By late summer, the valley smelled like warm dust and cut grain.

Lorne liked that smell. It threaded through everything—through the cloth of her apron, through the cracks in the shop door, through the air above the loaves as if the fields themselves were leaning in to see what their grain had become.

Harvest always made the bakery feel taller.

Farmers came in straighter, shoulders wide with work instead of winter. Children bounced rather than trudged. Even the coins sounded different when they hit the counter—lighter, somehow, as if people were paying for celebration instead of survival.

This year, though, the tall feeling had a wobble in it.

“Flour’s good, but not great,” Bryn said, flipping open the ledger as he leaned on the bench. “We’ve got enough for the orders we’ve promised, plus a little extra. But not ‘feed the whole river’ extra.”

“Who’s asking us to feed the whole river?” Lorne asked, dusting a proofing basket with flour.

She’d been up since before first light, shaping the first run of harvest rounds. They were smaller than Lantern loaves, less solemn, but they still carried weight. Families ordered them to mark the first cutting, the last sheaf, the moment they could look at their stores and breathe again.

Mila, at the stove, stirred a pot of syrup for the honey glazes. “The river guild is,” she said quietly. “Or part of it.”

Bryn snorted. “Kett,” he said. “Of course.” Lorne looked up sharply.

“He’s back?” she asked.

Mila nodded. “He came in yesterday while you were fetching eggs,” she said. “Asked Crumb to think about something.”

Lorne set the basket down a little too hard.

“No one told me,” she said.

“You would’ve stopped thinking about braids entirely,” Bryn said. “We need your brain on wheat sheaves, not river schemes.”

Lorne made a face and reached for another round of dough. “What did he want?” she asked.

Mila hesitated.

“Crumb said we’d talk about it this morning,” she said. “He wanted all of us there.” “That sounds bad,” Bryn muttered.

“Not necessarily,” came Crumb’s voice from the doorway. “Sometimes it sounds like that because we care.”

He came in from the back, wiping his hands. His hair was damp around the edges, as if he’d washed his face in cold water and not quite finished drying.

“Put that one down,” he told Lorne, nodding at the half-shaped round in her hands. “It can rest a moment. We need heads more than hands right now.”

She set the dough on the bench and wiped her fingers on her apron, feeling oddly exposed without something to shape.

Crumb moved to the main bench and set a folded piece of paper there. It was heavier than most—good stock, guild paper.

“Kestrel brought this from upriver,” he said. “It’s not just him asking. It’s a lot of people, written in his hand.”

He unfolded it.

Lorne caught glimpses of neat lines, tidy columns. The script was smaller than Bryn’s, more orderly than Crumb’s. At the bottom were several signatures, some smudged as if they’d been signed in a hurry.

“What happened?” Mila asked.

“Blight,” Crumb said. “Upriver. Two valleys over. A rot got into their grain stores. They didn’t notice in time. Half their flour’s gone sour or spoiled.”

Mila’s hand went to her mouth. Bryn swore softly.

Lorne’s stomach clenched.

She’d seen small patches of rot before—in sacks left damp too long, in the corners of neglected mills. But a whole valley?

“They have nothing?” she asked.

“They have some,” Crumb said. “Not enough for winter. Barely enough for autumn if they stretch it until the bread’s thin as paper.”

He tapped the paper.

“The guild is organizing relief shipments,” he continued. “They’re asking every bakery along the Pathling to do what it can. Kett wrote, ‘We know you’re not big. But you’re good. And good bread travels better than bad.’”

Bryn glanced at the ledger.

“And by ‘do what it can,’ they mean… what, exactly?” he asked. “Give them coin? Flour? Loaves? All three?”

“Loaves,” Crumb said. “Sturdy ones. Ones that can ride in wagons without sulking. They’re setting aside some of the guild’s grain stores for it, but they need ovens.”

He looked at each of them in turn.

“He’s asking if we’ll bake a batch,” Crumb said. “Or several. Loaves that won’t be sold here. Won’t go on our shelves. Won’t be eaten by faces we know.”

Lorne felt her throat tighten.

“All of them… going away?” she asked. “None for the valley?”

“Not from those batches,” Crumb said. “We’d still bake for here. We’re not emptying our own jars. But if we say yes, some of the flour that could’ve become crowns and extra rounds will become road loaves instead.”

