Mila woke to the bell.

It wasn’t loud, exactly. It was more like someone bumping a spoon against the inside of her skull

—soft, insistent, impossible to ignore. Three slow chimes, then silence. The air in the little garret above the bakery was cold enough that she could see her breath when she sat up.

For a second she had the heavy, sweet moment of forgetting where she was. Then the smell hit her.

Yeast. Smoke. Yesterday’s crusts turning to crumbs in a bin downstairs. The faint sourness of a starter that had been living longer than she had.

She swung her feet to the floor, hissed when they hit the chill boards, and fumbled for her apron. She found it by touch, the ties still twisted from the night before. By the time she’d wrestled it over her head and jammed her hair into a knot, the bell chimed a fourth, impatient time.

“All right, all right,” she muttered, grabbing her shoes. “I’m coming, you old oven.”

The stairwell down to the kitchen was narrow and steep, a leftover from whatever small, sensible house this building had been before someone decided to hollow its heart out and make room for bread. The deeper she went, the warmer it got. First a hint of comfort. Then a wave of heat that wrapped itself around her like a blanket from the inside.

When she pushed through the swinging door into the bake room, the heat became a wall.

The oven was already awake. It crouched in its brick alcove at the far end of the room, its mouth dark, the iron door pulled mostly closed. Thin streams of light leaked out around the edges, breathing in and out with the fire inside. The coals whispered. Every now and then a louder crack of wood popped through, sending a brief flare up the chimney.

Crumb was there, of course. He always seemed to be there when she came down, as if he had never gone up to sleep in the first place.

He stood with one hand on the oven door, the other wrapped around a long-handled peel. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, forearms dusted in flour so thoroughly they looked carved from pale wood. A scattering of grey threaded his dark hair and beard, catching the oven-glow and turning it soft silver.

“You’re five minutes faster than yesterday,” he said without looking at her.

Mila glanced around, half-expecting to find a clock she’d missed. There wasn’t one. There was only Crumb, the oven, and the rough square of pale light on the wall where dawn would eventually reach.

“How do you—?”

He tapped his temple with the end of the peel. “The ovens are worse than old men. Once they’ve decided what time the day starts, they don’t change it.” He nodded at her apron. “You planning to sleep in that, or are you ready to work?”

She flushed and tightened the knot at the back of her waist. “Ready.”

“Good. Bench there. We’ve got preferments that need folding and dough that needs waking up.” He pulled the oven door open a hand’s width, checked the glow, then slid it closed again with the easy, unconscious touch of someone who had lived half his life between fire and flour. “The village will be up in a few hours. Let’s try to be ready before they remember they’re hungry.”

Mila crossed to the bench he’d pointed at. It was already laid out for her: bowls lined in a neat row, each covered with damp cloths. She lifted the first one and inhaled. The smell of it—ripe and full, sharp around the edges—curled right down into her chest.

“You said yesterday these are the ones we started in the afternoon?” she asked.

Crumb nodded, moving past her to a large tub of dough that must have been mixed before she even woke. “Mhm. They’ve been dreaming all night. Your job is to make sure they wake up properly. No one wants sleepy bread.”

Mila smiled despite herself. She dug her fingers into the first bowl. The sponge was soft and elastic, clinging to her skin. She turned it, folded it, coaxed more air into it the way Crumb had shown her. The rhythm of it settled her nerves better than any deep breath.

She had been at the bakehouse for four days.

Four days since she lugged her single trunk off the cart in the crossroads square. Four days since she’d stood outside the bakery’s heavy wooden door, heart pounding harder than any kneading, trying to decide if she was desperately foolish or just desperate.

Her parents’ inn was three roads away, a good day and a half’s travel if you didn’t stop. It had good bones and bad luck: a cracked beam, a roof that leaked, guests who came through thin as the soup they paid for. When she told them she wanted to apprentice here, her father had gone quiet, and her mother had wrung a cloth so tight it nearly tore.

“We need you,” her mother had said.

“You need more than I can give you if I don’t know what I’m doing,” Mila had answered, trying to keep her voice steady. “Let me learn. I’ll come back.”

Crumb had listened to all of this without saying much more than “How early can you get up?” and “Do you burn easily?” She still wasn’t sure if the last question had been about skin or temper.

He passed behind her now with a tray of yesterday’s loaves—what was left of them, anyway. Hard crusts destined to be sliced thin for broth or crushed down into crumbs.

“How’s the shoulder?” he asked.

“Sore,” she admitted. “Not as bad as the first morning.”

“Good sign. Means you didn’t run away in the night.” He slid the tray onto a shelf, then nodded toward the next bowl. “Don’t pet it. Fold. It’s not a cat.”

