Nebula Awards Showcase 54

by Nibedita Sen

  “It’s a fine day when a beautiful girl comes into my grandfather’s bakery with no money, but only wants one poor little rye bun,” he says. “Hardly seems worthwhile to charge her.” She flushes; he understands the game and is teasing her.

  Rosie elbows her; she should make her move. Say something pert in response; acquire the prize. Her coin is her flirtation, her smiles, she sees now that she and Rosie are paying after all, in a different kind.

  But instead, behind the baker she sees a small waif, silhouetted in the back door to the shop. Saffron nods at the baker, points over his shoulder. “Do you have company?”

  He turns, drops his teasing manner. “Jacky,” he says affectionately, and scoops several buns and a long thin loaf off of a different shelf. The small creature holds open his bag hopefully, and the day-old bread is placed inside. Jacky pulls out a single copper cent and gravely hands it to the baker, who as gravely accepts it. “My best to your mother,” the baker says, as the waif scampers off.

  The young man turns back to the counter, and the kindness in his eyes is replaced by a different kind of warmth for Saffron, one that is gentle and interested, and possibly could be the same kind of warmth as for that little boy someday if she lets it, if she begins as she means to go on.

  Saffron puts the coins on the counter for the rye bun. “Will you have coffee with me?” she says, clearly and calmly and forthrightly.

  The flour-dusted young man takes her money and hands her the bun. Rosie snickers in the background, but the baker’s smiles are all for her. “Aye, and more.”

  • • •

  Saffron returns to herself, the delight of the memory still sharp on her tongue. Her eyes clear, she smiles warmly at the crowd. “This has always been one of my favorite recipes of Danny’s,” she tells them, and her gilded plate is passed to the Duke. He does not look at her as he picks up the second bite of golden-crusted toast, redolent with rosemary and crystals of sea salt. Danny was an excellent baker long before he started experimenting with the rose-thyme plant that causes the memories, and this crostini is no exception.

  Around the table the noble sycophants follow the Duke’s example, and Saffron watches in amusement at seeing the whole table go slack, their eyes staring off into nothing as they remember.

  At the edges of the room the white-coated servants, the red-coated guards go on alert. Saffron knows, for he has told her, that the commander of the guard dislikes these little interludes. But the Duke will have his perks, and further—she is told—it amuses the Duke to watch the lords and ladies squirm. Not all the confections Danny makes evoke pleasant memories, and during their time in the Duke’s palace, he has been encouraged to experiment. An invitation to a Temporal Confections dinner is equally coveted and feared, but never declined.

  Around the table the diners slowly shake off the residue of the memory, come back to themselves with foolish smiles on their faces. Good, she thinks. Danny is outdoing himself tonight. Is that a hint of things to come? They are kept apart, in the castle, and she wishes they had some way to communicate, other than through memory. A memory can be directed, a little, if the eater has practice. Saffron knows what she wants to see with the Rosemary Crostini, and she knows Danny knows she will see it. It was a gift to her this night, that first flush of meeting, that moment trapped in time like a fly in amber.

  A salad course of watercress and arugula is served, and wineglasses filled with a dry white. The Duke’s regular taster is given his salad, a fresh fork. She is a perpetually frightened-looking girl with honey-colored hair, but she is no milkmaid from the countryside. She is eighth in line to the throne, the granddaughter of kind Lord Searle, that same Lord Searle who would make a remarkably good regent—if he had not been accused of treachery by the Duke and disappeared into the maze of dungeons under the castle.

  The girl retains many of her daytime privileges, but at dinner she sits at the Traitor King’s side, yet another hostage for others’ behavior. She tastes the requisite bite of the peppery greens, and then the plate is relayed to the Duke, and he picks up his own silver fork. Around the table the others join in, and Saffron and the girl fold their hands in their laps, and wait.

  Fennel Flatbread of Sunlit Days Gone By

  The sun is sparkling on the snow on the day Danny gets his first temporal pastry to work.

