Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 2 of 22

The crumble fell apart in Daisy's hands. She stood on the real street under the streetlamp, watching her jeweled filling turn to gray dust. The Void Chef had given her a door. It had not given her an anchor. Without one, every pastry she carried through would die the same way. She needed a thing tied to this waking world, and she needed to bind it right. She knew one place that might teach her. Daisy stepped back through the lit cafe window and followed the dark path to a rustic bar wrapped in warm wood. Broad windows glowed. Bottles of cosmic liquid lined the shelves. Behind the counter floated the same starry worm she knew, but dressed strange now. A brown wig sat crooked on its head. Round glasses framed its bright star eyes. It shook a metal cup with the tip of its tail. "Daisy Duke," it said, flat. "You smell like failure and lemon." "My food still crumbles," she said. She set the empty box on the bar. "You told me to bind a flavor to something the waking world keeps. I don't know how to make it stick." The Void Chef poured a bright orange drink into a glass. It slid the glass across the wood. "Binding isn't a recipe. It's a trade. The flavor holds if you give it a debt the world already carries." "A debt," Daisy said. "Like what?" "A weekday. A name. A grudge." It tapped the glass. "You baked lemon into your dream. So anchor it to a real morning. Pick a day. Bake it on that day, in that hour. The world remembers days. Your food borrows the memory and stays." Daisy thought of the rained-out birthday. Seven years old. A Sunday. She always baked her sun bread on Sundays, before she knew why. "Sunday," she said. "I want to bake sun bread. Tie it to Sunday morning." The Void Chef stopped shaking the cup. "That'll cost you." "What?" "You bind the bread to Sunday, you can never bake it on another day again. Not Monday. Not midnight. The anchor takes the day and keeps it." It leaned close. "Give me the smell of your oven at dawn. I'll teach you the bind." Daisy's chest tightened. That smell had woken her every Sunday of her life. She pressed her palm flat to the bar and gave it over. The bar's cosmic glow dimmed one shade. The Void Chef spoke three words she would not remember after. Her hands moved on their own. When it finished, a warm loaf sat in her box, pale orange, shaped like a soft cloud. It smelled of honey and citrus. It did not soften. She carried it back through the cafe window. On the real street, under the streetlamp, the bread held its shape. She had her first pastry that would not crumble. But she could only ever bake it on Sundays now.