Button and the Pink Cupcake
At the end of a crooked lane there was a little bakery, and on the windowsill of that bakery sat a bee made of wool.
His name was Button. Old Mrs. Alder had knitted him years ago from the last of a ball of yellow yarn and a scrap of brown left over from a winter scarf. She had braided a snug little hood for his head, stitched two curly antennae on top, and given him a pair of wings so thin and golden that the morning light shone straight through them. When she finished, she set him on the sill, patted his fuzzy head, and said, “There. Now the shop has a bee.”
Button loved the bakery. He loved the smell of warm bread at dawn and the clink of the bell over the door. He loved the old wooden table in the corner, scratched and worn smooth by a thousand elbows. Most of all, he loved Mrs. Alder, who hummed while she worked and always said good morning to him, even though he never said it back.
But Button had one small sorrow. Outside the window grew a pot of pink flowers, and every afternoon the real bees came to visit them. They zipped and buzzed and dove into the blossoms, and then they flew away to make honey. Button watched them with his big dark eyes and wished, more than anything, that he could make something sweet too.
“I’m only wool,” he would sigh to himself. “Wool can’t make anything.”
One autumn morning, Mrs. Alder did not hum.
She baked as usual: loaves for the Pembertons, sticky buns for the schoolteacher, a tray of cupcakes with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles for the little girl who came in every Saturday. She smiled at every customer. But between customers, when the shop was quiet, she sat at the old wooden table and turned an envelope over in her hands.
Button could see the front of it from the windowsill. It was a letter from her sister, who lived far away across the sea. At the bottom, in looping handwriting, it said, "I miss you, Rosie. The kitchen is so quiet without you."
Mrs. Alder was lonely. And no one in the whole village knew.
At closing time she wiped the counters, swept the floor, and put the leftover cupcakes into the glass case. There was one left, the prettiest of all, with a swirl of pink frosting as tall as a seashell. She looked at it for a long moment.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she said softly, to no one, and she turned out the lights and went upstairs.
Button sat very still in the dark. His wool felt heavier than usual. Somebody, he thought, ought to make her day sweet again.
Now, everybody knows that knitted things can move a little when the moon is full and no one is watching. It is not something they do often. It takes a great deal of wanting.
Button wanted very much.
He wiggled one woolly foot, then the other. He tipped forward, tumbled off the windowsill, and landed with a soft flump on the floor. Nothing hurt. That is one good thing about being made of wool.
He looked up at his wings. They fluttered, faintly, like leaves in a draft. He had never tried to fly before. He took a deep breath, which is hard to do when you have no lungs, and buzzed them as hard as he could.
He rose an inch. Then two. Then he wobbled sideways and bumped into a flour sack. But on the third try he made it all the way up to the top of the glass case, where the moonlight lay in a silver square.
The case was heavy, but the little door at the back did not quite close. Button pushed it with both paws. He reached in, and very, very carefully, he hugged the last cupcake to his chest. It was almost as big as he was. The frosting tickled his chin and smelled of strawberries.
Getting down was harder than getting up. He hopped and fluttered and half-fell and half-flew, and by the time he reached the old wooden table his antennae were bent and there was a dab of pink on his nose. But the cupcake was perfect. Not one sprinkle was lost.
He set it down right in the middle of the table, where the morning sun would land first.
Then he looked at it and frowned. It was lovely, but it looked lonely. A gift needed more.
Button remembered the flower pot by the door. Over the past week, its pink blossoms had begun to drop their petals, and Mrs. Alder had been too busy to sweep them up. So he gathered them, one by one, carrying each petal over his head like a little umbrella. Pink ones and pale yellow ones, curled at the edges and soft as cheeks. He laid them in a circle around the cupcake until it looked like a flower itself.
By the time he finished, the sky outside was turning gray. His legs ached in that woolly way that means you have done something important. He climbed up beside the cupcake, sat down, and held it steady with both paws, just in case.
And that is how Mrs. Alder found him.
She came down the stairs in her slippers and stopped. The sun was just touching the table. There sat the pink cupcake in a ring of petals, and beside it sat Button, a long way from his windowsill, with frosting on his nose and his antennae all askew.
For a long moment she didn’t move. Then she put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes went bright and wet.
“Well,” she whispered. “Well, I never.”
She did not ask how. Some questions are best left alone. She simply pulled up a chair, put the kettle on, and hummed a little tune to herself, a bit wobbly and a bit off-key. Then she broke the cupcake in two and set the smaller half in front of Button.
“For the baker’s helper,” she said.
Just then there was a tap at the window. A real bee, fat and golden, was bumbling against the glass, peering in at the flowers on the table. Mrs. Alder laughed, the first time all week, and opened the window to let in the warm morning air.
The real bee looked at Button. Button looked at the real bee.
And Button understood something he had not understood before. Some bees make honey. Some bees make a lonely day a little less lonely. And both, in their own way, are very sweet indeed.
When the shop opened that morning, Mrs. Alder was humming again. And Button was back on his windowsill, a little crooked, a little sticky, and happier than any bee has ever been.
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