Bryn made a low noise.

“How much flour are we talking?” he asked. “In numbers. Not in ‘some’ and ‘a bit.’” Crumb slid the paper toward him.

“They’re hoping for twenty loaves from us per run,” he said. “More if we can. Kett wrote ‘you decide where your line lives.’”

Bryn scanned the figures, lips moving.

“With the guild’s flour subsidy,” he said slowly, “we wouldn’t be paying full cost. But we’d still be using time, heat, hands. We’d have less room for extra harvest orders.”

“Less crowns?” Lorne asked before she could stop herself.

She could already see them in her mind—the golden rings she’d only just mastered, sitting in the window like little suns.

Crumb heard the catch in her voice.

“Maybe,” he said gently. “Not none. Fewer.” Mila stared at the paper.

“Are all the other bakeries doing it?” she asked. “Along the river?”

“Some are,” Crumb said. “Some can’t. Some won’t.” He shrugged. “Kett thought of us because we’ve already talked about.…” He glanced at the slate. “What travels and what doesn’t.”

Lorne’s eyes followed his.

The board still bore their chalked columns:

House Hearth Open Hand

Under Open Hand, in Mila’s neat script and Crumb’s crooked additions, were the simple recipes they’d agreed anyone could have for free if needed. Soup bread. Crumb pudding. Thin-day biscuits. The things that turned not-enough into something kinder.

“This seems like Open Hand,” Mila said finally. “Doesn’t it?”

“Open Hand is free,” Bryn pointed out. “We’d be getting some coin for this. Guild subsidy. Not much, but some.”

“Coin that never touches our counter,” Lorne said, surprising herself. “It goes straight from the guild to the grain merchants and wagoners.”

They looked at her. She flushed.

“I read the paper too,” she muttered. “While you were showing off with the ledger.” Crumb smiled faintly.

“Kett is asking us to treat these as between House and Open Hand,” he said. “Paid enough that we’re not burning ourselves out. Sacrificial enough that we feel it.”

Bryn rubbed his face.

“It’s a good thing I like you,” he told Crumb. “Otherwise I’d run to a nice quiet mill where all I have to worry about is rocks in the grain, not morals in the oven.”

“You’d be bored in a day,” Crumb said. “Two,” Bryn said. “I’d take a nap first.” Silence settled for a moment.

Outside, a cart rattled past, wheels crunching over dry earth. Somewhere down the road, someone laughed too loudly, drunk on sun and success.

Lorne looked at the half-shaped harvest round on the bench.

It would stay in the valley. It would sit on a table she might walk past later. She’d see whose hands tore it. Whose faces softened when they tasted.

The thought of baking whole batches that would vanish upriver, into mouths she’d never see, made something in her chest curl up.

“What do you want to do?” she asked Crumb quietly. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the paper.

“I want to send bread,” he said. “Because if this valley ever rots by accident or storm, I’d like to believe someone upriver will do the same. Because I remember being the boy whose parents whispered over an empty bin.”

He looked up at them.

“But I don’t get to decide alone,” he said. “Not for something that will take your wrists and backs with it. We can say no. We can say yes to less than they hope. We can say yes for one run and see how it feels.”

Mila swallowed.

“If we say no, will they go hungry?” she asked.

“They’ll be hungrier than they would have been,” Crumb said. “But one bakery isn’t going to turn famine into feast. We’re a crumb on the board. Important to the mouth that gets it. Invisible to the ones who don’t.”

“That’s not very comforting,” Bryn muttered.

“It’s not supposed to be,” Crumb said. “It’s supposed to be honest.”

Lorne thought of the first time she’d braided a Lantern loaf. How she’d nearly ruined it and how Crumb had said, “Then we’ll try again. The river doesn’t stop because we fumbled.”

She thought of the time the bread ran out and the way the line had shifted when Crumb stood on the stoop and told the truth.

She thought of the chalk words under Open Hand: Eat the lesson together. “Can I ask a question?” she said.

“You just did,” Bryn said.

She stuck her tongue out at him, then looked at Crumb.

“If we do this,” she said, “are we going to tell people? Here? Put a sign up that says, ‘We’re heroes, give us your applause?’”