She realized she’d gone soft, fingers barely moving. She snorted and pressed her hands in more firmly. “You could have just said you’re making stale bread stew if I do it wrong.”

“That is the polite version of what the dough will say back, yes.”

The door to the alley banged open, letting in a gust of air that felt like it came straight from the bottom of a well. Lorne slipped inside, cheeks pink from the cold, arms wrapped around a sack of flour she shouldn’t have been strong enough to carry. Her hair was already escaping its braid.

“You opened without me,” she accused lightly.

“We opened when the ovens woke up,” Crumb said. “Take it up with the coals.”

Lorne rolled her eyes in Mila’s direction as she hefted the sack onto a barrel. “He always says that like the ovens started paying rent.”

“They pay in heat,” Crumb replied, already back at the big dough tub. “Same as you three. Heat and sweat and the occasional burnt finger.”

Mila bit the inside of her cheek at the “three.” Bryn hadn’t appeared yet. On her first day she’d learned that the only thing more predictable than the oven’s need for wood was Bryn being exactly ten minutes later than he should be. Somehow Crumb always had a task ready for him anyway.

The room slowly woke up as they did. Lorne moved to the shaping bench, turning yesterday’s dough into rolls with quick, efficient motions. Crumb folded, weighed, and cut massive pieces of dough as if they were nothing more than wet cloth. Mila finished folding the preferments and moved on to mixing them into larger batches, the wooden spoon biting into her palm.

“Hands,” Crumb said when she started to slow. “You’ll get more done and the dough will talk back to you faster.”

She hesitated, then plunged her fingers into the sticky mass. The cold of it shocked her skin. But as she worked, it changed: from rough to smooth, from stubborn to supple. The more she leaned into the push and pull, the more it pushed and pulled back.

Outside, faintly, someone shouted in the street. A cart rumbled past. Somewhere in the building, a board popped as it adjusted to the rising heat.

“How do you know how much to make?” Mila asked once she could speak without panting. “You don’t have a list, just that big slate with numbers.

”Crumb glanced at the slate hanging near the doorway. Chalk marks spidered across it: loaves, rolls, flatbreads, a few sweet things. Some had neat tallies beside them. Others had question marks.

“Some orders are written. Some are… remembered,” he said. “Market days and festivals, those are easy. The rest…” He gestured with his chin toward the front of the shop. “You bake for the roads, not just the people you can see. Patterns. Seasons. The way certain people come in every third day like clockwork, and others like storms.”

“That sounds like guessing,” Lorne said, not looking up from her rolls.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Crumb replied cheerfully. “But it’s guessing with good data.”

Mila laughed, then caught herself. The oven seemed so serious. Crumb so solid. It felt wrong to laugh where the work was this important. But if he noticed, he didn’t scold her for it.

They fell into the rhythm she’d begun to recognize, even in only four days. Mixing. Folding. Shaping. Brief, careful tending to the fire. Crumb moved like someone who had done all of this so many times that he didn’t have to think about it anymore, which freed him to think about everything else.

“First batch of hearth loaves,” he said at last, wiping his hands on his apron and nodding toward the dough Mila had just shaped into rounds. “Your hands, your loaves. I’ll load this one, but you watch and remember.”

She swallowed. “All of them?”

“All of them,” he confirmed. “If they go well, we sell them. If they go badly, we learn something and we eat a lot of stew.”

Lorne snorted. “We’ll learn to be grateful for stew, more like.” Crumb winked at her. “That too. Mila, fetch the peel.”

The wooden peel was heavier than it looked. Mila took it with both hands, palms slightly slick. Crumb showed her how to slide its edge under each loaf without squashing it, how to turn the board so they sat in neat rows.

“See?” he said quietly, as if the loaves might startle and run if he spoke too loud. “They’re not finished. This is just the last, hottest room they wait in.”

She nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she understood. The dough still looked like dough to her, not bread. Soft. Vulnerable. Ruinable.

Crumb swung the oven door open.

The heat that poured out hit her like a physical thing. It rushed over her face, into her lungs, tightening everything. The inside of the oven glowed a deep, steady orange, coals banked in the back, the hearth stone scoured clean.

“Three breaths,” Crumb said, watching her. “In. Out. In. Out. On the third breath, you slide them in. If you rush, you’ll miss and burn yourself. If you hesitate, the oven will cool.”

Mila counted with him. One breath. Two. Three. On the third, she stepped forward and thrust the peel in, pushing it all the way to the back before giving it a quick, practiced jerk just like he’d shown her the day before.

The loaves slipped off in one smooth motion and settled onto the hot stone.

She jerked the peel back and away. A few crumbs flew, catching the light like dust motes. “Good,” Crumb said. “Door.”

She slammed it shut, heart pounding.

