The baker had little, but he managed to keep himself clean-shaven. He was surprisingly lean for a guy who worked around bread all day. He wore his favorite red polo shirt. (Yes, they have polo shirts in other worlds.) He paced around the bakery, a wooden shack that also served as his home. He ran his fingers through his wild grey hair. He was usually an optimist, but this request made him extremely nervous.
His daughter was 10, almost 11, with blond hair and usually a can-do attitude, but she was even more nervous than the baker.
“Oh dear! Oh dear!” said the baker, pacing in circles. “I hope we can do this, Katrina!”
“I think we can,” said his daughter, Katrina. “I hope we can.” She took a deep breath, shifted her face into a determined look, and said, “Why are we not starting now? Come on, this way.” Her hands started to glow.
They sped off at super speed into a nearby forest. Katrina stopped the spell and started another. She extended her arm and made her hand flat. The back of her hand faced upward. Her fingers pointed at the roots of a tree. She moved her arm upward, and the tree obeyed, releasing its roots and following her hand into the air.
Beneath the tree there was a hole. The baker and his daughter jumped into this hole. It looked at first like a small room made of dirt, but Katrina muttered some strange mystic words. The room was well lit by an indefinable source of light, tiled across wall, ceiling, and floor. The tiles were a polished white with a hint of light blue if you looked very closely. One of the walls did not look like the others. It was a dark metal, iron, the bane of magic. Only members of the highest family could cast spells through iron, with one exception.
Katrina touched a knob on the iron door. It looked like the dial on a vault. It glowed and began to spin. It popped out slightly then repeated the process six more times. Then it flashed briefly and fell off. The iron wall morphed to the same tile as the rest of the area.
Katrina brushed her hands across some of the tiles. The ones she brushed flipped over. On the other side of each tile was nothingness. You could put your hand through this side. Katrina closed her eyes. The rest of the tiles flipped over.
On the other side was a dim room made of dirt. Near the back corner of the room, to the right, there was a single frail-looking chair. “Only you can get the recipe now,” said Katrina to her father. The baker walked through the flipped tiles. The portion of the room that he entered changed from dirt to tiles. This continued as he walked through, the room brightening as he went. He crossed to the chair and stopped. The room would not convert itself to tiles beyond the old wooden chair. The baker picked it up and drove it into the far wall legs first, making the seat of the chair flush with the wall. The rest of the room covered itself in tiles. While tiles surrounded the seat, the headrest dissolved away leaving a piece of paper that floated down into his hands.
He started to take it back to her, but the entrance was now blocked by the solid side of the rotating tiles.
A hand reached through the tiles. The baker grabbed onto it, and his daughter pulled him through. They stared at the yellowed parchment. He read the list of ingredients aloud:
Four yellow yolks of spherical robin’s eggs
Liquid from 1 coin of leprechaun’s gold
3 cups of flour from the grains on the tongue of a Devouring Plant
9 spores of the Castle-Sized Fern
Pour the batter into magnetite cups before cooking to keep the muffins from rising out of control. Cook for three minutes over flames of true anger extracted from a red and orange bull.
They didn’t speak, but the thoughts of each were filled with how they might go about getting these ingredients. The daughter wondered if there were any cloning spells in existence because it had taken a thousand soldiers to find one spherical robin’s egg. These contained two yolks, one yellow and one blue. The yellow one was used for extraordinary recipes that were less sweet, such as bread, omelets, and, in this case, muffins. The blue one was used for sweeter things, such as cupcakes, normal cakes, and cookies. One yolk could sweeten a thousand cakes.
Katrina also wondered if she could feel the magic of the rainbow liquid generated from a leprechaun’s gold coins from the end of the rainbow. She hoped she wouldn’t accidentally go to the beginning of the rainbow. That was where the leprechauns lived, and they were much, much more aggressive than you hear about in fairy tales.
The baker’s thoughts were at first on how he could outwit the Devouring Plant. The man-sized plant had a mouth that could eat four sheep at once—if they were stacked on top of each other in stacks of two. It was practically insatiable and would eat any animal it could find. It could use its tongue, which looked like a giant wheat stalk, to lash out and grab its prey. Evil sorcerers could sometimes conjure tame versions of these plants to attack their enemies. These tame versions did not have the grains on their tongues, so that option was out of the question.
He then thought about the Castle-Sized Fern. Its spores acted like yeast on magic, which is why you needed the magnetite cups. The Castle-Sized Fern lived up to its name, and you had to scale it to get up to the spores. The royal family had converted one of these plants into a water slide for their children. Climbing it would not be easy. He thought about his daughter casting some enchanted rope, which she did know how to cast, but he had never been good at rope climbing, and besides, his daughter would have to continually cast the spell to keep the rope in existence. It’s how almost all conjuring spells work. It’s why they couldn’t use magic to make themselves rich, casting such spells drained her power. Completing this recipe, if it was even possible, would be the biggest test of her powers yet.
Here are some story starters to inspire you!
• Have you ever heard of a Rube Goldberg machine that gets you out of bed & makes you breakfast? I have, and I’ve built one.
• When I heard there was an update, I was excited. After all, I was a video game character.
• New school, new planet, new body. It’s the same every time I move.
• First there was nothing. Then there was me, Evileer, and the rest of the simulation.
Story kaBOOM! 