A rooster crowing in the warm afternoon air awoke Mena. There was a lot on her mind, and it weighed so heavily on her that closing her eyes and hiding in her dreams was the only way to escape it. With half-lidded eyes, she sat up and reached for her brush. Untangling her long, dark messy, hair that had come unfurled in her sleep, she gazed out the window and took a breather in the scenery—a blue horizon over yellow-green hills was brightened in the midday sunlight.

“Let’s hope today goes a bit better,” she said, reassuring herself as she put aside her brush and began to braid her hair. Completing the final knot, she slipped on her purple sweater-dress with the kitten emblazoned on it, along with her striped socks (also with the faces of cats, courtesy of her auntie) and her boots. As she stood up, she searched her room for the romance novel that had gone missing last night. Perhaps it had slipped beneath the furthest corner of the bed or was tangled deep in the sheets. “Deidre probably needs me,” Mena said at last, resolving to look for it later.

She headed downstairs and called for Deidre, but hearing no response, she tentatively called for Cletus too. Absolute silence.

Mena’s eyes shifted from left to right before she snatched herself an iced pastry from the display. It was a day old, and a bit flakey, but the icing was so rich and creamy. As she swallowed it down, she noticed a letter in the sunlight on the glinting marble counter. Mena walked over to it and picked it up, her dark eyes surveying the fancy script scrawled on it:

Dear Honey Bun,

It’s a very, very, very busy day today! Your banana bread sold like hotcakes, and one of the many who enjoyed it was Lord Florian Cornbury, who now wants a full order for his royal engagement. Cletus and I have traveled down to town to help with the reception, but I’d like you to start making as much banana bread as you can. Nearly the whole town is invited. Though you’ve got all day, I expect at least 7 loaves by the time we return. But don’t sweat it! You’re already on your way to becoming my star employee and I’m so proud of you!

Love,

Deidre

After reading Deidre’s signature with the I dotted with a heart, Mean’s heart started racing. She bit off a large chunk of pastry and quickly had to fetch a jug of milk to wash it all down. “Relax Mena,” she said after her snacking ordeal. “It’s like yesterday, but with a time limit…but…”—Mena’s heart thundered—"I don’t want to disappoint Deidre!”

She quickly located the pans, flour, bananas, milk, bowls and eggs and began mixing, cracking, rolling and stirring with a feverish determination in her eyes. Much to her surprise, her drive and prior knowledge helped her move quickly. Occasionally she’d crack an egg and the yoke would spill onto the counter, but she kept pressing onward. “Can’t disappoint Deidre,” she panted as the sweat on her forehead glistened.

At last, she mixed enough batter to fill four pans, and with white flour covering her nose and cheeks like badly applied powder makeup, she loaded the four batter-filled-pans into the brick oven. She closed her eyes and was about to breath out when her eyes shot open with cracked veins. “Up-shrooms,” she shouted. “How could I forget them.”

The special shrooms that had slipped her mind were essential to making the batter rise to a healthy golden-brown perfection. She opened the cupboard where they were last time, but it was bare. “Come on,” Mena carried on. She began to frantically open every drawer and cabinet, but none contained what she needed. “Where did they go?” she asked with a grimace.

Unfortunately, Deidre could not answer her, and Mena had to get it done before her employer got back. “This is a crazy conundrum,” Mena said, pacing back and forth until the only viable solution stopped her in her tracks. “Imagicnation,” she said to herself, the light of the idea brightening her eyes. “But I can’t use magic…okay…maybe this once.”

Unlike most of the spells Mena did, usually simple things like lifts blasts and illusions, Auntie Grizabella had let Mena know about a power central to all of these: Imagicnation. It was the ability to create objects out of your imagination. Though Mena had never done it successfully, it was worth a shot if it meant saving her rear.

She remembered exactly what imagicnation entailed. You simply had to imagine every quality of an object when conceiving it, much like tracking. Everything from the touch, the smell, the size and the taste. Fortunately for Mena, she knew every quality because she had used plenty of these while cooking. She even knew the taste because she had accidentally ingested them as a little girl and was stuck on the ceiling for a few hours.

It was worth a shot, Mena told herself again. Nobody would be here if she messed up and even if she did, Deidre would forgive her. She reassured herself of that.

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Mena loaded the tray in the oven, closed her eyes, held her fingers to point at her brain (like her auntie instructed her) and chanted,

“Mushroom of vertical stripes, of fishy smell and lifty bite. Of overage size that fits in my hand! Presto-Appearo in this pan!”

In Mena’s innerspace, she pictured the mushroom growing from her brain. It sprouted with a plaid cap of blue, red and green vertical stripes—the perfect size to put in a dish—but suddenly, it started to warp. Mena struggled to maintain the shape of the mushroom in her head as it began to morph and swirl in a rainbow of colors. “Come on,” Mena groaned as she was disoriented by the colors.

