Bliss (8 page)

“Can't you read? Does it look like three p.m. to you?” He dug through a pile of socks and T-shirts and pulled out a pair of wrinkled khakis.

“Not now, Ty!” Rose cried. “Look what I just found in the fridge!” She held the purple sequin on the tip of her finger like a ladybug and shoved it under Ty's nose.

“So?” he yawned.

“
So
, Aunt Lily was
eavesdropping
. While we were copying the recipes! I told you there was something fishy about her!”

Ty scoffed. “Did it ever occur to you,
mi hermana
, that she just wanted milk for her coffee, and that we happen to keep our milk in our refrigerator, like every other family in this country?” He laid the khakis over his bedspread and tried to smooth out the creases with his palm.

“Coffee?” Rose repeated quietly. “Was she drinking coffee?”

“Totally,” Ty said. He stood up. “Look, she even left the mug in the drive.”

Rose peered out the little white portal at the head of Ty's bed and into the backyard. Nestled in the pebbles of the driveway was a forlorn mug of brown liquid.

“Maybe,” Rose said. Then she tucked the sequin into the back pocket of her khakis, just in case Lily really was fishy and she needed to prove it later to the police.

“You're a baker, Rose,” Ty said, “not a detective.”

“Fine,” Rose pouted. “Let's bake, then.” She laid her marble notebook out on the floor while Ty pulled on the khakis over his lacrosse shorts. “The recipe for love muffins doesn't seem so bad. Here.” She pointed to the heading on the recipe:

Muffins of Green Squash. To Dissolve Love's
Various Impediments

“Green squash?” Ty gagged.

“Another name for zucchini,” Rose said. Then she read out loud what she'd copied:

It was in 1718 in the British country town of Gosling's Wake that Sir Jasper Bliss brought together two most unfortunate souls, the widower James Corinthian and dressmaker Petra Biddlebumme, who were too sad and too shy, respectively, to leap into the glorious fire of love. Jasper made a special delivery of these squash muffins to each one's house, then waited a safe distance from the dressmaking shop of Petra Biddlebumme. Two hours past the delivery of the muffins, widower James Corinthian ran to the door of Petra Biddlebumme, who asked him in for tea. They were married one month thence
.

“Awww,” Ty said sarcastically. “It's like an ancient version of Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle.”

“You're right,” Rose said. “You know what we should do to test out the recipe? Bake two of these muffins, give them to Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle when they come in today, then see if they fall in love!”

Ty got a look on his face like he just bit into a lemon. “Can't we get two
attractive
people together?”

Rose groaned. “You would say that. Listen, the man wears a frog sweatshirt. At this point, magic is his only hope. Do we have everything for the recipe?”

Ty read the recipe itself out loud:

Sir Jasper Bliss did grate one large green squash while chanting the names of the lonely customers thrice. Sir Jasper did pass through a metal sieve one fist of flour and one fist of sugar. Sir Jasper did drizzle two acorns of the finest distilled Tahitian vanilla over the flour. Then he did fold within the batter one egg of the Masked Lovebird, Agapornis personata, which Sir Jasper did acquire from a mystic who had collected them from the primordial forests of Madagascar
.

Rose stared up at Ty. “Where are we supposed to find the egg of a masked lovebird? Do we have to go to Madagascar?”

Ty scowled. “I don't know… Mom and Dad have all kinds of weird stuff in the kitchen. They probably have dinosaur eggs.”

They walked down into the kitchen and into the walk-in refrigerator to investigate the eggs. Rose opened a brown cardboard carton labeled
CALAMITY POULTRY: HAPPY CHICKENS MAKE HAPPY KITCHENS
! Inside were a dozen ordinary white eggs—definitely not the eggs of a masked lovebird, whatever those looked like.

“What's this?” Ty said, and Rose stood on her tiptoes to see what he was talking about. Behind stacks of egg cartons was a knob shaped like a rolling pin. “Cool,” he said, “I love rolling pins!” He spun it hard with his hand, and a gust of wind blew into the refrigerator, which was already cold enough. Rose felt a sudden warmth at her ankles. She looked at the floor and saw that part of the tiling had slid backward into itself, revealing a wooden staircase that led into a cellar.

