Rose Bliss Cooks up Magic. Kathryn Littlewood

almost like a wizard’s hat.

      Rose stepped delicately down the spiral steel staircase, careful not to trip over the cuffs of her trousers, which were too long.

      “Ahhhhh!” Marge cried. “The Director is coming! Ready yourselves!”

      Melanie and Felanie ran to meet Rose at the bottom of the staircase, and with a bow and extended arms, led her to a prep table. It was an enormous, empty stainless steel expanse, as big as a church door. Ning and Jasmine brought her a tray with coffee, a copy of the Wall Street Journal, and a scone with butter and jam.

      Rose was about to take a bite when she realized the six bakers were staring at her, the same smiles plastered on their faces.

      “You don’t have to smile for my benefit,” said Rose.

      Instantaneously, the bakers dropped their smiles into identical grim frowns.

      “You don’t have to frown, either,” Rose said.

      Some of the bakers went back to smiling, others smiled and then frowned, but all of them looked confused.

      “You guys!” Rose said, exasperated. “Smile if you want to! Or frown if you want to! Or don’t have any expression at all. It doesn’t matter to me. Honest.”

      The bakers looked at one another and relaxed. A few smiled easily, and the one named Ning wagged his eyebrows. For once, their faces looked normal, like the faces of regular people.

      “That’s better,” Rose said. She bit into the scone and winced – it was so dry that it sucked all the moisture from her mouth. She grabbed the mug of coffee and took a big sip, then made herself swallow. So much for breakfast. “I’m twelve. You should be giving me milk. Or juice. Not coffee.”

      “Oh!” said the curly-haired one named Gene. “My bad.” He frowned again.

      “It’s OK,” Rose said, pushing the plate away. “We should get to work, anyway. Marge, what are we supposed to do first?”

      “Here,” said Marge, handing Rose a colourful box labelled MOONY PYE! with the signature Mostess cow grinning in the corner. “This is the first FLCP on our list: Moony Pyes. Sales have gone down over the years, so we’ve been tinkering with a new recipe, but it’s unfinished. This is what we have so far, left to us from the former directrice.”

      The description on the side of the box read, MOONY PYE! A MARSHMALLOW AND SUGAR COOKIE SANDWICH, COVERED IN DELICIOUS CHOCOLATY FROSTING! The top of the box had a moon-shaped cutout in the cardboard, which was sealed with cellophane. Rose opened the box and pulled out the Moony Pye. Immediately, flakes of chocolate frosting coated her fingers.

      She held the Mooney Pye in both hands and dove in.

      It tasted like … wax. Like a waxy reminder of what chocolate was supposed to taste like. And under that taste? Stale sugar cookies. Then her teeth and tongue reached the marshmallow center, which tasted like … clay.

      She spat the mouthful of Moony Pye into the garbage and wiped her tongue with her hand.

      “Ugh!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, but that is terrible.”

      And yet, as she wiped the last bits of chocolate coating from her lips, she found herself craving another bite. There was something about that Moony Pye that made Rose want to dive in for more. “Weird,” she said. “It was awful, but I still kind of want to eat it.”

      “I love them,” Marge said gravely, that creepy smile returning to her face. “But I could love them even more. That’s where you come in, Rose. It is for you to make them better.” At the word “better,” she clasped her hands together.

      “Better?” Rose said, flabbergasted. How was she supposed to make this thing better when it wasn’t even good to start with?

      “Our previous director of the FLCP Development Kitchen,” said Marge, “she liked to be called the Directrice – was in the middle of tweaking the recipe. But tragically, she never finished!” Marge took a rubber-banded stack of recipe cards from her pocket and handed the top one to Rose. A recipe had been handwritten on it in a beautiful cursive using a rich purple ink. “This is as much as she was able to do.”

      In the corner of the card was an embossed picture of a rolling pin, with beams of light radiating out from the center. It looked familiar, but Rose couldn’t think where she’d seen that radiant rolling pin before.