They’d spoken of the same the night before, after Rollu had poured out his heart and his loss and Cinta had held him like he was just a child suffering from some hurt.
This hurt wouldn’t heal as quickly as a skinned knee or the insults thrown by the boys in the schoolyard.
Not here. Not where her memory remained.
“I have to.”
“And you won’t stay the day?”
The corner of Rol’s lips twitched up in an attempt at a smile that failed.
Cinta nodded his head, cleared his throat though he didn’t speak more to dissuade Rol’s departure. He wiped his white covered hands on his apron, a cloud of the same puffing out to fill the air around him when he clapped his hands over his thighs. He coughed, and the ritual finally brought at least the glimmer of mirth to Rol’s face.
The older man bent, groaned for his knees were always stiffest in the morning.
Rollu flinched, knowing he should stay here, helping his father, knowing too he had to leave.
“Here,” Cinta stood and extended his hand with a purse held at its center. “For your travels.”
For all the years that Rollu had grown up in the house, seen Cinta stash away coin after coin in the small vault beneath the cook room floor, he’d never seen his father open the thing nor withdraw any money from the same.
“Father—”
“It is your inheritance, Rol. I’ve been saving it for you for years, for when you wanted to open your own shop, for your wedding and,” he trailed off.
Rol would never marry, not now that the woman he wanted was gone.
“Take it, to help you settle somewhere new, and if need be, to return home to me when you’re ready.”
“Papa.”
He hadn’t called his father the same in many years, not since he was a small child sat upon the old man’s knee, but he used the term now, and found himself again to his father’s arms, hugged and hugging in return.
Cinta cupped his cheeks, held his face close, eye to eye in respect and love both. “Know that no matter what, you have a home here. You will be missed and loved beyond all measure. Never forget that, whether you travel five or five hundred miles.”
“I know, Father.”
He nodded, “Good.”
Cinta wiped a still floury hand across his cheek, and if the trail of white was left behind remained to coat the track of a tear, Rol said nothing of it.
“When you reach where you are going, send word. Perhaps I’ll close the shop and come for a visit for a day or two.”
Rol grinned at the thought, forgetting his sadness for the image of his father away from rolling pin and cookie tray for longer than an hour. “You wouldn’t get past the front door.”
The older man laughed, “For you, boy, I’d make the trip.”
And his father would.
It was the one truth he knew beyond a doubt.
Cinta would do anything, sacrifice anything, for the safety of his family, for his son.
“I love you, Papa.”
“And I you, boy. Get you gone before the roads are too crowded to move within. Go on. You’ll need to find a place to stop before full dark.”
“I’ll take the forest road and—”
They both knew what he would do there, say goodbye to the statue left behind of the woman he’d lost, the last monument he had of her.
“The elves are good folk. But their baking is for shit. You’d do well there, if you stopped.”
“I’ll consider the same.”
“Good lad.”
Rol gave his father a final parting embrace, felt the moment that Cinta stuffed the purse of coins in his bag, and smiled, for though he would never intend to deprive his father of his hard-earned wages, to have the extra would not go unappreciated in his journeys. “Thank you.”
Cinta patted his cheek, “Always, boy. Go on.”
When the door to the bake shop closed, Rol took a breath, and turned away without looking back. This was his choice, after all. Better to accept it without regret than worry over every step he took.
He found a wagon departing for the woods, the elves leading the team of four horses not wanting to stay for the celebration in the city, claiming the one in the woods would be better by far.
They were only too happy to take Rol with them and exclaim over their own practices as they went.
He watched Tornald fade into the distance from the back of the cart, the city of his birth and his childhood, his life for as long as he’d been alive, and took a breath of fresh air, wondering what adventures his journey might bring, wondering what his heart might find far from the land he’d once called home.
Chapter Two
As it turne d out, adventure was not quite what he’d expected it to be.
He passed through the forest and the elfin lands as quickly as he was able, not liking the way the trees loomed all around him, though the men and women were friendly enough. His cart mates took him farther than he’d expected, invited him to stay the night in their treetop dwelling where he found that he was not a fan of heights, much to their amusement and his consternation.
At dawn, he descended the rope ladder to the ground below and was sore pressed not to bend over and kiss the earth once his feet were firmly upon it.
“You’re looking to make a new home, no?” The man, whose name Rol could not pronounce, offered Rol a flat pita for breakfast stuffed with venison and leafy greens.
He missed the sweet rolls his father would have made. “Yes, somewhere I can hone my trade.”
“Baking? You humans and your sweets. But I’ve heard the trolls like them as much.”
“Trolls?”
“The Faustians. Paunchy bunch, but they’re fine craftsmen. Not much for fighting, but then, not everyone can be.”
“I’ve never been to Faust before.”
The male laughed, offered a clap to Rol’s shoulder that nearly unbalanced him with its strength. “Well you’re in for a treat. The men aren’t worth a second look, but the ladies, well, they’re not elf-kin, but it’s a pleasure when they venture from their cities to the forest to trade.”