  It is a Seventhday, and the shop is closed. They have been married for a year now; Danny’s grandfather has passed on, and the little bakery is all Danny’s. A small inheritance has allowed him to experiment; a small inheritance and a smaller glass bottle of dried rose-thyme that Danny’s grandfather gathered as a youth in the distant High Reaches. Despite its name, rose-thyme does not taste precisely like either; or, more correctly, it tastes like many more things than just those two flavors. It is a changeable plant; the method of preparation is key to bringing out a particular aromatic strain. More importantly, the method of preparation is key to evoking certain visions. As a child, Danny’s grandfather and his chums would chew on the flowers, which, when eaten plain, give brief flashes of déjà vu. He also told Danny that those who had once lived in the High Reaches had actual recipes that they swore could evoke glimpses of longer-ago memories, and indeed, at winter solstice every year, there was a certain currant cake made with the rose-thyme that would make everyone remember the previous solstice’s currant cake, and back and back, cementing the continuity of a long line of years.

  All that was long ago, and Danny’s grandfather’s people were mostly scattered and gone, driven forth by the last king’s brother, whose dukedom was in the High Reaches, at the border of the country. He and his son, Michal, were reputed to be cold and cruel. Certainly they had destroyed Danny’s ancestral home. But the current King was kind, if perhaps a bit soft, and he had not taken steps to control his distant cousin anymore than his father had controlled his younger brother.

  All this runs through Saffron’s head while she stands at the back of the shop, slowly kneading a mass of dough that will rise overnight for tomorrow’s buns. Watching the sky slowly darken, the snow clouds massing once more. Why is she thinking of the old king? But perhaps it is because of the clock tower bells. They have been ringing all morning, and she has not heard them ring like that since she was a child. Their slow pealing is an eerie counterpoint to the silent snow, the warm, empty shop. A cheerful whistle floats out occasionally from the other room of the bakery, punctuated with the sharp smell of dried fennel being crushed with mortar and pestle. Danny is experimenting yet again.

  Someone bangs on the back door, and she opens it to a snowdrift. Little Jacky, older now. He comes in, stamps his feet.

  “The King is dead,” he says, “Did you know?”

  Of course, she thinks, the bells, and behind him the flurries have started again, the spangles of sun replaced by fat dots of white.

  “Ma says they’ll make old Searle the regent. He’s a soft touch, that’s for sure. Gives out coppers to kids anytime you see him in the street. Hey, maybe he’ll give out silvers if he’s got a whole treasury.”

  Saffron shakes her head. She saw the King speak, not two months ago. He was grieving for his wife’s death in childbirth, and the city grieved along with him. But. . . “He was so healthy.”

  “Bloody flux,” Jacky says with certainty. “Got my cousin last month.” He holds out his palm. “I got five coppers for you this time. Been working for my uncle. What can I get with that?”

  She ruffles his snow-dusted hair and hands over a hearty round loaf that didn’t sell, and several currant buns, only a little burnt.

  He shouts his thanks and hurries off, running through the falling snow. His bit of red scarf flaps behind him; he shrinks smaller and smaller in the vanishing white. The king is dead, the poor little prince an infant. There will be change. Change is hard to weather. Change makes everyone skint, and keep their coins in their pockets.

  But the people will still need bread, she thinks, as she watches the diagonal drifts. And there has been pe
ace for so long. How can there not still be peace? Power will transfer, the reins will change hands, but she and Danny will have their bakery, their dough, their bread. They will focus on the rising of the yeast and the pounding of the dough and if they have to cut out currants for a time, well, plain buns sell nearly as well.

  The clock tower bells ring all day and all night for the end of the king, the ending of the old era. She stands for some time, looking at the falling snow, until behind her Danny shouts, I have it, I have it, Saffron, I have it.

  She turns to see the exult on his face, and he scoops her up and swings her around. He has been parceling out the last few sprigs of rose-thyme for months, trying recipe after recipe, running right through the last of the dried leaves.

