A Dash of Magic: A Bliss Novel (4 page)

“
This
is the bakery.”

Rose noticed a young woman and a young man sitting across from each other at a table, both eating some sort of goopy yellow mush from white bowls. Rose stared at it, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.
What is that stuff doing in a bakery?
she wondered.

“What?” said Balthazar crankily. “You don’t like the look of my polenta, Marjoram?”

“It’s Rosemary,” Rose mumbled.

“Whatever, Marjoram. Come to my office. All of you.”

Balthazar led the Blisses to a tin shed at the back of the patio. Inside was a shady room with an odd concrete structure in the center. The structure was shaped like an Olympic podium, with two lower platforms flanking one high column. At the top of the column was a grate, and beneath it roared a wood fire.

“My stove,” the old man grumbled. “I know it’s not one of your high-tech American wall ovens, but it serves my purposes just fine. I don’t do fancy frosting on my cupcakes and all that useless, time-wasting ornamental junk. I bake to feed people.”

Rose looked around the room. Lining one wall were giant sacks of ground corn, and lining another were shelf after shelf of blue mason jars, all labeled in Spanish. Rose burned to know what was in each jar and how to use it.

Balthazar stepped into the room. “For ten years I’ve been inventing new recipes using ground cornmeal. The golden porridge you were thumbing your nose at out there, Marj,” he said, pointing to Rose, “happens to be called Polenta of Plenitude. And it’s very useful. Unlike your American cupcakes. All style and no substance, I think.”

As Balthazar launched into an oration on the various incarnations of ground corn, Sage and Leigh wandered off to investigate a rack of cooling strawberry pies, while Ty stepped back onto the patio to seek
amigas
. Purdy and Albert asked smart questions and settled into chairs to listen.

And so did Rose. After a while she noticed that some of the lines on her great-great-great-grandfather’s face had softened into something that approximated a smile, or at least a nonfrown.

“See, the Polenta of Plenitude gets made,” Balthazar explained, “by stirring ground cornmeal in water and milk over an open flame.” He poured a cup full of golden corn dust into a pot with two cups of milk, then swirled the pot over the iron bars of the stovetop grid. “Then you add honey, a sprig of rosemary, and this.” Balthazar stepped over to the wall of blue jars and removed one labeled
EL SAPO INFLADO.

Rose peered inside and saw a huge bullfrog leaning back against the side of the jar, his legs splayed out and both webbed forehands cradling his monstrous, swollen belly.

“The burp of a bloated bullfrog,” he said, lowering the unscrewed jar to the boiling pot. The frog punched his gut with a tiny amphibian fist, then let out a rumbling, rolling belch that smelled, not surprisingly, like garlic.

A bubble grew out of the cornmeal, filling the entire pot, then swelling until it reached the ceiling of the tin shed before bursting in a sigh and dropping back into the pot.

“There,”
Balthazar huffed, stuffing the poor bloated bullfrog back on the shelf.

Balthazar dipped a spoon into the pot and handed it to Rose. The Polenta of Plenitude was some of the best stuff she’d ever tried: velvety, fresh, moist—the perfect balance of savory and sweet.

“Mom and Dad!” Rose said. “You have to try this!”

Each tasted a spoonful of the masterful corn mixture.

“Wow!” said Purdy. “You’ve really made something special here, Balthazar!”

Balthazar swatted Purdy’s compliment away like a fly, grumbling inaudibly. “I don’t eat sweets anymore,” he said. “You eat too many sweets, you get too big to run away when people come after you. When this
masa
works its magic, you can’t eat like most people do, stuffing themselves to the point where they’re bloated like a couch potato. Eat a little of this
masa
as an appetizer, and you’ll eat just enough of your main course to stay healthy. Unlike my
cat
over there, if you could call him that.”

“What else would they call me?” came a low voice from a dark corner of the room.

