Surprise Cake for Blueberri

Tang's hollow always smelled like something good. Today it smelled like bananas and a small amount of panic.

Kiwi was measuring flour for the third time. Taro was in Tang's best hammock, which he had found and gotten into immediately upon arriving, and which Tang had decided not to argue about. A recipe book was open on the little clay shelf, and nobody was looking at it.

"Stir it," said Kiwi.

"I am stirring it," said Tang.

"You're looking at it."

"I'm stirring it with my eyes."

Kiwi took a breath.

Neither of them heard Blueberri coming. Monkeys are quiet when they want to be, and Blueberri had been swinging through the canopy on her way to the Berry Patch when she caught the smell. She stopped on a branch just above the hollow entrance, sniffed once, and dropped in.

"Hi," she said.

Tang grabbed a bowl and held it in front of the batter. Kiwi stepped in front of the recipe book. Taro didn't move, which was normal.

"Hi!" said Tang. Very loudly.

Blueberri looked at the bowl. She looked at Kiwi standing against the shelf. She looked at Taro, who gave her a small wave from the hammock. She looked at the date scratched on Tang's little wall calendar.

Oh, she thought. Oh.

"What are you making?" she asked.

"...A thing," said Tang.

"Smells good," said Blueberri. She looked around the hollow — Tang's collection of jars and bits, the clay oven already warm, the bananas on the shelf. She took an apron from the hook by the door. It had a small hole in it and smelled like last week's soup.

"Can I help?" she said.

Kiwi's eyes went wide. Tang's mouth opened, then closed.

"...Sure," said Kiwi, very carefully.

So Blueberri helped. She mashed the bananas. She stirred when Tang was just looking at things. She handed Kiwi ingredients before he asked for them, which made him blink every time. Taro watched from the hammock and offered the occasional comment at roughly one-minute intervals.

The batter was coming together — pale yellow, smooth and right — when Tang leaned over the bowl with that look on his face.

"It needs something," he said.

He reached up to his shelf and grabbed a big fistful of deep purple berries. His own berries. The ones he always kept up there.

"Tang—" said Kiwi.

"They're her—" Tang stopped. Glanced at Blueberri. "They're good berries," he said, and dropped them in before anyone could argue.

Blueberri's throat went a little funny. She looked at her spoon.

Those were her berries. Her colour. She didn't say anything.

"Fine," said Kiwi, after a moment. He didn't sound fine. But he said it anyway.

The batter swirled purple. Then deeper purple. Then the exact blue-purple of a Wan Hundred Woods evening. The cake came out of Tang's clay oven and it was completely, perfectly, unmistakably purple.

Kiwi stared at it. "...It's not what the recipe said."

"No," said Blueberri. "It's better."

They carried it to the Great Clearing as the afternoon turned gold. Jackfroot was already there. He had been there for a while — you could tell by the small circular track worn into the grass from pacing. Cheri was standing at the edge of the clearing, perfectly still, exactly on time.

"SURPRISE!" shouted everyone — which was a bit confusing, since Blueberri had been with them the whole way there and was currently holding the cake.

Tang shouted it the loudest anyway.

Blueberri set the cake down on the flat rock in the middle of the clearing. She looked at all of them: Kiwi with flour still on his ear, Tang practically vibrating, Taro who had somehow arrived before everyone despite leaving last, Jackfroot doing one final lap before skidding to a stop, Cheri who gave a single nod like this had all gone according to plan.

She took the first slice and bit into it.

Bananas and summer and Tang's purple berries and the warm smell of the hollow and everyone she knew.

Later, when the cake was mostly gone and the clearing was quiet, Tang looked at the last purple slice, then at Blueberri.

"Did you know?" he asked. "The whole time?"

Blueberri picked up the last slice.

"Eat your cake, Tang," she said.

He did. And the lanterns came on one by one as the light faded, until Wan Hundred Woods glowed soft and gold all around them.