By the time the icicles finally let go of the eaves, Lorne’s knuckles were raw from winter. It wasn’t the cold that did it. Not really. It was everything winter sharpened.

Dry air made the dough sulk. Thin flour made it tear. People’s patience went brittle, and so did her own. Every small failure felt louder in the quiet months.

But now, at last, the gutters were dripping.

The square outside the bakehouse was a mess of slush and hope. Mud sucked at wheels. Children poked at the last piles of dirty snow with sticks. The air smelled faintly of thaw and smoke instead of just smoke.

Inside, the bakery smelled like citrus and honey.

Lorne shaped another ring of dough and set it carefully onto the parchment-lined board. The paste Mila had mixed—sweet and sticky with candied peel and crushed nuts—peered out in bright swirls from the cuts Lorne had made.

“Those are going to sell themselves,” Bryn said, passing by with a tray of plain loaves. “They’d better,” Lorne said. “We put half the week’s sugar into them.”

“Crumb called it an investment,” Mila said from the stove, where she was watching a pot of syrup with fierce concentration. “Something about ‘reminding people spring will taste like something other than cabbage.’”

Bryn snorted. “If he writes that on the slate, I’ll pay to watch Mistress Elka read it.” Lorne hid a smile and focused on the ring in front of her.

They were Crumb’s Spring Crowns—once-a-year sweet breads that only appeared in the narrow stretch of days between Hungry Winter and true planting. They weren’t as solemn as the Lantern loaves or as grand as the Harvest rounds. They were… hopeful. Frivolous, almost, but with a kind of earned frivolity.

Lorne liked them.

They took precision. The dough had to be enriched just enough to stay soft without collapsing. The cuts had to be deep enough to show the filling, shallow enough not to spill it all over the pan. She’d ruined three the year before by letting the rings twist too far. Crumb had turned them into pudding and fed them to half the street, calling them “Crowns that lost their patience.”

This year, she was determined the crowns would keep their shape.

The bell above the door jingled. Not the usual two-note jangle of one person slipping in, but a longer, messier clatter.

“Uh-oh,” Bryn said under his breath. “That sounded like coin.”

Lorne glanced up, wiping her hands on her apron. Through the gap to the front, she could just make out a wagon wheel—a strange one, with spokes painted a glossy red—and the hem of an expensive cloak.

“City folk,” Mila murmured.

“How do you know?” Bryn asked.

“Look at the mud,” Mila said. “Everyone else comes in trying not to bring it with them. That coat’s decided the mud should get out of its way.”

Bryn edged closer to the gap. “Heard of anyone important coming through?” he whispered.

“Only the seed merchants,” Crumb said, appearing at his elbow like he always did when they started speculating. “And they know better than to wear cloaks that fancy near a mill.”

“Whoever it is, they smell the crowns,” Mila said. The syrup on the stove puffed out a warm, citrus-sweet breath.

Crumb’s eyes lifted, sharp. “Don’t let them burn,” he said.

“I won’t,” Mila replied automatically.

“I was talking to the crowns,” Crumb said. “But the syrup too, if you like.” He wiped his hands and went to the front.

Lorne tried to mind her own work. She really did. But Bryn’s neck had stretched to an absurd angle, and even Lorne’s curiosity had limits.

She slid another tray of rings onto the rack and drifted closer, ears tuned to the voices beyond the doorframe.

“—quite a place,” a stranger was saying. His accent had the rounded edges of the ports, smoothed by travel. “Busier than I expected for such a small valley.”

“Bread keeps people honest,” Crumb replied. “They come for the crust. They stay for the arguments.”

A short scatter of polite laughter. Lorne risked peeking.

The man in the front of the shop didn’t look like a noble, exactly. His clothes were too practical. But everything he wore fit too well to be cheap. His coat was cut for movement. His boots were polished despite the slush. He carried himself like someone who looked at a room and immediately counted it.

He was younger than Lorne had expected—early thirties, maybe—with short, dark hair and quick eyes that took in the shelves in a single sweep.

One corner of the counter was already crowded with things he’d clearly asked to see: a daily loaf, a winter round, two Spring Crowns still cooling, and a small plate with slices of each.

Crumb stood across from him, relaxed and wary in equal measure.

“I’d heard stories,” the stranger said, picking up a slice of crown. “Some of the caravans talk about this place. ‘Crumb’s,’ they say, as if the bakery itself is someone’s surname.”

