Sweet

The flight attendant gaped at the child, speechless.

From the next seat, Albert clapped a hand over Leigh’s mouth. “She’s fine with the juice box. Thank you.”

Rose flopped back into her seat, a hot ball of anxiety churning in her stomach like a hurricane. She’d never felt so awful.

Purdy was sitting beside her. She reached over and took Rose’s hand in hers. “I can practically hear your mind racing, Rosie.”

Rose buried her head into the crook of her mother’s arm. “I don’t know if I can do this, Mama,” she said. “What if I get the measurements wrong? What if I can’t beat the egg whites fast enough? What if I sweat into the cupcakes, or just crumble and start crying, right there on TV?”

Purdy laughed. “Listen. You’re a master already. You wanted more responsibilities in the kitchen; you got ’em. You’ve been an incredible sous-chef for the past nine months, even though the baked goods haven’t been as magical as we’d like them to be. Now it’s time for me to be your sous-chef; I’ll be right there beside you every minute. And remember, I competed at the Gala when I was fifteen and came in third, with no sous-chef! So just imagine how well we’ll do together!”

And it was then that the shaking in Rose’s hands and the gurgling in her stomach finally abated, and her racing thoughts slowed to a jog, then a stroll, then sat down in the middle of her head and went to sleep.

Rose jolted awake as the jet touched down and bumped along the runway. Wiping sleep from her eyes, she leaned over her mother and looked out the window. Before this, Rose’s whole world had been no bigger than Calamity Falls, with the occasional trip to her Aunt Gert Hogswaddle’s house in the neighbouring county of Humbleton. Now it had burst at the seams and expanded to include the entire Atlantic Ocean.

The Bliss family got off the plane and picked up their luggage. Rose ogled all the signs written in French and listened to the French announcements piped in over the loudspeaker, none of which she understood. It was a new feeling, being a foreigner.

Riding in his baby sling on Balthazar’s chest, Gus the Scottish Fold looked vaguely bored. Ty, on the other hand, swaggered through the long hall of the airport like he was having the time of his life. “Hola,” he said over and over again, in a near-whisper, to every long-legged woman they passed.

“We’re in France, Ty,” Rose reminded her brother. “Not Spain.”

“Maybe some of these ladies are here on vacation from Spain,” he retorted.

Sage was trying to imitate Ty’s confident swagger. “¡Hola!” he called to a girl in a pink dress, and received a glare in response.

At the end of the long corridor was a man in a black suit and white gloves. He was holding up a poster board with BLISS printed on it in block letters.

Albert shook his hand. “Hi, hi,” he said nervously, scratching the back of his head. “We’re the Blisses. Last time we checked!”

“Oui,” said the driver, the French word for yes, Rose knew.

The driver eyed Balthazar and Al cautiously. “Welcome to Paris,” he said. “I am Stefan. Your car is right this way.”

“To the Hôtel de Notre Dame, then?” Albert asked, fiddling with a few stapled papers on which he had printed their itinerary.

“No, no!” yelled Stefan. “The hotel will have to wait. You are late for the Gala orientation meeting with Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, which means you are already treading on thin ice.”

They had only just arrived, and already Rose was in trouble.

Rose’s jaw dropped as Stefan stopped the car in front of the expo centre. It was a massive glass building with enormous banners on each side of the entrance. The banners were covered with pictures of giant cream puffs, tarts, and slices of gooey red velvet cake, with the words GALA DES GÂTEAUX GRANDS: 18–23 AVRIL printed in white letters.

Rose gulped. She knew the Gala des Gâteaux Grands was a big deal, but she wasn’t expecting banners the size of blimps.

Stefan held the back door open while Rose and Purdy and the rest of the family piled out of the car. As they pushed through the giant revolving glass door in the front of the centre, a nervous woman with short golden hair and extremely thin lips, which she’d painted fire-engine red, ran over.

“Rosemary Bliss?” she said, taking Purdy’s arm and pulling her towards a set of giant double doors. “You are late for the orientation! You must hurry!”

“No, no, I’m Purdy Bliss,” said Rose’s mother.

The woman stopped in her tracks and eyed the rest of the group suspiciously. “Then which one of you is Rosemary Bliss? Who is our chef?”

Rose hooked her thumb against the chest of her hooded sweatshirt. “Me?”

