Bliss. Kathryn Littlewood

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      IT WAS THE summer Rosemary Bliss turned ten that she saw her mother fold a lightning bolt into a bowl of batter and learned – beyond the shadow of a doubt – that 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 instead – to 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 hiccupped 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 centre 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 in 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 towards the door, but Albert held her back.

      “It’s not ready yet!” he said. There was another crack of lightning, and another—

      Afterwards 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 СКАЧАТЬ