“It is,” Crumb said lightly. “If you insist.” He watched as the man bit into the crown. Lorne watched too, even from here.

The stranger chewed, eyes half-closing for a moment. Then he made a small, considering noise in his throat.

“That’s unfair,” he said. “Is it?” Crumb asked.

“Yes,” the man said. “What right does one corner bakery tucked in a valley have to make something like this when half the cities serve bread that tastes like it fell asleep halfway through baking?”

Mila’s shoulders loosened a fraction.

“Some of us wake up early,” Crumb said. “Do you like it?”

“Very much,” the man said. “It tastes like the part of spring where you’ve still got a coat on but your toes are starting to believe in warmth again.”

Bryn looked impressed. “He talks like you,” he whispered. “Deeply concerning,” Lorne muttered.

The man wiped his fingers on a clean cloth. “I’m Kestrel Hane,” he said, offering Crumb his hand. “My friends call me Kett. My ledgers call me Master Hane of the River Guild.”

Crumb’s eyebrows lifted. Lorne’s did too.

The River Guild ran half the trade along the Pathling’s waters. They weren’t nobles, but they didn’t need to be. When you controlled the docks, you didn’t need a title to be powerful.

“A guild man,” Crumb said. “And yet you came in through the front door and paid for your own tastes. I’m impressed.”

Kett smiled. “I find it helpful to know what I’m talking about before I start talking about it.” “And what are you here to talk about?” Crumb asked.

Kett looked around the shop.

“At first, I thought I was here to see if the stories were true,” he said. “Now I think I’m here to make you an offer.”

Lorne’s stomach tightened.

Offers from city men with nice coats rarely ended with everyone happy. Crumb leaned on the counter. “I’m listening,” he said.

Kett nodded toward the Spring Crown. “This,” he said simply. “And whatever else you make that tastes like this.”

“Sweet breads?” Crumb asked.

“Sweet breads,” Kett confirmed. “Special loaves. Holiday rounds. Those things people talk about for days after they’ve already eaten them. We want those in more places than this one square.”

“We,” Crumb repeated.

“The River Guild,” Kett said. “We’ve been talking about adding more food to our routes. Not just sacks of grain. Finished goods. Sweets. Things that make a person feel like the journey is a celebration, not just a distance.”

“And you think we’re a traveling fair?” Crumb asked mildly. “Bake a few crowns, pack them in crates, send them downstream?”

Kett chuckled. “No,” he said. “I’m not an idiot. This kind of thing doesn’t travel far without sulking.” He took another small bite, as if to prove his point. “I’m thinking bigger than crates.”

Bryn’s eyes widened.

“Oh no,” he whispered. “He’s going to say it.” “Say what?” Mila hissed.

Kett said it. “Franchises,” he said. Lorne winced.

“We set up ovens in three, five, ten of the river towns,” Kett went on. “We supply them with your recipes, your methods, your… philosophy, if you insist. We hire and train bakers to follow them. ‘Crumb’s’ becomes not just a place, but a brand.”

Bryn mouthed the word silently. Brand.

Mila’s stomach flipped and she didn’t know if it was fear or excitement. Lorne’s heart started beating harder.

Her braids. On tables in other towns. Her knots and twists and crowns, carried on carts and talked about in markets she’d never see.

“The world gets better bread,” Kett said. “You get a share of the profits, coin enough to fix that crack in your ceiling and then some. Maybe new ovens. Maybe more apprentices. Maybe less Hungry Winter.”

Crumb looked up reflexively. There was, in fact, a crack near the back where the ceiling met the wall. Lorne had traced it with her eyes during slow proofs, imagining it widening with each season.

“And what,” Crumb said slowly, “do I give you?” Kett spread his hands.

“Your recipes,” he said. “The ones that make this place different. Your name. Your consent to let those recipes live in other ovens.”

“The name stays mine,” Crumb said automatically.

“Of course,” Kett said smoothly. “We’d never use it without you. I’m not interested in stealing. I’m interested in partnering.”

The word sat heavy in the floury air. Partnering.

Bryn leaned back from the gap, eyes wide.

“Do you know how much coin flows through the River Guild?” he whispered. “We could have gilded racks. Two ovens. Three ovens.”

“Hot water,” Mila murmured. “In the back. All the time.”

