The Magic Cake Shop (14 page)

“Lifflets add excitement to any dish you cook up,” said Mr. Crackle. “They whirl over your tongue like a mini-hurricane, and before long, your taste buds are dancing and so are you! I use them in lollipops for special occasions, like fiftieth wedding anniversaries. They make grandmas dance especially fast.”

Mr. Crackle opened a cupboard door and pulled out a long tube looped into dozens of coils. He reached back into the cupboard and fished around until he found a cap no bigger than the eye of a darning needle. “Here’s what we need to do. I’m going to cap one end of this tube, then open the lifflet bottle and stick the other end of the tube down the bottle’s neck. I want you to shake the bottle gently, as if you’re trying to wake up a sleeping butterfly inside you. That tiny bit of movement should dislodge only one lifflet, which will come whizzing through the tube. I’ll uncap the tube to let the lifflet through. Make sure you shake the bottle as carefully as you can, or you may disturb more than one lifflet.”

Mr. Crackle put the lifflet bottle and elixir bowl next to one another. Delicately he opened the bottle and wedged the tube inside. He held the other end of the tube in one hand; the other hand rested on the cap. He gave Emma a smile and a nod.

Emma held the bottle and gave it a featherlight shake.

The tube shook violently. A lifflet wriggled through,
quick as lightning. Emma held her breath. The lifflet shot through the loops and landed with a
flump!
in the elixir. Mr. Crackle flicked his wrist and capped the tube.

Emma peered into the bowl. The liquid had become a copper whirlpool. It spun so fast it whistled; then, with a soft thump, it settled and became still.

Mr. Crackle brought out an eyedropper. “Give it a taste.”

Emma and Albie dipped the dropper into the liquid, then squirted a tiny drop onto their tongues. Albie made a horrific grimace. Emma winced and shook her head. “Ugh. Flat soda pop.”

Mr. Crackle frowned. “Vats full of cod? That doesn’t sound right. Let’s see what your tongues look like.”

Emma and Albie stuck out their tongues. Mr. Crackle studied them.

“Hmm. Looks perfectly pink to me. Let’s add another lifflet.”

One by one, Mr. Crackle and Emma dropped lifflets into the elixir. Each time Emma and Albie took a taste, the mixture got worse. After flat soda pop, they tasted musty mothballs, a wormy apple, and burned plastic. There wasn’t the slightest speck of yellow on their tongues.

Then, while they were adding the fifth lifflet, the accident happened.

E
mma didn’t mean to jiggle the lifflet bottle as hard as she did. It’s just that when you’re racing to save the best baker in the world, and you have the ugly taste of flat pop, and mothballs, and bad apples, and burned plastic in your mouth, you get rather annoyed.

It’s one thing to ask a child to taste different kinds of lollipops to see which one she likes best. It’s another to ask her to taste a potion that keeps getting worse.

Emma had more patience than most ten-year-olds, but the burned plastic was just too much.

“Rotten lifflets,” she muttered. “I’ll show them.”

When it came time to wiggle the bottle a fifth time, with a horrible taste in her mouth and a grim smile on her face, Emma gave the bottle a firm and violent shake.

Every single lifflet shot through the tube.

“Uh-oh,” said Mr. Crackle.

He jammed the cap onto the tube.

The lifflets buried themselves against the cap, pushing
with all their might to burst free. The tube grew bloated and puffy, stretching thinner and thinner and bigger and bigger.…

Pop!
went the cap.
Whoooosh!
went the lifflets! Into the elixir they flew, bright strands of purple and gold that twinkled and shimmered and swirled and then … disappeared.

The elixir turned black. Foul green smoke poured from the bowl, and a vicious odor sprang up. Coughing and sputtering, Mr. Crackle ran to a window and wrenched it open. Emma and Albie followed at his heels, and the three of them gulped in the outside air.

“I didn’t mean to shake … well, I did mean to … but burned plastic … I’m so sorry!” sobbed Emma.

“My dear Emma, don’t look so forlorn,” wheezed Mr. Crackle. “Perhaps you saved us some time and gave the elixir just the right amount of lifflets with one good shake.”

They waited until the smoke cleared; then gingerly they peeked back into the kitchen. With a dreadful feeling in her stomach, Emma followed Mr. Crackle to the counter where the elixir was.

Mr. Crackle peered into the bowl. He started, then furrowed his eyebrows. “Hmm. Emma, Albie, take a look at this.” He lowered the bowl so they could peer into it.

The liquid had turned utterly still. It was as pure and clear as water.

“Let’s test it,” said Mr. Crackle softly.

He picked up the eyedropper and dipped it into the
bowl. Slowly, carefully, he pulled up a bit of the liquid. He squeezed a single drop onto Emma’s tongue, then Albie’s.

Emma was floating, weightless in the delight of the most exquisite flavor. The potion twinkled like stars in her mouth. She breathed a slow, magical breath.

It was perfect.

Mr. Crackle went to a drawer and pulled out two small mirrors. Solemnly he handed them to Emma and Albie.

Emma opened her mouth and looked at her reflection. In the center of her tongue, there gleamed a small, sparkling gold mark. She turned to Albie.

