Bit by bit, she had built up Sumi’s limbs with rice cereal mixed with melted marshmallow and honey, covering each layer with a thin sheet of modeling chocolate, until the combined confection began to look like human musculature. She was working on Sumi’s shoulders when the timer dinged on one of her ovens. She crossed to it, opened it, and withdrew a sheet of sugar cookie organs, each dusted with a different color of sugar.

“It helps that bones don’t melt,” she said, using a spatula to slide the organs off the cookie sheet and onto a cooling rack. “I don’t need to worry about putting something hot on top of them and losing the whole structure. That happens with the volcanos around here sometimes. It’s really tedious.”

“Um,” said Christopher. “All of this is cool to watch, if a little nightmare fuel-esque, but people are usually made of meat, not Rice Krispy treats. We need a functional Sumi. You’re making a cake that looks sort of like her.”

“Baking something transforms it, and anyone who’s ever eaten a piece of cake will tell you that sometimes we can take baked goods and turn them into a part of ourselves,” said the Baker serenely. She was in her element: she knew exactly what she was doing, and was content to continue doing it until the job was done. “If this works, she’ll be made of the same stuff as you and I.”

Cora, who had heard plenty of jokes about cake and brownies going straight to her thighs, looked down at her short-clipped fingernails, picking at them to dislodge the last bits of sticky pinkness left over from the Strawberry Sea, and said nothing at all.

“Huh,” said Christopher.

The Baker laughed. It was a bright, utterly joyful sound. “I love baking,” she said. “It lets you make the world you want, and it makes everything delicious.” She picked up a large pastry bag, beginning to pipe frosting intestines into the hollow of Sumi’s gut.

Bit by bit, the glittering bone disappeared under layers of pastry. Bit by bit, the structure of the Baker’s creation was built up to overlap the silent, almost disapproving shade, until the Baker was using modeling chocolate to sculpt the fine angles and planes of Sumi’s face. Layers of yellow cake had been laid down for the fatty tissue, covered by a slightly thicker layer of gingerbread which was covered in turn by a fondant shell, dyed a few shades darker than Rini’s skin.