The Bakery Witch

The Bakery Witch

She doesn’t even know she’s a witch, she just lives her happy life with her three cats and her bakery, selling the best bread and pastries in town.

She loves singing as she works, a bit of rock, a bit of opera and a bit of everything. The music infuses her pastries with power. People know to buy something from her bakery when they need a little nudge in the right direction in their life, they don’t know why but it seems her bread and pastry can boost one’s day.

There’s the anxious student stopping by the morning of an important exam to buy a chocolate croissant, and the witch sends them away with a kind smile and words of encouragement. They have the best grades of the promotion. Today, the witch was singing ‘We are the Champions’ while baking

There’s the lonely old man across the street wishing he could mend his relationship with his family. The witch always takes time to chat with him when he comes to buy bread. One day he comes in accompanied by a younger woman and two children and introduces them as his daughters and grandchildren. When she bakes mixed seeds bread, the old man’s favourite, the witch always hums songs about family and forgiveness.

After she closes her shop for the night, the witch always gives part of the leftovers to the homeless woman across the street and the rest to a shelter for abused women. When they bit into a cream pastry or a bun, they all feel loved and safe, and all of them end up building a new life for themselves quickly, a life full of hope and laughter. One day, the homeless woman across the street enters the bakery with a bright smile and tells the witch she found a job and a home.

The witch’s reputation spreads without her knowing and, one day just before the closure a man in a smart suit comes in and asks if she can help him break the curse on him. He’sHe was a businessman cursed to age thrice as quickly as normal and die if he doesn’t find love. He’s already tried everything and seen more pseudo-wizard and other sorcerers and he’s heard of the witch’s bakery and how her spells really work. Everyone in town assured him of it. Yet, the witch tells him she doesn’t know about breaking curses and isn’t interested in romance either but she could use some help with the bakery.

Having nothing to lose, the man accepts and becomes her apprentice. She teaches him how to make the bread rise to exact fluffiness, and bake pie crusts to perfection. And all along, she keeps humming and singing, telling her apprentice it’s half the fun of making bread. The man isn’t a very good singer but he picks the habit and makes up for his lack of skill by singing with wild enthusiasm. He’s never had so much fun in his life as he had kneading dough while singing cheesy pop songs or icing cinnamon rolls as he tries to keep up with an opera singer on the radio.

The customers are a bit surprised by the new assistant baker but quickly take a liking to him because if the witch works with him, he can only be a good man, right?

And, two years into his apprenticeship, the cursed man realises he has stopped aging. He’s even starting de-aging now. He doesn’t understand why, he hasn’t found love in all the time he has spent at the witch’s bakery. It’s only when he tells the witch about it that he understand, because she loo at him with raised eyebrows and asks: don’t you love baking? Singing? Making people’s day just a little better with a smile and a kind word?

And the man realises that he has, indeed, found love. He has a job that makes people and himself happy, he knows all regulars of the bakery by name and chats with them, the witch is his dearest friend and he has found a hobby in song (he’s still not great at it but it makes him happy so why stop?) His life is full of love, he just didn’t see it. And maybe, he’s a bit of a witch himself too, because his pastries seem to give people just what they need that day.

Years passes for the witch and her assistant, and their bakery is as popular as always. The anxious student graduated and is in a PhD program (they come before each important milestone to buy a chocolate croissant for the confidence boost), the old man from across the street comes once a week with his daughter and grandchildren, the formerly homeless woman comes to introduce her wife to the witch.

And maybe, one day, the man will meet someone and fall head over heels for them. And they will marry and have children or cats or even a lizard pet because why not. But in the meanwhile he’s in love with his job and lives with his best friend and her cats and, together, they are the bakery’s witches.