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Penelope
Lady Ruth Salisbury, Simon’s Gran, (I can’t believe Simon has a gran!) welcomes me into her sitting room. “Have some cake, dear,” she says, gesturing toward a full spread of tea and two plates with generous slices of toffee cake.
“You already made the cake?” I ask “I thought I was here to help you get everything ready.”
“Oh, this?” she hands me a plate. “This isn’t birthday cake. This is Penelope is here cake. Just us ladies cake.”
“Thank you, Lady Ruth,” I say, sitting on a love seat and taking a bite. She has a reputation for being eccentric. I suppose that pre-cake cake is par for the course. “It’s delicious!”
“Ruth, please, my dear. And thank you.”
“Thank you for doing this with me,” I say. I have always known Lady Ruth in passing. I’ve seen her around, telling bawdy tales, but she was always more acquainted with my mother’s generation. I never had a reason to get to know her until now.
Three weeks ago, we were in America. One week ago, we defeated Smith-Richards and Simon pulled the Salisbury family Excalibur out of a table. Three days ago, Simon finally told me about it. He told me what it means. That he has family other than what he’s built with Baz and me. That his mother is gone, but he has a gran and an uncle. That the Mage was his father. (He refuses to talk about that. I think he’s trying not to think about it.)
And now I am at Simon’s gran’s house putting together a birthday party for him. Nothing big. Just his birth family and his found family coming together to celebrate him. Baz and I thought it would make Simon happy if I got to know her better. He has had some time to do so a bit while he and Simon were helping her find her son. Simon’s uncle. The whole situation takes getting used to.
“It’s my pleasure,” Lady Ruth says. “I was thrilled when you asked.” She sounds like she means it.
Music blares from the kitchen. Lady Ruth shoots it a glare. “Yes, I know! That’s why we’re here! Hush it!” The music stops. I wait for her to explain, but she doesn’t. “What kinds of cakes were you thinking of making?”
I shrug. “I don’t really know much about cooking or baking.” I gesture at my plate. “I certainly can’t make anything like this. I suppose I could be your assistant.”
She laughs. “That might work for some of the sandwiches, but I use magic for the cakes.”
“You made this whole cake out of magic?” I ask, impressed. She must be very powerful if she’s planning to pull off a stunt like that more than once in a day and still host a party afterward.
Lady Ruth gives a dismissive wave. “I make cakes out of ingredients. I just use magic to tell them what to be.”
“Will that work on anything?” I ask. I’ve never been particularly interested in domestic spells, but this cake is so good it has me intrigued.
“If you know the right spells, my dear, most things are possible,” she says. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I say. We’re here to get to know each other.
“Can you tell me about Simon when he was young? I’m afraid that there aren’t too many people who I can ask.”
Lady Ruth
Penelope Bunce looks so like her mother. She sounds like her too, clever and cocky with an obsession with knowing everything. “What would you like to know?” She asks.
“Everything. He’s my grandson and I missed his entire childhood.” I’m not a bitter woman. I don’t waste my time holding grudges. But Davy took almost everything from me. He took Lucy, not even telling us when she died. He made Simon’s childhood a misery and kept his family from knowing he existed. He couldn’t even die decently. He made Simon and Penelope kill him, leaving their young adult lives in shambles. “Were you always so close?”
“Since first year, yes,” she says. “My mum tried to warn me off of him. She said nobody knew where he came from and he was dangerous.”
“Did she now?” I scoff. “How did she take it when she learned that he’s her best friend’s son?”
Penelope winces. “She doesn’t know yet. Nobody does but Baz, my boyfriend, and me. Simon isn’t ready to let the public know, and the headmistress of Watford is almost as public as the coven.”
I nod. Let the boy have control over something in his life. “So how did you meet?”
She smiles a very Mitali smile. “Mum said nobody knew where he came from and he was dangerous, so naturally, I introduced myself on the first day and started helping him with his homework.”
“Naturally,” I take a bite of cake. Then the oven alarm blares again, and I tell it to have some patience before turning my attention back to Penelope.
She snorts. “Technically, you could argue that he was dangerous. He didn’t know the first thing about how magic works and he had so much of it. He couldn’t control it at all.”
“Is that so?”
Penelope grins. “In third year, we were practicing up, up, and away and he launched his entire desk through the ceiling and into low earth orbit.”
“Oh dear,” I smile into my teacup.