Confusion flashed across the red-lipped woman’s face. “Ah. I see. My name is Flaurabelle. I am chief assistant to Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre. And you are late!” She ushered Rose through the double doors, with the rest of the Blisses following behind.

The room on the other side of the doors was immense. High ceilings arched overhead, with intricate hanging chandeliers. The floor was crowded with people sitting around large round tables. In the centre of each table was a giant crystal mixing bowl containing multi-coloured batter. All of the tables were filled except one.

Everyone turned to watch as the red-lipped woman led the Blisses to the empty table. Rose sat with Purdy and Ty on either side of her. “The batter is for decoration only,” the red-lipped woman warned in a whisper. “We already had an incident this morning. Please do not eat the batter.”

“OK,” Rose said quietly. She turned to the people glaring at them from a nearby table. “Sorry we’re late,” she said.

“Americans,” she heard someone sneer.

Just then the chandeliers went dark and a spotlight shone on a balcony on the back wall of the room. Pre-recorded orchestral music swelled as a man wearing a chef’s coat made entirely of red velvet appeared atop the balcony. The man was clearly old – not as old as Balthazar, but far older than Purdy and Albert – and completely hairless. His head was bald, his cheeks and chin were bald – he even lacked eyebrows. His bald head was small compared to his rotund belly, giving him the overall appearance of a turtle.

How do I get myself into these things? Rose wondered.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed an announcer, “please welcome the inventor of chocolate éclairs, the pre-eminent pastry chef of France, and most importantly, the founder of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands, Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre!”

As the audience applauded, Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre reached up, took hold of a set of handlebars hanging above the balcony, and stepped over the railing. The spotlight followed him as he soared down a zip line from the balcony to a stage on the other side of the room.

Chef Jeanpierre landed on the stage in a rumpled pile of red velvet. He huffed and puffed his way to a standing position and approached a podium, his arms held up like he was the pope.

Rose’s stomach fluttered. She had read about Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, of course. In a sense, he truly was the pope of baking. From her reading she knew that he took seven lumps of sugar in his morning coffee, that he’d had his hometown of St Aubergine renamed St Jeanpierre, and that he slept exclusively on pillows made of angel food cake, which he baked fresh every evening.

Whenever Rose thought that she’d become too obsessed with baking, she reminded herself about Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre.

Jean-Pierre’s eyes glimmered wide from behind his spectacles. He tapped the microphone, then said, “Bienvenue à la Gala des Gâteaux Grands.”

The room erupted into violent applause as everyone jumped to their feet and cheered.

“Please!” yelled Jean-Pierre. “Sit! Twenty of the world’s fiercest culinary competitors – and their assistants – are in this room,” said Jean-Pierre. “None of them as fierce as myself, of course, but this is why I exclude myself from competition.”

As Jean-Pierre was boasting, Rose glanced round the room. At one table sat a slight, bespectacled man with his arms folded, holding whisks like knives. In front of his plate was a name tag that read WEI WEN, CHINA.

At another table, a young man smirked behind a name tag labelled ROHIT MANSUKHANI, INDIA. At still another table sat a lithe blond man who looked to be eight feet tall: Dag Ferskjold, Norway. He peered at the ceiling with a thousand-yard stare. None of the other contestants looked particularly happy or excited.

“Each morning at 9am,” Jean-Pierre went on, “I will announce the surprise theme of the day. Past themes have included things like FLAKY. FLOURLESS. ROLLED. GREEN. Whatever crosses my mind as I wake. Where do the themes come from? Who knows!”

Rose turned round in her seat and glanced at the other side of the room. There was a tawny woman with short blonde hair gelled into spikes – Irina Klechevsky, Russia – and a tall bald man with exceedingly white teeth – Malik Hall, Senegal. There was a short man with sallow skin and big lips – Victor Cabeza, Mexico – and a handsome man with shoulder-length brown hair – Peter Gianopolous, Greece. There was Fritz Knapschildt from Germany, King Phokong from Thailand, Niccolo Puzzio from Italy, and many more, all grown-ups wearing stern, competitive looks. They were out for blood.

What am I doing here? thought Rose.

Rose was relieved to spot a table with two French girls who looked like they could be in high school. Their name tags read MIRIAM DESJARDINS, FRANCE and MURIEL DESJARDINS, FRANCE; and, upon closer examination, it seemed that they were identical twins, though one had long, brown hair and the other one had short, brown hair.

