Maya's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Maya opened the drawer for the third time, as if the tart pan might have grown back overnight. It hadn't. The festival baking contest was six days away, and she still didn't have a working recipe, let alone the shallow fluted pan her mother had thrown out last spring after it rusted through. She wanted to win that contest. Not with her grandmother's honey cake or any recipe copied from a book. She wanted to win with something she invented herself, so people in town would stop calling her "the kid who burned the school pancakes." She was eleven. She had opinions about butter. Her notebook lay open on the counter. Page one said: brown sugar crust, stewed pears, cardamom. Every version needed a shallow pan with a removable bottom. Without it, the crust wouldn't set, and she couldn't taste what she was trying to fix. Maya pulled on her boots. Kumo lifted his head from the rug, ears pricked, curled tail twitching. The Shiba followed her out the door without being asked. She went to the neighbor two houses down. Martha Honeycrust ran her kitchen like a small bakery and gave Maya cinnamon scraps whenever she passed. Maya trusted her more than she trusted her own mother in a kitchen. Martha was already on the porch shaking flour off her apron. Her bun was crooked. She had a smear of jam on her wrist. "You look like a girl with a problem," Martha said. "I need a tart pan. Fluted. Loose bottom." Martha studied her. "For the festival?" Maya nodded. Her throat tightened. She hated how much she wanted this. "I have three," Martha said. "But I'm using all of them Saturday. I sell at the market." Maya's stomach dropped. Kumo pressed against her knee. Martha wiped her hands. "I'll make you a trade. You can borrow one now, tonight, and bring it back by four in the morning. Every morning. Before I start my bake." "Four in the morning." "That's the deal. Miss it once and I take the pan back." Maya thought about her warm bed. She thought about the honey cake her grandmother used to win with. She held out her hand. Martha went inside and returned with a dented tin pan, edges fluted, bottom loose. She placed it in Maya's palms like it was breakable. "One more thing," Martha said. "My oven's tired. You'll want the community cookhouse for the real bakes. Better heat. Everyone shares it." Maya had never used it. It sat at the edge of the square, open on all sides, always smoking. Grown-ups cooked there. Strangers. "Okay," Maya said. She walked home with the pan against her chest and Kumo trotting beside her. She had six days, one borrowed pan, and a deadline before sunrise. She also had a new problem: her first real bake would have to happen in front of everyone, at the Firelit Community Cookhouse, where she didn't know a soul.