“‘Oh dear’ is right,” she says. “The coven spent weeks trying to get it down and then debating whether it was safer to magickally conceal it from Normal scientists who would be suspicious of a school desk orbiting the planet or leave it be so they don’t accidentally crash anything into it.” Penelope is cackling now.
“What did they ultimately decide?” The coven have always made such a fuss over everything and hardly do anything useful.
“They didn’t,” Penelope’s still laughing. “It fell out of orbit on its own and burned up in the atmosphere over Norway.”
“Problem solved,” I chuckle.
“Oh!” Penelope slaps her knee. “When the boys get here, remind me to tell you about the time that Simon tried to color his hair.”
“Why wait?” I ask.
“Trust me,” she gives me a wicked grin.
Penelope tells me more stories about Simon and his magickal mishaps. She tells me about his rivalry with Baz. I ask her how they ended up together and she tells me that they’ve been cagey about the details. She knows when they got together, but they won’t tell her how it happened. I like her. I’m glad that Simon has her in his life.
The oven’s alarm becomes more frequent and insistent through the course of our conversation. Finally, Penelope asks me about it.
“Oh, that?” I give a dismissive wave. “It’s just the oven. It knows about the party and soon it won’t give me a moment’s peace until I’ve made a cake.”
“What?” Penelope frowns, puzzled.
I sigh. “When I was a young woman, still newly wed, I forgot that I’d invited someone over for tea. I had nothing made. I was so embarrassed that I spelled my oven to warn me any time someone is coming over.”
“So your oven is demanding that you bake a cake because it knows that Simon and Baz are coming?” She nods at her plate. “That’s why you made this cake for me?”
“Of course, my dear.” I watch the gears whir behind her eyes.
“What spell did you cast?” Penelope is practically bouncing in her seat. I see. She is as excited about new magic as her mother.
I smile. “I cast If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,which is why no matter what else I make for guests, it insists that I bake a cake any time someone is coming over.”
She frowns. “That sounds awfully inconvenient.”
I shrug. “I’m used to it. It’s no trouble, really. It’s only a bother on Halloween, but I figured out that the oven will accept miniature cupcakes. I have to make quite a lot of them because they’ve become somewhat of a local attraction.”
“Cerce, that must be a chore,” Penelope laughs and takes her last bite of cake. “Shall we get to it then?”
Penelope
Lady Ruth leads me to a massive kitchen, where an old fashioned oven is blasting the jazz song, “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake.” She smacks it and says, “enough already! We’re doing it!” The oven quiets. Then she bustles around the kitchen, grabbing dishes and ingredients. “What kind of cakes do you reckon Simon will like?”
I laugh. “You name it, he’ll eat it. But his favorite food is the sour cherry scones that Cook Pritchard makes at Watford.”
She nods thoughtfully. “We can make something with cherries too, but how about if we start with chocolate? It’s not a party without a chocolate cake.”
“Do we need more than one cake?” I frown. “We aren’t an especially large group.” I thought that we were planning a simple affair.
“Nonsense!” Lady Ruth waves my question away. She looks over the items she has amassed on the counter. I am beginning to dread the amount of tedious kitchen work ahead of us when she aims her wand at the ingredients and casts, “Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake, bakers man, bake me a cake as fast as you can!” And then there’s a chocolate cake sitting on a stand she’d left waiting for it. It’s perfectly shaped, fully baked, and smells wonderful.
I’ve never been very interested in domestic magic, but I’ve never seen a display of power like this. It’s gorgeous! I had no idea that Lady Ruth could effortlessly cast a nursery rhyme, let alone plan on doing it repeatedly prior to hosting guests. I immediately reevaluate my estimation of her.
Lady Ruth nods approvingly at the cake and levels her wand at it. “Pretty please!” The cake frosts itself simply, but flawlessly. Then she places a single cherry in the middle and sets the cake on top of the oven, which she gives a smug little kick as if to say see? I made a cake, so shut up. “Shall we make the cherry one next?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say. “How about if you do that one and then I have a go at the next one?”
She nods, setting aside the chocolatey ingredients and replacing them with a bowl of cherries and lemons. She casts the spells again, this time changing the decoration spell to, “pretty please with a cherry on top!” This time, instead of a simple frosting look, the cake is fully decorated with frosting flowers around the edges, each with a cherry perched on it, and the words, “Happy Birthday Simon!” on the top.
