~ Cake: A Fairy Tale ~

by

Dina Keratis

A cool breeze from the open window teased her skin and she stretched, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. She froze with her arms high over her head and her eyes snapped open.

She sniffed, put one bare foot on the floor, and sniffed again. Was that molasses or...? She bent over and pulled on a yellow sneaker then groped under her bed to fish out the other.

Cake batter?

She paused to inhale the delicious scent and stuffed her other foot into the other sneaker. Without bothering to tie the laces she stood and walked out of her bedroom and down the hall to open the front door.

The night was quiet and empty. She stepped outside. The smell was much stronger on her porch. Definitely cake batter. She descended the stairs to the sidewalk, not worrying that she wore only her flannel pajamas and a pair of Chuck Taylors.

It didn’t matter.

She couldn’t explain how, but she was certain that in this moment, the Apollo Cake Factory was awake and cooking and that it was alive only for her. That yearning she’d always felt toward the place hit her full force but this time it arrived with the certainty of fulfillment.

She walked under rustling trees down dark avenues until she stood before Apollo Cake. The air around her pulsed with the same blue and pink atoms she’d seen in her room. They buzzed lightly around her head like friendly bees, laughed in her ear, and drove her toward the open door of the factory, lighting her path, leading her.

Bree stood at the entrance and held her breath.

No cubicles and computers littered the vast room, no gray carpets and fluorescent lights dulled the interior. There was nothing at all to suggest that the building housed anything but rats.

Walls and floor were black with soot and darker shadows lurked in the room’s corners. Across the room, a doorway beckoned her to enter the corridor beyond its arch.

Bree exhaled and took a tiny step forward.

“Breena Murphy! Turn around right now and get back into bed.”

“Mama?” With a gasp, she spun around but the street was still empty. Then she heard her father’s amused, indulgent voice. “Now, darling, you know you can’t go in there by yourself. It’s too dangerous.”

She didn’t question her sanity. Nor did she doubt that her parents were speaking to her from beyond the grave. Bree merely looked at her feet and sighed. Her parent’s voices--imagined or not--were correct after all. What was she doing in the middle of the night, alone on a city street, at the entrance to what might be hell?

Ignoring the pang of homesickness, she began to walk home, and the bouncing atoms faded with every step, but the scent of baking cake taunted her. She stopped. Lifting her head in defiance, she threw her shoulders back.

“You’re dead,” she whispered to her parents. “You left me.” And the thought of going back to that stifling house was suddenly unbearable. She had no idea what magic had awakened her, good or ill, but right now walking into the Apollo Cake Factory seemed to be the only choice.

She swallowed hard and turned back to Apollo Cake. Head high, she marched through the factory door, across the room, straight down the black corridor, and into a wall.

“Ow.”

She rubbed her nose and the atoms gathered and whirred near her right ear. She swatted at them and turned to see that the hall continued to her right. The pinpricks of light sped down the hall, then bobbed, as if to say, “Hurry up. This way!”

She followed them down the hall and into a small room with a cavernous stone fireplace. To her dismay, the atoms trembled and disappeared.

Breena stopped at the fireplace, peered into the darkness, and saw him.

Apollo.

Not the great god himself, sweaty and covered in soot as he shoveled cakes into the fire as she had imagined, but there, on the back wall of the fireplace, carved into the stone. He wore the helmet of the sun god and rode in a chariot led by two fiery steeds, just like in the mythology books.

“How cool is this?” she asked and reached out to trace the frieze with a finger. She touched the cold stone. The air around her shimmered and gathered in a pink glare. Vertigo belted her hard, sent her head spinning, and she fell to the ground while around her, the Apollo Cake Factory vanished and the convent ruins took its place.