Bliss. Kathryn Littlewood

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      TWO YEARS LATER, Rose had seen her fair share of catastrophes large and small in Calamity Falls – and had watched as her parents quietly mended them all.

      When old Mr Rook began sleepwalking on to other people’s lawns, Purdy made him a batch of Stone Sleep Snickerdoodles, filling one of her giant bowls with flour, brown sugar, eggs, nutmeg and the yawn of a weasel, which Albert had painstakingly collected. Mr Rook never sleepwalked again.

      When huge Mr Wadsworth got trapped at the bottom of a well and the fire department couldn’t manage to pull him out, Albert trapped the tail of a cloud in one of the blue mason jars, which Purdy then baked into Fluffy White Macaroons. “I hardly think this is a time for sweets, Mrs Bliss!” Mr Wadsworth cried when they lowered a box, “but they’re so delicious!” He devoured two dozen. Climbing out of the well was no problem after that – he practically floated.

      And when Mrs Rizzle, the retired opera singer, found herself too hoarse to make it through the final dress rehearsal of Oklahoma! at the Calamity Falls Playhouse, Purdy made a Singing Gingersnap, which required that Rose go to the market for some ginger root, and that Albert go and collect the song of a nightingale – which had to be done at night.

      In Germany.

      Albert usually didn’t mind these daring adventures to collect magical ingredients – except for the time he had to collect the sting of a bee. He always brought home a little extra, and those ingredients were carefully labelled, stored in blue mason jars and hidden in the Follow Your Bliss kitchen where no one – except someone who knew where to look – would ever find them.

      Rose was the one usually sent to collect the more mundane, less dangerous ingredients – eggs, flour, milk, nuts. The only emergencies Rose ever had to deal with were caused by her three-year-old little sister.

      On the morning of 13 July, Rose woke to the clattering of metal bowls on the tiled floor of her family kitchen. It was the kind of violent, reverberating crash that would make the hair on an ordinary person’s neck stand at attention. Rose just rolled her eyes.

      “Rose!” her mother shouted. “Can you come down to the kitchen?”

      Rose heaved herself out of bed and stumbled down the wooden staircase, still in her undershirt and flannel shorts.

      The kitchen of the Bliss home also happened to be the kitchen of the Follow Your Bliss Bakery, which Rose’s parents operated out of a sunny front room that faced a bustling street in Calamity Falls. Where most families had a couch and a television, the Blisses had a counter filled with pies, a cash register and a few booths and benches for customers.

      Purdy Bliss was standing in the centre of the kitchen amid a wreck of spilled metal bowls, little mountains of flour, an overturned sack of sugar and the brilliant orange yolks of a dozen cracked eggs. White cake flour was still swirling in the air like smoke.

      Rose’s little sister, Leigh Bliss, sat in the centre of the floor with her Polaroid camera round her neck and raw egg smeared on her cheek. She smiled gleefully as she snapped a photo of the wreckage.

      “Parsley Bliss,” Purdy began. “You ran through this kitchen and knocked over all the ingredients for this morning’s poppy muffins. You know that people are waiting for our poppy muffins. And now they’re not going to get any.”

      Leigh frowned for a moment, ashamed, then grinned widely and ran out of the room. She was still too young to feel bad about anything for longer than a minute.

      Purdy threw her hands up in the air and laughed. “It’s a good thing she’s so cute.”

      Rose looked with horror at the mess on the floor. “Can I help clean?”

      “No, I’ll get your dad to do it. But,” Purdy ventured, handing Rose a list scrawled on the back of an envelope, “you could ride into town and pick up these ingredients.” She looked again at the wreckage on the floor. “It’s a bit of an emergency.”

      “Sure, Mum,” Rose said, resigned to her fate as the family courier.

      “Oh!” Purdy cried. “I almost forgot.” She removed the silver chain from her neck and handed it to Rose. The chain carried what Rose always assumed was a charm, but which, on closer inspection, revealed itself to be a silver key in the shape of a tiny whisk.

      “Go to the locksmith and get a copy made of this key. We’re going to need it. This is very, very important, Rosemary.”

      Rose examined the key. It was beautiful and delicate – like a spider touching all its toes together. She’d seen her mother wearing it like a charm round her neck, but always assumed it was just another one of her mother’s bizarre jewellery choices, like the butterfly brooch whose wings spanned fifteen centimetres or the hat-shaped hat pin.

      “And when you’re done, you can go and buy yourself a Stetson’s doughnut. Even though I don’t know why you like them. They’re quite inferior.”

      Rose, in fact, hated the taste of Stetson’s doughnuts. They were too dry and too cakey and tasted a little like cough syrup – what else could you expect from doughnuts served up at a place called Stetson’s Doughnut and Automotive Repair? But buying one meant getting to drop seventy-five cents СКАЧАТЬ