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Baz
I am in such a rush to get up the stairs that I am halfway to the top before I realize I have no idea where to go. This isn’t my house. I’m at Lady Ruth’s. I’m covered in frosting. It’s on my face. It’s in my hair. It’s probably on every article of clothing except my pants and my socks.
Why am I covered in frosting?
We came to the Salisbury home for a birthday party that Lady Ruth and Penelope Bunce spent the morning and afternoon setting up for Simon. When we arrived, another Simon Snow strode purposefully into the entry. A Simon Snow made of cake, with a red S on its head, and leaving a trail of frosting footprints like a dog tracking in lemon flavored mud. His skin was made of lemon frosting. His freckles and moles were chocolate sprinkles. His eyes were a pair of blueberries. His hair was candy floss. The red of his lips, wings, and tail were sour cherry frosting. I hardly had a chance to process what I was seeing before I was tasting it. Because while my boyfriend and his best friend and his grandmother looked on, the cake replica of Simon snogged me without a hint of reservation.
And I mean snogged. This was no chaste kiss. It wasn’t a peck with cherry lips. It was all encompassing. Cake fingers raked through my hair. Cake wings wrapped around my back. An entire cake body almost pressed me back against the door. I was too stunned to figure out how to react.
Simon was speechless. I don’t blame him. I can’t begin to imagine was he was thinking. I stayed just long enough to get the explanation that Bunce had fucked up a spell and demand that she fix it by the time I get cleaned up before storming off to where I am now. At the top of a staircase in what is still mostly a strange house and covered in buttercream.
I hear Simon excuse himself to Bunce and Lady Ruth, telling them he is going to come and help me. Thank magic for that. I don’t know where to start. Simon jogs up the stairs to catch up with me. When he gets to the top, he looks me over from top to toe. I stand there stiffly, wanting to cringe, until a grin spreads slowly across his face.
“Is something funny, Snow?” I snap.
He smirks back. “Happy birthday to me. I was just thinking that you look delicious.”
I roll my eyes. “Seriously?”
He takes my hand (one of the only parts of me not covered in frosting since they were glued to my sides for the walking confection’s entire assault) and pulls me down the hall until we find a bathroom with a shower. He locks the door behind us and then licks a stripe of frosting off my cheek. “Downright edible, Baz.”
Oh.
Oh.
Simon
Baz startles and then his eyes get hungry. “You… like this?” he asks.
“I never would have thought of it, but fuck yes,” I say. “I’ve never gotten to see what we look like snogging from the outside.”
Baz blinks, clearly still gobsmacked. I can’t remember the last time I saw him so off balance.
“It’s hot as hell, by the way,” I continue. “And now you’re frosted like a literal dessert. You always smell like citrus and now you taste like lemons and… hmmm… what’s the red one?” I interrupt myself to kiss his lips and then swipe my tongue over my own. “Cherry. Sour cherry. Baz! Your mouth literally tastes like sour cherries. What’s not to like?”
“I’ll get you sticky,” Baz says.
I laugh and take my shirt off. No sense making more laundry for Baz to have to spell clean. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”
He puts a silencing spell on the door.
Baz
I don’t know if Simon is technically helping me clean myself up. I’m going to have to shower anyway to get all of the stickiness out of my skin and hair. I had to spell my clothes with back to start, clean as a whistle, and out, damned spot! to get them fully cleaned. But Simon clearly enjoys treating me like a walking dessert and I won’t deny him at his own birthday party.
But “party” means other people. Other people who are currently downstairs and completely aware of what we’re doing in the bathroom of Simon’s newfound grandmother’s home. Simon’s ability to touch me without reservation and without being urged on by a life or death situation is still so new. I want to savor it in a place that is ours and where my mind isn’t on what all of the closest people in Simon’s life will think.
Cerce, what a mess.
I get cleaned up as quickly as I can without completely denying Simon his fun. We dress and I do my best to make us look as presentable as possible as we descend the stairs together.
Simon
Cake Simon is still there when we get back to the main floor of the house. He’s (it’s?) standing near the wall in the sitting room where Lady Ruth and Jamie are entertaining Penelope and Shepard. (Shep must have arrived while we were upstairs) Baz sees Cake Simon and glares at Penelope.
“I told you to deal with this!” he seethes.
“She can’t yet,” Lady Ruth says mildly. I try to think of her as my Gran, but the title hasn’t stuck in my head.
