103. Free King Cake

To understand how the Blank Check Affair ended, you have to know what is King Cake. In case you are from somewhere where they don’t have  King Cake, well, it is a cake some people have for breakfast on the sixth of January, while opening the Christmas gifts the Magi have brought them. It has the shape of a large and often oblong doughnut and tastes rather like a brioche with a dose of orange blossom water. There is always a little prize hidden in it, usually a small figurine, and the person who gets the slice it is in gets to wear a paper crown and be king or queen of the breaskfast party. The cake also has a bean hidden in it. Whoever gets the bean has to pay for the next King cake.

                                       

Knickknack Nimbus himself told me about the end of the affair himself. And this is what he said:

                                                                                   

“I returned home to see what Mamma wanted and she put me on the phone with Darcy. I didn’t want to tell him I had the check.because I didn’t trust him but, of course, I had to tell, because nobody can say no to the Dark Man. He told me not to move from where I was and to close all the doors and windows and draw the blinds and wait. He would hang up and come for the check immediately, which, he assured me, would be safe with him. I did as he asked and Mamma and I sat on the sofa and waited for Darcy and while we did that I explained to her what was happening. She got scared someone might get there before Darcy did and steal the check, so she put it in a heatproof glass container and burnt it in there. She said she would show Darcy the ashes and ask him to ask her if she had really burnt the Magi’s blank check. He would believe her when she answered yes because you can’t lie to the Dark Man if he asks you to tell the truth. All this took about six minutes and Darcy arrived in seven, breaking a record.

“He immediately phoned the Wise Men, who were already mounting their camels, to tell them the check had been found and destroyed. They were very happy to hear that, because for the first time in their lives they had used a credit card to be able to ride out that night with the presents they had to give away and they weren’t happy about that. They had been given a credit card because word had gotten round that Darcy himself was out there looking for the check and people were betting ten to one the Dark Man would find it. Ernest, Death’s Coachman, had told the Magi that as long as they had credit they could ride, but if they should ever have to make good an abusive blank check the only ride they would go on would be in his carriage.  

“The Wise Men wanted to know where the check had been all this time and Darcy told them all about me.They were so pleased with me that they promised to send me a King Cake with a very different and very special little figure in it every single morning from this Epiphany on to Eternity. They said they would keep sending me one forever even if they were ever eventually forced to move away from this world.

“I told Mama that every morning would be the Epiphany for us from that day on and that we would always have hot chocolate and King Cake for breakfast and that she would always find the little figure in the cake and be crowned queen of the breakfast party and I would always find the bean in the cake because I could afford to provide the next cake.”

Darcy wanted to reward Nimbus too for having made his task easy for him and said he would grant him a wish. Nimbus wished the Dark Man would ask his mother to stay awake from eight in the morning till noon every day. Darcy did better. He asked Mrs. di Limbo to stay awake all day, except for forty winks in the early afternoon and she had to do just that. And now Nimbus is not scared she might turn into a baby or never  wake up again one day from so much fairy resting.

Alpin wanted me to complain to the Magi because when the check was burnt I was minus one Christmas gift, but I did no such thing because Nimbus and I made friends and a new friend is a wonderful gift. My friend sometimes invites me to breakfast. He invites Alpin too, but Alpin doesn’t care to accept these invitations because Darcy has asked him never to eat more than a slice or two of the cake and never to take for himself the figure in it.