The Sugar Wife

Christina Ladd

O nce there was a baker who wished to wed. Normally it is not difficult for a man of this profession to find a wife. After all, everyone needs their daily bread. But this man was no prize: the sugar of his cakes had rotted most of his teeth, and whether to avoid unsettling his customers or simply out of natural sullenness, he never smiled.

The baker made a few clumsy inquiries to those above his station, but his offers were rebuffed, and he was too proud and too well-off to ask for those who might have him. Sullen with rejection, he poured his resentments into his work, pummeling his doughs and stoking his oven ever hotter.

But of course, this is the way of baking: his doughs only rose higher, and in the ovens only became more darkly golden. The more he whipped his creams, the more their froth overflowed like lace; the more furiously he stirred his custards, the silkier their texture.

As anyone of achievement will tell you, though, success is not satisfaction. If anything, it is a goad: he had enough, and therefore he had time to contemplate what others had, and want it for himself.

The baker did not want love, or to share his life. He only wanted a woman to call his own, his and no other’s, who would lessen his labor and do the tasks he did not want to do. And why should he not have it? He had wealth, and he was skilled – far more than most who passed through his door.

Yes, perhaps this was a matter of skill. A man like him, why should he settle for less than he himself could achieve? He deserved no less. And he would make it so.

In a mood equal parts fury and delight, the baker began his great work: he would make a wife.

F irst, he would need structure. He thought of gingerbread and nut brittle, a favorite for confectionary architecture, but dismissed them. Such things were costly, and who wanted a wife with expensive tastes baked into her very bones? Instead, he took cheap flour, salt, and water, and began kneading a simple bread. He himself ate well, and knew that bones from the butcher were honeycombed inside. He shaped bone-loaves in imitation, allowing them to rise just a little before punching them down, twisting them into the forms he required. Then he baked them very hard, until the crust was thick and nearly black. When he hefted one, it was sturdy. It would not crumble or shatter but— yes, if he tried, he could break it across his knee. Good. He wanted use from this wife, and strength, but only if it was less than his own.

On the next day, he started on the real task: making a pleasing form. Around those black bones he sculpted flesh of sweet marzipan, fragrant and pliable. Thick arms to heft sacks of flour and trays of cakes for him, wide hips to balance jugs of milk or oil. As is true of those who are made to feel ugly, he knew beauty better than most, and he made her as lovely as could be.

In his process, during a moment of reflection, he also scooped out a hole on her chest, a rough fistful. It would not do for his wife to lack a heart. But the baker had little interest in hearts, and so he put no care into shaping it, only found a jar of red fruits steeped in brandy and tipped them into the little cavity. There: a crimson mush, sharply sweet. It would never beat, but it would bleed if need be.

He covered the hole with more marzipan, and took far more care in sculpting the breasts atop it.

When she was formed to his standards, he considered the question of her skin. It was the way at the time for women to be pale, and so he knew how he would proceed: he would make meringue, white as porcelain.

The baker broke egg after egg, discarding the golden yolk in favor of the slime, until he had a sloshing bowlful. This he whipped and whipped, grim with glee, until it was time to add the sugar. Because he did not want to risk a wife with cracks or uneven colors in her skin, he would not bake the meringue. Instead he boiled sugar, and when it was ready, he poured it into the eggy foam to cook it from the inside out.

A sugar burn is a burn like no other, for the syrup gets much hotter than even boiling water, and when it strikes a surface it pools and clings, so that even when wiped away, it continues to burn.

If she was beginning to live, her first feeling would be agony.

But oh, how lovely the meringue became, an unstained white he spread quite delicately over the marzipan form. He smoothed it until there was not one dollop or peak, only unbroken softness. For those moments, and in the final hours of crafting her final touches, he was almost tender.