Baz schools his face neutral and turns to her. “What does that mean?”
“Have you heard of a golem before, Baz?” she asks.
I shake my head. Baz’s eyes flick to Cake Simon and back to Lady Ruth. “That’s cake, not clay.”
“And yet it is a golem,” she says.
Baz pinches the bridge of his nose. “But it’s Simon! And this isn’t even the Jewish community! How can a cake duplicate of Simon be a golem?”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Basilton,” Lady Ruth’s gaze is level. There’s something calculating in it. She’s testing him. “Look around you, Mr Pitch. Really look.”
He does. He scans around the room. His eyes pause on the doorways and he focuses for a few moments on a glass display case full of candle holders, fancy looking wine glasses, and other things that are probably magickal artifacts I never paid attention to before. He turns back to Lady Ruth and properly studies her.
“Oh… But that…” Baz doesn’t finish whatever that thought is. What is it about this room that has Baz stammering? “But I just had a lemon and prawn sandwich right here last week!” I am getting more lost in this conversation by the second.
“Imitation. Kitchen spells are rather a specialty of mine.”
Baz frowns.
“Magic is davka funny sometimes,” she smiles.
Baz jerks his head toward Cake Simon. The golem, I guess. “You think this is funny?”
“I’m lost,” I say. “Is anyone going to fill me in?”
Baz sinks onto a loveseat, still looking between me and Lady Ruth. “The floor is yours.”
I sit down next to him and let him take my hand.
Lady Ruth explains that golems are magickal creatures made of clay that are created in times of need to protect the Jewish community from antisemitic violence. Growing up in care and going to a school of magic, I never learned much of anything about Judaism. I don’t even know if there were any Jewish people at Watford. The topic never came up.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “That doesn’t explain how Penny accidentally made a golem here… out of cake.”
“I concede that this scenario is rather unusual, but little is ever usual with you, is it, Simon?” There’s no bite in her words. She is only acknowledging an objective reality. But I’m still confused.
“Me? I didn’t make the golem.”
“And yet it is still yours,” Penny says.
“Mine?” I ask. “But I’m not even Jewish!”
“Technically, that’s not true,” Baz says quietly.
“What?!” I look between Baz, Penny, Shepard, my grandmother, and the golem.
“Simon,” Penny says. She’s been awfully quiet this whole time. “Traditional Jewish law is rather specific. It has something called matrilineal descent. It means that anyone born to a Jewish mother is Jewish, no matter how they personally practice or how they were educated.”
“Simon, dear,” Lady Ruth says. “I was going to give you some more time to get to know us before I broached any of this, but it seems that is not in the cards. The Salisburys were living as hidden Sephardi Jews in England before the last expulsion ended. I’m Jewish. My Lucy was Jewish.”
“Oh,” I say.
Baz squeezes my hand again. The room falls silent while I think.
“So you’re saying that according to Jewish customs, I’m Jewish?”
“Yes,” Lady Ruth says.
“Even though I don’t know the first thing about it?”
“Yes,” Jamie says. His expression is strange, almost wincing.
I can feel everyone watching me, waiting for me to react. I don’t know how to react. I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t know how I am supposed to feel. Am I supposed to feel anything? I’ve never been religious. I don’t have magic anymore. I can’t even feel it. If there any any spells that are unique to Jewish mages, I couldn’t learn them.
“Are you alright?” Baz asks.
“Am I not supposed to be? I don’t know what any of this means.” My wings twitch nervously and I stand up to give them room. “I thought I was coming for a birthday party, not another identity crisis.”
“It doesn’t have to be a crisis, dear,” Lady Ruth says. “You don’t have to do anything with this information right away. Or at all. Your path is your own. I’m happy to discuss this with you as much or as little as you like whenever you’re ready.”
“But what about that?” Baz draws our attention back to Cake Simon.
“He said he is here to answer a question that Simon can’t answer himself,” Penny says.
“It talks?”
“Not exactly. He writes with his finger.”
“What’s the question?” I ask.
“We don’t know,” Penny says.
“Well that’s just great,” Baz snaps.
My stomach growls.
“Shall we go to the dining room?” Jamie suggests.
“Yes, let’s,” Lady Ruth agrees and leads the way.