Behind her, the bell over the front door chimed faintly. First guest of the morning, earlier than usual. Somewhere above them, boards creaked again as the cold retreated another inch.

“How long?” she asked, staring at the oven door as if she could see through it by will alone.

“Long enough,” Crumb said. “Not so long we forget. I’ll watch the time. You start shaping the next batch. We’re not baking a single loaf today.”

She obeyed, but her mind kept drifting back to the oven. Every few minutes she glanced over. Crumb never took his eye off it for long. He could be kneading, washing, or talking, and still somehow know when to check the coals, when to crack the door and listen to the sound of crusts forming.

“You’ll hear it before you see it,” he reminded her when she looked up for the tenth time. “Bread that’s done sounds different when you tap it. But first, you’ll smell it.”

“I already smell it,” she protested.

“You smell the room,” he corrected gently. “You’ll know when it’s the loaves. They’ll start trying to climb out of the oven and into the street.”

She blushed and bent back over her work. The smell changed.

She didn’t have words for it at first. It was still yeast, still heat, still the dark comfort that had been rising since she came downstairs. But somewhere inside it, something sharpened. A layer of scent peeled back and underneath it was… golden. She couldn’t think of a better word.

Her head came up. “Now?”

Crumb smiled faintly. “Good. Yes. Now.”

He crossed to the oven and cracked the door. A wave of hot, fragrant air rolled out. Even from this distance, Mila could smell the difference: not dough any longer. Bread.

He reached for the peel, then paused and offered it to her instead. “You loaded them. You take them out.”

Her hands didn’t shake this time.

She slid the peel under the first row, feeling the firm weight of the loaves as they rose onto the board. When she lifted them into the light, her chest tightened.

They looked like bread.

They were not perfect. She could see that even as her heart leapt. One had opened a little too far along the scoring. Another had a slightly pale shoulder where it must have sat closer to the door. But they were bread. They had crust and color and that impossible, warm smell that made her think of home and of places she’d never been yet.

She set them on the cooling rack. Lorne stepped closer, eyes bright. “Not bad,” she said. “For hands that still forget which way is the alley.”

Mila laughed weakly. “I’m going to pretend that’s a compliment.”

“It is,” Crumb said. He was still watching the rack as he closed the oven again. “You remembered the slashes. You didn’t crowd them. Good spacing.” He tapped one of the loaves lightly with his knuckles. It made a hollow, satisfied sound. “We can sell these.”

Relief washed over her so suddenly that her knees went soft. “Really?” “Really. The village will tell us if I’m wrong.”

The bell over the front door chimed again. Someone’s voice drifted in, muffled by the partition between the bake room and the shop.

“Lorne, take the front for a bit,” Crumb said. “You’re less likely to scare anyone this early.”

Lorne made a face but quickly stripped off her floury apron and disappeared through the door, leaving a faint flour ghost in the air behind her.

Mila reached out, unable to resist, and brushed her fingertips along the crust of one of her loaves. It was rough and hot and beautiful. A bubble of pride rose in her chest.

Then she heard it.

A faint, sharp crackle from inside the oven.

Crumb heard it too. His head snapped toward the door. The smell shifted, just a hair—golden darkening toward bitter.

“Too hot,” he said under his breath. “I should’ve banked it more.” He grabbed the peel and yanked the oven door open.

The second row of loaves—Crumb’s own, the bigger hearth loaves for the inn and the Guard—were already too dark around the edges. As Mila watched, the crust on the one closest to the back went from deep brown to black in the space of a breath.

“I—should I—?” she stammered, stepping forward. “No,” he said, calm but fast. “Back up.”

He moved with speed she hadn’t seen from him yet. Peel in, loaves out, oven door open wide to spill heat into the room and slow the burning. Within moments the second batch was on the bench.

The smell was unmistakable now. Not golden. Char. Mila’s stomach dropped. “I’m sorry. Did I—?”

Crumb straightened slowly. The oven door stayed open for the moment, the fire inside grumbling at the sudden rush of cold air.

He looked at the blackened loaves and sighed once, a sound not of anger but of honest disappointment, like someone reading bad weather in the clouds.

“That one’s on me,” he said. “I was watching your first batch and not listening to mine.” He reached for the nearest ruined loaf and lifted it. The bottom was nearly black. The crust along one side crackled and flaked under his thumb. “Should’ve banked the fire. Or knocked these in a little later.”

“But I could have reminded you,” Mila insisted, heart pounding. “I should have noticed…” “Stop.” His voice wasn’t sharp, but it was firm enough that she fell silent.

He set the loaf down and turned to her fully. In the oven light, the lines at the corners of his eyes looked deeper.

“Whose hands touched these?” he asked. “Yours,” she said, confused.

“And whose hands loaded them?”

“Also yours.”

