A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

The gingerbread man began to dance a very respectable hornpipe. Don’t ask me where the cookies get the dances they do—this batch had been doing hornpipes. The last batch did waltzes, and the one before that had performed a decidedly lewd little number that had even made Aunt Tabitha blush. A little too much spice in those, I think. We had to add a lot of vanilla to settle them down.

Molly understood, though. When you spend most of your time with a dead horse, you learn to respect other people’s weird pets.

It seemed like once you agreed that the government could put you on a list because of something you were born with, you were asking for trouble.

When you’re different, even just a little different, even in a way that people can’t see, you like to know that people in power won’t judge you for it.

It should never have come down to me. It was miserably unfair that it had come to me and Spindle. There were grown-ups who should have stopped it. The Duchess should have found her courage and gone to the guards. The guards should have warned the Duchess. The Council, whoever they were, should have made sure the Duchess knew about the proclamations. The Duchess should have had people on the street who reported back to her. Everyone had failed at every step and now Spindle and I were heroes because of it.

You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don’t ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”

“You didn’t fail,” I said. “They wouldn’t let you succeed. It’s different.”

“My dear, I am certain that you can go on about how unworthy and incapable you are for hours yet, but we have very little time. Let us pretend that we have done all that and that I have nodded correctly and made the proper noises, and skip to the point where you say, “I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try.”

If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven’t, then you probably don’t. Well…a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I’ve been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.

It is nearly impossible to be sad when eating a blueberry muffin. I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific fact.

Death by sourdough starter. Not a good way to go.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cookie look smug.