The Cupcake Code

By Raelinda Woad

Midgeons are the unlikely winners of magical-darwinism, and they don’t even know it. Long ago, these tiniest of all fairies were hunted almost to extinction by a mythical race of giants called humans. When the giants disappeared, magic flourished in strange and wonderful ways. The midgeons’ forest evolved into a fairy paradise where cupcakes grow as big as houses (well, fairy houses) and ripening fields of petit fours provide three mouthwatering meals a day.
Now, that paradise is dying out and no one can figure out why. When four young cupcake-dwellers are chosen to search for help, they find themselves traveling through a world where everything is giant-sized, where fairies are expected to live in trees (of all places!) and where ancient enemies are now fellow survivors.
And before their quest is over, these tiny travelers must face a giant-sized question: Can cupcake fairies save the world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raelinda Woad
• Release date: May 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311053978

Raelinda Woad

Raelinda Woad has been a full time working artist for over 20 years. After earning a bachelors in interrelated media from MassART she began performing her True Stories That Haven't Quite Happened Yet for coffeehouse audiences across New England. She also created and hosted Story-LAB, a spoken-word concert series at Harvard Square's legendary Club Passim.None of which ever paid the rent.So she also started a business making tiny little book-shaped pins filled with tiny little imagination-shaped stories. Her Storybook pins are now being worn by hip librarians around the globe.Raelinda Woad lives in magical Salem MA. She does not have a cat, but she has a good cat name ready in case one decides to move in.

Book preview

THE CUPCAKE CODE

book one of

the magic-clever four

Raelinda Woad

The Cupcake Code is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitous or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 Raelinda Woad

Portions of this book Copyright © 2006 Raelinda Woad

2011 Kindle Wing Press

Edited by Lydia Horton

Cover art by Keith Dykes

To Brother Blue

For being the place where stories unfold

And to Ruth Hill

For running the place where stories unfold

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

The Magic-clever Number

Petit Fours A’lee

The Four

The Terrible Wail

Her Bright Blinkers

Memory Rock Garden

Darkness

The Adventure Story

A Long Strange Trip

Looking For Moss

The Realm Of Life

The Bounty Of Dreams

The Dream-wizards

Tree Flyering

The Bright Ages

The Last Light Of The Sun

Cupcake Confrontations

Petit Four Memory Lane

Beware Of The Giant Spider

The Passion Of The Splice

Beware Of The Somniovenator

The Theft Of The Flyering Cupcake

The Secret Life Of Boats

About The Author

Prologue

If you were asleep you might have even seen them, a cloud of fairies flyering together across the sunless sky. Excitement moved among them almost as fast as light through their wings.

The door that was late had opened!

The fairies knew what would be waiting behind that door. There would be four of them, four new fairies, nameless and dreaming. But not for much longer, the excited fairies also knew. The Bright Queen was going to summon their True Names. Then the new fairies would wake up and know the world.

It happened that way always. Just as light, passing through a fairy’s wing, always moved a little faster than light was really supposed to. Just as cupcakes, ripening across the shadowless land below them, always grew so bountiful and sound.

Not to mention all those petit fours.

But isn’t that typical. Yes, isn’t that always the way. Isn’t it always on the most normal of days, at the most normal of moments, that things begin to change.

The Magic-clever Number

Icinghead the cupcake fairy popped awake inside her tiny home, fizzing with excitement. She couldn’t remember why she was so excited, but someone, probably Marzipan, would tell her. Meanwhile, she loved how it felt. Maybe she should try falling back to sleep so she could wake up feeling excited again. Fun!

Wait, maybe that was it. Yes, life was fun! There were petit fours to eat. There was flyering. There were more petit fours to eat. And there was more flyering! Icinghead had never really thought about her life before, but now that she did she decided that it was great to be a cupcake fairy child.

Icinghead sighed with happiness and stretched her body out into the full length of her cupcake’s sleeping hollow. Years of living there had polished all the chocolate chips smooth, giving the hollow a comfortable surface without any bumps to trouble her wings. Someone (was it Marzipan?) once told her that their cupcakes’ sleeping hollows were shaped like the hollows of trees. Knowing how weak and spindly trees were, Icinghead had found that hard to believe. Besides, why would a fairy want to live in a tree when there were perfectly good cupcakes sprouting up near their village every day?

