Week 14 story: The Elves

In a thriving city not far from here, there lived a talented baker and his wife. 

But the passion in the baker’s heart for his pastries and bake shop did not match the funds in his bank account, which ran drier by the day. At last, the baker and his wife realized that they had but enough money and ingredients for one more day of pastry production. 

The baker dutifully prepped his ingredients and bases for his last day of operation the night before, shedding a single tear as he turned off the lights in his shop’s kitchen and headed upstairs to his apartment. 

But when the baker turned up the lights in the kitchen the next morning, he was met with a glorious surprise: a row of pastries and treats, still hot and fresh, all ready their trays. He gasped in delight and called to his wife, who helped him set the treats out in the shop. 

Soon the shop’s regulars began to appear for their morning muffins and danishes. They noticed on first sight how beautiful and expertly crafted the pastries were that day, and began to tip extra at the counter, remarking on the quality of the day’s treats. 

By the time the shop closed, the baker and his wife found they had made enough to not only keep the shop open another day, but to purchase twice the ingredients and bake twice the pastries they had the previous night. 

Again, the baker prepped for the next day before going upstairs, and again he awoke to all his ingredients magically transformed into delightful and elegantly made pastries. That day, the shop saw more customers than usual as the regulars began to refer their friends, and the baker and his wife made far more than usual in tips. 

"The Elves and the Shoemaker." By George Cruickshank.
Courtesy of Wikimedia.

So it went that each night the baker prepared for the next day’s baked goods, and the next morning, he awoke to the pastries baked. He soon began to prosper and his bank account to fill as word spread throughout the city that the bakeshop had the best baked goods that could be had. 

One night, as the holiday season approached, the baker’s curiosity overcame him. 

“How about we stay up tonight and watch the kitchen to figure out just who our mysterious helper could be?" the baker asked his wife.

The baker's wife agreed, so the two waited through the night, peeping through the windows in the swinging doors leading into the kitchen. Just as the baker began to doze off at midnight, his wife elbowed him in the ribs. The two peeked through the windows to see two tiny men, but a foot tall, adeptly mixing and measuring on the kitchen counter, firing up the ovens and making adding delicate touches to the pastries before placing them inside. 

The baker and his wife were astonished, and watched in amazement till it was almost light, when the baked goods were laid out the miniature men left. The baker’s wife walked into the kitchen with tears in her eyes, tracing the expertly formed crusts of tiny tarts. 

“We must do something to repay those men,” she told her husband. “We owe them everything!”

So the next night, when the tiny elf-men arrived in the baker’s kitchen, they were surprised to find that beside the ingredients the baker had prepared, there where two tiny chef uniforms and hats, along with two miniature mixers, baking trays, bowls, and utensils. 

The baker and his wife watched through the kitchen doors as the two tiny men danced in delight across the countertop at the tiny doll baking accessories the couple had purchased that day. They looked on as the elves donned their new uniforms, did their evening baking, and crept out of the kitchen with their gifts as morning dawned. 

The baker and his wife never saw the elves again, yet prospered in all their dealings from that day on, even opening a second shop short time later. 

Author’s note: This story is adapted from a Brothers Grimm tale of the same name. In the original however, the baker is actually a poor cobbler who’s almost out of material to continue making shoes. When he’s crafting his last pair of shoes, he leaves them out unfinished overnight, and wakes to find them mysteriously finished. The shoes are so well-made that they sell for more than usual, and the cycle continues till the cobbler is well-off and discovers the tiny men who are responsible for his success. In the original, when the cobbler and his wife find the elves, they sew them tiny outfits, since the elves are naked. In my version, I simply changed the cobbler to a baker and modernized the setting. I also switched the ending so the tiny men receive their own tiny cooking equipment instead of clothes (I thought having naked elves cooking was slightly grosser than the naked elves making shoes in the original). 

Bibliography: The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales translated by D. L. Ashliman (1998-2013).