Chapter Fifteen #2
Calisa breathed it in as she opened the oven. The cake had risen, with a crack at the top that made it look like it was about to ooze molten chocolate. Wearing oven mitts, she pulled it out and tested it. Perfectly done.
As it cooled, she mixed the icing, dumping in enough cocoa to make it as rich as she liked.
Since the raspberry jam had worked so nicely with the vanilla cake, she used the same jam again between the two layers, and then she spread the chocolate icing around the sides and smoothed it over the top.
It came out far less lumpy than her first attempt.
I’m learning. By the end of the summer, she’d be a master baker. Or at least reasonable.
But what would happen after the end of the summer?
Would enchanted tea with cake at the Faraway Inn continue, or would it all just stop—the inn shuttered, the garden left to be swallowed by the forest, and the portals permanently closed?
What would happen to Jack? And to the guests like Melidor who needed a place to escape, away from all the expectations and stresses of life?
Auntie Zee seemed to think it was time.
What if I can’t change her mind?
Or what if it really was time?
It couldn’t be. When Auntie Zee got back from her supply run, Calisa would try to talk with her again. That wasn’t the end of the conversation. A grand reopening could revitalize both the inn and Auntie Zee.
Calisa carried the cake into the sitting room. As if it had sensed her coming in, the teapot began to rattle and then steam. She glanced out the window to see Jack spreading Melidor’s mulch around the flower beds. She opened the window and called outside, “Cake’s ready!”
He waved back. “Awesome! Be there soon!” He turned toward the forest. “Hey, Melidor, do your friends like chocolate?” How does he do it?
she wondered. How did he keep going while carrying all that loss and fear?
He let himself feel it—she’d witnessed that—but then he just…
kept moving forward. Kept living fully. That’s strength.
Glancing toward Calisa, he smiled as bright as the sun.
She felt her insides melt like icing on too-warm cake.
“Their favorite is aspen!” the dryad called. “Followed by birch, maple, and willow, though the large fellow over there is partial to oak.”
“So, not chocolate?” Jack confirmed.
“Not chocolate!”
From the doorway, Mulligan said, “I am partial to chocolate, my dear.” He came into the sitting room, keeping to the shadows as far away from the window as possible, and took a seat by the fireplace. “It was Zef’s favorite.”
He hasn’t given up on Zef, Calisa thought.
He wore his despair on his voluminous sleeves—today he wore a billowy silk shirt and black wide-legged pants—but he still tried to break the spell.
How did he keep trying failure after failure?
She wished there were a way to transfer some of Jack’s and Mulligan’s resilience to Auntie Zee.
Kendra joined them shortly after, and Calisa cut slices of the cake for both of them, as well as a thick slice for Jack, for whenever he was done outside. She placed his slice on an end table and tucked a napkin under the edge of the plate.
Carrying her slice to the conch chair, Kendra sat, her back straight and her skirt dripping quietly on the carpet. Mulligan chose a winged armchair by the fireplace.
“I was hoping I could ask your opinion on something, if you don’t mind,” Calisa said to the two of them.
Her eyes flicked to the lobby, but she didn’t see Auntie Zee, only the white cat strolling through toward the kitchen.
“You’ve both been coming here for years. What did this place used to be like?”
Mulligan answered first. “Glorious, serene, vivacious. Ah, I do remember those days fondly. Every room full. Lively chatter over breakfast. Strolls through the garden and the surrounding hills. I have heard it claimed that the High King of the Goblins himself once chose to stay here in disguise, and that Auntie Zee simultaneously hosted the famed enchantress Isatre and her mortal enemy, the ruler of the Elind, without a single incident. They sipped juice at breakfast together and spoke of spring flowers, utterly unaware of who the other was.”
“That was a long time ago,” Kendra said, clipped.
“The glory days,” Mulligan agreed.
Calisa asked the more important question: “What do you think it would take to bring the inn’s old guests back?”
“Cake is a start,” Kendra said, piercing another bite of the chocolate cake with raspberry jam. “But is this what Auntie Zee wishes? She has run this inn for many, many decades. She deserves her own rest.”
Calisa hadn’t considered that. It was possible that her great-aunt wanted to retire, sell the inn, and move to Florida, where she’d befriend a few alligators and flamingos or whatever retirees did in Florida.
Maybe Calisa would have believed that if Auntie Zee had seemed happier about the idea.
She hadn’t, though. Surely she didn’t want her inn to die with a whimper.
Wouldn’t it be better to leave it thriving?
Sell it to another innkeeper, one who could keep the portals open.
Not just let it wither away. This place was Auntie Zee’s life’s work.
Besides, there was also Jack and his father to think of.
And me. She’d just discovered this place and its magic and portals and firebird and adorable friendly flying lizard.
To lose it all after only a summer…There was still so much she hadn’t seen or learned.
She still didn’t know who or what the statue was.
Mulligan hadn’t restored Zef. Melidor hadn’t planted her seedlings.
As for Kendra…“Do you think it’s time for Auntie Zee to close the inn? ” Calisa asked her.
“Of course not. I value this place greatly. Every year it’s been a restorative retreat. The one place I can go where no one makes any demands on me. I can simply be.”
All right. That was at least a start. “Do you think Auntie Zee wants it to close?”
“I do not. But it is a heavy responsibility, and time and age come for us all. I understand the weight of it. Perhaps she cannot see a way to carry it any longer.”
“If she could, though…what would you fix first?”
“The stream behind the inn,” Kendra said without any hesitation. “It used to be a lovely spot to visit. Now the weeds have choked the walk.”
“The library,” Mulligan answered. “I used to spend hours in that room. Frankly, I was disappointed to discover how unwelcoming it had become.”
Kendra agreed.
They continued on, listing the flaws they’d noticed.
Breakfast had been irregular until Calisa arrived.
Tea, nonexistent. There were no planned picnics in the gardens by the burbling brook like there had been in past summers.
Instead the gardens were mostly impassable, current progress aside, and the brook was buried beneath a thick mat of green.
They missed sitting on the porch in the evenings with a view of the fireflies, a nice drink, and pleasant music.
Auntie Zee used to plan excursions into town and provide disguises for those who needed them—that amenity was gone.
Every Saturday, a traveling musician from a different realm used to come to entertain them in the library.
Oh, and then there were the holiday feasts… .
Fetching a piece of paper and a pen from the lobby desk, Calisa made a list.
Some of it was beyond her. She wasn’t a musician and didn’t know any.
She had no idea how to plan a trip into town—or even where town was or how to get there—beyond calling a too-expensive Uber.
But she could do picnics in the garden. She and Jack could restore the stream and the porch.
The library could be cleaned. Tea was already restored, but she could ensure it continued, perhaps with a variety of cakes.
Maybe if she did all the doable tasks, the guests would return, Auntie Zee would change her mind and see it wasn’t time yet, and the inn would be saved.
Jack’s father would continue to have a home to return to.
The guests would return. Kendra could keep her refuge, Mulligan could keep his retreat, and Melidor could continue to find peace.
Auntie Zee might be done trying, but I’ve barely begun.
And as soon as Auntie Zee got back, Calisa would make that crystal clear.