Sugar Plum Dreams
Summary: They say you should never meet your heroes for risk of disappointment. Yet baker Ellie Carne is given just that chance when she unwittingly finds herself in a world she always believed to be only 'pure imagination'.
Based on the original '71 film with Gene Wilder. Willy Wonka/OC (though I haven't quite decided whether this will be a romantic relationship or purely a friendship. At the moment I'm favouring the latter but who knows)
Disclaimer: I own nothing except my own sanity...which is questionable, I have to say. If you recognise it, it's not mine.
Chapter One :: Goodnight Sweet Prince
"Thinking about how we mourn for artists we've never met. We don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us to know ourselves."
29th August, 2016
Ellie dropped her pen down on top of her notebook and let out a wide yawn before stretching her limbs to ease the stiffness from being sat in the same cramped position for too long. Leaning sideways a little, she gazed avidly out of the train window, willing the vehicle to go faster.
Ellie simply couldn't wait to get home. All she wanted to do right now was to bury her face against the fluffy fur of her cat, Matilda; to pour herself a glass of wine, light some candles and sink into a lovely relaxing hot bath...
Oh, how she had missed the sound of the sea and being able to bury her toes into soft sand! As much as she loved visiting her sister in London, even just for a week, she found that the dizzying hustle and bustle of city life wasn't really her scene. The crowds, the noise and smog drained her and made her feel claustrophobic, and long for the serenity of the little Cornish village which she called home.
The evening sun cast a soft golden glow, illuminating her tired features. Ellie couldn't help smiling as the countryside that rolled past the window was beginning to look more and more familiar.
Not far to go now...she thought.
What a relief it was going to be to wake up tomorrow to gently lapping aquamarine waves and the air full of the cries of gulls and smell of freshly made pasties instead of an angry cacophony of blaring car horns.
She was hoping the weather would stay fine so she may be able to enjoy those last few snatches of summer before diving back into her crazily busy work schedule which was to begin again in just two days.
She was just entertaining the idea of perhaps heading out to the beach tomorrow for a morning swim, though no sooner had she thought this, the train suddenly began to slow down... With a screeching of brakes, it slowed right to a crawl and then juddered to an unexpected halt altogether.
Ellie's brow furrowed. Hers was the very last station on this line...the train wasn't due to stop yet. Other passengers were turning round curiously in their seats, no doubt also wondering what was causing the hold up.
There came a crackle of static and a voice issued from a speaker somewhere to her left,
"Ladies and gentleman, we apologise for the delay...we are experiencing some difficulties with track circuit failure...we are working to resolve the problem, thank you for your patience - "
"Aw, you've got to be kidding me," Ellie groaned under her breath, slumping back into her seat with a sigh.
How long was that going to take to fix? So much for her lovely relaxing bath! She wasn't going to reach her flat until past midnight at this rate. Another irritated sigh escaped her, ruffling her overgrown fringe.
Merely to pass the time, she fished out her phone from her bag and began to absent-mindedly check her messages, social media and what not. Nothing of interest grabbed her particularly, though she spent the next few minutes answering emails from clients. Half an hour went by; the evening light outside was fading fast...which was more that could be said about this damn train...
Ellie was about to put her phone away again when a certain caption suddenly caught her eye.
Gene Wilder, 'Willy Wonka' star and comedy icon dies at 83
What?
Ellie stared at the headline for a couple of shocked seconds, unable to take in what she'd just read.
"Oh god...no!" she choked out. She didn't want to believe it. It couldn't be true!
Her involuntary outburst earned her some reproving glares from the passengers opposite but she did not take any notice. Fingers trembling slightly, she pressed the link to this horrific announcement.
Alas, it was indeed true...
A heavy, leaden weight settled in Ellie's stomach and an awful coldness welled up inside her the further she read. Her eyes travelled down the page until they landed on one of the photos in the article. Her heart gave an almighty pang.
Willy Wonka. Her childhood hero. The man who had taught her to have the courage to dream.
Suave, unpredictable and darkly sarcastic, Willy Wonka made the impossible possible. He was simply a genius, a magician among chocolatiers. Ellie loved that gentle timbre of his voice, those blue eyes which twinkled with warmth yet had that glimmer of something mysterious and rather disturbing as well. Those unruly curls always trying to escape the brim of his top hat, just begging to be soothed back into place (or perhaps that was only her daydreams running riot again!) He was both intriguing...and just a bit insane.