Outside her cupcake, Icinghead could hear the stomps of all the adult fairies charging across the village. Any moment now, she would hear the extra-loud stomps of them bouncing off their foot-thumbs into the air. They would probably be halfway to breakfast by the time Icinghead got up, but Icinghead could easily catch up with them. No hurries when you were a cupcake fairy child who could out-flyer a lightning bug.

Icinghead sighed again and closed her eyes; then opened them quickly. She had forgotten about those weird pictures inside her head. What made them so weird was they were pictures of things that weren’t there. It seemed to Icinghead that a thing should be there before you started seeing it inside your head. But there the pictures were, inside her head and nowhere else.

Usually the pictures stayed still, but this time one of them was moving. It was the picture of the stranger-child. Icinghead knew all the fairies in her village, but this was a fairy she had never seen. Icinghead wondered if this stranger-child had a True Name. Everyone in the village did, except Icinghead.

Icinghead tugged on one of her hair-ropes, the blue one, which always helped her think. There was something different looking about the stranger-child today.

Curiosity overcame Icinghead, as it so often did, and she started to close her eyes for a second look. But then something outside her cupcake caught her attention. The usual fairy-stomping sounds were sounding kind of unusual. Instead of moving away, the stomps were getting closer, and louder. In fact, it sounded as if all the fairies in the village were running straight towards Icinghead’s own cupcake.

As the fairies got closer, their yodeling cries changed into hollering words.

Four! Four! Four! Four! hollered the fairies.

Just hearing the number four spoken a single time is enough to send a thrill through any cupcake fairy’s wings. But to hear that number spoken four times...even Icinghead, who didn’t have a True Name and didn’t know how to be, even she knew that something important was happening.

All magical beings appreciate the number four, but cupcake fairies absolutely live by it. They grow to be a full four inches tall and have four wings (if you count their night-wings) as well as four fingers and four toes. But it doesn’t stop there. They also have four thumbs—one on each hand and one on each foot. Honesty compels me to add that these foot-thumbs are frequently loaded with toe-mulch. This is probably where the expression Never challenge a fairy to a thumb-wrestling match comes from.

The fairies’ stomping and hollering grew even louder. They were right outside Icinghead’s cupcake now. And Marzipan’s. And Nutmeg’s, and Clove’s.

Wake up, four-year-olds! cried the fairies. Wake up, cupcake adults!

Then Icinghead remembered. Today was her birthday. Today she, and her three wing-mates, turned four years old. And, like all winged fairies, they had aged magic-cleverly so they were really turning twelve, the age that winged fey-folk are considered fully grown adults.

Today Icinghead was a grownup.

Fun!

Icinghead stuck her head out of her cupcake. Her three wing-mates were already standing outside of theirs. Marzipan was beaming so hard you almost couldn’t see her glare. Clove had unfurled her wings and, true to her True Name, looked ready to flyer calmly into adulthood. Even Nutmeg, who usually looked like she was about to apologize for something, looked proud. Well, you didn’t turn into an adult fairy every day.

The other fairies of the village had formed a circle around the three new adults. Nobody kept track of how old fairies got after they turned four, but a fairy named Ponder was known to be one of the eldest. She stepped forward now and gave a little speech.

Welcome to adulthood, Marzipan, Nutmeg, and Clove.

Icinghead jumped out of her cupcake and landed in the middle of the fairy circle. Don’t forget me! she cried.

The cupcake fairies stared at her doubtfully. Someone even muttered, She doesn’t even have a Name. But Ponder said, "Of course. And Icinghead. Welcome to adulthood, Icinghead."

Icinghead giggled. I’m a grownup now. Fun!

A few of the fairies started brushing their hand-thumbs over their mouths, a polite signal to another fairy to be quiet. But only if that fairy knew how to be.

Marzipan had her own signal. She gave Icinghead a hard poke with one of her foot-thumbs and hissed, For petit’s sake, shhhh!

Um, sorry, said Icinghead, trying to smother her giggles.

She’s sorry, said Nutmeg, in case anyone hadn’t heard.

Clove, who was standing on the other side of Icinghead, put a hand on her shoulder. Listen now, she said in her calm voice.

Icinghead stopped giggling and listened.

Ponder continued. As adult fairies, you are now the guardians of your own days. Then she frowned. This was actually what the queen had said to each of the fairies when they turned four. It had sounded so important when the queen said it, but at the same time so untroubling because the queen had still been there to say it.

