Page 43 of Midsummer Phoenixes
“And that’s okay. But I wonder what it was like, back then. Back—I mean in the past, in general.”
I watched him fidget as I placed a plate in front of each of us, the larger serving plate with the sandwiches in the middle.
“I see,” I said and headed back to the kitchen to get two glasses and some water from the fridge.
I had tried to live, at least for a while. Just live. Alongside people, with people. For stretches, there had been laughter in my life, intimacy, both physical and to a lesser degree emotional, but all of these encounters ended in pain and death. And the pain in my past—the witch and everything before—always napped at my heels. I’d come to a certain kind of peace over the years, but it was nothing like the sense of belonging I felt each time I touched or kissed Amory.
All of that made a shit story, unworthy, just marginally better than lemon juice to sour milk. But I knew I had to give the man I loved something of myself. He deserved everything and generally asked so very little.
I sat down, poured him a glass of water and said, “A few hundred years ago, I decided to learn baking.” He froze as if I’d stop if he did anything, so I put a sandwich on his plate. “Eat. I wanted to learn something useful that would make the time go by faster, and I was thinking of staying in one place for a while.
“At the time, I’d been traveling all over the Alps—literally, going over. Goods, people, news, it was a decent way to make money, but after the third time dying on those fucking mountains—oh, hush, it’s fine—well, after the third time, I was pissed off and done.” It hadn’t been dying. It had been dying over and over while those who had been traveling with me had not been so lucky in the blizzard that hit our group.
Amory finally bit into his sandwich after I paused, and as a little reward, I decided to go on.Don’t think about the bodies in the snow, forget about those frozen faces.
“I picked a town just north of the Alps. It was a pretty place with a river and busy streets, affluent enough and big enough to make it easy for me to move there, stay there, and be undiscovered for a few decades.
“I found a childless baker who was looking for a good apprentice, and he took me on.” The man’s wife had died after suffering from syphilis. He’d not contracted it. I became something of a houseboy to the baker, who was genuinely kind and taught me everything he knew. “He was a good teacher, and the work was hard but enjoyable.”
“I didn’t know you could bake,” Amory said.
“Oh, I can. All day if I have to. Fine. You don’t have to give me that look. I’ll make some bread for you before the month is out.
“The baker died.” And I grieved and hated myself for deciding to take a break from my nomadic life. But I stayed, because the man had no family, and someone needed to make sure he received a proper burial. “My time in that place was running out. People already commented that I needed to get married, always a sign they thought you were getting old back then.
“But I couldn’t just do that. You see, the baker had loved his art and his little bakery. He’d taken care of his tools and his ovens, and he’d gifted me his recipes. So I looked for an apprentice of my own. I found two.” They had been a brother and a sister who had given mercy to their mother. Who had told me all about the witch in the tower where they had been conceived. They had no home, and after that hunt, I’d needed the semblance of a home, and just like that, I taught them baking.
To Amory, I said, “They were siblings, one with a head for the business, one with a sense of the art that baking is. I stayed long enough to teach them everything the baker had taught me. I even taught them the recipe he’d held closest to his heart: a recipe for Osterbrot or Easter Bread.
“Yes, my heart. I’ll make that for you as well. The same way he taught me to, if you want. A way for you to taste what was last tasted centuries ago.
“The baker had a rule when it came to Osterbrot, which was typically eaten on Easter Sunday. He was churchgoing to some degree, because you had to be back then. He wasn’t faithful. It’s why we got along so well.” And of course the less public side of our relationship, but I’d spend a day dying before I told Amory. “One rule he had for the Osterbrot was that at least half the loaves wouldn’t be sold. He would give them away, to orphans, to less fortunate families, to homeless people. If I’m being honest, it was the most important ingredient he ever taught me.
“On my last day with them, I walked the streets of the town with the siblings, just as the morning sun woke up the world. We handed out the small feasts together, though in the end, I let them do it alone. When our baskets were empty, I told them to keep the shop and the recipes and the baker’s most valuable ingredient—kindness and generosity. I left, not taking anything but the clothes on my back and the little money in my pocket, because I wanted to start fresh somewhere else.”
I sighed. “And if you can believe it, not two days later, I run into Simeon in a pigsty. But he’ll sue me if I tell you about that, so forget I said anything.”
“Wow,” my lover said.
“Eat your dinner, Amory.”
“Yeah. Wow.” He bit into his sandwich, but I could see the gears turning, his mind a clockwork I longed to understand more than that of any timepiece I had ever owned. “How long were you there for?”
“Hmm. Around twenty years. People then took note of who was making their bread, and much longer would have been dangerous.”
“Right.” He smiled as he took another bite. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that. Or that you can bake old-fashioned bread. I definitely want to try this… what do you call it?”
“Osterbrot.”
“Yes, that.”
“I’ll make it for you,” I said and finished one triangular sandwich myself. I let Amory have the rest, because he’d been on his feet all night and was definitely hungry, and I’d had pancakes and pie.
After dinner—and he didn’t try to clean up anything for once, bless him—we moved to the couch, and he watched me fix his uniform shirt, which took approximately three minutes, although I drew it out because I enjoyed his attention.
“Soyer, how many trades do you know?” he asked, examining the mended shirt, fingers running over the button I’d resewn.
“As many as I needed to.”
