"The Best Baker in All the Land"

 

The baker knew as soon as she took it from the oven that the bread was perfect. It smelled of honey and wheat and earth transformed; its edges were so golden and smooth that it made her think of her lover and blush. Without slicing into it, she could imagine what it was like on the inside--flaky, warm, light as a sunbeam. It was easily the best thing she had ever baked.

She sealed the bread inside a wrapper and shut it inside a cabinet. There was no way she could eat it.

But she could tell her friends and a few of her favorite customers about it. They noticed the sweetly lingering scent of the bread when they visited her at the bakery over the following days. She mentioned the new recipe to them, letting some of her excitement slip into her voice whenever she did. Each of them insisted that they had to try some of this marvelous creation.

In response, the baker would shake her head and wave her hand. "I can't serve that until I'm sure that I can do something that well again. Here, let me give you something else I've been working on." And she would set on a plate a fruit tart, or a slice of marble cake, that the person would sample and instantly crow over, saying that if this was how one of her regular offerings tasted, surely that special bread must be divine.

It didn't take long for the baker's reputation to grow, spreading throughout the city and into the distant countryside. Soon, people were tracking dust from faraway lands onto the town's streets as they headed toward the baker's tiny shop. Those who regularly enjoyed her apple bars and her macaroons swore that each day's goods tasted better than the last. Yet when asked about the baker's specialty, few could say anything about it, other than that the scent of it was rumored to be something out of Heaven's kitchen.

It was on an afternoon when the baker was baking more of the eclairs that had left the mayor in tears that she went looking in her cabinet for more ingredients and found the bread. Moisture had seeped through the wrapper; the green mold covering the bread made it look like a hill in a shepherd's field. For a minute, she grieved. Then she looked at the first tray of eclairs she had made and shrugged. She cut the mold away, threw the rest of the bread to the pigeons in the alley, and returned to the work she had yet to do, becoming in that quiet moment the best baker in all the land.