What she saw, she loved. This was a town of busy people. Some were busy in a going-places sort of way, carting goods along or just walking at brisk paces towards what she could only assume was their day’s work. Unlike her, they all seemed to understand the illogic of these streets, which wound this way and that at their own whims.
As she walked, Jane occasionally picked someone to follow for a while, either seeing them to their destination or else losing them in all the bustle. The kinds of work people got up to were wonderfully varied. Men beat out filthy rugs, masons repaired stonework, women hawked meats and vegetables, and river-driven mills churned out flour and sawn logs.
The day before, Jane could have seen herself joining in any of those jobs. In a way, they were all part of the tangible, creative work she craved.
Today, though, she was a baker.
Perhaps fate would be cruel enough to teach her that she had no chance of ever baking well. Until then, she was determined to learn everything there was to know about the profession.
This time, the bridge she took over the river was one of several on the incoming-water side of the lake. None of those bridges were quite as big as the waterfall side, but they were still so large and high compared to other bridges she’d known that it was thrilling to look down at the water from the top.
Eventually, she had made her way around enough curving bends to be in direct line of sight with the library. It sat at the back of a surprisingly big courtyard, one engineered with fountains, benches, and grassy areas for resting or playing. Several people were doing just that, enjoying the sun as they took small breaks between their day’s tasks.
Jane shot past all of them with the determination of a rolling boulder, reaching the huge oak double doors of the stone library in no time at all. Walking in, she was instantly assaulted by the smell of old wood and paper. The air was surprisingly fresh. She had expected it to be musty, but this place was obviously well-kept. A certain hint of power in the air told her it was done magically.
While she was standing there, admiring the sheer size of the place, an older man passing with a cart stopped beside her.
“Can I help you, miss? Anything in particular you’d like? A nice adventure, or perhaps a romance?”
“I’m trying to learn how to bake,” Jane replied. “And I have a bit of a background in science, so to speak. I was hoping to find something that might be right for someone like me.”
“Oh, certainly.” The man smiled. “But I’m not the person to help you. How about you take a seat right there? I’ll send someone by who has more expertise in that kind of book.”
She sat down on a mammoth bench, which looked like it had been carved from an entire tree, and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. Within a few minutes, a tiny woman about Jane’s age jogged into the entry area, saw Jane, and rushed over.
“Tom sent me. I’m Emily.” The woman waved as she caught her breath. “He said you wanted to see our cooking books. Weird ones, he said.”
Jane tilted her head. “I suppose so. Is it ‘weird’ to want a more scientific cooking book?”
“Around here? Very. But don’t worry about that. Come on, I have a whole collection of things like this. You are going to love it.”
Emily dragged Jane along through the library, out of breath but talking the entire time. “I’m an archivist! I find interesting books and figure out where they fit. You’d be amazed how long some of them just sit around.”
“Well, they don’t go bad, right?” Jane stretched her stride a bit to keep up with the much shorter girl’s dogtrot. “My old mast… teachers used to say that.”
“They were right, but it’s still sad. Imagine you are a book, you know? Filled with knowledge by someone who just wanted to share it. Then someone else puts you on a shelf and, you know, poof! Twenty years go by. It makes me sad just to think about it.”
“You sound like you really love the books.”
“I do. I consider them my quiet little children. Now let’s hurry. We’re getting close.”
The library was a maze. Jane was even more certain that she never would have found what she needed on her own. Emily navigated the twists and turns with ease, leading Jane around bookshelves and down hallways until they finally entered an out-of-the-way section marked Research and Analysis: Miscellaneous and Diverse.
“Here you go. The shelf you want is over there.” Emily flopped onto a chair, sweating. “I’m going to rest. I am so out of shape from this job.”
“You won’t recommend certain ones?”
“How could I?” Emily laughed. “I don’t cook! I wouldn’t know what spoke to you, anyway. Go take a look yourself.”
From her first pick off the indicated shelf, Jane could tell she was dealing with a different sort of cookbook. Most of them were for serious professionals trying to learn all they could about one specific form of cooking. Books on butchering meat, which she only glanced at before deciding they were too much for her, sat between huge books on basting things, roasting things, or the correct use of herbs in stewing.
Those were all a good sign, but not what she needed.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Jane pushed on until she finally found a cluster of books about baking, each of which was so obviously superior to Gramma Isaks’ tome that any of them would have spared her this trip to the library entirely. She almost just grabbed one at random before a single title caught her eye and made her decision for her.
The Magic of Baking: A Step-by-Step Process for Understanding the Art and Science of Oven-Work, by Felicity Cast.
She cracked it open and took a look at the table of contents. This was organized into sections, subsections, and sub-sub-sections by a person with a perfect logical grasp of how to lay out information. Jane almost cried, even before she got to the introductory paragraphs.
As a metallurgist, I found it easy to locate tomes on any aspect of iron I cared to know. Some were poorly written, surely, but most were well-organized things, built to satisfy the needs of scientists, craftsmen, and workers alike.
When I retired and took up the art of cooking as a hobby, I despaired of finding a guide to baking that did the same. I searched endlessly for a book that could guide me step by step through the most simple processes, while building towards complexity in an orderly way.
Reader, I never found it. So I wrote it. The book you hold in your hands is what I was looking for. Within are insights I fought to gain over two decades of baking. If you seek what I sought, be assured that you, at last, have found it.
“This,” Jane said. “I need this. Very badly. How long can I keep it for?”
“Forever.” Emily yawned. “Literally forever.”
“What? It belongs to the library! What if someone else wants to check it out?”