The queen had also given them a present. On each cupcake fairy’s fourth birthday, the queen had placed a picture of themselves inside their own heads. This may sound strange, but cupcake fairies have no mirrors so they have no idea what they themselves look like. But on the day they became adults each fairy learned how their queen saw them. And they had entered adulthood knowing themselves loved.

Ponder looked at the four new adults sadly. She had nothing like that to give them. But the day before, Salt, Rosy, Evoke, and herself had met outside her home (a very respectable semi-sweet chocolate cupcake with an italian meringue roof) and wove a matching set of ankle bracelets out of sugar-grass. Only adult fairies wore jewelry, and they thought it might please the four new ones.

It pleased them very much. Marzipan and Nutmeg gave yelps of delight and put on their bracelets right away, wiggling them over their foot-thumbs. Then they hopped around from fairy to fairy, showing off their new treasures. Clove took a moment to look at hers before slipping it on her own ankle and joining them. The adults had really done a clever-clever job. Each ankle bracelet had four contrasting colors that blended into a single rich color when you held the bracelet away from you. They looked good enough to eat.

So of course, Icinghead tried to eat hers. Ponder gently pulled the bracelet out of her mouth. You don’t eat it, Icinghead, you wear it. See what the others are doing?

Oh. Icinghead wiggled the bracelet over her own foot-thumb and onto her ankle. Then she broke into a huge grin. Fun!

Ponder and the other elder fairies looked at her awkwardly. They seemed to want to say something, but couldn’t quite figure out how. Finally, Ponder said, Never take it off, Icinghead.

Um, okay. Why?

Because...when you wear it you will always know...er...always know... Ponder became lost for words.

You will always know that people are thinking of you, Salt finished for her.

Icinghead stared at them, confused. What difference did it make that other people were thinking of her? Grownups are so strange, she thought. Then Icinghead remembered again: she was a grownup now.

But I don’t feel grown up, she said out loud.

That broke the awkward mood. The fairies all started laughing, but kindly.

Oh, Icinghead, you don’t feel like an adult the very moment you turn four, explained Rosy, in her cheerful voice.

I don’t?

Of course not, silly. It takes four whole weeks.

Marzipan, Nutmeg, and Clove had just finished their round of showing off their bracelets. When she heard what Rosy said, Nutmeg looked crushed.

Four whole weeks? But that’s almost forever.

Believe me, said Salt, the time will go by before you know it. Don’t worry, she added, to Icinghead. You’re an adult now.

I’ll say, muttered Crumb, thinking of her roof.

Everyone winced at the mention of roofs, and tried not to look at Icinghead’s hair.

Icinghead had the dubious double-distinction of being the village’s best flyerer, and its worst lander. The other fairies back-beat their wings when they wanted to land, a strenuous and tricky maneuver that required knowing how to be. But Icinghead had figured out her own method when she was a baby on the wing, a method that could only work in a village where fairies made their homes from cupcakes. Whenever Icinghead was done flyering she would furl her wings and —Fuuuuuuuuun! — plummet straight onto the nearest icing-covered roof.

This was hard enough on people’s homes when she was a tiny baby. But now she was fully grown, and everyone’s roof was covered with Icinghead-size squishes. Icinghead’s hair, meanwhile, was covered with bits of everyone’s roof. Clumpy and wild, it sprang out of her head in every direction except down, a sticky rainbow of ropes from all the different flavors she’d been landing in. It was amazing she could flyer under the weight of it but flyer she did, further and higher than any other fairy. Until she was ready to land, and then... THUMP!

Icinghead started dancing around, almost bouncing off her foot-thumbs with excitement. To think, only this morning she had loved being a fairy child, when being a grownup was far more fun. You got presents.

I’m a grownup, she sang happily. And Clove is. And Nutmeg is. And Marzipan is. She danced from fairy to fairy, singing, And you, and you, and you, and you. Hey, there’s no more children left!

A look of sadness passed across the elder fairies’ faces. They all tried not to look at the empty lot where the castle used to be.

Rosy broke up that mood. Come on, you four adults! You don’t want to hold up breakfast on your birthday. Let’s hear your adult yodels!

Marzipan, who’d been secretly practicing, gave the first yodel and took off across the village, unfurling her bright-wings as she ran. They were as thin as rice paper and stayed folded against her back like a pair of arched fans when she wasn’t using them. Nutmeg was right behind her, unfurling her own paper-thin wings. Her yodel came out a bit hesitant, but by then other fairies were joining in.

