The Pastry Shop Round the Bend
By Makeda K. Braithwaite, first published in FIYAH
When another witch moves in to her neighborhood and opens a bakery too, a witch must keep a close eye on her and her antics.
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Plot Summary
The woman hands a sausage roll, a pork one with all kinds of seasonings on it, to the customer—her own recipe, as well as her own spell cast upon it. Everyone in the village comes to her bakery for more than just its goods. They also come for her magic. One girl comes in, and the woman’s mother takes over the countertop for now. Privately, the girl tells the woman that she needs to get pregnant to win her boyfriend’s approval. However, the woman doesn’t want to fulfill her wish, as it’s against her code. Instead, she takes matters into her own hands and gives her a tea and lemon fish pie which will make her boyfriend uninterested in having a child, as well as revealing his affair with a neighbor. When the day comes to the end and the woman and her mother are closing up shop, they see a new cottage being moved into across the street from theirs.
The next morning, the woman picks herbs from her garden. She gets a ring from her doorbell. It’s the new neighbor, a witch like her, who has not come bearing gifts per custom. They have a passive-aggressive conversation about how the new neighbor is about to open a bakery next to hers. The woman doesn’t feel great about her. Later, over tea, she discusses it with her husband, who assures her that her business is unmatched. However, she’s still upset that she has a competitor. Still, he compliments her food and the magic laden within it. They kiss.
Two weeks later, the woman starts losing her customers to the new neighbor. The man who once bought her sausage rolls is now dead, from old age, with no trace of magical wrongdoing. The girl, too, stops coming, and the woman eventually sees her go into the new neighbor’s cottage. Right away, the woman worries what could happen with the new neighbor’s magic. Later, she confronts the new neighbor and tells her not to interfere with her customer whom she has already applied magic to. Angrily, the woman says that the new neighbor has made the girl pregnant with a demon, with a parasite curse. Later, with her husband, the woman says that the curse will cause the girl to die in childbirth, leaving the new neighbor with a magical child, after which the village will blame the woman. Her husband tells her to use her magic for good.
The witch wakes up, and something attempts to come out of her. Eventually, a creature emerges from her. The woman sees all of it through her vision. Later, the girl comes to her house. She admits that the new neighbor’s magic isn’t as good as hers and that she finally caught her boyfriend cheating on her. When the girl leaves, the woman sees, across the street, the new neighbor, with a little boy beside her. Unbothered, the woman gets ready to open up for the day.
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