  Now he hands her a round circle of flatbread on a plate. It looks like any of Danny’s homey flatbreads, but smaller. A few bites only, and one bite is missing.

  She knows already that there is something special about this moment. It is the sort of memory you recall for years after. A moment when the world changed around you. A moment etched with both beauty and loss, a moment that you leave behind as you move away from it, a moment you can never reach again.

  Except, with what Danny has now made, perhaps you can.

  Saffron takes the first bite ever of a temporal confections creation and falls back further still.

  The world shifts around her. She is seven, and her mother is still living. The sun drifts golden onto a dew-spattered morning, and she shakes a magnolia tree onto Rosie, watching her sister laugh as the droplets spray—

  • • •

  “Another masterpiece,” says Saffron, and the same white-gloved servant passes her plate to the Duke. She shivers, deep inside, for she is not lying. Danny has been working on that linked memory trick for years. She has seen the Fennel Flatbread creation memory before, but she has never seen that magnolia tree memory within it. Usually the scene ends the moment Danny hands her the flatbread and she takes a bite.

  Around the table eager hands reach for the plates, barely able to wait for the Duke. A Fennel Flatbread of Sunlit Days Gone By sounds delightful; not like any of the Duke’s nastier tricks. They all could use a moment of nostalgia, of respite from their grown-up cares. They eat, and Saffron watches them, still wondering how Danny triggered the second memory. Perhaps it was in the mashed fava bean dip served alongside, perhaps it is something in the flatbread itself. He has been working on reductions, on methods of increasing the intensity of the herbs. But of course, he has not been able to share anything with her since coming to the palace. And truly, it is better if she does not know. She has never been very good at dissembling, though she has been practicing in this last year. Readying the skill for the moment she needs it.

  The words rise as the memories dissolve; the voices filled with emotion, with wonder.

  —I was climbing a tree; it was cut down long ago

  —I saw my mum, I haven’t seen her in years

  —My boy was young again; he ran to me

  The Duke scoffs. Whatever he has seen, it has made little impression. “Puerile fantasies,” he says, and swivels to eye Saffron. “I hope the next course will be more suitable to an. . .advanced palate.”

  “Danny’s skill at arranging a balance of flavor and memory is unsurpassed,” Saffron says evenly. If she wished to gently push the Duke she would remind him of previous banquets; the one that ended with the nobles in tears; the one that ended with them overcome with patriotism, swearing oaths to the Traitor King. But she does not want to disturb the fragile balance. Danny is building to something, she is more and more certain. Which means that she is to taste, and be ready. Timing is critical in baking, and here so tonight.

  Another course is served; a delicate shellfish bisque, but the nobles barely notice what they eat, lost in recounting, reliving, those long-ago moments, made real again for an instant. If the Duke were more observant, he would notice how even the sweetest memory has an edge, for it is something that is lost and will not come again. But perhaps Danny is lulling him, downplaying his skill with the more complicated memories; the ones that linger like the mold on cheese, the yeast in the sourdough, the bitter in the wine.

  The bisque is finished—Saffron sometimes feels guilty that the main cooks no longer receive the attention they ought—and the servers return with the next pastry course.

  Ah, thinks Saffron, who recognizes it immediately. Here we go into the darker turn.

  She could almost be angry at Danny, but she knows whatever he plans tonight has a purpose. The Duke will feast on her tears, but so be it.

  The silver fork cuts through the pastry and she takes a bite.

  Rose-Pepper Shortbread of Sweetness Lost

  She and Danny have been married for three years now. The bakery has picked up, now that they are offering a few unusual items right alongside the daily bread. There is still no baby, but they are happy with their bakery and their work, and they do not mind—too much. Danny bakes and she assists, Danny invents and she assists. But she does not mind that either, for she has found her own calling at the front of the shop, and it is matching people with the right pastry.

  There is an art to knowing what people need. Oh, they would all take the flatbread if they could, but do they need it?

