.”
He turned to me then, eyebrows raised. He blinked a few times, then his face softened. “No, of course not.” He ran a hand through his floppy thick brown hair and turned his body slightly closer to mine. Had I embarrassed him? I opened my mouth, not even sure myself what I was about to say, but a veritable feast materialized out of thin air.
Silver-covered dishes rattled into place before us, along with a white ceramic gravy bowl, a wooden bowl of hot string beans, and a three-tiered platter of petit fours. I startled, then giggled at my own jumpiness. I lifted the lid on the large dish that hovered before me and peeked under, moaning as the scent of roasted duck reached my nose.
The floating dishes began to parade in front of us, floating slowly past as if on a conveyor belt. I’d wondered how we’d eat without a table, but magic took care of that. Plates of various patterns distributed around the circle, hovering at the perfect height for each person, along with a set of cutlery. My dish had pink frolicking bunnies lining the edge, while Maple’s had a vine blooming with purple flowers.
I looked left and right for direction. Maple was no help. The food simply passed her by, her mind too full of Wool to notice. I glanced Hank’s way.
He sighed and gestured at the dish with his large hand. “You tell the dish how much you want and it’ll serve you.”
“Oh.” I smiled at the bowl of greens beans. “One big scoop, please.”
The wooden spoon lifted up and deposited a large scoop of beans on my plate. I flushed with delight.
“You don’t have to say please, it’s just a bowl.” Hank waved the floating dish before him away.
“Yeah, well, I’ve never had to be polite to a fire before either.” I kept my eyes on the dish of steaming baked potatoes before me, but out of the corner of my eye caught Hank do a double take. Then a grin spread across his face. It shouldn’t have pleased me so much to have caused the first smile I’d seen on his face all day.
“Touché.”
I nudged Maple and snapped her out of her stupor. She began to dish food onto her plate, though she barely picked at it.
“My stomach’s all full of butterflies and moths,” she muttered to me. “I’m afraid I’ll toss it all up, if I eat. And then I’d just die if I did that in front of him.”
The evening passed pleasantly, and though I didn’t con any more smiles out of Hank, he gradually edged closer and closer to me and we ate in friendly silence, with a little comment here and there.
After dinner we milled about, Sam and Zeke volunteering to get the sponges and the soap going on cleaning the dishes.
I joined a little group over by Bern, the magicneer from the Air Kingdom. He asked me how I liked Bijou Mer, and when I told him I thought it was the loveliest, most sparkling place I’d ever seen, he told me that his grandfather had helped design the Levaquifer system that filled the canals.
Glenn cornered me at one point and talked at length about not only the food and seasonal allergies he had, but also listed all the ones he didn’t have. Why?
After twenty minutes, my patience wore thin. I tried to flash my eyes at Maple, blinking out “help” in Morse code, but she was too busy gawking at Wool, who stood talking with her and Hank.
Hank intercepted my SOS though, and to my complete surprise, pulled away from his conversation. He strode over to where we stood a little ways away from the fire. He put a large hand on Glenn’s shoulder and said, “I think Zeke was asking for you in the kitchen.”
“Oh? Oh really? I wonder what for. Maybe he’d like help with the dishes, though I should think he and Sam should have that under control, don’t you? Or perhaps he has a question about a certain ingredient or technique used by the Earth Kingdom. Did you know he’s originally from Earth? Why anyone would leave, especially for Air, I certainly cannot fathom. Can you? Or maybe—”
Hank loomed over him. “Why don’t you go to the kitchen and ask him yourself?”
Glenn gulped. “Oh. Oh, all right.” And with that, the short round man power walked back inside the house. I watched him go with relief.
But when I looked up into Hank’s face, a different sort of anxiety stirred in my stomach. I looked quickly away, and stared instead at his broad chest. Nope, not the place to look either, on a dark starry night, in the shadows of a flickering campfire.
“Thanks for that. He’s a nice guy, but I don’t think I said one word. Literally.” I grinned and nodded a few too many times. “Well, should we join the others then?”
Hank stood too close for me to take a full breath. It was as if he were sucking all the air out of the dark and starry sky. He smelled salty and herbal, like lemon thyme maybe. I felt as if the air itself made me woozy.
Instead of moving toward the group, he took a half step closer. I gulped and felt like I had to throw my head all the way back to look up into his face. But when I did, my breath caught, and I stumbled back. He gazed down at me intently. The expression alone would have surprised me, but what sent me reeling back, was that his face had changed; his features were different.
I squinted. Was it the firelight that made his eyes now appear blue instead of black? His hair shorter than it’d been a minute ago? His nose, still large, but straighter, without that crooked bump in the middle? His chin dimpled and square, where it’d been sharper and pointy before? Could the flickering light change so much? His expression changed too as I continued to blink and stare and recoil.