We all file through the house, Penny in the rear, spelling away Cake Simon’s footprints as he walks. The dining room is no less grand without the family Excalibur protruding from the table. There are stands full of sandwiches and all sorts. I waste no time turning a chair backwards to make room for my wings to splay out behind me, sitting down, and loading a plate. Everyone except for Cake Simon joins me; he stands at relaxed attention by the door. Lady Ruth is the last to sit, despite being the first person in the room. She goes to a small sink that I’d never noticed before in the corner, uses a double handled cup to pour water over her hands, murmurs something under her breath, dries her hands, and sits in her seat across from me. She murmurs again before taking her first bite of an egg and cress sandwich.
Baz watches this whole progression intently, but says nothing about it. He eats his sandwiches slowly, his hand in front of his mouth. He’s been making a lot of progress controlling his fangs, but something has him so shaken that he seems to be having trouble with it.
Baz
I have so many questions I don’t know where to start.
This house. Is the whole thing spelled? I’ve been here before, but I never saw the mezuzahs before. I never saw the display case full of candlesticks and kiddush cups and menorahs and spice boxes and a huge ram’s horn. I never saw the handwashing sink in the corner of the dining room. How?
Lady Ruth. Has she been code switching with non-Jewish mages? I’ve never heard her use terms like “davka” in all the years I’ve known her. How have I never noticed that she wears a wig? How did I miss her doing a ritual handwashing and blessing her food the last time I was here for a meal?
Jews haven’t been outlawed in Great Britain for hundreds of years. Why are the Salisburys still in hiding? Do they hide from everyone or only the World of Mages?
Lady Ruth was perfectly supportive of Simon and me being together before she knew that he was her grandson. My gender aside, if Lady Ruth is religious enough to cover her hair, ritually wash for meals, and have a fucking cake golem materialize when a mage who isn’t even Jewish botches a baking spell in her house, will she still be okay with her only grandson dating a goy?
Will this whole situation force Simon to choose between his newfound family (and an entire community to go with it) and our relationship?
I want answers. I want them all now. And I can’t ask any of my questions. This is Simon’s revelation. Simon’s family. And it’s Simon’s birthday party.
Will the golem go stale if we don’t figure out what the question is fast enough? What can a confection answer that Simon can’t?
Today was supposed to be a piece of cake.
Lady Ruth
I wasn’t planning to broach the topic of being Jewish until Simon had a chance to get to know us. I was definitely not planning to bring it up so close to the Three Weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av. He’s experienced too much. Too many traumas. Too many scars. Too many changes. Too much rejection.
Will he want to engage with his Judaism at all? Will he want to participate in the community?
It’s a hard path ahead if he does. He struggles with speaking one language already. Will he want to learn anything about Jewish practice? He’s been forced to kill and kill and kill. How will he feel observing Yom Kippur? He’s been deprived of so much. Will he ever want to keep kosher or will he feel like he’s being deprived all over again? Can he learn to slow down and rest on Shabbat? Will he want to? Will he want to go to synagogue?
Did he have a brit milah? Did Lucy live long enough to get him one? Did Davy do something to prevent it? He can’t even have an aliya if he hasn’t had a brit. Will this be just one more thing that dangles a community in front of him and holds it just out of reach or makes him bleed? How would we find out? It’s not anyone’s preferred birthday dinner table conversation. Excuse me, Simon. I hope you’re enjoying your salami. Are you, by chance, circumcised? Oh dear. Someone please give Baz the Heimlich. I think he’s choked on his walnuts. I don’t want to scare him off. There must be a delicate way to approach this.
Simon
Lady Ruth is unusually quiet during the meal. She keeps looking between me and the cake golem that I know is still behind me. I think she must be trying to figure out what question he’s supposed to answer. I can almost see the gears turning. But she looks troubled.
Baz is quiet too. I think he’d be doing the same thing as Lady Ruth if he were across from me instead of next to me. As it stands, he’s staring into the middle distance, his jaw stiff. I rub his thigh under the table and he releases the breath he’s holding. It’s the closest he’ll get to jerking out of his reverie.
Penny keeps looking from me to Baz to Lady Ruth to the golem, and back to me, her brows knit in a frown. Magic. The second there’s a magickal mystery, that’s all they’ll ever think about, isn’t it? Magic forbid they take a moment to have a good time. Literally. Only Shepard and Jamie are eating and smiling like they’re enjoying a birthday party.
I roll my eyes and resist the urge to do or say anything that will hurt people’s feelings. I think Shep notices because he launches into stories about creatures he’s met that have Jamie laughing raucously. I give him a grateful smile and try to put my attention on the conversation instead of the people who are barely listening to it.
