A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

by T. Kingfisher

I was three and threw a tantrum in the bakery, and the entire case of gingerbread men came alive, even the ones that were still in the oven. Those started hammering on the door to be let out, and the already-baked ones ran through the store, giggling like little maniacs.

That would be spectacular to see! Gingerbreadman haka! https://youtu.be/JLCXNm7IZWc?si=Nl9kIWVk5duuNVwM

Something to do with sympathetic magic, the parish priest said (six loaves of plain bread and—oh, all right, one berry scone, but don’t tell the abbot!) And it has to be something made of dough.

Wonderful how Kingfisher has made all Mona's customers REAL simply by telling us their daily order and little quirk.

When everyone had been shooed out of the shop—which took a while, in the case of Miss McGrammar—I went back into the kitchen, just in time to be accused of murder.

What a great way to slide from one chapter to the next.

“Walk careful, bread girl. Little people like us, we’re not safe these days. Watch your back.”

Good advice. Listen to her.

And then somebody grabbed me from out of the dark. “Where is she?” a voice snarled in my ear, and I was wrenched off the street and into the shadows of the alleyway. Sweet lady of angels, is this day never going to end?

A) I can't believe that the Aunt let her walk home alone. B) I notice that more and more authors, printers and publishers are playing with fonts to express emotion in text. All caps. Italics. Larger print. That sort of thing. I know that it's a thing coming from so much social media in our lives. It is just interesting to me to notice.

Something patted my cheek. I looked down and saw the gingerbread man on my shoulder. He was steadying himself with a hank of hair in one hand, and with the other he reached up and caught the tears I hadn’t known I was crying.

What a tender image.

Spindle balled his hands into fists. “Knackering Molly told us to stay here!” “And then she left us alone! With no food and no explanations, nothing!” I did feel a little guilty about leaving, but mostly I just felt mad. Why shouldn’t I go to the constables? I’d never committed a crime in my life, not unless you count filching cookies from the case, and I’d baked those cookies in the first place, so that didn’t really count. It was no wonder people like Spindle and Knackering Molly were paranoid, but I was a respectable citizen. The constables were there to protect me.

I like Mona, she is a fun character and I am enjoying her story. I don't like stupid Mona.

“Let the record show,” I said to the gingerbread man, “that bread was not meant to fly.”

Nice try though.

The door opened. It was Joshua. “Your Grace,” he said, and bowed low. “Your men await.”

Somewhere, probably in the dungeons below the castle, are magic users arrested by Oberon. Find them, let them out. Have them join you.

The Duchess said that she was going to throw him out of the city, and that sounded like a great idea, except that there was a whole lot of city between here and the gates and what if something went horribly wrong?

They're going to exile the man who ordered dozens of deaths and forced innocents to flee for their lives? Soft.

“I cannot tell you, my friends, how grateful I am for your loyalty. In these times, it is the only coin in our kingdom of any worth, and I thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

I'm sorry, I don't want to be political, but in my opinion, in the world today, we need people loyal to our Constitution and not individuals.

“Now we throw the dice,” she said.

Alea iacta est!

She glared at the guards, as if she planned to take the cinnamon rolls back. They tried to look meek and not as if they were covered in bits of icing.

I think that a man covered in bits of icing probably looks pretty meek.

I don’t know if when you’re an adult, you can argue and be right, but if you’re a kid and you argue with an adult, you’re automatically wrong. Always. It’s a law of nature or something.

What a shame this is right more often than not.

Then she swept up a box full of muffins (which were supposed to go to the knitting circle on Fourth Street) and forced them into my hands. Maybe she thought they didn’t feed people at the palace.

Mage supplies.

“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.

This is at least the fourth time she’s used this kind of phrase.

The head blacksmith was a swarthy man named Argonel, and he was brilliant. He had a voice like stones grinding wheat, and his hands were scarred and hideous and he didn’t act like it was strange at all to take orders from a fourteen-year-old girl.

What a great description, visual and auditory. I can SEE (and hear) him!

“She din’t ask you,” he said. “She’s tellin’ you. It’s the Duchess’s orders!”

Um. Careful now Spindle. This is how Oberon started.

Spindle shrugged. “’Bout like you’d expect. Some people sayin’ it’ll blow over if we pay ’em off. Most people are doin’ what they’re told.” He swallowed. “Even if the Carex take the whole city, they probably won’t get very far in the Rat’s Nest. So—uh—you and yours wanna come in, we can probly find a place for you.”

I keep expecting magic users to come out of hiding at the last minute and save the day. Knackering Molly in the lead. "Hiyo, Nag!"

Sisters of Unrelenting Virtue.

That soinds like a formidible order.

Do not be bound by what seems foolish or impossible.

Good advice for anyone.

She sighed. “At least we won’t lose many lives to this. But great good gods, what a waste.”

And it's all your fault, Duchess. You have just had Oberon executed.

Some of the ordinary gingerbread men get a little feisty sometimes—they’ll tie your shoelaces together and stuff—but these are going to be much worse. I thought they could, oh, spook the horses and cut ropes and put rocks in people’s beds—” “—put pepper in the flour an’ set fire to bedrolls—” “—steal their daggers and their socks—” “—put out their eyes while they’re asleep!”

This is where the "Gingerbread Battle Song" starts in the movie.

There was no one else in the streets. We reached the gate just as that odd grayish-brown light that precedes dawn was starting to seep over the walls.

They need to deploy the zombie crayfish.

I would be able to control each golem individually with the magic of sympathy.

That should be fundamental or principle of sympathy.

I realized, with mild surprise, that the energy that normally went into making my legs work was now going into animating the chocolate-chip slug-monster.

Well. Don't that beat all. A chocolate-chip slug monster. Who'da thunk it?

“But not a stupid one. It has to have Nag in it like he really was. Not…you know…heroic. She shouldn’t have had to be a hero.” “No,” said the Duchess. “No. No one should.”

No one should. Amen. Thank God for the ones we do have.

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

You think by now she'd have given him a NAME!

Dead Horse War,

What a cool name.

You can’t put the military in charge of the city. We’re useful servants but terrible masters.

May we never see the day when the US Military thinks that it needs to take over.