A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

Not that Aunt Tabitha had bodies in her bakery on a regular basis, but she’s one of those competent people who always know what to do. If a herd of ravenous centaurs descended on the city and went galloping through the streets, devouring small children and cats, Aunt Tabitha would calmly go about setting up barricades and manning crossbows as if she did it twice a week.

Dance, I ordered it. 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.

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.

I’d been terrified and yes, I know that line about how courage is going forward when you’re scared, except that I hadn’t even done that. I hadn’t gone forward. I’d run away and run away and the only reason I’d gone to the Duchess was because I’d run out of ways to keep running away.

Everyone had failed at every step and now Spindle and I were heroes because of it.

It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.”

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.”

I mean, here I was, trying to save the city from being overrun by cannibal mercenaries, and I felt sick to my stomach because the cook was mad at me. Being fourteen has a lot of drawbacks.

“Battle can-can,” said the Duchess wisely. “Very old tactical maneuver. Used to defeat the waltzing berserkers of West Quillmark, as I recall.” “You just made that up.” “Well, obviously.”

Not so much because she’s the Duchess, but because after everything was over, I realized that I was still angry at her for not being braver or smarter or more…more something. When you’re in charge of the whole city, you’re responsible. It shouldn’t be up to a couple of kids and a madwoman on a bone horse to fix the mess you allowed to happen.

We met each other’s eyes, and then we both looked away. After a minute, I said, “I never wanted to be a hero.” His face was solemn. “Nobody ever does.”