Faustians.
Trolls.
Rol had, of course, heard of them before.
Trolls, the men at least, were bred stockier than most humans of his acquaintance, with beards as thick as fresh summer grass and tempers as foul as dragon’s breath. He’d heard their hair was so thick and so pervasive that the only way to read a troll’s expression was to watch the way the hairs shifted, no sign of the mouth beneath.
Probably pointed eared too, though that was likely only a myth.
They were smiths and workman, brilliant in their architecture and construction. It was said that their monarch’s castle was so tall that the highest tower was surrounded by clouds.
Which was impossible, as far as Rol knew, but the idea alone was intriguing, and Faust was as far from his homeland and his memories as anywhere else, while being close enough he could return if he needed too.
He smiled, the decision easier to make than he’d expected.
He entered th e city of Travow on foot, the capital of Faust a bustling town full of life compared to the open plains he’d passed to get there. His guide had taken Rol as near the gate as possible, but the man had been turning down a different path, and Rol had already paid him for his assistance given, no need to waste more coin when he had two good legs to walk by.
Only a mile or two, the elf had said.
Rol had never realized how far a mile truly was, but it was good, to walk.
It exhausted him so that when he reached the great wall around the city, he was not struck down by awe at the sight of the towering stones, the gargoyles carved into the rock faces, flying buttresses that dripped a constant sludge into the black tar moat around the city itself.
Perhaps cloud shrouded towers were not as un-constructible as he’d thought…
The city street s were swollen with people, and where his own capital had
been massive and bustling, he was overwhelmed by the press as he entered the town. Men and women, as different from each other as any he’d ever seen, swarmed from stall to stall, merchant to merchant, vendors hawking wares from second and third stories, stairwells built into the faces of the buildings for those seeking goods to climb. It was a sea of colors, and Rol felt drab in his own sullen gray shirt and worn breeches.
And there were no beards, not like he’d expected.
Clean shaven and ruddy cheeked, a moustache or two of intimidating bristle, but no beards.
A man caught him staring and Rol blushed and turned aside, pretended he hadn’t been gawking like a child.
Another saw him staring at a vendor’s stall of venison. He turned from his venture with the meat hawker to hand Rol a skewer of the same, a warm smile on his face at the good deed.
“Thank you.”
The man frowned.
Rol had not thought ahead to whether or not the trolls spoke his tongue.
He swallowed hard, the heady smell of the beef turning sour at the realization.
“You are Spinichian, no?”
He turned to the voice, another vendor calling from two stalls down, the white cloud in the air around him making Rol smile, for he knew the type of merchant he was approaching, had hawked his father’s wares the same for years untold.
The baker was as portly as the elves had warned Faustian men would be. His stomach so large that it overhung his belt and would have blocked out the sight of his feet below if the man ever chanced to look. He was bald headed but for his moustache, braided to a sharp point that stretched to touch his chest, made up for the lack atop his scalp, and his cheeks were ruddy with heat and likely the brandy Rol could smell rolling off the tortes on display in the cart.
Rol was taller than the troll by a good foot, but the man had an aura about him that suggested Rol’s height would mean less than nothing to the master baker.
He cleared his throat and then nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“What brings you here, to Faust? We don’t get many of your folk this far north.”
Rol swallowed, not willing to reveal all of his losses to this man, not knowing how else to reply. “Looking for a change, sir.”
“Eh, and what do you do, boy?”
“Do?”
“Profession. What’s your profession? Are you a cobbler? A farmer? Gods know we don’t need another stone hauler within our city walls.”
“No, sir; I’m a baker.”
The man’s shoulders stiffened, his gaze grew sharper and Rol wondered if he should not have said anything at all. “A baker.”
“Yes, sir. The son of a baker, and his father before him. I was hoping to apprentice here in the city, if someone was looking for an aide.”
“And if I’m not?”
Rol’s smile tempered at the growled question, grew taut and brittle on his lips. Rol hadn’t thought beyond the leaving of Spinick, only barely considering what he would do when he reached his somewhere new. He hadn’t thought of an answer if the man’s question held weight, hadn’t considered that he might not be able to find work wherever he landed. He stiffened his shoulders. “Then I’ll keep looking.”
“I’m the best pastry chef in this city, boy. You won’t get better than me.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man considered, and Rol tried not to shift uncomfortably on his feet beneath the gaze. “I close at sunset. You come back then. I’ll let you cook for me and prove if you have any worth.”
Truly?
It wasn’t that Rol thought the demonstration would be easy, he fully expected to receive the full chastisement of the baker when he returned to cook for him, but to have found a potential job within moments of entering the city?
“Gratitude. You won’t regret it, sir.”
“Unsted.”
“Sir?”
“Master Unsted. That’s what you call me. Now get out of here, you’re blocking my stall.”
Rol nodded, nearly ran into the edge of the cart in his haste to clear the man’s stand and make way for those around him to patronize the baker.