Ty had seen them, too. He was leaning as far back in his chair as he could, raising and lowering his eyebrows at them. The girls were too busy staring at Jean-Pierre to notice.

“After I announce the theme,” Jean-Pierre continued, “you will have one hour to collect a special ingredient of your own choosing. The rest of your ingredients must come from the Gala kitchen.”

It suddenly occurred to Rose that Aunt Lily was probably sitting somewhere in that room at that very moment. Rose looked around and finally spotted the producers of 30-Minute Magic, Ryan and Kyle, sitting at the table on the other side of the room. Both producers were typing on their phones; Lily herself was nowhere to be found.

Jean-Pierre paused for a minute to take a sip of tea. “At 10am, after you’ve collected your special ingredient, the competition will take place. There will be cameras filming you from every angle, capturing every turn of the spoon, every bead of sweat, every tear. You must love the cameras, and also ignore them.”

Rose prayed that she wouldn’t produce any tears for them to capture.

“After the baking you will face the judge’s table, where your desserts will be sampled by the judge, who is myself. After that, I will announce who will move on to the next day of competition and who will be sent back to their houses to cry and relive the painful memories of what they did wrong, over and over, for the rest of their lives.”

The audience tittered meanly.

“There will be five days of competition, with the final day being a face-off between the top two competitors.” Jean-Pierre paused to wipe his bare brow. “As always, competitors must work from memory. Anyone caught with a cookbook as they bake will be immediately tossed to the curb.”

The from memory part was what worried Rose the most. The recipes in the Bliss Cookery Booke relied on precision – any deviation could alter not only the taste and texture of whatever she was trying to bake, but its magical properties as well. She and her mother would have to memorise the magical recipes perfectly in the hour before the baking commenced – that is, if Balthazar could manage to translate them.

“And, as always, no one who has previously participated in the Gala des Gâteaux Grands may participate again. If your assistant has previously baked in this competition, you must find a new assistant!”

Rose stared at her mother. Her mother stared back. Don’t panic, she thought, trying to catch her breath. Grandpa Balthazar is a professional. He can be my assistant.

Balthazar was scratching Gus’s pinched, rumpled ears. Rose leaned over and whispered, “You can be my assistant, right, Grandpa Balthazar?”

Balthazar shook his head. “Nope. I competed in the first Gala des Gâteaux Grands in the nineteen fifties, when I was sixty-six. Lost flat-out. It was gruelling.”

Rose looked at her father. “I know you never competed, Dad,” said Rose.

Albert reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a brown paper bag, then held it to his mouth and began to hyperventilate. “Rose,” he managed in between puffs, “I can’t be in front of cameras. Or audiences. I’m too shy. I’ll get seasick. You’ll be better off with Ty. You two were a good team when your mum and I went off to Humbleton, right?”

“Thyme, my sweet,” said Purdy, “you’ll help Rosie, right?”

Ty perked up, staring joyfully at the table where Miriam and Muriel Desjardins sat. “Sure! I’ll get to be on TV, right?” Purdy nodded. “Anything for my beloved hermana.” Ty practically shouted when he said hermana, hoping the French girls would hear him.

They didn’t – but Jean-Pierre did.

“Shush your mouths!” he yelled. “You’ll have the rest of the day to sort out your pairings. I will see you all tomorrow morning at 9am for day one of the competition.”

With that, Jean-Pierre grabbed the handlebars, which hoisted him higher and higher until he disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.

Rose looked again at her brother Ty, who gave her a double thumbs-up sign.

We are going to lose, she thought.

THE NEXT DAY, Rose examined her little Gala kitchen in the expo centre. It was one of twenty that were connected by an aisle of black and white checkered tiles that led to a raised platform at the front of the room with a microphone and a long oak dining table.

Hanging above the row of kitchens were balconies draped in red velvet, like special box seats at an opera. In the balcony above her, Rose saw Balthazar and Gus sitting with her parents and Sage and Leigh.

Across the black-and-white-tiled aisle stood Lily’s kitchen. Lily was standing coolly behind a wooden chopping block, wearing, as usual, a black cocktail dress. She turned and winked at Rose as she tested the dials on her oven.

Rose sighed heavily, and Ty poked her in the shoulder. “What’s bugging you, mi hermana?”