Rose couldn’t believe her eyes: a pudgy gray cat as wide around as a bowling ball lumbered out from behind a box and climbed up a ramp onto a rolling wooden chopping block. He sat upright on his haunches and licked under his front leg, which was quite thin compared to his thick face and rotund body. Most striking of all were his ears, which didn’t stand straight up like a regular cat’s but were pinched and rumpled into two folded lumps atop his wide face. “Balthazar, you should have told me we were having people over. I would have bathed. I’m in a shambles!”

“Whoa!” Sage exclaimed. “You have a talking cat?”

“Unfortunately,”
Balthazar replied. “He wandered into my parents’ kitchen when I was fifteen, and he got his grubby claws on a batch of Chattering Cheddar Biscuits I made. He hasn’t shut up since.”

“Allow me to properly introduce myself since the old man can’t bring himself to do it for me,” the cat said. He sounded like a butler in a mansion outside of London. “My name is Asparagus the Green, but you should call me Gus.”

“But you’re
not
green,” Sage said. “You’re more of a dark gray.”

“Minor details.” The cat blinked. “I am a Scottish Fold, and—”

“Is that some kind of soldier or something?” asked Sage.

“It is the name of my breed. I am pure Scottish Fold, hence my exquisitely folded ears. I am not from Scotland, however. My dearly departed mother and father hailed from London. And who might you be?”

“This is my great-great-granddaughter Purdy Bliss; her husband, Albert; and her herbaceous children, Parsley, Sage, Marjoram, and Thyme.”

“Rosemary,” whispered Rose.

“Sure,” Balthazar continued. “And they are here because—” Balthazar stopped and turned to Purdy. “Why
are
you here?”

“We’re here for the translation of the Booke,” she replied nervously. “We need it, now.”

“Why?” he asked. “Can’t you just use your own?”

“Our copy is indisposed at the moment.”

“What do you mean, ‘indisposed’?”

Rose and the rest of the family gathered around one of Balthazar’s picnic tables, and Purdy recounted the tale of Aunt Lily. “So you see,” Purdy concluded, “we need a copy of the Booke if we’re to win.”

Balthazar had listened to the story with his arms folded over his cardigan, his face growing steadily redder and redder. As Purdy concluded, his bushy black eyebrows sloped furiously downward to where they met in the center of his furrowed brow. He stood up, scowled, then disappeared into his kitchen hut.

He reappeared a moment later carrying a dusty tome at least a foot thick, bound in ancient, disintegrating leather. He laid the book gingerly on the table and blew softly on the cover. A puff of black dust flew in Leigh’s face.

“Is it customary in the land of Mexico to blow clumps of dust into the faces of small children?” Leigh coughed.

Gus bolted upright and dropped the shell of the cream puff he’d been licking back into his metal bowl. “I’m sorry; did the toddler just speak like a grown lady?”

“Of course I did!” Leigh answered indignantly. “This, from the talking cat!”

Rose peered at the book, which was thicker than her head. There were symbols printed on the cover, none of which she recognized.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“It means ‘Bliss Cookery Booke’ in Sassanian,” the old man said. “Sassanian’s a dead language that was spoken by a tribe of ancient shamans in the Fertile Crescent. They made their medicines of wheat and honey and other sweet ingredients—those were the first magical bakers.”

Balthazar pulled a short stack of parchment from the back of the Booke and slapped it down on the table.
Recipes.
They were written in English in perfect calligraphy, not a stroke out of place. “These,” he said, “are the translations I’ve done so far. Nine in all.”

“You’ve only translated nine recipes?” Albert asked, scratching at his beard and fanning out his armpits.

“Do you know how hard Sassanian is to decipher? I’m not about to do a rush job on something so important!”

“He’s a bit . . . fastidious,” Gus added.

“This, from a
cat
,” Balthazar countered.

“We need access to as many recipes as is humanly possible by the time the Gala begins,” said Purdy.

“And when’s that?” said Albert.

“Day after tomorrow,” said Purdy, pushing her sweaty bangs off her forehead. “We fly to Paris in just a few hours. Looks like we’re toast.”