Lady Ruth sets this cake aside too and turns to me. “Are you ready to try it, dear?”
“Of course!” I say.
“What flavor are you intending to make?”
I look at the ingredients on the counter. “Lemon,” I say.
She nods.
I aim my ring at the counter full of ingredients and cast, “pat-a-cake pat-a-cake, bakers man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Roll it, pat it, and mark it with an S, and put it in the oven for Simon, our guest!”
There isn’t a loud bang, but flour explodes in an impenetrable cloud. When it settles, there’s a figure perched on the counter. It’s Simon. But it isn’t Simon. It’s cake.
The cake Simon is life size, though I think there weren’t nearly enough ingredients for that to reasonably happen. Thankfully, it isn’t the most detailed cake because he isn’t clothed. His human skin seems to be lemon frosting with freckles and moles made of chocolate sprinkles, and the skin of his lips, wings, and tail are clearly cherry frosting. His eyes are made of two blueberries that flew out of the fridge, which had opened on its own. His hair is made of spun sugar. Cherry frosting also forms a red S on his forehead.
I blink at my creation.
Cake Simon blinks back.
“Oh dear!” Lady Ruth says.
“Ummmm,” I say.
“Penelope, did you say that Simon was the one who had all of those magickal mishaps at school? Or have I perhaps misheard?” She doesn’t sound angry- more like bemused.
“No, you heard me right. New spells don’t normally give me this much trouble.”
Lady Ruth doesn’t take her eyes off of the cake Simon. “Is Miss Possibelf still teaching Magic Words at Watford?”
“Yes,” I say. What does that have to do with this?
“And is she still teaching students that it is dangerous to add extra words to spells you haven’t cast before and don’t fully understand?”
“Yes, but I thought… but I do understand the nursery rhyme! Why would it do this?”
Lady Ruth
How do I explain what went wrong? Context matters for spell casting. Her addition might not have done this in her own kitchen, but that isn’t where she is right now. She’s in mine. How do I explain that marking things with letters and giving them purpose means something else in a house with a family background like ours?
Penelope
We are interrupted by Cake Simon. He doesn’t seem to be able to speak. I guess cake doesn’t have vocal chords. But he uses his finger to write I’m right here on the counter in frosting. His finger comes away from the counter with no apparent loss of frosting. I wonder how he replenishes it.
I frown. “Do you… do you understand us?”
Cake Simon nods.
“Fascinating,” Lady Ruth says. It seems that despite her dismay at my mishap, she is as intrigued by new magickal phenomena as I am. “Do you know who you are?”
Cake Simon writes Simon Snow on the counter.
“Do you know who I am?” I ask.
Penny
“Do you know what you are?” Lady Ruth asks.
Golem. Why cake? Why not clay?
Lady Ruth frowns. “So you know that you’re a golem, but you also know that you’re Simon Snow?”
There is something truly unsettling about an eyeroll when someone’s eyes are made of blueberries. I shudder. Cake Simon notices and frowns.
“What is your mission?” Lady Ruth says.
“Mission?” I ask while Cake Simon writes.
“If he’s a golem, he must have an objective of some sort. Usually, golems protect Jewish communities from external threats.”
I’m Simon. Done with missions. Summoned for party.
Cake Simon’s handwriting is no better than real Simon’s. And it’s huge. The counter is running out of space already.
“Do you have your magic?” I ask.
Cake Simon shakes his head, scowling. He starts writing on a wall. Summoned me. Made me. Unhappy to see me. Think I’m a mistake.
Fuck. Simon has been depressed, so Cake Simon is too. He’s a magickal construction with Simon’s insecurities around magic. What are we going to do?
“I’m sorry, Simon. I didn’t mean to make you like this,” I admit, “but I don’t want to hurt you either.”
Cake Simon’s shoulders slump forward.
“Chin up, my dears,” Lady Ruth says. “Simon, can you tell me what you feel summoned to do at the party?”
Cake Simon makes a motion like he’s sighing, but there isn’t any sound or breath. He finds another patch of wall and writes. Here to help. Will be needed. I have the answer.
“What’s the question?” Lady Ruth says.
You have to ask.
“So your objective is to answer a question, but you can’t tell us what it is?” I say.
Cake Simon nods.
“Very well,” Lady Ruth shrugs. “Can you help us make sandwiches without frosting them?”