“This whole thing, it’s too much pressure,” she said.

Ty tousled her stringy black hair. “Don’t worry, Rose. You’re the best there is. And you’ve got me right here, all the way.”

Ty had been so nice to Rose in the previous nine months that she almost couldn’t believe it. But nice wasn’t going to help her get the Booke back. She needed expert assistance. Still, it was comforting to have her older brother beside her.

“Thanks, Ty,” she said.

Rose peered round her kitchen once more. On one side of the oven was a red refrigerator, and on the other was a wooden bookcase that served as a pantry. There were clear mason jars of flour, white sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and cocoa powder, plus a brightly coloured cardboard box hidden in the back.

“What’s this?” Ty asked Rose, picking up the box.

Rose took the box from Ty and recognised it immediately as a box of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. “No!” said Rose. “What’s this doing here?”

Rose marched across the aisle of black and white tiles and stopped short in front of Lily’s wooden chopping block.

“Why is this in my kitchen?” she demanded.

“It’s in everyone’s kitchen!” Lily replied, brushing a strand of black hair from her cheek. “I donated it, so it’s part of everyone’s allowable pantry items. Anyone can add a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient – I think it’ll really improve their results.”

“It’ll improve your results, you mean!” Rose cried. “Anyone who eats this stuff waxes poetic about you! The judge will just start talking about how amazing you are!”

“Can I help it if it has that particular side effect?” Lily winked.

The expo centre suddenly went dark, and Rose hurried back to her own kitchen. A set of roving purple spotlights focused on the centre of the ceiling, where a giant cupcake with a hollow centre hovered like a hot-air balloon.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed an announcer, “please welcome the inventor of crêpes suzette, the champion pastry chef of France, and the founder of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands: Chef Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre!”

Orchestra music soared as the giant cupcake sank slowly to the ground. Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre stepped out of it, dressed in his coat of red velvet, his hands clasped atop his wide belly. His beady eyes peered from behind his glasses as he stared out over the crowd.

He raised a microphone to his lips and said, “Remember, after I announce the theme, you’ll have precisely one hour to plan and to gather your one special ingredient, one that is not found in the pantry.”

“So now Lily can combine her Magic Ingredient with any of the magical recipes in the Booke, which will make it infinitely more powerful!” whispered Rose. “Can you believe this, Ty?”

But Ty was too busy staring across the black-and-white-tiled aisle. Miriam and Muriel Desjardins were looking casually at Ty. Ty was pretending not to notice, staring into the distance with his eyes wide and his mouth pursed, as if he were writing the lyrics to a painful love song in his head.

The twins had perfect faces, with sparkling eyes and pouting lips, chic haircuts, and expensive-looking clothes. They looked a year or two older than Ty, and an inch or two taller. They were definitely out of his league, but he would be the last one to admit it.

“And now. . . ,” Jean-Pierre said over the thunder of a drumroll, “the theme of the day is. . . SWEET! You may interpret the theme however you wish. The cooking will commence in one hour. Go. Now!”

The lights snapped back to full in the room and the spectators in the opera boxes clapped as all of the bakers and their assistants began to confer in heated whispers.

SWEET. Rose could bake a hundred versions of the common cupcake, but today she was competing not only against the best bakers in the world, but also against her Aunt Lily, who could make any magical recipe in the Cookery Booke, plus add a dash of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. To make it through this first round, she would need something from the Bliss Cookery Booke, and for that she needed Purdy and Balthazar.

As she waited for her mother and great-great-great-grandfather to join her on the expo floor, Rose glanced over at Lily. Lily was conferring with an impossibly small man wearing a calico jumpsuit of purple, white, and gold satin, the kind you’d find on a medieval clown. He was little, but he wasn’t proportioned like a dwarf – it was as if he was a typically sized man who had been shrunken down. The top of his head barely reached Lily’s hip. He had tanned skin, a bald head, thick black eyebrows, and a long, black moustache.

Lily’s assistant? Rose wondered.

Balthazar and Purdy hurried up, with Albert, Sage, and Leigh trailing behind.

“Look at this,” said Rose, holding up the box of Lily’s Magic Ingredient. “She donated this to the Gala. Everyone’s pantry is stocked with it.”

“That wicked cheater!” Purdy yelled.

“I have just the thing to beat her,” Balthazar said, handing her one of his perfectly handwritten sheets. “I translated this one a few months ago. It’s aces.”

