The Bakery at the Bottom of My Dream

How it begins

The first customer asked for the cake she'd eaten in her sleep.

A delivery receipt curled beside the till. It listed flour, yeast, and nothing about the practical consequences of somebody else's dream.

Elena Keane looked at the display case. Three pear tarts, a tray of buns, and a chocolate loaf that had sunk in the middle with unusual dignity.

"Could you describe it?"

"Blue icing. Orange inside. It tasted like the kitchen where I grew up, except my mother was happy."

Elena kept her hands on the counter.

She had dreamed that cake at four seventeen, shortly before the alarm. In the dream, she'd served it on a plate shaped like a small boat.

She had told nobody.

The woman looked embarrassed.

"I know that sounds strange."

"It's been a strange morning for the loaf as well. Would you like tea while I think?"

By nine, three more customers had arrived asking for things Elena had never baked while awake.

A bread that stayed warm through an argument. A biscuit that tasted different depending on who you shared it with. A wedding cake for a marriage that had ended kindly in a life one man couldn't remember living.

Malik Saye came in after his night route and listened from the end of the counter.

"I know the shop," he said.

Elena turned.

"This shop?"

"The other one. It's at the bottom of a street my bus doesn't travel anymore."

Outside, the real morning brightened over a delivery van parked across her door. Elena had been awake for six hours and had not eaten anything she hadn't broken by accident.

Malik looked at the empty plate beside her till.

"What do you have in the dream bakery?"

She knew the answer immediately. That was what frightened her.

"A chair by the window," she said.

For a moment, nobody asked her to make them anything.