Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 3 of 22

The sun bread held its shape on the real street. Daisy stood under the streetlamp and grinned. Then the grin slipped. She had one loaf that would not crumble, and no place in the waking world to sell it. A pastry with nowhere to go was just bread going stale in a box. She carried the loaf back through the lit window, into the warm-wood bar. The starry worm still wore its crooked brown wig and round glasses. It shook a metal cup with its tail and poured something bright purple into a glass. "You look like a woman with a good problem," the Void Chef said. Flat, dry. "Those are the worst kind." "The bread works," Daisy said. She set the box down. "But I have no counter. No window. No place out there to hand it to anyone. I baked a Sunday I can't sell." The Void Chef stopped shaking the cup. "You already have a doorway. You paid me for it." "The cafe," Daisy said. "But it's just a passage. It appears, then it's gone." "It's a passage until you stand in it," the worm said. "A door nobody stands in is a door. A door somebody stands in is a shop." It slid the purple drink toward her. "Same wood. Different verb." Daisy thought of the little stall she had crossed through every night. Blue and pink canopy. A wide, empty order window. A picnic bench sitting patient underneath. She had walked past that window a dozen times and never once looked through it as hers. "It has no light," she said. "No one would find it in the dark." The Void Chef tapped the bar twice. On the second tap, a tall navy post rose beside the cafe window, out past the glass. A star sat on its crown and threw soft rose light across the empty counter. "That'll cost you," it said. Daisy's stomach dropped. "What now?" "Nothing new. The lamp stays lit only when the shop is open. You close, it goes dark, and the whole stall forgets it was ever there. So do the customers." It leaned close, star eyes glinting. "They'll remember the bread. Never the way back. You'll have to summon the door fresh every time." Daisy looked at the loaf. Honey and citrus, warm through the box. She thought of a stranger biting in and tasting a Sunday they'd forgotten they missed. "Deal," she said. "I'll open it myself." She carried the sun bread to the cafe window and set it on the counter. The rose lamp caught the pale orange crust. Beyond the glass, the real street waited. A woman with a coat stopped, drawn by the light, and squinted at the window that hadn't been there a moment ago. "We open at dawn," Daisy called through the window. "First loaf's warm." The woman stepped forward. Daisy had a shop. And a lamp she would have to relight, alone, every single time.