Crumb’s mouth twitched.

“No,” he said. “Though the impulse is understandable. Kett asked for loaves, not lanterns.”

“Then how will people even know?” Bryn demanded. “What if they think we’re just… short again? Like the day we misjudged the starter?”

“They’ll know what we tell them,” Crumb said. “If they ask, we’ll answer. If they don’t, the bread will still arrive upriver. Their ovens will smell it either way.”

“That feels…” Lorne searched for a word. “Unfinished.”

“Good,” Crumb said. “Some kinds of giving should feel like that.” Bryn groaned.

“I was hoping you’d say, ‘No, we’ll take every opportunity to be known as saviors and raise our prices by half,’” he said. “Just once.”

“Wrong bakery,” Crumb said.

He tapped the paper once more, then set it aside.

“All right,” he said. “Here’s what I propose. We commit to one run. Twenty loaves. We see how the oven and our backs handle it. We pay attention to who goes short because of it—and we don’t pretend no one does.”

He looked at Bryn.

“You’ll track the cost,” he said. “Not just flour. Time. Heat. Shelves.” Bryn nodded reluctantly.

“Fine,” he said. “But I’m writing it in red.”

“Use whatever color you like,” Crumb said. He looked at Mila. “You’ll watch the dough. These need to travel. Less water. A bit more salt. Think… long road, not soft pillow.”

Mila’s eyes sharpened. “I can do that,” she said. He turned to Lorne.

“And you,” he said, “will decide what they look like.” She blinked.

“Me?” she said. “Why me?”

“Because you care about what we do when we write on bread,” Crumb said. “We need a mark that says, ‘You are not forgotten,’ not ‘Look at our valley.’”

He glanced at their sign through the front window—the stylized lantern sign that hung above the door.

“We are not stamping our name on these as if they were festival banners,” he said. “Open Hand loaves don’t point back to us. They point forward to whoever needs them next.”

Lorne’s throat tightened.

“What kind of mark says that?” she asked. Crumb shrugged.

“That’s for you to find,” he said. “Not today. Not all at once. For the first run, maybe no mark at all. Just good bread that holds. We can add lines once we’ve listened.”

The idea of sending unmarked loaves out into the world made her want to cling to her scoring knife.

But something in her also… relaxed.

No names this time. No wheat sheaves. No crowns. Just… bread. “I’ll… think about it,” she said.

“Do it while you shape,” he said. “Hands help the mind settle.” He clapped his hands once, as if to shake off the heaviness.

“All right,” he said. “Decision for today: yes to twenty. We’ll tell Kett. Tomorrow morning, before dawn, we bake for another valley. Then we rest. Then we see.”

Bryn sighed like someone signing away his inheritance.

“Fine,” he said. “Twenty loaves for strangers. One extra crown for me.”

“Eighteen loaves for strangers and two crowns for you, maybe,” Crumb said. “If the flour holds.” Lorne picked up the half-shaped harvest round again.

It felt heavier now.

Not in a bad way.

Just… more connected.

They started the road dough in the deepest part of night.

The valley was quiet. Even the insects sounded tired. Mila yawned over the big mixing bowl, tying her hair back again with a strip of cloth.

“We’re up earlier for these than we are for Lantern Week,” Bryn grumbled, rubbing his eyes. “Dead people don’t need their bread hot,” Mila said. “Living people do.”

“That’s a cheery thought,” he muttered.

Crumb checked the water temperature with his fingers, then nodded.

“Travel loaves,” he reminded them. “Less water. More backbone. They’ll take longer to chew. That’s all right. Hunger’s teeth are strong.”

Mila adjusted the ratios with a care that made Bryn’s head hurt. Lorne stood beside her, watching the dough come together.

This wasn’t like the crowns. It didn’t shine with fat or pulse with sugar. It was plain, almost dull-looking—just flour, water, salt, starter. The kind of bread you could eat every day until you forgot there was any other kind.

“Smells like home,” Bryn said begrudgingly.

“It will for them, too,” Crumb said. “If we get it right.”

When the dough was ready, they turned it out onto the bench. Crumb divided it into rough portions.

“Not too big,” he cautioned. “These have to bake all the way through without drying. Think… one loaf per family, not per feast.”

Lorne shaped her first road loaf.

