Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 19 of 22

Word spread fast. The woman who remembered woodworking told others, and soon Daisy's counter drew a line of people who'd lost dreams. They wanted them back. Daisy pulled a stranger's dream into a rib-shaped loaf and slid it across. He ate. Then he wept, and not the good kind. His hands shook. He couldn't stop them. "I remember why I stopped," he whispered. "I remember why I let it go." He left with his dream returned and his whole face broken. Daisy watched him go. Cold ran through her petals. "Some dreams should stay lost," she said. "He was better before I gave it back." "So sort them," said Skeeter. The crystal skeleton leaned on his cane by the frozen corner, where meltwater shimmered into a silver-blue fall. "But a baker can't taste inside a stranger's chest. You need eyes that see what a dream costs before you bake it." The bell rang. Thorn Duke stepped in, jean jacket damp, boots leaving wet prints. Their face held a dozen eyes ringed in dark rose petals, no mouth among them. Daisy's twin in trade, if not in blood. Thorn had chased their own fading twin through the same rifts. Every eye had learned to read what most people missed. "You're baking blind," Thorn said. Blunt. No softening. "I felt that man from outside. His dream had teeth." "I can't tell which ones will break people," Daisy said. Thorn stepped to the counter. Their eyes fixed on the next customer in line, a girl clutching a can of cheap sweet tea like a keepsake. "Show me the flavor before you set it. I'll look at it." Daisy pulled the girl's forgotten dream. It rose off her palm, faint and sugary, the taste of a summer porch. Thorn leaned close. Half their eyes narrowed. "Safe," they said. "No hook. She only forgot because she grew up." Daisy baked it in. The girl ate and laughed, light as before. The next man's dream came up bitter. Thorn's eyes went wide, then flat. "No. That one guards a wound. Give it back and he loses the reason he survived." Daisy pulled her hand away. She set out plain shortbread instead and told the man it wasn't ready. He nodded and left whole. They worked the line together. Daisy pulled each dream. Thorn read it. Blue cornflowers someone had left on the counter wilted in the oven's heat while the two of them sorted safe from ruinous, one taste at a time. When the last customer left, Daisy set down her tray. "I can't do this without you. Every batch needs your eyes." "Then I stay," Thorn said. "Until my twin calls louder than your oven." One eye twitched toward the door, restless. "That day's coming." Daisy nodded. She had her sorter now. Her real bakery could open safe. But her partner would leave the moment his lost half pulled hardest, and she'd bake blind again.