“Rolling pins that don’t splinter,” Lorne added before she could stop herself. They looked at each other, caught.

Crumb said nothing for a long moment.

“You’ll want to think about it,” Kett said, misreading the silence. “Of course. I’d be worried if you didn’t.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a neat packet of papers. “These are figures.

Places we could start. How much flour you’d need. How much we think you’d make. You don’t have to decide today.”

He placed the packet on the counter as if setting down a particularly well-behaved loaf. Crumb wiped his hands before he touched it.

“Do any of your other partners bake Lantern bread?” he asked quietly. “Or Harvest rounds with particular marks? Or write names on ribbons?”

Kett blinked. “I’m not asking you to sell your… ritual loaves,” he said. “Just the ones that don’t need lanterns and stories attached. This crown, for example. The honey braids the girl with the serious eyes was making when I came in. Those could go anywhere. They don’t belong to any one riverbank.”

Lorne flushed and ducked back from the gap. “Serious eyes,” Bryn teased under his breath. “Shut up,” she muttered.

Crumb tapped the papers.

“These are neat,” he said. “They took you a while to write. You didn’t think of this only after taking a bite.”

“I don’t walk into a promising oven without a plan,” Kett said. “We’ve been hearing about you for a while. It was time to see if the stories had legs.”

“And do they?” Crumb asked.

Kett smiled. “They have loaves,” he said. “Better.” Crumb was quiet again.

Lorne chewed her lip. Her head buzzed with images she didn’t want to admit she liked.

Other kitchens. Other benches. Her hands teaching someone else the exact angle to cut the crown’s dough so it opened just right. A line of shops along the river with their sign hanging out front, the lantern sign. People saying, “Oh, you trained at the Crossroads bakery,” with the kind of respect that meant something.

Crumb’s voice cut through her imaginings.

“Leave the papers,” he said. “Come back at close.” Kett raised his eyebrows. “That fast?”

“You said you’d be worried if I didn’t think,” Crumb said. “I’ll think. And I’ll ask my apprentices what they think too. If this changes their lives, they deserve to sit at the table.”

Kett studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll be at the inn. Don’t make me drink their beer for nothing.” He paid for his tastes—overpaid, actually—and left, the bell jangling.

Silence fell in the bake room as if someone had clapped a lid over the oven. “Is this the part where we all pretend we’re not excited?” Bryn asked.

“I’m not excited,” Lorne said automatically. Mila looked at her. “You’re lying.”

Lorne glared, then sighed. “Fine. I’m… thinking about it,” she admitted. “Hard.” Crumb came back in, tucking the packet under one arm.

“Back to the crowns,” he said. “They won’t shape themselves, even for the River Guild.” “That’s it?” Bryn blurted. “You’re not going to say anything about what just happened?”

“I just invited you to sit at the table,” Crumb said. “Not to sit at my thoughts. Let me gather them. You gather yours.”

He nodded at the dough.

“Hands first,” he said. “Mouths later.” They worked.

It was harder than usual to fall into the rhythm. Every knead and cut came with a whisper of what if.

What if there were two benches like this? Ten? What if Bryn never had to run to the mill on a half-frozen ankle because they could afford to buy flour in larger, safer quantities? What if Mila could send coin back to her family without counting every copper three times? What if Lorne’s braids became so well-known that people in cities asked for them by name?

What if Crumb said no?

Lorne’s fingers slipped once, leaving a cut too deep in the dough. She hissed under her breath and smoothed it as best she could, but the ring would open too wide in the oven. A crown losing its modesty.

“Thinking ahead of yourself again?” Crumb asked gently as he passed. “Yes,” she said. “And sideways. And into the river.”

He smiled faintly. “We’ll feed all those directions where we can,” he said. “Without drowning.”

The morning rush came and went. The crowns did, in fact, sell themselves. Some went to regulars who’d waited all winter. Some went to merchants who didn’t know what they were buying until they took a bite and closed their eyes.

At one point, Lorne saw a child press their nose to the glass and stare at the last crown in the basket like it was holy. The mother counted her coins twice before nodding.

“This one,” she said. “We’ll share.”

Lorne’s chest ached in a new, unfamiliar way.

Would that mean as much if there were baskets of crowns in every town? She didn’t know.

After the midday lull, Crumb called them all to the main bench. He set Kett’s packet on the flour-sprinkled wood and opened it.