A hidden passageway! Rose stared at Ty, who stared back in disbelief.

“This is, like, the second secret room we found in this refrigerator this
week
,” he said.

Rose grabbed a flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen, and she and Ty made their way down the stairs, which were crooked, unfinished planks of wood that seemed ready to collapse at any second. The glow from the flashlight was measly, and Rose could see only a few inches in front of her. She could feel her heart thumping heavily, but Ty's footsteps behind her were steady and calm.

When she got to the bottom of the stairs, Rose shuffled along the cold concrete floor, holding the flashlight up in front of her with shaking hands. She screamed at what she saw.

Staring back at her from inside a blue mason jar was a face, like a human face, only much smaller.

“What is that!?” Ty screamed.

Rose winced and moved the light closer, so that the whole jar came into view. There was, inside the jar, what could only be described as a gnome. It was a little man, about half a foot tall, with a white puffy beard and a green cap. He wasn't dead and shriveled, as you'd expect a gnome to be—he was breathing. Snoring, in fact. He had a dreamy smile on his face and his nostrils flared and then collapsed again as he breathed in and out. Rose was floored. There was a label at the bottom of the jar that read
THE DWARF OF PERPETUAL SLEEP
.

Ty was speechless for a minute. “No
way
,” he said, peering into the jar at the snoring creature.

Rose let the flashlight slide to the right, where another jar sat. This one appeared to be empty, except for a little red leaf that was swirling around inside like it was in the park on a fall day. This jar read
THE FIRST WIND OF AUTUMN
.

Ty had spun around in the opposite direction to investigate a jar that was filled with a dusty glow. “What's that one?” Rose asked him.

“Light from a lunar eclipse,” he whispered. The light cast a blue tint on his nose. He peered at a jar on the shelf beneath it and gasped. “Look, Rose!”

Rose spun around and placed the flashlight in front of a smaller jar. This one was not made of the same shimmering blue-tinted glass as the others—this one was made of green glass that was reinforced with barbed wire. The clasp on the jar was made of heavy rusted metal, and it was locked. Rose could barely make out what was inside—it seemed to be a slimy gray orb, about the size of a baseball. The label read
WARLOCK'S EYE
.

Rose and Ty turned to each other in disbelief. They'd seen their father chase down wind and whispers and exotic birds—had he slain a warlock, too, and stolen its eye? Were there such things as warlocks? Would the warlock ever be back for its eye? Rose shivered at the thought. If there were Dwarves of Perpetual Sleep living in a secret room beneath the kitchen, what else was there?

Ty tapped Rose on the shoulder and said, “Here, look! Masked lovebird eggs!”

There, in one of the blue jars, were a dozen or so tiny red eggs, flecked with black. Ty grabbed the jar off the shelf and said, “Let's go. I don't want to know what else is down here.”

For once, Rose had to admit that she didn't really want to know either.

No sooner had Rose and Ty set out the marble notebook on the kitchen counter than Lily, Sage, and Chip burst through the backdoor, carrying stacks of wooden crates filled with blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries.

“How are we gonna cook with them in here?” Rose asked Ty quietly.

A devilish grin crept across his face. “Let me go talk to Leigh.”

He disappeared upstairs, then reappeared, Leigh following wide-eyed in his wake. “It's on,” he mouthed silently.

“Hey, guys?” Ty called to Chip and Lily. “Can you two watch Leigh today? The old
hermana
and I need to concentrate on baking.”

Chip approached the glass front door of the bakery. There was already a loud line of hungry townspeople in the early-morning sun, waiting impatiently for their morning pastries: the fibbing dressmaker Mrs. Havegood, the impossibly tall Sheriff Raeburn, the quiet librarian Miss Karnopolis, and a dozen others, all clamoring for baked goods.

As Chip propped the door open, Leigh ran through, screaming, “Hide! Seek! Hide! Seek!” She bounded down the street.

“Leigh!” Chip screamed. “Get back here!”

Lily grabbed Sage by the hand and ran out the door after Leigh. “We'll catch her!” she shouted, already halfway down the block.

Chip called out, “I'll take care of the customers!” He would have no choice but to leave Rose and Ty alone, for the time being.