“What is it?” His hands reached to his face, patting around. His thick eyebrows jumped up, his lips parted, and he turned away.
I tried to peek around his broad back, but he kept his face hidden from me, muttering to himself. When he turned, I blinked in surprise. He looked like he had before. Dark eyes, pointy sharp jawline, crooked nose. Had I just imagined the change? Had it been the firelight and shadows?
He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “Why don’t we, uh—” He gestured to the group and strode back to the fire, not even waiting to see if I followed. I stood still for a bit, reeling. Finally I shook my head. There was so much in this world I didn’t understand.
So much about Hank I d
idn’t understand. Earlier, he’d seemed to hate me, then at dinner he’d warmed to me, I thought. Now… now I had no idea. And what did I think of him? I took a deep breath. It wasn’t something I had to figure out this moment. Tomorrow the competition began, and there was something I’d been meaning to do.
I said my good nights, then headed down the hall. Amelia had mentioned a library. I opened the door beside the kitchen and entered a room lit by glowing wall sconces and a fire burning bright in the hearth. I wondered if it were a flame with a personality.
“Hello, fire?”
But nothing answered. I briefly wondered how Iggy was doing in the tent. He’d insisted on staying behind in the oven. That was fine by me. I didn’t need his insults keeping me up all night.
I moved about the two-story-tall room. The huge fireplace took up one wall, with a large, magically moving painting of the sea above it. In front of the fire stood four stuffed armchairs and a wooden coffee table on a dark red rug. All around the other three walls, from floor to ceiling, stretched shelves packed with books. A spiral staircase wrapped its way up to the mezzanine on the second floor, which overlooked the great room below.
I browsed, gathering up about a half dozen books in my arms, and plunked them down on the coffee table. I settled into the armchair closest to the fireplace and pulled a soft white blanket over my legs. I dove into the first book, entitled Magical Ingredients in Baking and Cooking. I figured it’d help to study up as much as I could.
One, I was excited to discover new plants, herbs, and flavors for my bakes. But also, to avoid doing things like mixing baking soda with dragon’s bane, which I learned if inhaled would cause permanent baldness. When I came to the chapter on venoms, Glenn’s allergy made more sense to me. I read:
Snake venom can be extracted from fangs, snake shifters, and is found in smaller quantities in snake eggs. The venom has medicinal purposes as well, and when used with the proper enchantments, it can block specific pain signals in the brain, with no observed side effects. Used improperly or in greater quantities, the venom can be deadly. Doubly so for those with a rare allergy to the venom.
I raised a brow. I guess Glenn has a legitimate worry there. I cocked my head to the side. Not that he needs to tell us all about it twenty thousand times.
I must have drifted to sleep, because I yawned and blinked sometime later. I sat up and stretched, trying to focus in the dim light of the fire, which had dwindled to embers. A movement outside the windows caught my eye.
I blinked and leaned forward in my chair, dropping my feet off the coffee table. Out on the lawn, a bent figure snuck across the grass. It disappeared into the line of cyprus trees before I could move to the window for a better look. Strange.
Too tired to puzzle out what it meant, I crept back down the dark hall to my room and collapsed into bed.
14
The Competition
The sun rose bright in a beautiful blue sky as we ate breakfast on the lawn before the competition. Maple, sitting next to me, turned a light shade of green.
“Too nervous to eat too?” I nudged her with my shoulder.
“My dad’s coming today. Sent word he was able to get tickets.”
I tried to sound upbeat. “He’s being supportive, right?”
Her nostrils flared. “You’d think. But he’s so caught up in this rivalry with Glenn.”
Across the circle from us, Glenn detailed to Bern all the ways in which he was clearly the superior baker. “In the Earth Kingdom, apprentices train for years, and to get to my level on the council, it takes heaps of experience and talent, you know?”
I jumped when he looked up and caught my eye. Maple tried to hide her face behind her bowl of oatmeal.
He shook his finger at her. “You’re Roger’s daughter, right?”
Maple lowered her bowl a fraction and nodded.
“I was just telling Bern that to rise up to a level like mine, or like Nan’s—” He turned to me. “She was the last royal baker, Earth rest her bones. It takes lots of time and paying your dues. Glad to see you’re still at it— Was it Maggie?”
My friend gulped. “Maple.”
“The humiliation you must’ve felt.” He clicked his tongue. “But I’m glad you’re still trying your hardest. Good for you.”
Maple turned bright red and hid behind her bowl. Confused, I looked from her to Glenn.
