floor and a loud crash, the cat only moaning louder. Thieves rarely plied their trade in this working-class section of Calimport, and heaven only knew what valuables they expected to find in a bakery. There was a first time for everything, though, and after all, there were such things as very stupid bandits.
Adrenaline pumping, they reached the bakery in minutes, braced for action. The street was nearly deserted in the soft moonlight and the flickering glow from strategically placed overnight torches on poles. A few boarders from Sheets to the Wind watched in their nightclothes from the doorstep across the way. Sasha crept up to the bakery door and quietly tried it. Locked.
They listened. There was no crashing, no clanging, just one thing alone: the kind of spooky, ululating wail that fathers use when telling ghost stories to their children. They had never heard Piewacket make such noise. She sounded like a wretched alto mutilating her scales; she was beyond upset, spiraling down toward full-blown feline catatonia.
'They've heard us!' Wiglaf stage-whispered.
'Get behind me,' hissed Sasha as she drew her sword and took the stance. 'Mr. Evertongue, please open the lock.' Thorin pushed the key in and twisted, and the door slowly swung open, increasing the volume of Piewacket's eerie howl. Sasha stood in the doorway, tense, alert, as Thorin reached just inside for a morning torch, which he pitched to Wiglaf to light, then drew his axe.
The front counter area was deserted. Wiglaf returned in seconds with the torch aflame, and the three slowly stepped inside, past the front room, toward the baking area.
Piewacket mewled even louder when she saw the torchlight, and the three looked up to find her high on top of the ovens, hair standing straight, spitting in anger. They followed her gaze downward.
Pots and pans, bowls and spoons that they had stacked neatly on the baking surface this afternoon were strewn all over the floor. The wooden bowl that had held Wiglaf's tiny loaf of bread was dumped over on its side, empty.
'My bread! They stole my wonder bread!' Wiglaf whispered.
'And they got out somehow,' said Thorin in a full voice. 'Come on, Piewacket. It's okay now, girl.' But the cat did not move.
Sasha held her hand up. 'I see someone's back. There.' Wiglaf raised the torch higher, and now they could all make out a curved shape lurking just behind the table. 'Come out now,' she commanded. 'It's no use. You're finished. Now.' No response. Cautiously, they approached the crouching figure. As they rounded the table, Piewacket suddenly leapt over their heads, touched the table with one bound, trampolined onto the wood floor, and skittered out the door.
There was nobody there. Nothing.
Except for one thing.
An oblong mound of cream-colored dough the size of the largest dog in Calimport.
From the floor, it barely cleared the level of the baking table, half Wiglaf's height. Lengthwise, it was twice that. It was squeezed tightly in the work space between the table and the hearth at the back of the room.
'My sweet grandma!' Thorin said.
'Wonder bread,' Wiglaf said in rapture.
Sasha touched the huge mound with the tip of her sword, and it sank in easily, making a wet pop as it cut through an air bubble, which spit some droplets at her. She withdrew the weapon; the blade was covered with doughy goo.
A heavy pot hanging near the oven tipped over with a reverberating clatter. Sasha and Thorin turned to look, but Wiglaf was still admiring the miracle.
'Wiglaf,' said Sasha.
'This is how they fed all those people in the Year of Starving,' he exulted.
'Wiglaf,' said Sasha.
'Good-bye to hunger. Good-bye to famine.'
'Wiglafl' shouted Thorin.
Wiglaf turned with a start.
'Son, it's still rising.'
The doughy mass had pushed farther toward the ovens. Now it nearly covered the metal arm that had held Thorin's water pot over the fire. They whirled around. The monstrous loaf had increased to a full hand taller than the level of the baking table. When they held still, they could see it rising silently, inexorably, like flood waters up a riverbank.
'Well, let's get it out of here,' said Wiglaf, and he sunk his arms into the mound up to his elbows. He pulled out a double handful of the goo. The impressions of his hands vanished in seconds as the dough expanded beyond them, and he could feel the sticky ball he held growing larger, inflating like a sheep's bladder. The pace was accelerating. He dropped his gargantuan biscuit into the broadening mass.
'Next idea?' Sasha raised one eyebrow.
'How long has this stuff been sitting here?' Thorin asked.
“Two, three hours? Why?' cried Wiglaf.
'How long before it stops rising?'
They stared with growing dread at the bread-mountain. It was easy to see its progress now. The dough was moving past the fire grate on the back wall at a slow, syrupy rate, pressing through the tines like soft cheese, headed toward the smoldering coals. In the other direction, against the baking table, the pile was nearly as tall as Sasha, patiently oozing over and around the table, pushing its way into every empty space.
'We've got to leave,' she said. 'While we still can.'
They stepped gingerly around the growing goop, backing against oven doors that would soon be covered in dough, inching their way sideways toward the front counter area, thankfully still pristine for now. Like a witness to a carriage accident, Wiglaf had to fight a perverse fascination as he moved; he just couldn't take his eyes off the bizarre sight. Safely past the entrance to the baking area, they watched helplessly as the dough rose upward and outward, seeking the confines of whatever oddly shaped 'pan' it was now in. It was taller than any of them now. It pushed toward the ceiling and out to the walls. It had thoroughly covered the fire coals and was rising up into the chimney. For the first time there was a faint smell of baking as the trio backed out the door.
'Self-baking bread! It hardly needs any heat!' Wiglaf sighed in amazement.
There were a few more people in the street now; Garadel had fetched the constabulary, and two night-shift officers were armed and ready to repel thieves. But before Wiglaf and the others could explain, a red, hissing coal fell from somewhere above and landed with a plop at Wiglaf's feet. He recoiled, ran into the street, and frantically mumbled at the flickering overnight torches, praying he'd remembered every syllable of one of the very first spells Fenzig had ever taught him.
Each time they are called upon to make their solemn decisions, the Fates weigh our lifelong understanding against our immediate need. Somehow, at this moment, the divine mathematics were on Wiglaf's side, for without a sound, a brilliant ball of continual light winked into existence, completely surrounding the bakery and turning darkness into daylight within a precisely defined sphere. It was as if the spectators in the street were watching a show whose star happened to be a building. Within the spell's range, the illumination was blinding, and Sasha and Thorin, tumbling out of the bakery and into the street, saw only spots for a brief moment. But for the others looking back, all was clear.
A woman in Garadel's doorstep screamed and pointed back at the bakery roof. Spotlit by Wiglaf's magical radiance, the impossible shape of a huge squared block of breadstuffs slowly pushed its way up out of the chimney, like sausage through a grinder, festooned with hot coals that trickled off the mass and ran down the roof's bricked incline into the street.
Back inside, the main sticky blob had insinuated its way into the front room and was headed for the door, its bulk loudly dragging pans and utensils against the wood floor in a weird imitation of a chain-clanking ghost. Two squared-off doughy arms proceeded out through the windows on either side of the bakery and oozed limply toward the ground, several neighborhood dogs barking and snapping at them. A family of mice scurried out the front door, the largest one shaking something cream-colored off its paws.
'What's all this, then?'
Another group of excited and curious townspeople had been drawn by the magical light, and Wiglaf was dismayed to see Angrod Swordthumper among them, dinner napkin still bibbed in place under his chin.