“Where did you find this guy?” Jamie says. “He’s hilarious!”
“At a supposed Renaissance Fair where Normals dress up like Tinkerbell and sell fake magickal paraphernalia,” Baz says, apparently recovered enough to speak as if he wasn’t just in his own little world. He returns my earlier gesture, rubbing my thigh under the table. I think it is to get back in sync with what the mood today was supposed to have.
Penny catches on too and eventually the two of them launch into the story of how they got Shep out of being engaged to a demon. Baz and I have heard it already, but Jamie and Lady Ruth haven’t. I’m making my way through my third plate full of sandwiches. Almost everyone else has finished eating and leaned back in their chair. When Penny gets to the part where she realized that the contract was void because the name was wrong, Lady Ruth’s eyes go wide.
“That’s it!” She says.
“That’s what?” I ask.
“I think I might know what the question is.”
“Really?” Penny looks relieved.
Lady Ruth gets up and walks around the table to get closer to the golem. I don’t know why, but I feel compelled to join her. It can’t be because of any spell. Those don’t work on me anymore. I can’t even feel magic now. I just know something important is about to happen.
My cake doppelganger keeps his eyes— his blueberries?— on me as we approach. His face is not detailed enough to convey any subtle expressions, but his look feels appraising. His tail is lashing behind him and his wings are folding themselves open and closed just a little. I rake my fingers through my hair and the golem does the same in his candy floss. (How he doesn’t leave any frosting behind there when it stuck all over Baz earlier is a mystery.) I frown and the golem mirrors me.
Baz
Simon and the cake golem are mirroring each other’s very gesture. It isn't just that Simon’s tail and the golem’s tail are both swinging about. They aren’t both just fidgeting with their wings. The angles of the motions are exact. There’s no delay. The golem isn’t copying Simon. It’s like its movements are following the same impulses as Simon’s.
There has to be magic happening here. But what? Simon is magickally inert. He can’t cast it and he can’t be cast upon. But the cake Simon is clearly not inert at all. It is made by magic. Its entire existence is magic.
I walk over to them and take Simon’s hand. The golem’s hand twitches in my direction, but then drops back to its side. It frowns at our hands for a moment before looking back at Simon’s face. Does it have emotions? Is it jealous? Its tail and wing movements are still mirroring Simon’s; its face goes back to matching his confused frown. Their heads are tilted to the side identically.
Simon
Baz is holding my hand as I stare into Cake Simon’s blueberries. I feel like something important is happening. I feel like I’m missing something that everyone else understands again. I want someone to give me the answers.
“Are you immune to magic?” Baz asks.
Cake Simon shakes his head.
“Does the question have to do with that?”
Cake Simon nods.
“Is the question a spell?”
Another nod.
“Do I know it?”
He shakes his head.
“Do I?” Lady Ruth asks.
He nods.
“I don’t have magic anymore,” I say. “How do I ask the question if I can’t cast it?”
He points at Lady Ruth. She nods.
“Does the question pertain to Simon’s standing in the Jewish community?”
A nod.
Lady Ruth turns to me. “Forgive me, Simon. I think I know what the question is. You might find it rather intrusive. Would you like this to be a little more private?”
I shrug. “I’m okay.” I wouldn’t dream of sending Baz away, and Penny and I have a no secrets pact (and she’s the one who created Cake Simon in the first place). I’m not going to ask only Shep and Jamie to leave. “Everyone here is family.”
Lady Ruth gives me a soft look and squeezes my other hand. Then she aims her wand at Cake Simon and casts, “?ויקרא שמו בישראל”
The red S on Cake Simon’s forehead morphs into a ש. More words appear over his head in letters made of bold, black ink:
שמעון שלג בן אברהם
I can’t read it. But I also don’t know what Lady Ruth cast, so I don’t know what question he is answering.
Lady Ruth heaves a sigh of relief and reads aloud. “Shimon Sheleg ben Avraham.”
“Oh, thank God,” Jamie says and then mutters, “fucking hell.”
“Was that the question?” Lady Ruth asks. “Is your mission complete?”
Cake Simon nods and Lady Ruth pulls Baz and me away from him in time for him to take flight. He doesn’t go far, though. He lands in a seated position in the middle of the table and is completely still.
I’m as confused as ever. But Baz is grinning, so something must be good news. “What did you ask him?” I say.
