Bliss
Authors: Kathryn Littlewood
Bliss
KATHRYN LITTLEWOOD
For Ted
Contents
Prologue
        A Pinch of Magic
Chapter 1
        Calamity Falls
Chapter 2
        A Hammer Falls
Chapter 3
        A Mysterious Stranger
Chapter 4
        Aunt Lily Helps Out
Chapter 5
        The Cookery Booke
Chapter 6
        Recipe the First: Love Muffins
Chapter 7
        Recipe the Second: Cookies of Truth
Chapter 8
        Truth and Consequences
Chapter 9
        Love from On High
Chapter 10
      You Scream, I Scream
Chapter 11
      Recipe the Third: Turn-Around-Inside-Out-Upside-Down Cake
Chapter 12
      Lying to Aunt Lily
Chapter 13
      Ni Esrever
Chapter 14
      A New Cook in the Kitchen
Chapter 15
      Recipe the Fourth: Back-to-Before Blackberry Torte
Chapter 16
      Sunrise, Sunset
Chapter 17
      Homecoming
Chapter 18
      Disappearing Acts
I
t was the summer Rosemary Bliss turned ten that she saw her mother fold a lightning bolt into a bowl of batter and learnedâbeyond the shadow of a doubtâthat her parents made magic in the Bliss bakery.
It was the month the youngest Calhoun child, six-year-old Kenny, had wandered into an open relay room at the train station, touched the wrong knob, and nearly been electrocuted. The charge hadn't killed him outright. It was just powerful enough to make his hair stand on end and to land him in the hospital.
When Rose's mother, Purdy, heard about Kenny's coma, she closed the bakery, saying, “This is no time for cookies,” and then she set to work in the kitchen. She couldn't be drawn away for food or sleep. Nights passed and still she worked. Rose's father, Albert, watched Rose's siblings, while Rose begged her mother to help in the kitchen. But Rose was sent to do errands insteadâto town for extra flour or dark chocolate or Tahitian vanilla.
Finally, late Sunday evening, as the fiercest storm they'd had all summer lashed Calamity Falls with thunder, lightning, and heavy rain that pounded the roof like handfuls of flung gravel, Purdy made an announcement: “It's time.”
“We can't leave the children,” Albert said. “Not in a storm like this one.”
Purdy nodded sharply. “Then I guess we have no choice but to bring them all along.” She turned and shouted upstairs, “Field trip, everyone!”
Rose hiccuped with excitement as her father packed her and her brothers and baby sister into the family's minivan, along with a large mason jar made out of worn blue glass.
Wind and rain rocked the van on its wheels and almost pushed it off the road, but Albert gritted his teeth and pressed on to the barren top of Bald Man's Peak.
He parked. “Are you sure you should be doing this?” he asked his wife.
She loosened the lid on the mason jar. “Kenny is too young. I have to at least try.” And then she kicked open the door and rushed out into the rain.
Rose watched her mother stagger forward into the teeth of the storm, right into the center of the clearing. She pulled the lid off and raised the jar high over her head.
That was when the lightning came.
With a blood-stopping
crack
the first bolt tore the sky in two and came down right into the jar. The entire plateau lit up, and Rose's mother was suddenly burning bright as though she were made of light.
“Mama!” Rose cried, and surged toward the door, but Albert held her back.
“It's not ready yet!” he said. There was another crack of lighting, and anotherâ
Afterward Rose didn't know whether she had been blinded by the light or by her tears.
“Mama!” she whimpered.
And then the van door was opening again, and her mother slid back into the car. She was soaking wet and smelled like a burning toaster, but other than that, she looked unharmed. Rose stared into the jar and saw hundreds of crackling veins of blue light flickering about.
“Get us home pronto,” Purdy said. “This is the final ingredient.”
Back at home, the kids were sent to bed, but Rose stayed awake in secret and watched her mother work.
Purdy stood over a metal mixing bowl filled with a smooth white batter. She carefully positioned the mason jar over the bowl and opened the lid. Little flickers of blue light poured out of the jar and zigzagged into the batter like snakes, turning the whole thing a glowing greenish color.
Purdy turned the batter with a spoon and whispered, “
Electro Correcto
.” Then she poured it into a loaf pan and put it in the oven. She closed the door and, without glancing over her shoulder, said, “You should be in bed, Rosemary Bliss.”
Rose didn't sleep very well that night. Her dreams were filled with lightning, with her mother glowing an electric orange and wagging a finger at her to go to bed.
In the morning, Purdy put the loaf on a plate, added a drizzle of white frosting from a pastry bag, and called to Albert, “Let's go!” She crooked a finger at Rose. “You too.”
Then Rose, Purdy, and Albert went to the hospital room where Kenny lay.
Rose didn't think he looked so bad from the outsideâa little quieter than normal, a little bluer than anyone should beâbut there were grim-looking machines hooked up to him, and his pulse was a weak beeping in the tiny room.
Kenny's mother looked up, saw Mrs. Bliss, and burst into tears. “It's too late for cakes, Purdy!” she said, but Rose's mother just eased a crumb between his lips.
Nothing happened for the longest time.
And then there was the faintest
gulp
.
She slid a bigger chunk into his mouth. This time, his tongue moved and there was a louder
gulp
. Then she pushed a whole mouthful in, and his jaw seemed to work of its own accord. He chewed, and swallowed, and before his eyes opened, said, “You got any milk?”
After that moment, Rose knew that the rumors were true: The baked goods from the Follow Your Bliss Bakery actually
were
magical. And her mother and father, despite living in a small town, owning a minivan, and sometimes wearing fanny packs, were kitchen magicians.
And Rose couldn't help but ponder:
Am I going to become a kitchen magician too?
T
wo years later, Rose had seen her fair share of catastrophes large and small in Calamity Fallsâand had watched as her parents quietly mended them all.
When old Mr. Rook began sleepwalking onto other people's lawns, Purdy made him a batch of Stone Sleep Snickerdoodles, filling one of her giant bowls with flour, brown sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and the yawn of a weasel, which Albert had painstakingly collected. Mr. Rook never sleepwalked again.
When huge Mr. Wadsworth got trapped at the bottom of a well and the fire department couldn't manage to pull him out, Albert trapped the tail of a cloud in one of the blue mason jars, which Purdy then baked into Fluffy White Macaroons. “I hardly think this is a time for sweets, Mrs. Bliss!” Mr. Wadsworth cried when they lowered a box, “but they're
so
delicious!” He devoured two dozen. Climbing out of the well was no problem after thatâhe practically floated.
And when Mrs. Rizzle, the retired opera singer, found herself too hoarse to make it through the final dress rehearsal of
Oklahoma!
at the Calamity Falls Playhouse, Purdy made a Singing Gingersnap, which required that Rose go to the market for some ginger root, and that Albert go collect the song of a nightingaleâwhich had to be done at night.
In Germany.
Albert usually didn't mind these daring adventures to collect magical ingredientsâexcept for the time he had to collect the sting of a bee. He always brought home a little extra, and those ingredients were carefully labeled, stored in blue mason jars, and hidden in the Follow Your Bliss kitchen where no oneâexcept someone who knew where to lookâwould ever find them.
Rose was the one usually sent to collect the more mundane, less dangerous ingredientsâeggs, flour, milk, nuts. The only emergencies Rose ever had to deal with were caused by her three-year-old little sister.
The morning of July 13, Rose woke to the clattering of metal bowls on the tile floor of her family kitchen. It was the kind of violent, reverberating crash that would make the hair on an ordinary person's neck stand at attention. Rose just rolled her eyes.