But those weren't the only reasons why this character meant so much to her...
Eleanor Carne - more fondly known as Ellie - was a baker and cake decorator by profession.
No, wait, scratch that... It was more than just a profession. It was her absolute passion. So much so that she'd joke that she suffered with OCD - Obsessive Cake Disorder. And the one movie that had first helped to spark this passion and was by far her biggest influence, was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
From the moment her eight year old self heard those opening notes of Pure Imagination and saw the beauty of that Chocolate Room, she was utterly hooked.
Where most little girls wished to be Disney princesses, young Ellie dreamed of being some sort of confectionery queen. She was often described as being 'away with the fairies' ... or maybe 'away with the Oompa Loompas' would've been more accurate! Naturally, many of her childhood games involved being given a tour in that magical factory and being told she was heir to a candy throne. She could not recall whether she'd gone as far as to lick her bedroom walls but she dreamed about it and she distinctly remembered begging her mother to let her have a Willy Wonka-themed birthday party. (This did not happen.)
The movie inspired her so much that she wanted to try her own hand at sugary creativity in the kitchen. It wasn't unusual for her to be found experimenting and concocting delicious treats for friends, family and even local villagers.
Baking was her happy place. It gave her a sense of self. There was something truly magical in seeing the way other people's eyes lit up with glee as they tucked in to their favourite dessert made by her own hand. Nothing delighted her more than to hermit herself away, surrounded by bowls of buttercream, spending hours with her long nose stuck in recipe books or video tutorials.
However, by the time she reached her twenties, meandering from one dead-end job to another, Ellie always felt there was something missing in her life...there was that dream constantly lurking in the back of her mind to run her own cake business one day.
Not for the first time, she thought of Mr. Wonka, whose passion had became his profession and in turn he transformed his profession into a wonderful dream.
Inside this room, all of my dreams become realities...and some of my realities become dreams...
So Ellie decided to take matters into her own hands, and after months and months of working her butt off through a blur of cake crumbs and sleepless nights, the Sugar Plum Bakery was born.
While Ellie knew she could never hope to produce an ice cream which would never melt or the likes of an everlasting gobstopper or chewing gum meal, she still hoped she could invoke that sense of child-like wonder and surprise in the things she made. Willy Wonka taught her to keep everything whimsical, innocent and honest.
She named her business, 'Sugar Plum Bakery', after one of her first challenging projects was to make a large array of pretty treats for a Nutcracker-themed party for her ballet-obsessed niece.
Up til the wee small hours of the morning, shoulders aching, up to her ears in pastel pink icing and glitter; sculpting nutcrackers out of fondant, creating gingerbread houses and gingerbread fir trees; cookies made to look like pointe shoes and tutus, candy-coloured macarons, marshmallow fairy wands as light and fluffy as clouds; delicate sugar mice and snowflakes, all meticulously decorated, as she listened to Tchaikovsky on repeat for added inspiration.
It had been difficult, fiddly work but Ellie simply relished being challenged. Something within her soul would come alive. Seeing the absolute joy and excitement that had lit up those children's faces at the party when they saw her Kingdom of Sweets had made it all completely worth it.
Not that it had always been easy...far from it. There were many occasions where her little enterprise seemed doomed to fail.
Yet another thing which her favourite movie had taught her was perseverance and to have faith. She stubbornly refused to give up on her dream, even when the odds were stacked against her...even when her bank balance was close to zilch...even when that storm a few winters ago caused terrible flood damage in her kitchen; even when her ears rang with her mother's constant gibes of "Can't you just get a real job?" or "It'll never work, y'know."
But the Sugar Plum Bakery was her baby which she had nurtured from its infancy and Ellie was proud that she'd ignored the naysayers and watched her baby bloom and grow. She had lost count of the times she had had to pinch herself, for here she was six years down the line with a thriving business, making others happy by doing something she loved more than anything. It was like conjuring her own brand of magic from the kitchen of her little seaside flat.
Ellie glanced down at her notebook before her, where she had been doodling ideas for her latest design: a request for a fantasy-themed wedding cake (an intricate 3D dragon wrapping its long pearlescent body round the sides, complete with sugar lace wings).
