A Taste of Love
by Maya Daisy
I couldn’t help but smile as I kneaded the dough for the famous pink heart donuts that are so popular this time of year. I could have used a mixer, I suppose, but I’ve always preferred to mix things by hand. I’ve always thought that there’s nothing quite like seeing something undergo a complete transformation in your own hands. My sister Ophelia thinks that I’m bonkers because she could never have the patience to do things that slowly. She always uses the mixer, but then, she doesn’t much like baking anyway. I’m pretty sure that the only reason she knows how is because Maman forced her to learn, just like she made all of us learn. She never had to force me though. I’ve always loved being in the kitchen. Grandmere likes to joke that I learned to bake before I walked, which might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I like the story anyway.
“Aurelia,” Madeleine, my other sister, gasped as she skidded into the kitchen. “Are you finished with those donuts yet? No, of course you aren’t. Never mind, I’ll help you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve already finished a batch,” I said, nodding towards the boxes at the other side of the kitchen. “And these just need to be cut and fried.”
She shoved me to the side and plopped the dough onto the counter so she could start rolling it. She’s pretty small for a twelve-year-old, but she caught me by surprise. “I’ll finish up with this batch, Maman needs you to start making deliveries STAT. We’re running so behind. And Ophelia’s moping in her room because she has to help out- she can be so dramatic sometimes- instead of hanging out with her friends, even though obviously she just wants to be with James…” Madeleine started putting the donuts into the oil to fry, chattering all the while.
Aimee, who’s seven, wandered in. “Can I make Sparkly Sweetheart cookies for the Valentine’s party tonight? Can I?” she asked. Aimee’s an excellent baker, although not exactly the tidiest. Her cookies though, are perfection.
“Aimee, can you make your cookies later?” Madeleine asked. “I need your help cutting out donuts. You know, that reminds of the time that I made that raspberry cake- that was such a mistake by the way, I mean blech- raspberries in cake? - and then-.”
I interrupted Madeleine. “I have to deliver these, but Maddie, please keep Aimee away from the oil. And Aimee, stay try not to make too much of a mess while you bake, alright?” Madeleine went back to chattering, and I tuned her out while I started gathering the donut boxes to take for deliveries. I love Madeleine, but honestly, sometimes she just talks too much.
Ophelia, who’s fourteen, stomped into the kitchen and started slamming ingredients onto the counter grumpily. Madeleine rolled her eyes. “Come on Phelie, cut it out. We all know you’d rather be anywhere but here, but can’t you at least try to pretend you enjoy spending time with us?” Madeleine grinned at her. “I know we’re not Jaa-mes, but we can’t be that bad.”
Aimee grinned and started singing, “Phelie and James, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” They burst into laughter.
Ophelia glared at them and then started laughing too. “Oh, come on you guys, knock it off. You know I’m not mad because of you guys; I just hate working in the bakery. Aurelia, where are you going?”
“Deliveries,” I said. “Do you want to go instead? I’m sure Maman wouldn’t mind.”
Ophelia shuddered. “No way. The only thing worse than being stuck in here is needing to talk to annoying people.” We laughed.
“Okay you guys, I’ll be back soon. Try not to burn the kitchen down while I’m gone!” I called as I left with the donut boxes stacked precariously in my arms. I deposited them carefully in the cooler that was attached to my pink bicycle, hopped on, and got started on my delivery route.
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I rang the doorbell, and a sad looking woman opened the door in her pajamas. She took her order and ate a donut right in front of me. Her eyes glowed a bit strangely. She smiled and said that her name was Eudoria, then closed the door. About forty-five minutes later, I had completed my final delivery, and except for one over-active guard dog who just about scared the life out of me, it was pretty uneventful. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for what was going on at the bakery while I was gone. I walked into the kitchen only to be bombed with a cloud of flour.
“Ugh, what happened in here?” I coughed.
“Don’t tell Maman, Aurelia!” Aimee cried desperately. “I was making my cookies and then somebody,” she said with a glare at Madeleine. “Just shoved me and I dropped the whole bag of flour!”
“SHOVED you?!” Madeleine cried. “I didn’t shove you! You got in my way! I told you to stay back while I was frying donuts! It’s dangerous! You’re the one who was shoving me.”
I looked at Ophelia desperately.
“Hey, don’t look at me,” she groused. “I was making lava cakes this whole time. I just started helping them now.”