“What did you think?” he asked, without preamble. “Honest. No varnish.”

Mila twisted her apron strings. “It sounds… big,” she said finally. “And scary. And… good, maybe.”

“Coin good?” Crumb asked.

“Coin good,” she said. “And… travel good. For some of us. New ovens. New people.”

“Same menu,” Bryn said. “Everywhere. People in the city getting the same bread we get here. That seems… fair. They need good bread too.”

Lorne swallowed. “It could make a lot of people happy,” she said. “And it would mean your recipes don’t die if anything happens to this place.”

Crumb’s mouth quirked. “Planning my funeral already?” he asked. “Planning the oven’s,” she retorted.

Bryn snorted.

“Do you want it?” Crumb asked her.

The directness of the question startled her.

“Yes,” she said before she could dress it up. “Part of me does. The part that likes the idea of someone in the port city arguing over whether I meant three twists or four in a braid and getting it wrong.”

Crumb laughed.

“But,” she added, “another part of me is… not sure. It feels like taking the crowns out of season. If they’re everywhere, all the time… do they still feel like spring?”

Crumb nodded, pleased and sad all at once. Mila frowned at the papers.

“My worry is different,” she said. “What if they mess it up? What if they use cheaper flour and don’t tell anyone? What if people eat ‘our’ bread somewhere else and think it’s yours, but it’s not?”

“What if someone eats ‘our’ bread somewhere else and loves it,” Bryn countered. “And never would have otherwise?”

“What if the river ovens get priority when flour is short?” Lorne asked. “What if we start baking for them before we bake for here?”

The questions piled up like unshaped dough. Crumb listened, hands folded.

“Want to know what I thought, the first time I read this?” he asked. “Yes,” they said together.

“I thought,” he said, “‘This is flattering.’” They stared.

“That’s it?” Bryn said.

“For the first breaths,” Crumb said. “Someone rode out here from a city, tasted my crowns, and decided they were worth putting on paper. That does something to a man’s pride, whether he admits it or not.”

He flipped a page.

“Then I thought about flour,” he said. “About how much it takes to feed one valley. About how much more it would take to feed ten with the same recipes. About whose sacks would run thin first.”

He flipped another page.

“And then,” he went on, quieter, “I thought about my teacher.”

They pressed closer.

Crumb almost never talked about whoever had taught him.

“She had a shop near the first bend in the river,” he said. “Smaller than this. No sign. Just the smell. We called it Mina’s Corner because no one knew what the real name was. She baked three things most days: a plain bread, a walnut loaf, and a kind of sticky bun that made grown men lick their fingers in the street.”

“What were they called?” Mila asked.

“Sticky buns,” Crumb said. “She wasn’t much for names.” They smiled.

“Sometimes, traders would come through and offer to buy the recipe for the buns,” he said. “Or to take her on as some sort of advisor to their city kitchens. She always said no.”

“Why?” Bryn asked. “Was she stubborn like you?”

“Worse,” Crumb said fondly. “I asked her once. I was your age. I told her she could have bigger ovens. More helpers. More money. Better shoes. She said, ‘If I teach that bun to an oven with no river outside its door, it won’t be this bun anymore. It’ll be something else wearing its name.’”

Lorne frowned. “That sounds… mystical.”

“It sounded foolish to me at the time,” Crumb said. “I thought, ‘Flour is flour. Sugar is sugar. Rivers are rivers.’ But years later, after she died and someone else bought the shop… they tried to keep making them. Sticky buns, same recipe, same oven.”

“And?” Mila asked.

“And they were wrong,” Crumb said simply. “Not bad. Just… wrong. They didn’t taste like Mina’s buns because Mina wasn’t there. Because the people who came in didn’t tell their sorrow to the dough in the same way. Because the river had shifted its banks a little. I don’t know. A hundred small things that added up to, ‘This is now a different thing.’”

He looked at the crowns on the cooling rack.

“These,” he said, “could be very good in other towns. I’m not arrogant enough to think otherwise. There are hungry mouths and good bakers everywhere. If we shared the recipe, I’m sure some of them would do wonders with it.”

“Then why not?” Bryn asked, frustrated. “Why not help them? Why not get paid for it?” Crumb met his eyes.