A muffled sob suddenly burst from her, eyes stinging as tears threatened to spill. She couldn't help it.
Knowing that the actor who had helped bring the mercurial candy man to life had passed away was much more painful than she expected. It felt as if a little part inside of her had died with him and the world suddenly seemed that much emptier.
At the age of twenty-six, perhaps it was considered weird – unhealthy even – to feel such a way about a person who was fictional but Willy Wonka felt as dear a friend to her as any in the real world. Not that she would ever admit that to another living soul.
She sniffed noisily.
This is ridiculous, she thought, impatiently scraping back the tears which had begun to run down her cheeks, pull yourself together, it's not like you even knew the man.
Perhaps not. But had she not seen the wonder that was Willy Wonka, Ellie wouldn't be the person she had become today. For that, she would forever be grateful to him. He was so much more than just a character on the screen to her. He was her hero, her greatest inspiration...the encouraging voice in her ear...
Anything you want to, do it... We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams...
She looked back at his picture on her phone, her teary brown gaze meeting his blue one.
"Goodnight, sweet prince," she whispered, "Thank you for teaching me to dream."
Ellie leaned her head back against her seat, feeling more tired than ever after reading that heartbreaking news. The train still had not kindly consented to move and unfortunately did not seem to be any time soon. Her eyelids felt so heavy...surely it wouldn't do any harm just to shut them for a bit. Just for five minutes...
The next thing Ellie was aware of was the sudden volume in noise. She awoke with a start to see passengers were filing past her, leaving the train. She unstuck her cheek from the window and squinted out through it. It was properly dark now. The problem with the track had obviously been dealt with and the train had started up again while she'd slept and had now reached its destination. At last!
Yawning, mind still half fogged with sleep, Ellie slung her travel bag over her shoulder and joined the throng of people surging towards the exit. Just one taxi ride later and she would be home, thank god.
With no room in her head except the thought of her bed, she didn't pay too much attention to her surroundings. Nor did she really register a train guard's cheery warning of, "Watch your step there, Miss, it's a bit slippery on the platform..." as a strange thing to say until...
Crrruuunch.
"What the f- ?"
As soon as she had left the train, her feet sank into something soft and cold. Very cold.
To her utter dismay, the whole platform was covered in a thick blanket of snow. Snow? Why the heck was it snowing? It was August!
She looked around. Nobody else seemed to be at all surprised by the sight of the abrupt change of weather. In fact, those people nearest in the station she could see were bundled up in coats, hats and scarfs as if they were long expecting it. The British weather was unpredictable at the best of times but this was extreme. Snow in the summer? Ellie had never seen anything like it! Why was the weather suddenly behaving so crazily?
Drowsiness long forgotten, she had only gone a few paces but immediately began to shiver and her feet were soaked; her cotton dress and battered Converse shoes were no suitable barrier against this unseasonably bitter temperature. It wasn't all that easy to see where she was walking either, for it was dark and the snow was falling heavily.
Folding her arms across herself, head bowed against the wind, Ellie began to trudge in what she hoped was the direction of the road. She had had enough nasty surprises for one night, now she really wanted to go home.
But if Ellie thought the evening's peculiarities were at an end, then she was very sadly mistaken...
As she finally made it to the road outside the station and peered through the swirling flakes, trying to spot a taxi to hail, she suddenly realised something which only added further to her utter confusion.
Gone were the postcard-pretty cottages that made up her quiet little hometown by the sea. Instead, the town she could see laid out before her was definitely not known to her. Ellie stared all around, her heart racing in slight panic.
In fact, nothing at all was familiar. It wasn't home, that was for sure.
So where on earth was she?
I have never written anything to do with Charlie & the Chocolate Factory before so I beg of you to be gentle with me. I wrote this partly as a tribute to the beautiful soul that was Gene Wilder but I also want to dedicate this story to my mum, who was a professional baker herself before her illness stopped her working. Gene Wilder's Wonka was always one of her favourite characters and I have fond memories of my sister and I watching this film with her.
Don't worry, we'll be meeting the Willy Wonka characters next chapter. Reviews would be much appreciated! Until next time, Kitty xx