The Midnight Dragon Bakery

Pip Emberwing’s lamp was already lit, although the sun had not quite finished setting. Its gold glow made a neat circle on his bedroom rug. Outside that circle, shadows stretched from the chair legs, the bedposts, and one extremely suspicious sock.

Pip, a small teal dragon with enormous amber wings, polished the lamp chimney until it squeaked. “There,” he said. “No darkness can possibly enter a room with glass this shiny.”

A shadow slid longer beneath his bed.

Pip climbed onto his pillow. “Except that darkness,” he whispered. “That darkness has chosen a very unreasonable address.”

He stayed awake instead of getting ready for bed. He rearranged his biscuit tin, counted his matches, and puffed a tiny cinnamon-scented flame at the corners of the ceiling. While searching for another candle, he found a folded notice tucked under his door.

HELP WANTED, it said in Mabel Bell’s bouncy handwriting. GRANDMOTHER’S BAKERY NEEDS REOPENING FOR AUTUMN. MUST LIKE FLOUR. AND OVENS. AND EARLY MORNINGS.

Pip read the last words twice. Then he hurried down Moonbell Street before the sunset could finish its work.

Mara stood outside the old bakery with flour on her elbows and a green wool cap over her curls. The shop had huge windows, a round brick oven, and a chimney wide enough for Pip to fly through sideways. Best of all, lamps hung from every wall.

“It’s perfect,” Pip said.

“You’ll help?” Mabel asked.

“On one condition,” Pip said earnestly. “We open at night.”

Mara blinked. “At night?”

“The lights can stay on,” Pip explained. “Also, nobody will expect me to be asleep.”

Mara considered this. “A nighttime bakery is a splendid idea.” She pulled out her notebook. “Moon-shaped buns. Midnight muffins. Possibly alarm-clock cookies.”

So, as the stars appeared, Mabel mixed dough while Pip dusted flour across the counter with his tail. He pinched moon crescents from soft dough. Mabel brushed them with honey. Then Pip leaned toward the oven and gave one careful puff.

Whoof.

Cinnamon flame curled over the logs. The oven glowed warm and orange, without a single alarming matchstick.

Soon, moon buns rose fat and shiny. Their smell floated through the open door: butter, cinnamon, and something hopeful. A canal worker came in for two. Then Mrs. Brindle from the lantern shop bought four “for scientific comparison.” By midnight, Moonbell Street was full of happy chewing.

Mara hung a sign in the window: THE MIDNIGHT DRAGON BAKERY.

“Our first night!” she said.

Pip was just beginning to feel wonderfully safe when the last customer, a sleepy postman, peered through the glass. “Funny,” he said. “All the street lanterns have gone out.”

Pip looked outside.

Beyond the bakery’s golden windows stood a row of blackened lantern posts. Darkness gathered between them.

“That,” Pip whispered, “is an unreasonable amount of darkness.”