Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
T he party went well—Goldie’s was packed with all my friends and regular customers. I was suitably “shocked” when I walk in and everyone shouted “Surprise!” I made my eyes wide and gasped, “Oh my God—you guys!” in a very convincing way, if I do say so myself.
Goody Albright seemed to agree.
“Very nice, my dear,” she murmured in my ear as she hugged me. “If you ever get tired of baking you could have a whole second career in Hollywood!”
I laughed and hugged her back. I was about to ask her about the portrait and how to remove it, when Sarah swooped in and grabbed me for another hug.
“Happy Birthday, Celia!” she said, grinning from ear-to-ear. “I’m so glad I get to celebrate it with you!”
“Aww, thanks so much, hon,” I said, hugging her back. Sarah is such a sweetheart—I might be a little jealous that she found her Heartmate literally on the first day she came to Hidden Hollow, but I could never be mad at her. Also, she’s another curvy girl, like me so seeing her with a hot, muscular Orc like Rath gave me hope that I might still find someone myself.
The party was a smash and people kept coming in. Somehow they all fit, though normally Goldie’s is a pretty small space. She must be using an expansion spell for the night, I thought as I watched Chester the deaf Centaur and H’rux the Minotaur walk through the door and somehow find space at one of the tall standing tables.
Goldie had paid for extra help and it was a good thing she had—business was booming. The Brownies she’d hired were running to and fro, serving up her special cheeseburgers and onion burgers as well as lots of frosty milkshakes in all flavors—strawberry, chocolate, vanilla and fresh cut grass which actually isn’t half bad. I also saw quite a lot of crispy hay salads going out to the herbivorous Creatures in the room.
Once the eating finished, some room was cleared and the dancing started. Goldie’s is set up like a 50’s diner with tiny little juke boxes on every table where you can pay to pick a song. People started feeding silver pieces into the tiny machines and soon song after song was rolling out.
As the night started winding down, I found myself in the corner with Goldie herself, the two of us watching as people slow danced to Earth Angel , a golden oldie classic even I wasn’t old enough to remember. The music was sweet and caused a sense of longing in my heart as I watched Sarah and Rath drift by, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Warms your heart to see, doesn’t it?” Goldie murmured as we watched them dance. Like me she was somewhere around middle age with a full, hourglass figure and blonde hair that looked good on her although it obviously wasn’t her natural color.
“Yes, it does,” I said and sighed deeply.
“You know when she first came in here, she couldn’t say a word? To me, anyway. Rath had to do all the talking,” Goldie remarked, nodding at Sarah.
“I heard about that,” I said. Sarah had confided to me that she used to have Selective Mutism—a condition that was caused by a binding spell which had kept her magic and her voice wrapped up tight. It had to do with a curse on her family which she had managed to break, with Rath’s help. Now she could talk to anyone, though she still got a little shy at times.
“They make the cutest couple,” Goldie said and sighed. “And me still single.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I confessed. “I always thought there was time to find someone later but it looks like later is here and I have no one.”
“You think you’ve got it bad—look at me,” Goldie groused. “With a name like mine, you’d think I could have my pick but here I am without a single bear in sight—let alone three of them!” We both laughed together and she gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t give up, sweetie. It ain’t over ‘till it’s over.”
“Yeah, well…” I shrugged. “I’d like to believe that but practically the whole town is here tonight and I don’t see anyone I’d want to date.”
“What about H’rux?” she asked, nodding at the Minotaur who was standing across the room, bellowing in Chester the deaf Centaur’s ear—it was really the only way to have a conversation with the elderly Creature.
“He’s okay, I guess,” I said, shrugging. “But he doesn’t like sweets or pastries which is kind of my whole life. Plus, I’m a little freaked out about the idea of kissing a guy with a bull’s head.”
“Ah, you’d get over that soon enough—I hear he’s hung like a bull, too,” Goldie said, elbowing me in the ribs.
I hid a snort of laughter behind my hand.
“Goldie! You’re so bad!”
“Not bad—just horny, sweetie,” she said frankly. “Did you know that women our age sometimes get a second burst of hormones that make them hot to trot? I mean that literally— I might even be interested in a centaur. Not Chester but maybe his nephew Nathan—he’s on the Town Council, you know,” she added, nodding at a handsome Centaur who had dappled gray flanks and a thick chestnut beard that reached far down his muscular chest.
“Uh, I’m not sure how you could make that work,” I said doubtfully. “I mean, anatomically, you know?”
