'Wiggy! So this is yer big recipe?' he bellowed. 'I was to be pickin' up tomorrow's breakfast rolls… but it looks like one'\ be enough!' The crowd broke its stunned silence with a titter of nervous laughter. Angrod grabbed an overnight torch and sauntered over toward the bakery. He tapped with the torch at the growing claylike fountain oozing from the window. 'I'll have this one!' Relieved of its tension, the crowd laughed louder.
'Get away, man!' Sasha warned.
'I can handle Wiggy's breakfast, missy,' Angrod sneered.
But suddenly, as he poked at the dough, his torch went inside it, through the membrane of a mammoth air pocket. The torn bubble popped and splattered him with dough, and the crowd went wild. Livid and embarrassed, Angrod began to club at his gooey tormentor with the torch, but each time he struck the lump, more air popped out, more dough spat on him, and he only became a bigger mess.
Wiglaf heard other popping sounds; he turned to see air pockets in the dough bursting and splattering in all directions as it squeezed out of the tight confines of the bakery, covering the yipping dogs and anyone else who happened to be too close. Then the horrible sight vanished-for it was at that precise instant that Wiglaf's spell exhausted itself and the magical illumination winked back to normal. There was only popping, splat-ting, clanging, barking, and screaming while everyone's eyes adjusted to torchlight.
'Get the light back!' yelled Sasha.
'It's supposed to be permanent! I don't know what went wrong!' Wiglaf cried, desperately thinking of a substitute. He wildly gesticulated, chanted from memory, reached an emphatic finish, and extended his arms in a flourish. The torches and hot coals, every fire in the street, burst into superluminance; their light was as bright as the noonday sun, and revealed a panicked group of people who looked like the losers in a pie fight-including his own father. Wiglaf felt the magical flame's warmth and perversely wanted to bask in it, but then came a shout from Angrod.
'I can't move me legs!' the big smith bellowed. In the dark, Angrod had stumbled farther into the mountain of gook, and now he was trapped waist-deep in it, flailing with his torch, surrounded by dough. The crowd stared in gooey stupefaction.
'Hold on,' screamed Sasha, and ran to Angrod, careful to stay out of the stuff herself. She grabbed both hands and yanked with all her strength.
'Ooooowf Angrod screamed. 'Me mitt! Leave us be!' He left her grip and massaged his right arm and shoulder, still smarting from arm wrestling. The mass was rising yet, well past his hips, headed toward his chest and head.
'No! If that stuff gets to your face, you'll smother!' Sasha shouted.
Wiglaf was suddenly there, reaching under Angrod's left shoulder to help. They pulled as hard as they could, but Angrod was stuck tight, and getting trapped deeper by the second. The already gargantuan lump was growing so steadily that it looked instead as if Angrod was receding into it. The dough had risen past his belly button and was still moving.
“Too late, Wiggy,' Angrod sobbed. 'Save yerself.'
'Thanks, you big goon, but there's one last chance,' Wiglaf said. 'Only I've never tried this on a person before. Okay with you?'
“Try it, laddie,' Angrod said grimly.
Wiglaf produced a piece of pork rind from his robe and chanted softly but quickly. 'One more time, Sasha.'
They anchored their arms under Angrod's shoulders and pulled, causing lances of pain to shoot up the big man's right arm. There was a little resistance at first. Then he started to move out of the goop, and once they established some momentum, Angrod slid out of the dough like a sword from its sheath, with a long wet sucking sound. The expanding dough wrapped itself around Wiglaf's right foot, but he kicked it free.
'Ye did it, lad!' he cried. 'Ye saved me!'
'Wiglaf, how?' Sasha asked in astonishment.
Angrod pushed to his knees and tried to stand, but his feet slipped out from under him and he fell flat. He got to all fours and failed at a few sliding strides before sitting down with a plop.
'I greased you,' said Wiglaf.
Sasha guffawed as Angrod slipped before even rising to his knees.
'Don't worry. It won't last much longer.'
'Wigg-' Angrod started, then thought better. 'Excuse me, Wiglaf. I don't care how ye done it, laddie. I'd have been a goner but for you. Maybe you do have magic inside ye, after all.' He extended his hand, and Wiglaf and Sasha helped the big man to his feet. 'Thanks be to ye, lad. I-what's that smell?'
Wiglaf sniffed. It smelled like baking bread, everywhere. The remnants of dough on Angrod's legs were definitely hardening; they could pull it off in little strips. But there was another scent in the air too.
Smoke.
The torches!
It seemed as if the rate of growth of the dough pouring out of the bakery might have finally slowed. But now the large mass was pushing up and out, against the nearest supercharged overnight torches. The onlookers could all see a faint brownish cast on the surface of the dough mound-and at the very edges, unmistakable traces of carbon. Smoke began to waft upward and overpower the lovely self-baking smell. In the nearby stables, horses whinnied and kicked in terror. Wiglaf groaned. The largest loaf of bread in history, and now it was burning.
'You've got to turn them off!' Thorin shouted.
Wiglaf gave it some panicked thought. He mumbled and gestured toward the torches with a sweep of his hand. At the end of his movement, a fine streak flew from his pointing finger into the night sky a few yards above the bakery, and with a low roar, a fireball detonated.
'NO!' screamed Sasha.
The wave of heat was almost solid as it raced downward toward the near-bakery-sized lump of dough, crisping the outer surface. The bricks on the roof drank in the heat and began baking the dough's underside. The blackened burning areas spread, and huge billows of smoke cascaded into the street and caused spasms of hacking in the onlookers' throats. Wiglaf was drenched in sweat. The dough had apparently stopped rising. Wonderful. Now everyone would simply die of suffocation.
Then, a miracle happened.
The columns of smoke changed course and blew over the heads of the coughing crowd. The breeze pushed a pair of low-lying clouds together in front of the bright moon, and they darkened in seconds into impressive thunderheads. A fat, heavy drop of water splat-ted on Wiglafs head, and was joined by thousands more just instants later. The magnificent cloudburst sizzled out the torches and coals and drenched the suddenly jubilant people in the street. The sticky dough was wiping off easily in the cleansing rainstorm, and the goopy mass that moments ago had threatened Angrod's life was quickly turning into the world's biggest dumpling.
A gaunt, berobed figure in the middle of the street dropped his arms and ran his hands through a head of wet, snow-white hair before replacing his cowl.
Not a miracle at all. This storm had been manmade.
'Fenzig! Whe-, wha-, hoo-' sputtered Wiglaf when he reached his master's side.
'Spare me the hyperventilation,' the mage sniffed in a voice too low for others to hear. 'You actually thought I would let you out of my sight for an entire week? Though I must admit, I did underestimate you.' He frowned at the street scene. 'I didn't think such a level of disaster could possibly be created in a single day.'
'I didn't mean-'
'Silence. I know what you meant. I've been watching you the entire time. You know just enough to be dangerous, lad, and precious little else. If you had applied yourself during our language classes, you would have been able to read the entire inscription on the parchment. That, youngling, was your undoing.'
'But the Year of Plenty-'
'Achieved with your magic dough, yes, but the rest of that piece fed multitudes!'
'The other half?'
'It is written perfectly plainly in Thorass,' Fenzig hissed. 'One sprinkled pinch is sufficient to make the oversized loaves that ended that famine of antiquity. I could throttle you for causing this mess. And you're going to make amends. But now I have to put on the public face.'
Against all reason, Fenzig put his arms around Wiglaf and walked him back toward the crowd, speaking at