It felt strange not to tuck it into a round or twist it into something clever. Crumb told them to keep the shapes simple—slightly elongated, with rounded ends. Loaves you could stack in a crate without them sulking or getting offended at being touched.

“What about scoring?” she asked quietly. Crumb considered.

“For today,” he said, “just a single line. Down the middle. Not deep. Enough to keep the crust from tearing its own way.”

“That’s it?” Bryn asked. “No spirals? No jokes?”

“No jokes,” Crumb said. “There’s nothing funny about being hungry far from here.” Bryn sobered.

Lorne held the knife above the first loaf.

A single line.

It felt like not enough. She did it anyway.

Soon the bench was full of near-identical loaves—modest, neat, quietly determined.

They proofed in their baskets while the sky went from ink-black to bruised purple. Lorne watched the shapes rise like small ribs under a blanket.

“What do you think they’ll do when they see them?” she asked softly.

“Depends who sees them,” Mila said. “Someone who’s been watching their flour go bad? Cry. Someone who thinks they deserved more? Complain. Someone who didn’t expect anything? Maybe keep them hidden.”

“I don’t like that last one,” Bryn said.

“Me neither,” Mila said. “But I understand it.” Crumb slid the first batch into the oven.

“Remember,” he said, as he shut the door, “these loaves will be cut by hands with stories we’ll never hear. That doesn’t make the stories smaller.”

He glanced at Lorne.

“Or our part in them,” he added. “We just don’t get to narrate them.” She nodded, throat tight.

When the loaves came out, they weren’t pretty in the way crowns were pretty. Their crusts were a little thicker, their color a shade darker. They felt sturdy in Lorne’s hands.

She tapped one gently and listened.

It sounded like a hollow, hopeful knock.

“Travel well,” she whispered, surprising herself. Bryn snorted. “You talking to bread now?” he asked. “You don’t?” she retorted.

He considered. “Fair,” he said.

They cooled them just long enough not to sweat in the crates. Kett arrived as they were stacking the last layer.

He looked different in the early light—less polished, more like the river he worked on. His coat was plain, his hair a bit mussed.

“You did it,” he said, running a hand over the top of one crate. “Faster than I thought.” “We’re not going to make a habit of it,” Bryn said quickly.

“Not this exact way,” Crumb said. “We’ll see how the oven feels after this run before we promise you more.”

Kett nodded.

“That’s all I asked,” he said. “Something, not everything.” He inhaled deeply over the crate.

“Smells like the valley,” he murmured. “Smells like work,” Bryn said.

Kett smiled crookedly.

“Same thing, most days,” he said.

He helped them carry the crates to the waiting wagon. The horse snorted, tossing its head, impatient.

“How long will it take?” Mila asked, patting the side of the crate as if that might reassure the bread.

“Two days, if the roads are kind,” Kett said. “Three, if the weather throws a tantrum.” “Will they still be good?” Lorne asked, anxiety prickling her.

“They’ll be what they need to be,” Crumb said. “Solid. Sliceable. Not a feast, but something.” He ran his hand over the side of the crate.

“Tell them,” he said quietly.

Kett raised an eyebrow. “Tell who?” he asked.

“Whoever opens it,” Crumb said. “Tell them these were baked by people who know what it feels like to count loaves that don’t quite reach the end of the week. That we didn’t send pity. We sent understanding.”

Kett studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“I’ll tell them,” he said. “Some, at least, will hear.”

He climbed up onto the wagon seat, took the reins, and clicked his tongue.

The wheels creaked. The horse leaned into the harness.

The crates, stacked like small wooden houses, began to move.

Lorne watched until the wagon turned the corner and the last crate disappeared from view. She felt… hollow. And full. Both at once.

“It’s like sending your braids away without being there to see if anyone compliments them,” Bryn said quietly at her shoulder.

She huffed a laugh.

“Trust you to make it about hair,” she said. He nudged her.

“You all right?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Yes. I don’t know.”

“Good,” Crumb said behind them. “If this ever feels simple, we’ve stopped noticing what we’re doing.”

They turned.

The bake room, without the crates, looked a little too empty, like a table after a party where you’d missed the best conversation.

“How much did that cost us?” Bryn asked.