With Ty looking over her shoulder, Rose read the recipe:

The Sweetest Cookie, for the Relief of Human Sourness

It was in 1456, in the French city of Paris, that young Philippe Canard did confess to Sir Falstaffe Bliss that his sole wish on the occasion of his fifth birthday was that his notoriously sour, crabby, ill-tempered, and otherwise foul Grandmother might grant him a smile. Sir Bliss did feed these sweet cookies to the Countess Fifi Canard, who, at the occasion of Philippe’s birthday party, did hoist Philippe into her arms, kiss his cheek, and smile so sweetly that young Philippe himself did smile for the remainder of his life.

Sir Bliss did place four fists of WHITE FLOUR in the centre of the wooden bowl. Into the flour he cracked one of the CHICKEN’S EGGS, then poured an acorn of VANILLA and one staff of melted COW’S BUTTER. Afterward, he did add the LOVER’S SWEET WHISPERS, congealed in almond butter.

“So that’s our one special ingredient,” Ty said. “‘Lovers’ sweet whispers in almond butter.’ That should be easy enough to get. I’ll just whisper into a jar.”

Balthazar rolled his eyes. “No, kid. You’ll need the sweet whispers of two people who are in love, not one person who wishes he was in love.”

“Burn, Abuelo,” Ty replied. “Burn.”

There were a few more instructions, and then the recipe ended with:

He did rest the cake in the oven HOT as SEVEN FLAMES for the TIME of SIX SONGS and then fed the cookies to the sour Countess, who remained sweet thereafter.

Just then Lily walked up, arm in arm with Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre. The short man she’d been talking with earlier was nowhere to be seen.

“Look!” Lily said, pointing at the scrap of paper with the recipe. “They’re cheating!”

Purdy stepped between Lily and the recipe. “Lily, if you sunk any lower, they’d have to dredge you up from the bottom of the Seine.”

Lily smiled at Jean-Pierre. “I really hate to have to tattle on children,” she said. “I’m just trying to protect the integrity of the Gala.”

Albert stepped in with a toothy grin. “No rule violations here, sir! The rules prohibit using a cookbook while baking. The kids have merely planned out their recipe. The paper will be gone come competition time.”

Gus, still in the baby sling on Balthazar’s chest, swatted Rose’s ear till she leaned close, his whiskers tickling her cheek. “If I were you, I’d go now and get those sweet whispers. An hour goes by faster than you think.”

“But where are we going to get lovers’ sweet whispers?” Rose asked.

Gus squinted a minute, thinking. “In my first marriage, my dear Hilarie and I often exchanged sweet nothings while catching mice along the River Thames in London.”

Gus was right – lovers did tend to congregate by water. The expo centre was only a few blocks from the Seine, the winding, snaky river that cut through Paris.

Rose reached up and scratched the soft grey fur under Gus’s chin.

If it’s possible for a cat to look bashful, at that moment, Gus did. “Thank you,” he said. “Now go.”

Though the riverbank was just a few minutes’ walk from the Hôtel de Ville expo centre, Sage complained the entire time.

“Why am I even here? You and Ty are gonna do all the baking, and I’m just supposed to watch?” he whined. “With all those cameras around? I should be in front of the cameras! I could launch my stand-up comedy career. But no, you two get to do everything important, as usual.”

Rose glanced over at Ty, then looked guiltily at the blue mason jar she was carrying, which she’d slathered on the inside with pale yellow almond butter. It was true. Sage rarely got the opportunity to do anything important. Of course, when he did, he usually made a mess of it.

“Why don’t you be in charge of collecting the sweet whispers?” said Rose. “In fact, you could collect all the special ingredients! We’ll do the baking, you’ll do the collecting, and then when we win, we’ll introduce you on camera and you can launch your stand-up comedy career.”

Ty looked at her like she was crazy, but Sage smiled and immediately stopped complaining. He took the blue mason jar from Rose and cradled it in his arms like it was an infant.

The morning light rippled across the Seine like a spilled canister of silver glitter. Rose thought that this may have been the most romantic place she’d ever seen, even more romantic than the overlook point on Sparrow Hill in Calamity Falls. She imagined building a hut on the stone riverbank and living there with Devin Stetson, baking croissants for passersby while he played guitar and collected change in a hat.