I sighed. “Okay you guys, let’s just try to clean this up quickly, okay? It’s Valentine’s Day, and this is our busiest season! We can’t afford to be distracted.”
After tidying up in the kitchen, the girls went on with their days. Ophelia escaped from kitchen duty as soon as she could and went into the pantry to start reorganizing to maximize the ‘flow of the space’ as she put it. I was working at the counter in the bakery and was soon joined by a reluctant Ophelia who had organized the pantry as much as was humanly possible and was then evicted from the kitchen. The door jingled as two customers walked in.
“Good afternoon! Two lava cakes, an iced caramel latte and one black coffee with cinnamon?” I said cheerfully to Mr. and Mrs. Chaucer. They’re regulars at the bakery, and we all know their Saturday afternoon order by heart.
“You know us, Aurelia,” Mr. Chaucer said cheerfully.
“Oh, and why don’t we get one of those delightful looking blueberry scones?” Mrs. Chaucer asked.
Ophelia smiled at them. The Chaucer’s were some of the only customers that Ophelia actually enjoyed talking to. She started mixing up their coffees while I put their lava cakes into a box. I handed it to them, and Mrs. Chaucer opened it up.
“I just can’t wait!” she said. Ophelia turned around and put their coffees on the counter just as Mrs. Chaucer took a bite. Ophelia looked at her strangely.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
Mrs. Chaucer looked confused. “Of course! Why?”
Ophelia rubbed her eyes. “No, nothing. I must be seeing things… Have a nice day.” The couple left the store.
“What was that about?” I asked. Ophelia still looked confused.
“I thought I saw-but well, that doesn’t make sense… I just thought that-” she cut herself off as a customer walked into the bakery.
The woman seemed oddly familiar. It took me a moment to place her, but suddenly, I saw it. It was the glum woman-Eudoria?- from earlier! Only, she didn’t seem unhappy now. She was still wearing pajamas, but they looked fresher. The biggest change was in her face. Earlier, she’d looked distraught, (except for that one moment when her eyes maybe glowed) but now she looked as fresh as a daisy and as happy as whatever flower is happier than a daisy.
“Good afternoon!” she chirped. “You're the girl who delivered me those donuts this morning! Aurelia, wasn’t it?”
I was flabbergasted. I’d never seen a person’s personality do such a complete one-eighty in just a few hours. I nodded.
“Let’s see… Do you have any more of those donuts from earlier?” she asked brightly. I nodded. “I’ll take three of those, a rosehip and lavender latte, and two dog treats.”
“Uh… Okay,” I said eloquently. Ophelia shot me a look, snapping me out of my confused daze. “I mean, sure! I’ll get those for you right now.”
“Oh, thank you so much. Those donuts are absolutely phenomenal! You know, it's the funniest thing, after eating them I just felt so light and happy!”
I passed the woman her pastries and smiled. “Here you go!” She left the store.
I told Ophelia about what had happened earlier with the strange glow and her personality change.
“No way!” she gasped. “That’s what I thought I saw happen to Mrs. Chaucer! What do you think is happening? Are we going crazy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “When it was just me, I thought I was imagining it. But how come I didn’t see it this time? I was looking at Mrs. Chaucer, and I didn’t see her eyes glow or anything.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But-”. She was distracted from what she was saying by the sight of two familiar angry faces in the street outside. “Aren’t those the Chaucers?” she asked in confusion.
I turned around. It was, in fact, the Chaucers yelling at each other in the street. We looked at each other in bewilderment.
Madeleine ran into the front excitedly. “Did you see Abby and Liam? They were walking in the park and HOLDING HANDS!! I thought they hated each other! Although now that I think of it, yesterday Abby was here and she had one of my chocolates covered strawberry scones- which are awesome by the way, and I can’t believe you hate them Ophelia-
“They’re an abomination,” Ophelia interrupted. “Chocolate and fruit? Gross.”
“And then when Liam came in to get one,” Madeleine continued, ignoring Ophelia. “They started talking and being sort of normal, but like way nicer than normal… which is really weird because at school on Friday, Liam said she was aging prematurely because she was always mad at him, and she called him an idiot- why are you guys looking at me like that?”
“Okay, something really weird is going on,” I said. “First Eudoria, then the Chaucer’s, and now Abby and Liam? Why are people being so strange?”
