Being Mr. Kenny

The Girl and the Wondercake

by Mark Kenny

Long long ago, there lived a girl on the top of the world called Linda. She lived mostly on her own in her house, but she was sometimes visited by the Engertip; a special animal covered in silver scales with little black eyes. The Engertip was a magical creature who lived on the moon.

Linda was wandering in the woods one day, when she stumbled across a magical bean which she picked up and put in her pocket. Little did she know that the magical bean could ruin her life quite easily with a twitch and a flash, but in oblivion she continued her trip into the dark mysterious woods.

Linda hummed a secret song that she and the Engertip had once written. It was a sad song about insects and the like. As she hummed, the birds began to turn into stone and fall out of the trees, making a melodic thump as they hit the ground. Linda found this a pleasant experience and began skipping, firing her song at specific birds honing this useful skill until she could kill two birds with one song. Soon she had completely extincted the entire bird population of the forest and satisfied, returned home to bake a cake.

She carefully selected a recipe book from the shelf entitled Cakes and beans: an unusual taste. Remembering the magical bean, she opened the book and it fell open on a page entitled “Cakes to bake when you have a magical bean”. She chose an interesting recipe involving eggs, flour, sugar and many other ingredients. The recipe recommended the use of four eggs but Linda had always been fond of eggs and used fifteen. She had taken these following her entertaining song; seeing no harm in stealing dead birds’ eggs she had reached into the recently vacated nests and looted the ovoid delicacies. There were eggs of all shapes, sizes and colours, some with rough shells, and some with smooth. Linda’s favourite egg was a large speckled black egg which rolled round and round of its own accord. She had found it in a nest on the highest branch of the highest tree in the forest. The egg made beautiful tinkeldy-pinkeldy noises that matched the sound of the thousand tiny silver bells on Linda’s favourite dress and she thought it would taste wonderful in a cake.

She filled a pan with fresh cream and set it on the biggest burner in her kitchen. When the cream was boiling she turned off the heat and let it stand for a while before stirring in all the sugar she could find in her house. She added a tin of baked beans from her neighbour’s kitchen. Her neighbour had mysteriously disappeared the day he arrived, so Linda took full advantage of this, and was constantly stealing his food. Even more mysterious than his disappearance, was the fact that the food regenerated as soon as Linda stole it, giving Linda a most wonderful and convienient resource.

When Linda had made her mysterious sugar and cream mixture she proceded to mix in the flour. She used many types, but the most of it was the flour they use to make bread. Half of the flour she was using went into the cake dough, and half went all over the kitchen since Linda was hopelessly disorganised and a very messy cook. Linda didn’t mind the flour, though, because she thought that it lent the kitchen a well loved look, and indeed, the flour remained all over her kitchen for two weeks before the slugs lovingly ate it off each and every surface.

So far, Linda had been following the recipe exactly but after the flour episode she could no longer see the book, let alone the recipe. She decided to make it up as she went along. Once she had made the dough, she placed it into a mixing bowl and cracked all the eggs into it except for her favourite black one. The mysterious black egg was still rolling around, but much slower than before, and Linda noticed this and thought it strange. The eggs glooped all over the dough like blobby raindrops, and Linda, in a whimsical mood, decided that this was absolultely the most hilarious thing in the entire history of the world. As she emptied the contents of the last two eggs she got so excited she clapped her hands together cheerfully, sending thousands of egg droplets all over the kitchen. This was too much for Linda, and she laughed so hard and so uncontrollably that she fell on the floor and found it dificult to breathe, what with all the flour.

It was while she was in this state that a man dressed in green trousers came to the door carrying a parcel, which, upon receiving no answer to his ominous knocks, he deposited on her doorstep. Linda did not notice this, however and after recovering from her hysterics, continued making her amazing cake. She thoroughly mixed in the eggs, giggling every now and then until the dough had become a stiff. She tasted the mixture she had made, and decided it was in dire need of some spices and added nutmeg and cinnamon and on consideration, a good sprinkle of a secret spice which makes everything edible and turns messes into wonderful cakes. Linda was always “making cakes” and this spice proved invaluable.

After mixing her cake, she took the magical bean and crushed it completely in a pestle and mortar. The bean released purple sparks, and she crushed it mercilessly, muttering wild curses under her breath. The room went dark and lightning flashed outside, and a terrible storm raged inside the kitchen. Furniture whirled round and round, and Linda began to sing in a high pitched voice a terrible song about the end of the world, when all would be swallowed up in a heat so fierce that the atoms themselves would be rent apart.