“Her dad tried to get her hired on in the royal kitchens. Nan was one of us, from the Earth Kingdom, and she didn’t accept her application. Well, Roger took great offense to that, thought someone from the Water Kingdom ought to be in the Water kitchens, but when you’re talking at that level you’ve got to be realistic. And between you and me”
—And everyone else who can’t help but eavesdrop, you’re so loud—
“only the Fire Kingdom’s guild even begins to approach our standards in Earth.” Glenn brushed nonexistent dust off his sleeve. “With my connections, I could introduce you to some master-level bakers looking for an apprentice when the competition’s over.”
I glanced at Maple, whose bright red face and downcast eyes showed the extent of her embarrassment. Glenn. I didn’t think the dope intended to be rude and annoying, it just came naturally.
“Thanks, but who knows—I may already have a job when it’s over.”
Glenn blinked at me, then his eyes grew round. “Oh! You mean—if you win?” He chortled. “My girl, you’re up against some very experienced bakers here, and you don’t even know how to use magic.”
I nodded, smiling through my annoyance. “True, but Amelia did say that whoever wins can bring on other contestants as staff.” I put an arm around Maple’s shoulders. “And I’ve got my fingers crossed that Maple might choose me.”
Glenn’s mouth hung open.
Maple knocked her shoulder against mine. “Thank you,” she whispered.
After some magical tidying up, we followed Amelia to the tent. Behind it, wooden bleachers rose up from the lawn, adorned with waving flags in blue, green, and gold. A couple hundred people sat on every available inch of the benches and at the top, in boxes separated from the rest of the crowd, sat the royal family. An older man and woman with dark hair and twisting golden crowns sat in the center, surrounded on both sides by young couples.
“Maple!” Maple’s dad stood and waved from the benches, with who I assumed were her mother and some younger siblings. Maple winced and raised a hand.
If my family could see me now, what would they think? Could they even process the existence of magic? I blinked as an idea occurred to me. Had they known when they’d adopted me? No. They couldn’t have kept something like that from me all these years.
Amelia stood before us with Rhonda and Francis. She raised her arms, and the crowd quieted down.
“Welcome to the competition for the next Royal Baker of the Water Kingdom. A day made even more special by the royal family gracing us with their lofty presence. To the health and prosperity of the Water’s royal line!”
A great cheer of “Huzzah!” rang out. The crowd bowed their heads and Maple dipped into a low curtsy beside me. I lifted my brows. Oh yeah, royalty. I bent my knees, grateful that my jeans were so stretchy. Hank, standing to my left, suddenly jolted and folded forward into a low bow. What took him so long? I, at least, had the excuse of being unfamiliar with the customs. Maybe nerves had gotten the best of him. He did look pale and twitchy.
Maple murmured, “I wonder where Prince Harry is?”
“Hmm?”
“Oh.” She leaned closer and whispered. “There are five royal sons.”
I lifted my eyes. Only four young men sat in the box seats.
“Strange.” Maple pulled her lips to one side.
“Why strange?”
“He’s actually a big supporter of baking. He’s been pushing for years to try to get the Water Kingdom’s baking guild up to par with Earth’s and Fire’s. Seems like the kind of thing he wouldn’t want to miss.”
I stood as eve
ryone else rose. “Kind of odd for a prince to be into baking, isn’t it?”
She heaved a great sigh. “It makes him even dreamier.”
I raised my brows and grinned. “Oh? Dreamy, huh?”
She swallowed, catching herself. “That’s just what all the girls I know say.”
Amelia turned toward us and commanded, “To your stations.”
As we made our way through the tent, she turned to the crowd, announcing, “The bakers will have exactly one and a half hours to complete a showcase bake, something that demonstrates their skills and personal style. Ready, bakers? Begin!”
Amelia gathered up a pine cone from the ground, tossed it into the air, and when it came down, it transformed into an hourglass the size of the woman herself. White grains of sand poured into the bottom half.
I took a shaky breath as I donned the white apron provided for all of us contestants. I nodded at Bern to my right, smiled at Zeke to my left, then looked down at my butcher-block counter. Breathe.
I pressed my trembling hands to the tabletop and opened my collection to the poppy seed cake recipe. As I did so, the blue feathered quill sprang to life and hovered at the ready.
I ducked past flying glass jars and baskets until I’d gathered all the ingredients from the pantry. Now the hardest part. I plastered on my brightest smile and crouched in front of the oven. Iggy dimly glowed in the back.
“Hey, Iggy. How are you today?”
The flame coughed black smoke. “You do have eyes? I’m nearly extinguished. You left me with hardly anything to eat.”
He did look dim. “I-I didn’t know you needed anything to eat.”
The flame rolled his eyes. “Do you know anything?”
I blew my bangs out of my eyes. “I’ll get whatever you need if you’ll please heat up the oven for poppy seed cake? And less hot than yesterday?”
“Bring me some decent logs, and I’ll consider it.”