“Because I don’t want the story of this place to be reduced to a taste someone recognizes in a port city stall,” he said. “I want people to say, ‘When I was in the Crossroads, I ate a crown that made me believe in spring again.’ Not, ‘Oh, I had one of those at the river market last week.’”

“That sounds selfish,” Bryn said.

“It is,” Crumb said. “And it isn’t. If I sell this crown’s recipe to the river, I’m not just selling mine. I’m selling yours. Lorne’s braids. Mila’s careful syrups. All folded into a name on a board in ten towns where no one knows what Elka complains about or how heavy it feels in here on Lantern Week.”

He tapped the packet.

“Some recipes are meant to travel,” he said. “We already share some with other bakers in small ways. Techniques. Little tricks. I’d happily teach the guild how to make a good daily loaf that doesn’t turn to rock on the second day. But some things…” He looked at the crowns again. “Some things only make sense in the mouth they were made for.”

Mila frowned. “That seems unfair to everyone else,” she said.

“Maybe,” Crumb said. “Or maybe it’s why traveling matters. If everything tastes the same everywhere, why come here at all?”

Lorne thought of the woman and child at the window. Of the way the mother had said, “We’ll share.” That decision had been made because this was not an everyday bread. Because it wasn’t guaranteed. Because it sat in one basket, in one window, in one day.

“If you say no,” she asked softly, “will we always be poor?” Crumb blinked, surprised by the bluntness.

“No,” he said. “We’re poor now because winter was thin and the millers are dragging their feet. Not because we’re small. There are other ways to grow than by stretching ourselves so thin we taste like nothing.”

He flipped to another page.

“Kett isn’t wrong,” he added. “He sees something real. There is room for better bread along the river. There is a version of this where we help that happen. I just don’t think this”—he tapped the crown recipe—“is the way.”

“Could we… choose which recipes travel?” Mila asked. “Pick some as… sacred?” “Slightly dramatic, but yes,” Bryn said. “A sacred menu. I like it.”

Crumb smiled.

“I thought of that too,” he said. “A list on the wall for us, not for guests. ‘These we never sell the names of. These we might share. These we’ll teach to anyone who asks.’”

“Which ones go where?” Lorne asked, drawn despite herself.

Crumb reached for a piece of chalk and turned to the small slate that usually held the day’s tasks.

He drew three columns:

●   House

 ●       Hearth

 ●       Open Hand

 “House recipes,” he said, tapping the first, “are the ones we’d consider letting live elsewhere. The good daily bread. The soft rolls. Maybe a simple braid. These we can change, adapt, teach. They belong to the craft.”

He tapped the second column.

“Hearth recipes,” he went on, “are the ones that don’t make sense without this room. Lantern loaves. Harvest rounds. Lantern Week braids. The little cinnamon knots we only make on the first snow. These we do not trade. Not for coin, not for flattery.”

“And ‘Open Hand’?” Mila asked.

“Those are the recipes we’ll gladly give away to anyone who needs them,” he said. “The thin soups that stretch a pot, the sturdy loaf you can make with almost no flour when times are hard, the biscuits that convince a child to eat something with actual nutrition in it. Those we share as far as we can, no price. That’s… obligation.”

Bryn squinted at the columns.

“So crowns?” he asked. “Hearth?” Crumb hesitated, looking at Lorne. “What do you think?” he asked her.

She thought of Kett’s coat, his papers, his promise of more ovens and less thin winters. She thought of Mina’s buns in a shop that wasn’t hers. She thought of how the crowns had smelled this morning in a room where the frost was still on the window.

“Hearth,” she said. “Even if it hurts.” Crumb nodded. “Me too.”

Mila bit her lip. “Open Hand?” she asked. “Anything we’ve made that belongs there yet?”

“The soup bread,” Crumb said without hesitation. “The one you adjusted last winter when that family came in half-frozen and we were out of everything except stale loaves and onions.

Remember?”

Mila flushed. “That was barely a recipe.”

“It fed them,” Crumb said. “And us. We’ll write it down properly and send it with anyone who asks how to turn old bread into something kinder. No guild contract needed.”

Bryn tapped the “House” column.

“And these,” he said. “Will you tell Kett he can have some of these, but not the rest?”

“I’ll tell him we can talk about them,” Crumb said. “Maybe he leaves with a solid hearth loaf recipe and a sour face. Maybe he realizes not every partnership has to be all or nothing.”

He closed the packet.