“And who built the fire?” “You did…”

He nodded. “Then who’s responsible for these being ruined?” She swallowed. “You are.”

“Exactly.” He wiped his palms on his apron again, leaving darker smears over the flour. “An oven doesn’t listen to excuses. Only to wood and timing and how much you respect heat. I broke that rule. So the loaves answer to me.”

She stared at the ruined batch. There were eight of them. Eight great, beautiful loaves that were now… not. Her throat felt tight. “Can we save any?”

“Maybe.” He picked up another, turned it over. The bottom was blackened, but when he pressed his thumb into the side, the crust gave way to a softer crumb inside. “They’ll be too dark for the front counter, but they’ll make good broth. Or crumbs. Sometimes the village wants a loaf with more bark than bite.” He glanced toward the front. “But we won’t pretend these are what they should have been.”

He stacked three of them aside, in what Mila was starting to recognize as the “we will find a way to use these” pile, and moved the worst of the bunch to a corner of the bench.

Mila’s fingers flexed at her sides. She could feel the question pressing against her teeth. “Aren’t you… angry?”

Crumb raised an eyebrow. “Do I look angry?” “You don’t look… happy,” she said carefully.

He huffed a small laugh. “I’m not happy. Waste never makes me happy. But being angry at the bread doesn’t make it less burnt, and being angry at myself doesn’t teach you anything except that I have a loud voice.”

He gestured toward the cooling rack where her loaves sat. “What you did right doesn’t go away because I did something wrong ten minutes later.”

She looked from her own bread to his ruined batch and back again. The contrast made her chest ache in a way she couldn’t quite name.

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“We do what we always do,” he said. “We feed who we can with what we have, and we don’t lie about it.”

He closed the oven door most of the way, leaving it cracked to let heat bleed off, then wiped his hands clean and nodded toward the front of the shop.

“Come on. You haven’t seen the shutters yet.”

Mila blinked. “The… shutters?”

He gave her a look that said she was missing something obvious. “We spent all morning getting this place to smell like a promise. What good is that if we keep it trapped in here?”

He led the way out of the bake room, through the short passage that separated the back from the front. The shop itself felt colder compared to the oven’s embrace, though it was still much warmer than the street. Morning light filtered in through the small front windows, pale and half-hearted.

Lorne stood behind the counter, tying off a parcel of rolls for an older woman with a shawl pulled tight over her shoulders. The woman smiled when she saw Crumb.

“Morning,” she said. “You’ve been mean to your fire again. I could smell it all the way down by the fountain.”

“I’ll apologize on its behalf,” Crumb replied. “Lorne will add an extra heel in your bag.” The woman cackled and shuffled out, hugging the warm parcel to her chest.

Crumb waited until the door swung closed behind her, then stepped to the front windows. Heavy wooden shutters were folded back along the inside wall, half-concealing the glass.

He took hold of one and pushed it outward. Cool air immediately rushed in, carrying with it the sounds of the crossroads: cart wheels, distant voices, the clank of the well bucket.

As the shutters opened fully, the bakery’s warmth spilled out, and with it, the smell.

Mila stood just behind him. She felt it, physically, the way the scent of the fresh loaves—hers and Lorne’s and even the faint bitterness of the burnt ones—reached out through the doorway and into the street.

A passerby who had been trudging past glanced over. His steps slowed. A child tugging on her mother’s sleeve stopped entirely, nose in the air.

“This is the real bell,” Crumb said quietly, watching the street. “Most people aren’t awake enough to know they’re hungry until something reminds them.”

Mila watched the man who’d slowed. He stood there for a heartbeat, as if considering. Then he changed direction and came toward the door.

“How many of them would have come in if you’d still yelled over burnt bread?” Crumb asked, still soft enough that only she could hear.

She thought of the way her father shouted when a batch of stew stuck to the pot, the way the whole inn seemed to flinch. She thought of the ruined loaves on the bench, and of the way Crumb had simply said, That one’s on me.

“Maybe none,” she admitted.

“Exactly.” He stepped back from the window as the door opened and the man came in, blinking at the warmth. “Failure’s part of the day. We don’t have to feed it to the guests.”

He clapped a hand gently on her shoulder. It was a light touch, but it steadied her more than the bench ever had.

“You did good work this morning, Mila,” he said. “Let it smell like that.”

Then he moved toward the counter to greet the new guest, leaving her standing in the doorway between bake room and shop, watching the way the warmth and the scent and the steady, unhurried voice of the man behind the counter drew people in from the cold.

She looked back once toward the oven, imagining the blackened loaves cooling on the bench. They were still there. So was the mess, the wasted flour, the lesson.

But so were her loaves.

So was the smell.

She took a deep breath of it, feeling it fill her chest, and then she tied her apron a little tighter and went back to the heat to start on the next batch.