  At first they do not advertise that there is anything special about some of the pastries in their shop. Danny is still working out the strengths and flavors. The first few pastries and confections come with barely a hint, a flash. A memory easily dismissed as natural. The sort of thing that keeps people returning to a bakery where they feel so content, so rejuvenated. So understood. With the increased income, Saffron arranges the shop and sews new curtains and freshens the paint. She hires Rosie to work alongside them, and that gives Danny more time to develop the recipes, strengthen the flavors. Rosie is a natural third point to their triangle; her open, gregarious warmth is a fire they kindle themselves by. She helps them turn the bakery from a shop to a café; she encourages customers not to just buy their regular bread and go, but to sit and linger, try that extra morsel of unusual pastry and feel at peace.

  This morning, Rosie is laughing with a regular about something that happened last night. Rosie has changed the last two years; her curls are the same, but she has swapped her ribbons and laces for steel-toed boots and the cry of Resistance.

  Saffron understands that the new Regent Michal, at first so sympathetic, so distraught about the sudden treachery of Lord Searle, has slowly been closing his velvet glove around the city. She understands that there have been rumors of people taken. Rumors of Bad Things. But she only has one sister, and rumors are not here and now, they are not the shop and bread and cheese and chairs.

  She pulls Rosie behind the counter, by the trays of day-old regular bread, and says as much.

  Rosie’s chin sets. It is not the first time they’ve had this conversation. “I have to do something,” she tells Saffron. She drops her voice. “You know the little print shop, down the street?”

  The printer. An outspoken, angry man. Yes.

  “You know they took him, Saffy. Tortured him. Just for printing the truth about what’s been happening to the girls. The disappearances—”

  “Who says, though?” says Saffron, who can’t believe in things happening to people she knows.

  Rosie gives her a look. “His body was all covered up at the hanging. So you wouldn’t see what had been done to him. I saw—”

  “You went there?”

  “I can’t stay here, safe in a bakery,” says Rosie, voice rising. “I have to try.”

  “We are doing good work here,” Saffron says, helplessly.

  Rosie shakes her head. “This is not the only good work there is to be done. Can’t you see that?”

  They are close to understanding each other, but then Saffron lets slip: “Can’t someone else do that work?” and that makes Rosie shake her head, and stomp away, off to heft some flour bags around, take out her frustration.

&n
bsp; Yes, Rosie has changed. Or no, not changed, perhaps, but grown up. Matured into something that was there all along.

  She can’t just stay in her bakery, Rosie says. But why not? Why can’t there be room for someone who takes care of people, one person at a time? Who feeds them bread for their bodies and confections for their souls and does good work on a single, individual level? Saffron is heavy with resentment, she is prickly with the wish to prove Rosie wrong.

  That is when the enforcer comes in.

  He wears the emblem of the palace; the R of the Regency, the eagle of the Duke. He saunters up and says politely, “We have reports of miscreants disturbing the peace last night.”

  “Everything is just fine here,” Saffron says.

  “And your employees?” he says. “Where were they?”

  “We have but one,” she says, “and she is a law-abiding citizen.” Her heart is thumping inside and he can surely see her pallor. What did Rosie do? For that is her first thought, that Rosie and her group of troublemaker friends must have done something. This man would not be here for nothing. Around the store she sees the customers who have finished their pastries quietly slipping away, their peace at an end.

  The enforcer’s eyes follow her gaze; he looks languidly around the room like a bored cat. “This is a sort of opium den, is it?” he says, gesturing at a man’s slack face.

  “Merely a bakery,” Saffron says.

  “Please produce your license,” he says, more politely yet, and she understands how to do this part, this part is rote. She gets it from the back room, a few steps away through that curtain. Her eyes sweep the room for Danny—surely Danny will know what to do—but he is out on a buying errand, and she sees only her sister, crouched and silent, hiding behind a barrel of flour.

  Numbly she returns, shows the man the card that should make him leave.

  He barely looks at it, lets it fall to the counter. “Please produce your sister,” he says, and this is the point she cannot forgive herself for, even as it happens.