The lightning bugs watched all this from the air, silently blinking on-off, on-off. In the Sunless Land it was these valiant bugs who made the daylight. Countless of them filled the sky, working hard all day to bestow the light they carried in their homesick hearts. It was a soft, sparkling light that cast no shadows, and made everything seem a little closer than it really was.

Soon all the fairies were bouncing off their foot-thumbs into the air, beating their wings hard until the light broke through them and created lift. Then they were up. They were flyering.

Below them was Icinghead, but just for a moment. With a snap she unfurled her own wings and jumped. All she needed was a single flyering hop and the tiniest of wing-beats and she was above them all in the sparkling air. And, best of all, she was a fairy so she didn’t have to hide her eyes from what happened next.

When light passes through a fairy’s wings it’s as if, within that paper thinness, there is a hidden universe with a different set of laws for how fast things are allowed to travel. Light moves through a fairy’s wing so fast that when it comes out the other side it hits the regular world hard enough to become asundered. Then all the secret colors that live deep inside of light get released. Colors of such impossible beauty, only fairy eyes can bare to behold them.

For a moment the hungry fairies formed a dazzling cloud of color over the village. Then the cloud stirred with the beating of wings, and the fairies took off across the sky for the first gather of the day.

Petit Fours A’lee

Below the cloud of fairies was their beloved corner of the Sunless Land, which to them was the whole world. It was a land of easygoing rivers and gently rolling hills, almost a sea of hills, rolling as far as a flyering eye could see. Their village was laid out on a rare flat of land atop one of those hills. In its center, an empty lot marked where the castle used to be with its towering reach and blazing roof. A miraculous little garden had once sprung up next to the castle, thriving in its magic-clever light. But the castle had disappeared with the Bright Queen, and then the garden had withered and died.

But at the edge of the village struggled another patch of plants, still hanging on. The fairies were completely devoted to this sad, little patch and stubbornly called it The Forest. The Forest really wasn’t big enough to be called a forest. Its tallest trees were scarcely two feet high (and most days scarcely alive) but the fairies never gave up their faith in it.

Each fairy had her own plant-companion to look after. But whether it was a single tree or a patch of lichen she never thought of it as just a plant anymore than you would think of a cat or dog as just a pet. The weary plants were part of their family.

Every day the fairies would talk to their plant-companions, sing to them, and especially lie to them, about how green they looked.

Much greener than yesterday. I’m sure of it!

Each tree would then struggle to lift its hunched-over limbs. Each flower would try to open a petal, or at least not wilt.

Their fairies would cheer them on tirelessly, calling the lightning bugs down to fly closer and blink brighter.

Can’t you feel that beautiful light all around you? their fairies would coax. You have to eat something. Oh, won’t you please eat just a little something?

Finally their plant-companions would summon their strength and draw a tiny sip of nourishment from the sparkling light.

Their fairies would jump up and cheer. They would gush to their plant-companions about how wonderful they were.

Now just a little more, they would wheedle. Wouldn’t you like just a little bit more of that yummy, yummy light?

But their green friends would already be grey from the effort. It cost them almost as much strength as it gave them, to draw energy from the sunless light. The exhausted plants had to be coaxed again and again to take another sip, just the tiniest sip, of nourishment.

Some days their plant-companions would start looking better. Other days the tired-out plants would seem to sink into themselves and not even want to try. Yet the fairies never stopped coaxing until they were satisfied each green friend had gained enough strength to last another day. Only then did the fairies allow their plant-companions to sink back into exhausted sleep. Then, through the dreams of those weary plants would move something far away and long ago and shining and beautiful. Until that terrible voice said, "Mine." And they found themselves gasping for light.

That is how a forest dreams in a sunless land.

As the cloud of fairies flyered over The Forest their hearts ached to see it so worn down. Why did the world have to have everything a cupcake fairy could need, but never enough for their beloved plant-companions. In the strange, sparkling light of the Sunless Land it was hard for green things to thrive.

Sugar had no such problem.

New cupcakes could be seen sprouting almost every day, growing as big as houses, (well, fairy houses). And a colorful glittering weed, called sugar-grass, grew across the land with so much energy it seemed to pour down the sides of the hills, barely stopping when it came to a river bank. This weed was edible, but its sweetness was harsh and burned your mouth if you didn’t drink lots of water with it. Besides, the hungry fairies had something much tastier in mind as they flyered low over the rolling hills.