But, eventually, after several hours, Linda won out and with considerable relief put the crushed bean under a hot grill until it became a sweet smelling brown powder, which she added to the cake. Finally the mixture was ready to bake, and she crammed the magical gloopy substance (for it had become magical with the addition of the bean) into a large baking tin which she placed into a hot oven. She left the cake baking and took another trip into the woods.

She discovered that the birds she had turned into stone that morning had been restored to their former glory, and were hurredly going about their daily business. Linda was reasonably annoyed by this, but soon forgot about it. She came across a little patch of soft grass illuminated by a shaft of light falling through the canopy of the forest. Seated on a white blanket was a boy of about the same age as Linda. Linda was seized with curiosity since she had never seen a real boy before. Her neighbour was the only other person she knew, and they had taken a dislike to each other within minutes of meeting. Linda did not care though since he was gone as quickly as he came and she got to eat all his food for free. She hid behind a tree for a few minutes and watched the boy in secrecy.

The boy was wearing a large green hat which had a very large brim. From the brim dangled tiny little silver decorations, and Linda thought it a very fine hat indeed. Linda’s curiosity became too much for her and she approached the mysterious boy (but with some caution). When she was about three feet away from the boy he suddenly looked up from beneath his fascinating hat and said, in a friendly tone,

“I have come a very long way to study blue marigolds, have you seen any about?” Linda was slightly taken aback, but considered his question for a moment and remembered that she had seen some flowers in her neighbour’s garden, but she could not be sure whether they were blue marigolds. She invited the boy back to her house anyway.

The boy thought this a wonderful idea, agreed instantly, and stood up. It was then that Linda realised that the blanket he had been seated upon was no blanket at all, but was in fact a shawl! Linda was, needless to say, extremely impressed. The boy had bright green eyes, and very dark hair, which almost matched Linda’s complexion, except that she had piercing blue eyes, and very blonde hair. Linda noticed that the boy was smiling.

“I do so very much like your hat,” she said, “where did you get such a marvellous thing?”

“I found wonderful fabrics in a strange land, and using a blood-red glass needle I sewed together the pieces until I had formed the magical piece of haberdashery you see before you.” Linda was even more extremely impressed, and did a little dance to celebrate the hat. She asked if she could wear his shawl, and the boy blushed and offered it to her. Linda took it, carefully, and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was soft and smelt faintly of cabbage, and Linda liked the way it sounded as it rubbed against her clothes. They walked a while in silence listening to the birdsong, while Linda remembered how she had once killed each and every one of those birds, but she felt no remorse.

“My name is Linda, I live in my very own house at the top of the world.” She said. Then it was the boy’s turn to be impressed, and he said;

“My name is Job and I have recently arrived from a bristling city where I live alone in a flat above a shop.” Linda thought this was very exciting, but she could not help feeling a little frightened for she had heard about the city from the birds. The birds were always morose about the city, and told only stories of rainy misery and damp feathers. Linda bit her lip in concern for the boy.

And so they continued their conversation. She told him about the magical Engertip, and about how her song had killed the birds. Job was amused by this, and asked to hear her song. She began to sing, but halfway through the song Job became so upset that he had to sit down suddenly on a petrified family of blackbirds that had just plummeted from a tree. Linda was very touched that he was moved by her song, and joined him on the blackbirds, and there they sat until her song was sung. They remained a while in the quiet until the blackbirds came back to life and pecked angrily at their bottoms.

Linda and Job walked back to the house, whereupon they discovered the package the green-trousered man had left. Attached to it was a note, which Linda read quickly. It read; “Courtesy of the Elders of Elborag”. She opened the box and inside was a large stoppered bottle of purple liquid which Linda took inside and placed next to the black egg. The egg had long stopped its rolling and Linda was very disappointed to see that the black paint had peeled off. Linda picked up the egg, shook it gently, and dropped it out of the window. On the way down, it hatched and a small white bird with red eyes flapped its wings and flew over the hill into the sunset. Linda noticed this and smiled; it had not been worthless after all.

Job remarked that he had never smelt anything so lovely in his whole life, referring of course to the smell of baking cake. Linda giggled delightfully as she remembered and took the cake out of the oven. Now resting on the table, it glowed faintly in the evening darkness, and they both admired it in quiet awe before retiring to the drawing room with the bottle of purple liquid. There they fell asleep together and were nevermore apart.

The End