“Come back to the table, dear,” Lady Ruth says. “It seems that dessert is served.”
I let Baz lead me back to my seat.
“The phrasing is a statement, but it is usually intoned as a question.” Lady Ruth is still staring at the inky lettering over Cake Simon’s head, which is starting to fade. There are tears forming in her eyes, but she’s smiling. “It means, ‘his name will be proclaimed among Israel.’”
“I don’t follow,” I say.
“When a Jewish boy is born, he does not receive his Hebrew name right away. Even if the parents put something on a secular birth certificate, his Hebrew name isn’t official until he is ritually circumcised on his eighth day of life.”
I feel my face heat up. When Lady Ruth asked me if I wanted privacy, I had no idea that she meant we were going to be discussing the absence of my foreskin in front of everyone I love. Baz squeezes my hand.
“I know this must feel like a horribly awkward conversation, but this is a good thing, Simon,” she says. “The fact that we were able to reveal a Hebrew name means that you had the ritual done correctly. It means that Lucy lived long enough to have it done. It means that you can fully participate in any Jewish community or ritual role you want.”
“What?” I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being confused.
Jamie says, “There are certain things that a Jewish man can traditionally only do if he has had a brit milah. That’s what the circumcision ritual is called. Without it, he’s still Jewish, but cannot do all of the same rituals. The point is that the choice of how much you want to engage with any of this is yours.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. I guess that is a good thing.
“But it’s even better than that,” Jamie grins.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Shimon Sheleg means Simon Snow, and ben Avraham means…”
“Son of Avraham,” Baz interrupts. “The forefather, Abraham.”
“Exactly!” Jamie says.
“But my father’s name isn’t Abraham. We know that,” I say. “ It’s… Davy… David.” I mutter.
“Biologically, yes,” Lady Ruth says. “But ritually, no. Your status as a Jew is passed down from mother to child, but tribal affiliation within the Jewish People is passed down by the father. Davy, may his name be forgotten, was not Jewish, so he didn’t have a tribal affiliation to give you. In that case, your father’s name defaults to our first forefather, Avraham.”
“Simon,” Baz squeezes my hand. “Within the Jewish community, you’re free of him. Unconnected. He’s a non-entity.”
“Oh.” I can feel my eyes burning. Baz hugs me to his chest and lets me breathe. Baz didn’t have his normal shower products, so he smells like some unnameable scent instead of cedar and bergamot. But I can still smell him underneath it, like cool water, like crisp, cool air in a cave. Baz rubs my back between my wings.
“Happy birthday, love,” he whispers in my ear.
When I let go of Baz, the sandwiches are gone from the table, replaced by an assortment of cakes- regular ones, not shaped like people. We all have fresh plates. One of the cakes has candles and the words, “Happy birthday, Simon!” on it. It has a border of cherries around the edges.
“Shall we?” Lady Ruth asks.
I nod. The rest of the birthday party proceeds like I might have expected if I had much experience with birthday parties. We eat cake. (There was some debate about whether we should eat the deactivated cake golem until I cut myself a slice of its face. It’s only cake now. Who would I be if I let cake go to waste?) There’s talking and laughing and people give me presents. It’s mostly stuff for our flat since there’s still almost nothing in it.
When it’s time to go, Lady Ruth gives me a tight hug. “I know today went a little off target. Are you okay, dear?”
I hug her back. “Yeah. I guess I have a lot to think about.”
“You can ask me about it anytime. But I won’t push you. You’ve been forced into enough. Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
She takes a moment to choose her words. “The World of Mages chewed you up and spat you out. It gave you a taste of community, asked you to save it, and then abandoned you when you succeeded at doing so and lost your magic. The Jewish Community is not perfect. It is factious and splintered and scattered. But no matter what you can and can’t do, no matter what you choose, your status as a Jew is equal to every other, from the most learned of rabbis to the most secular of everyday people. This is something that no one can take away from you.”
I think about that. “Is there a Hebrew word for grandmother?” I ask.
She looks up at me, her eyes shining. “Yes. It’s savta.”
“Do you want me to call you that?”
“More than anything, Simon.” I thought she was hugging me tightly before. I underestimated her. She squeezes me like she wants to break a rib.
I squeeze her back more carefully. “Thank you for the party, Savta. I’ll see you later, yeah?”
She lets me go and says, “L’hitra’ot. Until the next time, dear.”
I pull my coat over my folded wings and let Baz guide me back to the Tube.