He gave her marshmallowy skin into which he could sink his fingers. Spun sugar hair, the pale gold of just-turned caramel. Slivers of almond for nails. Globes of clear sugar for eyes, set with chocolate discs, milk for the iris and the bitterest dark for the pupils. Pink rosebud lips, and below them, pink rosebud nipples. And lower still, a darker red, deepened with chocolate and salt, layered in luscious excess. He panted as he piped it, nearly stopping, but he knew that whatever was building in this room would abandon him if he paused to indulge himself. So he left the thick, frilling walls of sweetness for later, pausing only to lick his fingers. He found the taste very much to his liking.

At dusk on the third day, it was finished, she was finished. His greatest creation; his sugar wife. In a moment of clumsy tenderness, he kissed her lips – only to come away with no more than icing paste on his own.

She did not wake.

It might have ended there, if the baker had not mastered his rage. He might have smashed up her confectionary corpse, and devoured the slaughter for a week of suppers.

But something stopped him – a selfish pain, of course. A sharp throb from one of his mouldering teeth. And as the agony lanced straight into his brain, he realized what else he might do to bring his bride to life.

For three days he had brutalized the elements of his craft to bring forth perfection. Boiling and beating, pressing and churning, scorching and scalding. Every ingredient of his would-be wife made by methods that, had she even a single nerve, would have been such fine, fine torture.

But there was yet more pain he could give her.

With tongs intended to remove pans from the fire, he began to wrench the teeth from his mouth.

The first he took and howled, the relief from its constant ache no salve to this sharp new anguish. Wiser for the next, he gathered all his steeping liquors. He held each gulp in his mouth as long as he could, macerated his rotten teeth in blood and spirits, and then swallowed the gunk and did it again, until his mouth and his nerves were as numb as he could get them. Then he recommenced pulling.

When he was done, there were seventeen teeth on a tray, and through the haze of pain and drunkenness he had never felt better. He spat blood and set to work.

Thirteen teeth he pressed into her mouth, a baker’s dozen as even as he could make them. The remaining four he used for her adornments: two for her ears, vile ivory studs, and one for her throat, strung on a shred of pastry like a rancid pearl. And the last for her finger, for a bride should have a ring. This most rotten tooth, grimed with blood and decay, glittered most of all.

He wiped his mouth. It was done now. She was done. Black-boned and white-fleshed, with a smile of rotting teeth. The embers breathed upon the stove, and the shadows flickered.

“Wife,” he whispered, voice thick with gore.

The embers hissed as if spattered with liquid, and extinguished themselves. The shadows clotted like overwhipped cream.

“Sweetness,” he whispered, as he had heard other men call their wives. His mouth filled again with blood, even though it had been ebbing. He felt lightheaded, and could not muster the energy to spit, only opened his lips and let it dribble out. The stink of iron muddled the scents of yeast and sugar, but strangely it did not offend. The effect was rich. Enticing.

A name. She needs a name. He knew little of what to call her, other than what she was. “Sugar,” he said, his blood curdled as buttermilk, overflowing his lips now in chunks.

The darkness of the room was complete, but somehow it only served to make Sugar brighter, her white skin shining. And brighter still was her smile, so brutally sweet it could crush your heart to crumbs.

T he baker did not die that night; like his own confections, he lingered on the tongue. The gossips prattled at length about his sudden illness and equally sudden bride, fetched, it seemed, from out of town.

No suspicion fell on Sugar when he died soon after; if anyone mentioned that she had driven him to an early grave, it was with a wink and a chuckle.

And what luck it was, they said, for the sweet young thing, that such a sour old husband should leave her so soon, and with such a fine business to inherit. There would be no shortage of customers or suitors for that one, especially since her pastries were even finer than her late husband’s. Cake as light as lies, ganache as deep as shipwrecks, custards as rich as any king’s coffers.

Every indulgence was deeper and sharper somehow, for Sugar understood the lancing tartness of citrus, the wincing bitterness of chocolate, and even the burning fire of spice.

Each pain, after all, served to enhance the sweetness.

Thanks for reading - but we’d love feedback! Let us know what you think of The Sugar Wife at Bluesky.

Mythaxis is forever free to read, but if you'd like to support us you can do so here (but only if you really want to!)