The Bakery That Sells Weather

How it begins

Elsie was glazing a fine afternoon when the farmer asked for a flood.

The pastry brush stopped above the tray.

Outside her bakery wagon, three customers waited for sunshine rolls. A schoolteacher wanted a mild breeze for a picnic. The mayor had ordered a perfectly cloudless hour for the unveiling of his new statue.

Weather was usually a polite business.

"A shower?" Elsie suggested.

"A flood."

"I don't sell disasters."

"You used to."

He placed a small round tin on the counter.

Elsie recognized the blue enamel immediately. Her mother had used tins like that before the bakery acquired wheels, before the valley became famous for its excellent climate, before everybody stopped talking about the north reservoir.

The lid was dented.

Inside lay one black crumb.

The sunshine rolls dimmed.

"Where did you get this?"

"Under my father's floorboards."

The farmer's hands were broad and cracked, with clean crescents beneath his nails. He had dressed carefully for the visit. One shirt cuff was repaired with thread that did not quite match.

Elsie knew him by sight. Jon Reed. The farm beyond the dry bridge.

"What do you want it for?"

"To remember."

Behind him, the schoolteacher quietly put her money away.

The mayor's assistant discovered an urgent reason to leave.

Elsie looked at the crumb again. A tiny reflection trembled on its surface: not the bakery ceiling, but trees bending under heavy rain.

"My mother wrote every recipe down," she said.

"Then you'll know what happened."

That was the difficulty.

Her mother's recipe book contained an index entry for Flood, Valley, Late Autumn.

The corresponding page had been cut out.

For years Elsie had assumed the missing recipe was an act of kindness.

Jon rested one hand on the tin.

"The reservoir is filling again," he said. "And nobody remembers why we were afraid of it."

Above the counter, the little bells began to ring.

There was no wind.