“And maybe,” he added, “he goes to the next valley and finds someone else whose bread deserves to travel. We’re not the only good oven in the world.”

“You sound almost relieved by that,” Lorne said.

“I am,” Crumb said. “If all the pressure to fix the river’s bread falls on this room, we’ll collapse like overproved dough.”

He wiped his hands and looked at each of them in turn.

“Here’s the part I want you to remember when I’m too old to lift a peel,” he said. “There will always be Kestrels. Men and women with figures and plans and promises of more. Some of them will be kind. Some manipulative. Most a mix. They will look at what you make and see opportunity. That’s not evil. But you have to know, before they come, which parts of your work have no price.”

He tapped his chest lightly.

“Or they’ll tell you,” he said. “And they might be very convincing.”

That evening, when the last customer left and the shutters were half-closed, Kett returned.

He came through the door without fuss, brushed the worst of the mud from his boots, and leaned on the counter.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well,” Crumb said. “We’re flattered.” Kett smiled. “And?”

“And we’ll talk to you about house bread,” Crumb said. “About daily loaves that don’t crumble into dust. Maybe even about a good roll you can sell for cheap and still sleep at night.”

“But not the crowns,” Kett said.

“No,” Crumb said. “Not the crowns. Not the Lantern loaves. Not the braids we quietly send to the infirmary when no one’s looking. Those we’re keeping.”

Kett studied him.

“Because they’re sacred,” he said, a little dry.

“Because they’re specific,” Crumb corrected. “To this valley. To these winters. To these people’s names. It would be… dishonest to teach them to a town that doesn’t have our ghosts.”

Kett tapped the edge of the counter, thinking.

“You know I could probably find someone to stand across from you and argue that all bread is bread and that you’re being precious,” he said.

“Yes,” Crumb said. “You’d probably be right to a point. But I’d still say no.” Kett’s mouth twitched.

“Stubborn,” he said. “Mina would approve.” Crumb’s eyebrows went up. “You knew her?”

“Everyone who worked the river did,” Kett said. “Her sticky buns were the reason some of us signed on to certain routes. I ate the imposters after she died. They weren’t the same.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out the packet, now folded in half.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll mark the crowns as ‘not for sale.’ But the hearth loaf… let’s see if we can’t get that into more mouths without ruining its soul.”

They talked for another hour, bent over Crumb’s rough notebooks and Kett’s neat ledgers. At one point, Bryn wandered through and nearly tripped over the sight of Crumb and a guild man both scribbling on the same scrap of paper without shouting.

Later, after Kett had gone back to the inn with a satchel of sample loaves, Lorne swept the crumbs from the main bench and stared at the chalkboard.

House. Hearth. Open Hand.

Under “Hearth,” Crumb had written, in his crooked letters:

●  Lantern bread

●  Harvest rounds

●  Spring Crowns

●  Braids for the cart

 Under “House,” he’d added:

●  Daily sour loaf

●  Market rolls

●  Feast plaits (maybe) Under “Open Hand”:

●  Soup bread

 ● Crumb pudding

 ● Thin-day biscuits

 Without quite meaning to, Lorne picked up the chalk. Under “Hearth,” she added, in tiny writing:

● The way we talk about guests when they’re gone

 Mila, passing by, paused.

“Is that a recipe now?” she asked softly. “It feels like one,” Lorne said.

Bryn came in, drying a tray. He read the list and snorted. “If people ever see that,” he said, “they’ll think we’re mad.” “Good,” Lorne said. “Maybe they won’t ask for the recipe.”

They went upstairs tired, smelling of citrus and yeast and woodsmoke.

In her narrow bed, Lorne lay awake for a while, listening to the drip of thawing ice outside and the faint creak of the oven settling.

In her mind, she walked past ovens she’d never see—city ovens, river ovens, mountain ovens—and imagined what might one day be baked there with or without her hand.

She felt the pull of it. The possibility.

But she also saw, clearly, a little boy in the Crossroads pressing his nose to the window for a crown that only existed here.

She decided, somewhere between waking and sleep, that if she ever did leave this bench and teach in another town, she would carry a different book with her.

One for house recipes. One for open-hand recipes.

And one, thick and careful, that she would never copy or sell, only bake from when she came home.

A book of hearth.

A book of names, and crowns, and the kinds of cakes and breads that were not really recipes at all, but stories the valley told itself, one loaf at a time.