Periwinkle's Arc

Chapter 2 of 17

The dough sat covered on the ledge, soft and ready. Periwinkle pressed her palm to the stone floor. It was cold. She had no oven, no coals, no flame. She could shape a hundred loaves and bake none of them. She rubbed her hands together and looked around the bare hollow for anything that might hold a fire. She stepped back outside. The rain had stopped. Wet branches lay scattered along the slope, too damp to burn. She gathered a few anyway and stacked them in a ring of stones near the hollow's mouth. She struck her flint against a rock, again and again. Sparks jumped and died. The wood only hissed. After a hundred strikes, her fingers bled and the branches stayed black. Periwinkle sat back on her heels. The dough would not wait forever. She stared down the slope, and past the trees she saw a glow. She walked toward it. In a clearing she had not seen before stood a small building. Warm light poured from its tall windows. Painted bread lined its walls, and cloudlike trim ran along its roof. A sign above the door read Heavenly Bakery. Smoke rose from a chimney at the back. The place looked ready to feed a whole road of travelers, and no one stood inside. Periwinkle pushed the door. It opened. Heat rolled over her face. Along the far wall sat a great brick oven, and inside it a bed of coals burned orange and steady. Someone had built the fire and left it. She thought of the winged woman on the slope, the one who had sent her to the hollow. This felt like the same quiet help. She did not question it long. She ran back up the slope and carried her bowl down with both arms. She shaped the dough on the bakery's clean table. She cut loaves and slid them into the oven on a long wooden peel. The coals hissed and settled. She crouched by the oven door and watched the crusts turn gold. When she pulled the first loaf out, its shell cracked under her thumb. Steam curled up. The smell filled the room. Her bread had finally baked. Her hands still stung from the flint, but she laughed. Then she looked around the warm room and understood the price of it. This bakery was not hers. Someone owned it. Someone had lit that fire and left the door open. She had baked her bread in another person's oven, and sooner or later that person would come back to find her standing in it.