In the kitchen, Rose opened the marble notebook on the counter. She was finally going to have a chance to bake something—not just a usual something, but an extraordinary something! From the Cookery Booke! So why were her hands shaking? She felt like she was about to perform a concert for millions of screaming fans—filled with pride and excitement, but also petrified. What if she made a mistake, and everyone booed? Or worse, what if someone got hurt?

Sir Jasper Bliss did grate one large green squash while chanting the names of the lonely customers thrice
.

Ty washed a zucchini and pushed it up and down along the rough surface of a cheese grater, and wet ribbons of green dribbled into a pile of messy pulp.

“Don't forget to chant!” said Rose.

Ty groaned. “Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle.”

“Louder!”

“Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle! Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle!”

Chip poked his head through the saloon doors. He was breathing rapidly, and his face was red and sweaty. The line outside had doubled. “You kids okay?”

“Sure,” Ty stuttered, turning red in the cheeks, “we were just … trying to remember the words to … a rap.”

Chip scowled. “Just like your mother, always talking nonsense while you're baking!” He disappeared behind the doors again; Rose and Ty breathed a sigh of relief.

Sir Jasper did pass through a metal sieve one fist of flour and one fist of sugar
.

Rose furrowed her brow. “A fist. What the heck is a fist?” She made a fist and held it next to her mother's metal measuring cups, which nested neatly inside one another like Russian dolls. Her fist was about the size of one cup.

Ty held up his own fist, which was the size of a grapefruit, then held up the one-cup measure, which was tiny in comparison. “Well,
mujer
,” he said, “people were smaller back then. Let's go with one cup.” He dipped the cup measure into the burlap sack of flour and shaved off the excess with his finger, then sifted the flour through a metal sieve that looked like a shallow butterfly net.

Then he did fold within the batter one egg of the Masked Lovebird, Agapornis personata, which Sir Jasper did acquire from a mystic who had collected them from the primordial forests of Madagascar
.

Rose carefully opened the blue mason jar, making sure that Chip didn't see what they were doing. She cracked the egg into the center of the batter, and a yolk the color of a red rose plopped into the white batter.

The yolk began to tremble and shake in the bowl, then disappeared beneath the batter. It reappeared a second later on the other side of the bowl, then dipped down again, then reappeared. It moved faster and faster until it began circling the dough, kneading the batter into a ball in the middle of the bowl.

And then the yolk exploded in the batter: The mixture crackled and sizzled, sparks of purple and blue shooting up into the air like miniature fireworks and falling back down. Before their eyes, the batter turned a light, delicate shade of pink. Then the noises stopped, the mixture settled, and it was like nothing extraordinary had ever happened.

Rose shivered. These were no Betty Crocker zucchini muffins.

She was finally becoming a kitchen magician. Even Ty wore a look of awe.

Rose and Ty poured the batter into muffin tins and baked them up, guessing when they needed to.
Bake at the heat of six flames
became 325 degrees, the temperature at which their mother usually set the oven, and
for the time of eight songs
became an awkward half-hour or so of singing through all of the Christmas carols they knew.

After they made it through eight songs, Rose and Ty removed a dozen finely puffed brown-and-green-flecked muffins from the oven and set two off to cool.

“What do we do with the rest?” Rose asked.

“I'll get rid of them,” Ty said, carrying the rest of the muffins out of the kitchen.

Rose peered over the saloon doors into the front room and saw Mr. Bastable at the front of a long, rowdy line. He shuffled up to the counter, his white hair puffed up like the head of a dandelion. He was wearing a shirt that said
I'M A FROG PRINCE. KISS ME.

Rose rushed through the door, holding the hot muffins, and practically shoved Chip off to the side. “Mr. Bastable! Good morning! How can I help you?”

Mr. Bastable stared back at her, confused. “Good morning,” he stuttered, making a show of choosing among the pastries. “I'll have … a carrot-bran muffin.”

Mr. Bastable turned around and noticed Miss Thistle next in line behind him, wearing a brightly colored jogging outfit.

“Miss Thistle!” Rose shouted. “Step right up!”

Miss Thistle looked around and then pointed to herself. “Me?”