The mushroom began to expand in spikes like it was gelatinous and someone was pinching the very fabric of its being, but Mena kept hammering back the spikes back in and concentrating on restraining the wild image. She strained and forced the mushroom back into its form and with a loud breath, Mena’s hands dropped, and she opened her eyes.

Green sparkles danced as the mushrooms she imagined formed in the air and lowered into the batter. Panting, Mena quickly closed the oven with a giddy dance. “Genius Mena strikes again!” she said with a self-satisfied expression.

But her gloating was cut short by an unsettling rattling in the pans. “Uh…” Mena said, her normally large mouth shrank, and her eyes were huge and terrified. “What was tha…”

The pan stopped rattling, and Mena slowly lifted the latch of the brick oven. She was met with an explosion of banana bread batter flowing out of the oven; it expanded at an alarming rate. “Miserable ma…” Mena exclaimed but she could not even finish her catch phrase. She ran to escape the brown miasma that was consuming everything. She leaped over the counter and ran out the front door as the ooze blasted it down. Getting to a safe distance, Mean watched in horror as banana bread batter exploded out of every window and even the chimney.

“What…happened…?” Mena said, her heart ready to burst out of her chest.

“Oh Mena,” a sweet voice called and she turned and saw Deidre walking back with Cletus and a towering man in bright red armor and a horned helmet with a V-shaped visor.

Deidre smiled when she saw Mena, but her expression changed to one of horror. “Howdy Mena the Captain of the Growden royal militia is here to help us transport your…oh my lordy lord what happened to my bakery!”

Mena was feeling even sicker than when the bakery flooded. She was wishing she could presto-disapearo right on the spot. She couldn’t even watch as Deidre approached her pride and joy and stammered in utter shock that her livelihood was totaled. “How-how did this happen?”

Mena was silent. She could not bring herself to own up to it, even when Deidre ran her finger through the now solid batter and licked it. “This is banana bread.”

Deidre turned around to face Mena. There was no anger in her eyes, but a shattered look of devastation that stung Mena to the core. Mena knew immediately she had not only ruined Deidre’s business but broken her heart too.

“I know what happened,” Cletus’ petty voice rang out. “And that’s the real reason I invited you to this bakery, captain. This young girl here is indeed a bonafide, no good, evil witch.”

“That’s not possible,” Deidre stammered.

“Oh, is it?” Cletus said, his unibrow lowered. “Look what I found in her bedroom.”

He produced the magical romance novel from the back pocket of his overalls-a clear staple of the wizarding world.

“My book,” Mena exclaimed, before she quickly covered her mouth.

Cletus guffawed. “If that’s not an admission of guilt, Deidre, I don’t know what is.”

The way Deidre looked at Mena now was a mixture of horror and betrayal, and Mena wished she drowned in the soup of the batter. At last, Deidre said to Mena. “Mena, why didn’t ya’ll tell me that you were a witch?”

Tears sparkled from Mena’s eyes like liquified shards of broken glass. “After what you told me about what happened to your family, I didn’t want you to think badly of me.”

Deidre took her gloved hand and held it over Mena’s face like she was going to slap her. “I can think for myself, thank you.”

But when she was about to hit Mena, she looked into the young witch’s tearing eyes—eyes that she had gazed upon so fondly—tears fell from the belle’s own eyes instead. Trying to remain tough, Deidre scolded Mena, though her voice was breaking. “Mena, I don’t even care that you’re a witch. Rather, you lied to me about who you were, and because of that, you’ve destroyed the last thing I had precious to me.”

“I’m…sorry. I made a really bad mistake.” Mena hung her head low. Tears dripped onto the grass below.

Deidre’s stern expression wavered and there was pity in her eyes, but she remained silent.

Seeing Deidre’s reproach towards Mena made Cletus giggle with glee. “At last, we can return to it being jus’ Deidre and me!”—he produced a small bag from his pocket—"It’s a good thing I swiped these.”

Mena looked up. It was the missing bag of Up-shrooms.

“If I hadn’t have stolen these,” Cletus remarked. “That evil witch wouldn’t have used her magic and…”

Deidre wound up a punch before decking Cletus in the face.

“You mean to tell me,” Deidre said, standing over Cletus. “Y’all stole the up-shrooms and destroyed my bakery! I can’t trust anyone anymore.”

Deidre stomped off, leaving a dazed Cletus on the ground and Mena standing by the captain. She felt like bawling but instead she looked at the captain, held out her wrists and cried theatrically, “Take me away. I deserve to be locked up.”

The hulking captain with a mixture of surprise and disdain, loosened the cuffs from around his belt and clamped them around Mena’s hands. Through the visor that darkened his face, he spoke with a deep voice that shared as much sympathy as the steel of a guillotine in mid-winter, “Oh you’ll be more than locked up. Our king does not take kindly to scum who murdered hundreds of innocent civilians in his kingdom. We haven’t had a good old-fashioned execution in years.”

Leading Mena away in chains, she stifled one last glance at the bakery and the woman who cared for her, but its owner was observing the damages with her back turned. Though the sun shone brightly, it couldn’t dry the tempest in Mena’s heart.