“Oh, you can make it work,” Goldie said with confidence. “There’s a certain kind of sex sling you can use—of course, you need an enlargement spell too, in order to accommodate something that big.”
“Oh my God—Goldie!” I slapped her arm and felt myself turning red as I giggled helplessly.
“I’m serious, girl—you can’t go in there unprepared,” she said, laughing along with me. “And of course you need a good birth control spell too. If you get preggers with a centaur baby, it’s over.”
We spent some more time eyeing the other eligible bachelors in town: Jackson the Kraken, whose tentacles were mostly hidden since he was in his human form that night, Dave the werewolf who had to leave early before the full moon came out, Christopher, who was a Dragon and immensely wealthy in the Mortal Realm. He was handsome in a gleaming, scaly way—he was also in human form but the scales couldn’t be hidden. Unfortunately, Goldie told me all he cared about was money and making more of it.
“Cold hearted,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing but hoarding more gold on his mind. It’s a shame because he’s really good looking if you don’t mind the scales.”
There were various other men and Creatures too, but none of them was appealing and many of them had already found their Heartmates—which made them permanently off limits. Once you find your Heartmate, you’re tied to them for life. It’s one of the magical parts of living in Hidden Hollow that I wished I could experience for myself.
“Hey, let’s change the subject—this is getting me down,” Goldie said after a while. “Let’s talk business for a minute—are the pears ripe yet? I have customers asking me all the time when I’m going to get your special tarts in.”
She was talking about a special kind of pastry I only made once a year—mainly because the pears that went into it were only ripe for one day. They grew on a magical tree I had discovered on one of my early morning walks when I had first moved to Hidden Hollow.
“I’m checking them every day,” I promised her. “In fact, I’m going to check again tomorrow morning.”
“You do that.” Goldie nodded. “You don’t want to miss them. Folks around here look forward to those tarts something fierce. They’ll be damn disappointed if they don’t get them.”
“Don’t worry—they’re coming,” I promised.
If you think we were being too serious about a simple fruit pastry, let me try to explain. The pears in question were a special variety that can’t be grown commercially—they only sprout in the wild on magical lands like the ones around Hidden Hollow.
They’re called “Golden-Skinned Warblers” because when they’re ripe they have a golden, satiny skin that glows with magic and they give out a warbling, trilling note when they’re picked. If they don’t sing, they’re not ripe and they taste as bitter and chalky as chewing on an aspirin tablet.
But when they are ripe, then you’re in for a truly exquisite culinary experience. They’re sweet as candy and they melt in your mouth. They taste delicious any way you bake or cook them and their flavor lingers on your tongue for hours after you eat even a tiny slice of one.
The only magical side-effect of the pears is that they make you sing every word you try to say after you eat them. Mostly it only lasts for an hour but the more you eat, the longer the effects linger. People can tell if someone gets more than his fair share of the Golden-Skinned Warbler tarts by how long they’re sing-speaking afterwards.
I had been keeping a close eye on the tree—I was the only one who knew its location—and I was estimating that the pears would be ripe and ready to pick any day now. Once they were, I would pile as many as I could into my largest basket and take them back to the bakery to begin work. I would close up shop and spend most of the day making the special tarts with a big sign on the window letting folks know what to expect.
I wouldn’t open the doors to The Lost Lamb until I had plenty of tarts ready to sell. Word usually spread like wildfire and I would have a line out the door and round the block for hours afterwards.
Tart Day, as everyone had started calling it, was extremely busy. I was glad I would have Sarah to help me this time. Last year I had been run off my feet for twelve hours straight. It was great for business but extremely bad for my back and knees.
“You just be sure you put at least two or three dozen aside for me,” Goldie said to me now. “I’ll keep them back for the folks who didn’t get any because they were out of town on Tart Day.”
“I’ll do that,” I promised her.
“Good. I can’t wait—the whole town smells delicious when you start baking those.” Goldie smiled at me. “Don’t tell your Great Aunt I said it, but you’re a better baker than she ever was. I can taste the love you put into your food.”
“Well, thank you.” I was touched. Goldie was kind of a Kitchen Witch herself—though she definitely had some other powers I wasn’t quite sure about—so hearing her professional opinion of my baking was special to me.
Not long after that, the party broke up. I said goodbye to everyone and hugged a lot of people—I got asked about the special tarts several more times and promised they would be coming soon.
Then I left, having completely forgotten to ask anyone about the portrait or how to remove it from my bedroom wall.