Rose’s heart plummeted. It was over before it ever began. There was no way she’d be able to defeat Lily—not when Lily had the Cookery Booke, not when Rose had nothing but her skills as a baker. It might have been different if she were able to read Sassanian, but now . . .

Balthazar stared off into the sky for a moment, snarling one side of his lip.

“You’re just going to have to bring me along then,” he announced, coughing. “I’ll go pack my bags.”

R
ose squirmed in her seat aboard the 747 flying her and her family to Paris. The cabin lighting had been dimmed, and the muted roar of the jet engines was soothing; but Rose was having trouble falling asleep.

Her great-great-great-grandfather Balthazar was across the aisle from her, snoring. For the last hour, she’d watched a single droplet of spittle dangle from the corner of his mouth, then tuck itself up again, back and forth like a yo-yo, shivering with each massive snore, while Gus the cat, strapped into a BabyBjörn against Balthazar’s heaving, snoring chest, looked out in fury.

On the other side of Balthazar, Ty fiddled with a video game. Sage had pulled his legs onto the seat and fallen asleep Indian style, his hands on his knees.

“Excuse me, sir” said a voice from behind her. Rose craned her neck around the seat to check on her baby sister, who’d grabbed the sleeve of a passing flight attendant. “I am very sorry to bother you. This juice box is a little saccharine and, frankly, unappealing.”

The flight attendant gaped at the child, speechless.

From the next seat, Albert clapped a hand over Leigh’s mouth. “She’s fine with the juice box. Thank you.”

Rose flopped back into her seat, a hot ball of anxiety churning in her stomach like a hurricane. She’d never felt so awful.

Purdy was sitting beside her. She reached over and took Rose’s hand in hers. “I can practically hear your mind racing, Rosie.”

Rose buried her head into the crook of her mother’s arm. “I don’t know if I can do this, Mama,” she said. “What if I get the measurements wrong? What if I can’t beat the egg whites fast enough? What if I sweat into the cupcakes, or just crumble and start crying, right there on TV?”

Purdy laughed. “Listen. You’re a master already. You wanted more responsibilities in the kitchen; you got ’em. You’ve been an incredible sous-chef for the past nine months, even though the baked goods haven’t been as magical as we’d like them to be. Now it’s time for me to be
your
sous-chef; I’ll be right there beside you every minute. And remember, I competed at the Gala when I was fifteen and came in third, with no sous-chef! So just imagine how well we’ll do
together
!”

And it was then that the shaking in Rose’s hands and the gurgling in her stomach finally abated, and her racing thoughts slowed to a jog, then a stroll, then sat down in the middle of her head and went to sleep.

Rose jolted awake as the jet touched down and bumped along the runway. Wiping sleep from her eyes, she leaned over her mother and looked out the window. Before this, Rose’s whole world had been no bigger than Calamity Falls, with the occasional trip to her aunt Gert Hogswaddle’s house in the neighboring county of Humbleton. Now it had burst at the seams and expanded to include the entire Atlantic Ocean.

The Bliss family got off the plane and picked up their luggage. Rose ogled all the signs written in French and listened to the French announcements piped in over the loudspeaker, none of which she understood. It was a new feeling, being a foreigner.

Riding in his BabyBjörn on Balthazar’s chest, Gus the Scottish Fold looked vaguely bored. Ty, on the other hand, swaggered through the long hall of the airport like he was having the time of his life. “
Hola
,” he said over and over again, in a near-whisper, to every long-legged woman they passed.

“We’re in France, Ty,” Rose reminded her brother. “Not Spain.”

“Maybe some of these ladies are here on vacation from Spain,” he retorted.

Sage was trying to imitate Ty’s confident swagger.
“¡Hola!”
he called to a girl in a pink dress, and received a glare in response.

At the end of the long corridor was a man in a black suit and white gloves. He was holding up a poster board with
BLISS
printed on it in block letters.

Albert shook his hand. “Hi, hi,” he said nervously, scratching the back of his head. “We’re the Blisses. Last time we checked!”

“
Oui
,” said the driver, the French word for
yes
, Rose knew.