“In coin?” Crumb said. “We’ll know when you total it.” “In… crowns?” Lorne asked.

Crumb smiled slightly.

“Four,” he said. “We could have made four more crowns with that flour if we’d tried. Now we won’t.”

“Will people be angry?” Mila asked.

“Some,” Crumb said. “If we tell them why and they’re still angry, that’s useful information.” “What do we tell them?” Bryn asked. “If they notice?”

“The truth,” Crumb said. “That we sent some of our harvest away. That we trust the valley enough to do that once in a while.”

He moved toward the slate.

Under Open Hand, he added a new line in his crooked hand:

● Road loaves (for elsewhere)

Then, after a pause, he wrote in smaller letters beside it:

(We’ll never see them eaten.) Lorne stared at the words.

Before she could think about it too hard, she took the chalk from him and added, underneath:

● But someone will.

Crumb’s mouth curved.

“That’s the part we bake for,” he said. “Not the thank-you. The ‘someone.’” Bryn squinted at the slate.

“How do we make sure we don’t… overdo it?” he asked. “Send so much away that we end up like them.”

“We keep count,” Crumb said. “Of flour. Of hours. Of shoulders. We decide each time if this is the day to send more or to tend our own fire. The answer won’t always be yes. It shouldn’t be.”

Mila nodded slowly.

“It feels like tithing,” she said. “But with blistered hands.” Crumb chuckled.

“Something like that,” he said.

He clapped his hands together, sending a small puff of flour into the air.

“All right,” he said. “The river has its bread. The valley still needs breakfast. Back to the rounds. We’ve got half a harvest slate to catch up on.”

They dove back in.

The rest of the day was busy enough that Lorne barely had time to think about the crates bumping their way along the river roads.

Farmers came, smelling of straw and sweat, ordering rounds and rolls.

“We heard you were up early,” one said. “Kett stopped by the fields on his way out. Said you baked for the next valley.”

Lorne froze, knife halfway to a loaf.

Crumb, at the counter, didn’t look surprised.

“He asked,” he said simply. “We did what we could.” The farmer nodded slowly.

“We had blight here, three years back,” he said. “Not as bad, but enough. If someone had sent us bread then…” He shook his head. “We’d have wept in it. I’m glad they’ll get to.”

He put an extra coin in the jar on his way out.

“Make sure you sleep sometime this week,” he called over his shoulder. “Can’t have you falling into the oven.”

That evening, as they banked the fire and scrubbed the last trays, Lorne stood alone for a moment in front of the slate.

Her muscles ached. There was a flour streak on her cheek she’d forgotten about hours ago. Her braids were fuzzing loose around her ears.

She traced the words Road loaves (for elsewhere) with one flour-dusted finger. “We’ll never see them eaten,” she whispered.

She thought of the wagon. The crates. The invisible mouths.

Then she thought of herself, five years from now. Ten. In some other kitchen, maybe, or still here. Baking loaves for faces she could see and others she couldn’t. Sending recipes out in the world that might travel further than she ever would.

She hoped, if she forgot anything from this year, it wouldn’t be this.

That giving didn’t always look like a lantern on a river or a big speech or a line on the ledger.

Sometimes it looked like plain brown loaves, stacked in a cart at dawn, leaving a bakehouse that still smelled like them long after they were gone.

Crumb’s voice floated over from the darkening oven.

“Lorne,” he called. “You coming up? Or are you moving your bed down here permanently?” “Maybe,” she called back. “The bench is softer than my mattress.”

“Lies,” Bryn said, appearing on the stairs. “The bench is wood. Your bed is only mostly wood.” Mila giggled as she passed, carrying the last of the clean cloths.

Lorne took one last look at the board, at the crooked words they’d added over the past months

—House, Hearth, Open Hand, the notes about failure, about saying no, about what to do when coin was loud, when there wasn’t enough, when there was too much.

Then she blew a little flour at it, as if sealing it in place, and turned toward the stairs. Behind her, in the dim glow of the banked coals, the slate glimmered faintly.

A small, silent ledger of the year they were spending in that kitchen.

A list of lessons that would travel with them long after the loaves they baked there had all been eaten—by neighbors, by strangers, by people whose names they’d never hear, whose hunger they’d nevertheless touched for the space of a bite.