He found, that even though he didn’t know the common tongue of the city, and that many looked at him as odd and outcaste, there was a certain amount of peace to be had in the streets of the capital that he’d not found at home in a long while.
He breathed easier with it.
And when night came, he was there to assist Master Unsted clear away the remains of his cart and clean the shop just beyond the wooden structure.
When he’d finished scrubbing the kitchen, he cooked, and when Master Unsted offered nothing but a sullen: “You’ll do,” Rol smiled, a real and true smile like he’d thought he’d never find again, and was shown to a room above stairs.
They began cooking before dawn, and he was expected to have the food stores prepared before Unsted entered the kitchen.
For routine, Rol fell into the same easily, comforted by it.
Life was good.
Chapter Three
“This is shit!”
Rollu flinched at the angry shout from the master as the old man threw the plate of cookies Rol had just finished across the room to crash against the bakery door.
For three years, Rol had dealt with the mercurial mood swings of his master, one day the man pleased at Rol’s progress in the shop, the next infuriated that he dared put hand to dough and call the same baking.
“You must be better than this, boy! I cannot present some simple cookie to the princess for her feast! What am I to do with you if you have no aspiration for greatness?”
But his cookies were great.
It wasn’t that Rol was overly confident in his recipes, some had gone horribly astray over the years and he’d played with his measurements time and again, but the ginger snap recipe that his father had created had never needed any tampering. Simple or not, they were the best that he could make, and though he would never say the same aloud, they were better than anything Master Unsted could make too!
News had come earlier that week that the king was throwing a grand party for his daughter and that whoever’s treat was chosen as the princess’ favorite, would be granted the title of King’s Baker with the commission for the lady’s wedding cake to follow.
Rol had never seen the lady in question but had heard the stories.
Fair of hair, and fairer still of face and form, the princess was said to be beyond compare. A face rounded like a heart; eyes ethereal in their otherworldliness, silver, no white, no one could say with any certainty.
And the tower that touched the clouds he’d thought was just myth when he first came to the city, was in fact her home where she spent her days.
The wedding announcement had gone out in the spring.
That she was to marry her father’s Lord of the Hunt, Sir Bajin Calwstart.
The Fox.
Rol had had the displeasure to meet the man time and again over his residency within Travow.
The Lord of the Hunt was a brute, always causing fights and then laughing when they grew out of hand. He preferred himself bloodied and bruised and if he entered an ale house, then it was wise to depart before he downed his first tankard.
Rol had done his best to avoid him, and Sir Bajin wouldn’t lower himself to speak with a lowly baker’s apprentice, not without good cause – say a push or trip, which Rol had been lucky enough to escape with his life when the Fox drew his sword, and he with no weapon of his own.
Just the baker’s boy .
Matihilda had calmed the brute, and while the Fox was distracted, Rol had slipped from the tavern and escaped his doom.
He pitied the poor woman who was the man’s bride.
That said woman was the princess of the country he now called home, was tragic, but there was little he could do to spare the lady her fate.
As the barkeep said: he was just a baker.
And perhaps the princess was beholden to her betrothed.
Who was he to sa
y?
But he could say that his ginger snaps were not simple at all!
“Sir, every baker will be doing their best to outdo the other, thinking of richness and sophistication over taste and comfort. Wow the princess, not with something fancy and overdone, but rather with something that will linger on the pallet, bring her back again and again. I have made these cookies many times for you, and you have always said they are a delight. Delight the lady. Let us compete with what we are best at and let the rest falter in their reach.”
“You would question me?”
Rol drew back, not sure how best to answer the man who wielded rolling pin as well as any soldier fresh from the field wielded sword. “Master—”
“You would question me, boy?!”
The cook raised his marble cudgel.
If he was going to be beaten for speaking the truth, then Rol would do so standing straight and tall to face his punishment.
The door to the shop jingled.
Saved by the bell and the entrance of a cadre of soldiers, their combined mass blocking the sun from shining through the window as they waited patiently for their lord and master to enter behind them.
No normal lord though.
Someone far outranking such a meager title.
The very king himself.
Since Rol was a child, he’d known of no quarrel with the trolls, their land rich in rock but little else, seafarers and stone smiths the lot of them.
But they were good peoples, and they loved their king and his family without fault.
The ruler was a man of the people, and generous as such.
The king frowned when he stepped into the shop and his toes trod upon the remnants of broken cookie crumbles littering the ground. His expression was quickly exchanged for a warm smile upon his first breath of clove scented air, the warm heat of the oven on the bright fall day.
“Master Unsted! Your shoppe is a haven in this city of masons and architects. What have you in the oven this day? What plans for my daughter’s celebration?”
It was such a genial smile, open and warm, and though Rollu stood a good half a foot taller than the man, he felt dwarfed by the indominable spirit of the liege. Even he, who loved his homeland and his own king, found himself dropping to his knee in homage of the Faustian monarch, head bowed in honor and respect.
Sinfully Delicious: Six Scintillating Stories of Sweets, Treats, and Happily Ever Afters Page 34