“Yeah, and this reminds me, earlier, Lindsey came in and ordered some ‘sparkly sweetheart’ cookies, and then Aimee said that her eyes were glowing, which they weren’t obviously- or at least that’s what I thought-, and then Lily came in, and they started chatting like BFFs.” Ophelia said.
“But they haven’t been speaking to each other for months!” I said in confusion.
“Hang on, what are you guys talking about?” Madeleine interjected. “Who’s Eudoria? And since when are Lily and Lindsey talking to each other again? Also, now that you mention eyes glowing, Abby’s eyes totally glowed yesterday when she ate my scone- like, the entire time, so I know I wasn’t making it up-, and actually, Liam’s did too, I think. He was only here for a moment because he left as soon as he got his scone-probably because Abby was glaring at him- and-”
“Hang on,” I said, interrupting Madeleine and shooting her an apologetic look. She seemed annoyed but let me continue. “How come only one of us sees the glowing eyes at a time? And why are people’s eyes glowing after they eat our pastries?”
“Because of the magic, obviously,” came Aimee’s voice from under the counter. We ducked down and saw her coloring in her book. She looked up. “Duh.” “Magic isn’t real,” Ophelia said, at the same time that Madeleine asked, “What magic?”
“The love magic from the spellbook I found in the attic,” Aimee continued. “Didn’t you guys know about it?”
I was beyond confused. “Can you explain please? And maybe go get this spellbook.”
Aimee crawled out from under the counter and stood up. “I have it here already. It’s this, see?” She held up her coloring book, which was apparently not a coloring book after all.
“I found it yesterday. It says that since February is love month, during this time a witch can cast love spells! She doesn’t get to decide what kind though. Whatever she bakes has its own power. I activated the spell and it looks like it’s working!” She beamed. “Aurelia, your magic makes people happy, Madeleine makes people fall in love, my magic makes friends be friends again, and since Ophelia hates baking, her magic makes people hate each other!”
“Okay, that makes sense.” Madeleine said.
“It does?” Ophelia asked. I had to agree with her. How in the world was this coloring/spell book controlling our neighbors?
“Yeah! It just makes sense that your magic would make people hate each other.” Madeleine smirked and Ophelia glared at her.
“Okay you guys, let’s focus on the problem at hand here. If our baking is really doing things, then that means it's our fault that the Chaucers were fighting.”
“Well, technically, it’s Ophelia’s fault,” Aimee piped up. I shot her a look. “What? It’s true.”
I started thinking. If Ophelia’s lava cakes had done this, maybe something of Madeleine’s could fix it. “Maddie, what did you say you gave Abby and Liam?”
“Chocolate covered strawberry scones, why?”
I snapped my fingers. “Perfect! We can give some to the Chaucers, and hopefully that will fix them. I’m not really sure what to do about the others though. Should we leave them? They seem fine.” They did seem fine. Eudoria seemed happier, which was nice, and Lindsey and Lily had been dancing around apologizing to each other for weeks. Not even Madeleine could remember why they were fighting. I wasn’t really sure about what was going on with Abby and Liam, but it was probably fine.
“Oh, and by the way, the love magic only works on people who already like each other. So, if Abby and Liam actually hated each other, then the spell wouldn’t have worked.” Aimee chimed in.
“Hey, I just got an idea,” Madeleine said excitedly. “I’m pretty sure that my teacher Ms. Hattie and the librarian like each other. I should give them some scones and see if it works!”
“Okay, no way,” I said. “We can’t just go around spelling people! That’s rude.”
“Well, technically, if it only works on people who like each other, then it’s really more like a nudge than spelling them,” Ophelia mused. “I think it’s a good idea. We should give it a shot.” We decided to try it. Madeleine went and delivered the scones free of charge and said that it seemed to be working! I sent Aimee to give the Chaucers some scones as well, and they settled down and apologized to each other. Apparently, Ophelia’s lava cakes make anyone hate each other, not only people who are already angry. Through the bakery window, I could see Eudoria walking around joyfully with her pomeranian. She started talking to the postman, and they both seemed happy. Madeleine noticed and gave them each a free scone. She was probably going a bit overboard, but nothing could stop her. She was about to match up the entire town, so I sent her to the kitchen to make donuts, which seemed to be safe because they were my specialty, not hers. She left grudgingly. Soon, it was time to prepare for the party. Aimee had the idea of inviting the people that we had practiced our matchmaking on, and everyone came. The Chaucers, Eudoria and her postman, Madeleine’s teachers, Lily and Lindsey, and even Abby and Liam!