Cake Simon shakes his head. I laugh.
“Do your wings work?” I ask. “Can you fly?”
No room
Lady Ruth
I haven’t gotten to see my grandson fly yet. I’ve seen his wings, of course. They’re glorious. But I’ve never seen him fly. I gesture toward the sitting room we vacated earlier. It has vaulted ceilings. Penelope and I follow Cake Simon through the door. His fingers brush against the mezuzah and then against his lips. Interesting.
Even when they’re made of cake, Simon’s wings are still magnificent. He spreads them wide and lifts off. He smiles until his wing smacks into a chandelier covering its intricate glass prisms in red frosting. Then he touches back down and stares at the mess.
I laugh. “Don’t worry about it, my dear.”
Cake Simon turns to me and notices his frosting footprints on the floor. He steps precisely on them to avoid making more as he heads back to the kitchen. He writes on the fridge door, I’m a mess.
Penelope laughs. “You’re always a mess, Simon. Try to relax.”
Cake Simon goes to an out of the way corner, settles into a comfortable stance, and stops moving. He’s gone dormant, inactive until he’s needed.
“Well,” I say, “This party is bound to be interesting.”
Penelope
Lady Ruth and I spend the next hour making sandwiches and salads and sides. She uses magic on some and makes others by hand. I don’t try to copy any more of her spells. I help how I can. I spell away the frosting from the counters, walls, and chandelier. I put up a Happy Birthday banner and help set the table. Lady Ruth is a fascinating woman to chat with. She is a top notch magician. She says exactly what she means and doesn’t shy away from anything. She gives off some serious neurodivergent vibes, which put us on the same page easily. It’s clear where Simon gets it. Cake Simon stays dormant until the sound of the cyclops knocker on the front door echoes through the house.
Baz
I’m excited for this birthday party. I’m so fucking happy for Simon. He’s going to have his found family that he built and his birth family that he found together in one place. We aren’t a large group. Two friends, his boyfriend, his gran, and his uncle. But he’s going to be surrounded by the people in the world who love him most. He deserves this. After everything he’s been through, he deserves every bit of this.
Simon is grinning when he uses the knocker. Lady Ruth and Bunce open the door. Lady Ruth looks pleased to see us, but Bunce looks… concerned. Simon doesn’t notice. He hugs his gran, who squeezes him tight and wishes him happy birthday before taking his coat so he can unfold his wings.
And then someone else walks silently into the foyer. It’s clearly Simon. Another Simon. But it looks like it’s made of cake. What the fuck happened here? The cake Simon strides up to me and takes my face in its hands without hesitation. I feel frosting sticking to my skin. The cake Simon stares at me for a moment out of eyes made of blueberries and then mashes its face against mine in a kiss, wrapping cake arms and cake wings around me.
I’m engulfed in frosting. I doubt I’ll ever get these clothes clean. I don’t know what to do. There’s no fucking way I’m snogging a cake in front of my actual boyfriend on his birthday. Is this some kind of joke?
Simon
There’s another me made of cake snogging my boyfriend. He’s frozen in place with his arms at his sides. The cake me wraps him tight with his wings and presses him fully against him. Is this what we look like when we snog? Fuck. Am I dreaming?
I laugh and the cake me breaks away from Baz, turning to me. It sort of stands at attention, regarding me with eyes made of blueberries. I can’t stop laughing. Cake me looks delicious.
Baz looks furious. Okay, I suppose this isn’t a dream.
“Bunce!” he seethes. “What the fuck is going on?”
“There was a bit of a mishap in the kitchen,” Penny dithers.
“Fix it!” Baz snaps. “I’m going to get cleaned up… somehow… and you are going to have this sorted by the time I get back.”
Penelope
Baz stalks off toward a staircase, presumably to find a shower. Simon pauses for a beat, still looking Cake Simon over, and then scurries after Baz, saying, “I’m gonna… umm… I’m gonna see if Baz needs any… help. Back in a bit!”
“Ah, yes,” Lady Ruth snorts. “I’m sure he’ll be very helpful getting the frosting off of his boyfriend.”
“Cerce, Lady Ruth!” I say, trying to sound scandalized, but then I laugh too. “Do you think he was talking to us or Cake Simon when he said he’d be back in a bit?”
“Definitely Cake Simon,” she says. “We’re going to have to figure out what that question is in a hurry, my dear.”
To Be Continued…