I’ve a new story out!
“The Ouroboros Bakery” can be read for free in this month’s issues of Kaleidotrope.
Whenever I’m not writing about science I seem to be writing about food – particularly about food and horror, and “The Ouroboros Bakery” is a dark fantasy story about pie and immortality. There’s a fair bit of cake in there as well, and while writing this story I came across a cake that was entirely new to me. Baumkuchen, which is basically cake on a spit. Layers and layers are brushed on as the spit turns, and when the whole thing is finished and you cut into it there’s the effect of tree rings. Naturally this is something I have to try!
It’s certainly more likely to be tasty than the blood pie of the magic bakery here, which – if you’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to get it – grants eternal life. But it seems that no matter how willing the customers are to guzzle down longevity, the reality of it never quite lives up to expectations…
“Please take it back,” he says. “Please.”
It’s not the most urgent plea Oksana has ever heard. This one is still mostly sane. He can still look her in the eye, and if his hands are tight-clasped together so that the knuckles show white, his voice has very little waver in it.
A strong man, then, but even strong men cannot fight on two fronts.
He does not touch his tea. Oksana serves it steaming hot, dark and tannic in the pot and her tea cups are the finest porcelain, translucent in afternoon sun. She has always been able to tell a lot from how her visitors drink her tea. Some sip as she does, their mouths unscalded and their cup dainty in their hands. Others are clumsier, aware of the cost of breakage, and these hold their cup in both hands. The polite do it before the tea cools, preferring to be burnt upon their palms than to risk cracks and recompense. And some refuse to drink altogether, whether out of preference or distraction, for Oksana serves her tea with sweet shortbread, with sponges and cream and tuile biscuits still warm from the oven.
Her visitor does not drink. It is not out of rudeness, and he would not eat again from her bakery unless it cost him his life, and there is nothing about Oksana’s afternoon tea that could do that. She finishes her slice of sponge, scrapes the last of the strawberry jam from her plate, the sweet tartness of it vivid against a background of tannin. His knuckles are paler than cream – they are as pale as icing sugar, and were he to try and take her cup in his hands, then all the tea would spill out…
You can read the rest over at Kaleidotrope!
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