His tongue was out.

And glittering.

Emma, Albie, and Mr. Crackle looked at one another. Slowly, slowly, they started to grin, their smiles spreading and stretching wider and wider until they were laughing hard enough to hiccup. The tall baker picked up the two children and whirled them around and around until Emma felt as if she would burst with happiness.

“Now,” said Mr. Crackle once he had put them down, “let’s mix up some sugar and pickled cabbage and see if we can’t stop that poison before my world poofs out completely.”

A
few minutes later, they were staring at a bowl of pink pickled cabbage crusted with sugar crystals. Mr. Crackle looked a little green.

“Why does medicine always look horrible?” he muttered as he dropped ten drops of the elixir into the bowl.

The elixir melted the sugary cabbage into a blob of red goo.

“Here goes.” Mr. Crackle grimaced as he held his nose and tilted the contents of the bowl into his mouth. He swallowed.

“It worked! I’ve never tasted anything so foul!” he announced cheerfully. “My sense of taste is back, and so is everything else. Goodness, pickled cabbage smells atrocious!”

“
T
ime for a celebratory early lunch,” Mr. Crackle declared. “I’ll whip up a batch of pea soup!”

Albie and Emma exchanged glances. “Pea soup?” Albie said.

“I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but there’s a reason why I was nicknamed Souper Duper in cooking school.”

Half an hour later, they sat down to steaming bowls of soup and hunks of fresh bread. Mr. Crackle inhaled and smiled. “It does feel lovely to have my senses back.”

As they dipped their bread into the scrumptious green soup, Emma asked hesitantly, “Mr. Crackle?”

“Yes, Emma?”

“Well, since you don’t have to worry about the poison anymore, can’t we just tell my uncle and Mr. Beedy that we failed to make the elixir and have done with it?”

Mr. Crackle paused thoughtfully over his soup. “Yes, we could, but I don’t think that would be the end of it.
My guess is that your uncle and Maximus will do something terrible to us, whether or not we’ve been successful at making the elixir. We know too much of their vile plan. I don’t think they’ll let us go scot-free.”

Albie shuddered. “Then what are we going to do?”

Mr. Crackle smiled. He dipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew the elixir recipe. He passed it to Emma and Albie. “Take a look at the last verse,” he said.

Emma read the last lines of the recipe:

“Where’s Creeker’s curse?” Emma asked.

Mr. Crackle paused. “A more accurate question would be,
What
is Creeker’s curse? About five hundred years ago, there lived an extraordinary cook named Marta Creeker. Her dishes were like little mouthfuls of heaven, and people traveled thousands of miles to taste her cooking. There was one peculiar thing about her, though—she would never cook an afternoon meal.”

Mr. Crackle broke off another chunk of bread and swirled it into his soup. “One day, a rich king arrived and asked Marta to be his royal chef. She said yes, on one condition—she would be responsible for his breakfast and dinner, but someone else had to cook his lunch. The
king agreed. All went well for a time, but one morning the king woke up and wanted a noon feast. Unfortunately, the evening before, the royal lunch chef had become violently sick with the flu. With no other cooks around but Marta, the king demanded that she prepare the feast. When Marta reminded the king of their bargain, he flew into a fit. He threatened to throw her in a vat of bubbling oatmeal if she refused.”

Albie wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like a bad case of the spoils! What happened next?”

“Marta made the feast. At noon the king sat down on his royal throne to eat. He took one bite … and turned into a lamb chop. It seems Marta suffered from a rare and inexplicable disease—if someone ate her food at noon, he would instantly turn into whatever he was eating.” Mr. Crackle lifted his soup-sodden bread and neatly dropped it into his mouth. “Since then, any dish that shouldn’t be eaten at noon has been referred to as ‘Creeker’s curse.’ ”

Emma remembered Mr. Crackle’s final words to Maximus Beedy and Uncle Simon.
Come ten minutes before noon and I’ll have your potion
. “Is the elixir going to turn Uncle Simon and Mr. Beedy into lamb chops?”

“The curse is a little different with every recipe. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

They cleaned up after their lunch, then settled in to wait.

I
t was fifteen minutes before noon. Inside the cake-shop kitchen, Emma sat on the dessert box and stared at the door. Albie chewed his fingernails and paced back and forth. Mr. Crackle sat on the counter with a mug of tea.

“Do you think they’re going to be on time?” Albie asked.

“They’ve got to be.” Emma hopped down from the box and began to pace with Albie. “I wish this whole potion-drinking-at-noon didn’t have to be so on-the-dot.”

Mr. Crackle sipped and swallowed. “There is a certain magic in precise timing. One of my favorite parts of baking is taking a pastry out of the oven at the exact moment it is perfectly cooked.”

“But if Uncle Simon and Mr. Greedy Beedy aren’t exactly on time, we’re the ones who’ll be cooked!” Emma cried.

“Have some tea,” Mr. Crackle offered. “I have a chamomile honey flavor in the cupboard that is wonderfully
relaxing. And by the time you pour yourself a cup and drink it, your uncle and Mr. Beedy will be here. They know they can’t be late.”