Their keen, hungry eyes searched the ground for that telltale gleam of glazed icing. Soon there was a shout, "Petit fours a’lee! " and a sharp-eyed fairy, named Finder, back-beat her wings and sank down through the air.

Everyone else waited in the sky because flyering down takes more energy than coming back up (their paper-thin wings did not easily back-beat) and Finder wanted to make sure she hadn’t been misled by the glitter of sugar-grass.

But when she reached the ground, there they were before her, a whole patch of tiny, iced cakes, perfectly ripe.

With another shout, "A’leeeee! " Finder gave her friends the thumbs-up, all four of them, which was the signal for the cupcake fairies to land. The air filled with back-beating wings, and a moment later the whole village was on the ground and foraging through the petit four patch, plucking sweet little cakes and popping them in their mouths.

All except Icinghead. As usual, she remained in the air to be fed on the wing—like a baby!—by her wing-mates. But none of the elder fairies even noticed anymore. They’d grown used to Icinghead’s Nameless ways. Besides, when you’re in a petit four patch its hard to notice anything else, except petit fours. True to their True names, the little cakes were as irresistible as they were bountiful.

It would be impossible to list all the petit fours that grew in the Sunless Land. But here are just a few:

There were raspberry almond squares the size of a fairy’s palm, iced with shimmery pink fondant and decorated with sugar-vines and sugar-roses. They grew on the lower slopes of the hills almost as abundantly as sugar-grass itself. There were fantasy-meringue cookies shaped like salamanders and dragonflyers and other imaginary creatures. They grew in the flatter lands between the hills, although never too close to water. But growing right along the river bank were uniform rows of chocolate éclairs, their crisp pastry cases holding cargos of pure vanilla custard. And further up the bank grew the popular opera-cakes, their dense, chewy layers and buttercream filling all held down by an abundance of hazelnut icing, stiff as fudge, with a single, aromatic coffee bean resting on top like a doorknob on the door to heaven. (Sadly, they only grew every fourth day.)

On the rarest occasion a happy cupcake fairy would find cream puff doves, with spun-sugar wings and marzipan hearts, made of pastry so delicate it seemed to be composed of butter and sighs. They were the fairies' absolute favorite because petit fours shaped like birds were the hardest to find. They grew only in fours, and melted into the air moments after they were ripe.

After the fairies picked the area clean they took to the air again, until another gleaming patch of pastries was spotted. And after that another, then another, until they had eaten their fill of little cakes. Then it was time to visit their plant-companions.

Brimming with sugar and energy, the fairies burst into The Forest, filling it with chatter like visitors in a hospital ward.

Icinghead remained on the wing and watched them go to their plant-companions from the air. She wasn’t friends with any one plant because she felt friendly to all of them—they were such good listeners. And she preferred to stay by herself for a while longer. It was easier, being by herself.

Icinghead beat her wings and did a flyering hop across the sky. While other fairies needed solid ground to push off from, Icinghead could push against the air itself. And the higher she went, the more solid the air became for her.

Icinghead cast her eyes across the sunless land. From this high up she could see how the rolling hills rolled away from the village in every direction, with the river winding between them like sparkling lines of blue embroidery. And she could see how tiny her village was, just a small gathering of cupcakes on top of one of the hills.

Icinghead pushed off from the air again and flyered even higher. She had never been this high before. When she looked down, The Forest was little more than a far away dot of green. It was hard to believe that all the other fairies, that Marzipan, Nutmeg, and Clove, were all inside that tiny, green dot.

Icinghead cast her eyes across the distance again and found she could see further than ever. There were more rolling hills out there than she felt like counting, hills as far as her high-flyering eyes could see.

Then she noticed, at the very edge of her vision, something that looked a little bit different. Just past the very last hill that she could see was a strange, pulsing light. It wasn’t golden, like lightning bug light. Its color was almost red.

Icinghead tried to push off from the air again, but she had flyered as high as her bright-wings would take her. Light was passing through them faster than she’d ever known; mad, beautiful colors boiling off them into the thinning air. Icinghead tried to furl, thinking to go into her usual plummet, but her wings had become so charged they wouldn’t respond. She was forced to keep them open as if they were a pair of newly cast night-wings (and as if she were a fairy who knew how to be). She glided downward until her wings