“They won’t. And libraries don’t have unlimited room, Jane. Either you take it, or one day it gets sent to a bookseller, who eventually burns it. Take it. Please. It will make the book happy.”
“Very well.” Jane smiled. “But if I ever get my bakery up and running, you have to let me give you some free bread.”
“Deal.”
Jane turned the precious book over in her hands, tracing the title with her finger. “Felicity Cast… who was she?”
“No idea. This is the only book she wrote, and she put precious little in it about herself.” Emily stood and stretched, then started back towards the front. “Come on. I’ll show you the way out. We can’t have another person getting lost in here.”
Emily led Jane back towards the library entrance, babbling happily the whole way. It seemed to be her default state, a sort of ever-moving mouth that only paused momentarily to rest and recover before another cycle of talk. Jane rather liked it. She liked it so much, in fact, that it gave her an idea.
“Would you like to come over to my bakery for dinner?” She looked at Emily hopefully. “I was thinking of having some people over. Bella and Allen. I’d love to invite you, too.”
“Sure thing,” Emily replied. “When? Where?”
The quick acceptance almost, but not quite, made Jane lose her composure. Once again, it was proving much easier to make friends than she had expected.
Emily might be a special case, for all Jane knew. There was nothing Jane would call normal about the girl. Even so, making two friends now seemed like a goal that was well within reach, not to mention whatever mysterious thing Bella was trying to help her start with Allen.
Jane gave Emily the details, setting the date for the next Lee-day, which she hoped was far enough out that Bella and Allen wouldn’t already have plans. The girl wrote it down, smiled at Jane, and then made her tiny, diminutive way back into the sea of books like she was returning to her natural habitat.
Jane almost stopped for ingredients on the way home, but thought better of it. She would do a better job of that once she had an idea of how the whole thing really worked. Instead, she took the long way home, making her way back to the Underbridge bazaar and hoping she wasn’t too late to catch Allen.
She wasn’t. As she approached the tinker’s shop, she heard voices that slowly tuned into clarity with each step.
“No, you need to tell me more about this person,” boomed a deep baritone voice. “I’ve known you for ten years, and you’ve never said a word about anyone who came to the shop, except to explain what they bought or ordered. Now some girl comes by, you mention the color of her hair, and you want me to drop it?”
“It’s nothing, all right?” Allen’s voice piped up. “I probably won’t even see her again. After all…”
Jane’s ears had been so engaged in the process of listening that her feet had forgotten to stop walking. She burst into visibility at that moment. Allen’s friend turned out to be a massive person wearing a leather apron, soot-streaked and filthy in a way Jane could only imagine was forge-related.
“Oh.” Allen’s voice dropped several volume levels. “Hi there, Jane.”
The next few seconds were awkward, not least because the big blacksmith kept elbowing Allen in the ribs in a significant, jostling sort of way. Allen eventually broke the cycle by stepping forward out of the range of his friend’s long arms, which put him almost within range of Jane’s short ones. She resisted the impulse to test that range as she put on what she hoped was a friendly face.
“Did the stuff not work out?” Allen asked. “You need to return some? I’m glad to figure it out with you, if so.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s all been great so far. I was just walking home and thinking I might have some people over in the evening, this next Lee-day. I thought of you.”
Behind Allen, the blacksmith barely avoided spitting out the mouthful of water he’d just taken from his canteen. Allen turned around to glare at him while ineffectually trying to hide the glare from Jane. The blacksmith smiled triumphantly, a bit too smug for Jane’s liking.
As awkward as she felt, Allen’s embarrassment was somehow making it better. Trying to find ways to ease his pain took her mind well away from her own.
“So far, I’ve just asked Emily,” she went on. “A girl I met at the library. Do you know her, by chance? Emily?”
The tinker just shook his head, apparently still speechless over what was happening.
“Oh. Well, she seems nice. And I’m going to ask Bella, of course.”
The blacksmith once again avoided spitting out his water, but this time, all was not well. Instead of spewing, he inhaled the water as soon as the name of her friend left Jane’s mouth. He immediately began coughing and hacking.
Allen was a mortified shade of white by now, but the sound of his friend choking nearby seemed to jolt him into action.
“Of course. Lee-day. I’ll be there. I’ll… I’ll bring something. Okay?”
His hands came up and grasped Jane by the arms, gently guiding her away from his stall. Simultaneously, his words were speeding up, despite what looked like substantial efforts to control them.
“Thank-you-so-much-for-asking-me. I’m-excited-to-see-the-place-again. See-you-soon.”
Jane found herself incapable of mustering any offense at being ejected into the streets. She was too pleasantly flustered. Besides a handshake, she hadn’t come within a foot of the tinker before.
He touched me. On my arm. On both arms.
She was still reeling a bit when the blacksmith caught up with her.
“Jane. Whoooo.” He held out one hand while the other dropped to his knee, holding up his huge torso as he bent over and continued to cough. “Sorry. Just one sec.”
She waited until he managed to coax a whole breath into his lungs and pulled himself back up to his full height.
“So, I wanted to ask you a favor. Could you not tell Bella what just happened?”
“What?”
“Bella. I didn’t realize she had sent you down here. If she finds out I was making things hard on a new friend… Well, I mean, it’s Bella. You know what would happen.”
Jane didn’t know and couldn’t guess, but the man’s fear seemed genuine enough. Her first impulse was to have mercy on him. Before she could really get there, however, she remembered just how horrified poor Allen had been, and how close she had come to being in the same dire straits.
“We’ll see,” Jane called, skipping away with heartless cheer. “We’ll see.”