This story got started as I was falling asleep and a bad pun on flowers/flours popped into my head.
Although the bad pun got me started, in the end it had to go. (There's an anecdote in Robert McKee's "Story" about the screenwriters who started with a body behind the sofa, wrote the whole film round it and then realised it had become irrelevant.)
The Baker's Bargain (981 words)
Tom had half an hour to spare to try a new recipe before he opened the bakery. He had a whole rainbow palette to work with: pastry and dough, fruit peel and flesh, juice and jam, seeds and herbs, honey and treacle and custard and chocolate. He could spend a lifetime finding the perfect combinations of substance and flavour. It was a wild, gusty spring morning that made him think of freshness; he’d try cinammon rolls with cloves and mint. The clock’s hands whizzed round as he measured and stirred. When the rolls were in the oven he phoned Anna around the corner. She was always up at sunrise.
The bakery door opened, letting in the tinkle of a far-off bell. A slender young woman in a bright green velvet coat blew in, a smattering of sleet skipping around her shoes. The smell of cut grass filled the shop.
Tom smiled. “Hello again, Flora," he said. "Let me guess. A dozen honey cakes?”
“They are so very good. And such kind service. Perhaps one day I will be able to offer you something that you like as much.” A blush burned Tom’s face. He avoided Flora’s lime green eyes as he took her money.
The door banged open again and Anna limped into the bakery, leaning on her cane, a box tucked under her other arm. Her brown hair was tangled, her cheeks whipped pink by the wind. Mud stained the knees of her jeans. Flora smiled at Anna as she passed. Anna glared her out of the shop.
“That was a fey,” said Anna. “Most of them have got a sweet tooth. One day she’ll come in here and offer you a bargain. Don’t take it. The fey always trick you on the price.” She tapped her cane irritably.
“The fey. Right, I’ll be careful.” Tom hurried round to take the box. The honey from Anna’s bees had flavour that stretched for miles. He was willing to put up with some New Age nonsense for the sake of his cakes.
Anna sniffed. “Do I smell cloves?”
“Yeah. One of my experiments. Want to try?”
Anna clambered up onto a stool at the counter to eat the warm roll. “Not a success, this time,” she said. “But my teeth feel nice and clean now.”
“I have these ideas. It’s always so clear in my head, and then I try and it doesn’t work.”
Anna smiled. “That’s the nature of experiments. Sometimes there’s happy accidents too.”
“I wish it would turn out how I imagine it. If I could just got the proportions right...”
“You will. Knowledge requires sacrifice and all that. Remember the cheese and chilli scones?”
“I'll give you some to take with you. Looks like you’re busy,” he said.
“You caught me sorting out the raspberry canes. It’s new moon, the best time for planting.”
“You don’t seriously believe all that stuff do you?” Tom blurted. “I mean, new moons, fairies, aren’t you a bit old for all that?”
Anna slid off the stool. “She will come back. Whatever she offers you, the price is always too high. Don’t have anything to do with her. You can drop my payment through the letterbox.”
#
Flora did come back, when the weather was all blue skies and warm breezes. She ordered her honey cakes and said, “Perhaps I might offer you better payment than money.”
“Er...”
“Be bold, Tom. Many things are possible.” The scent of flowers drowsing in sunshine flooded over him. The wooden floor of the bakery creaked and groaned as it thrust out green shoots. Flora smiled at him, her lips as red as the depths of a rose.
“Surely, you must have one heart-felt wish?” she asked.
“Yes. I want to be able to bake everything perfectly, every time.” Tom blinked in surprise as the wish leapt from his lips. “I want the flavours to come out just as I imagine them.”
“Your wish is to have every bread and cake and pastry turn out exactly as you plan?”
“Yes. Although, I was told, there would be a price...”
“My dear Tom, I am offering you payment. How can there be a price?”
#
Tom woke tangled in the trailing ends of a nightmare. He felt drained and woozy as he began baking, but his loaves and pastries were better than ever. He made the cinnamon, mint and clove rolls again, and phoned Anna.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “I knew you’d get it right.”
“They came out exactly as I imagined,” said Tom.
#
Tick tock, every day perfect loaves and pastries. He set the oven too high, he put in too many spices, he left the flour or the yeast out. It didn’t matter. Every new recipe turned out exactly as he imagined it. No surprises. No happy accidents. As he baked, his mind imagined a lifetime of tick tock, idea to realisation, no matter what he did or didn’t do. The clock hands crawled. Every morning he picked up the phone to call Anna, and changed his mind. After a fortnight, she came to the bakery anyway.
“You took the bargain, didn’t you?” she said.
“She said there was no price!” Tom wailed.
“Tell me exactly what was said.”
When Tom finished, Anna said, “Oh, that old trick. She’ll be back to offer to take it away, for a price. She’ll ask you for something like one blink of your eye. And you’ll think ‘What harm could that possibly do?’ And that blink will happen at the very moment when you need your eyes wide open, and then, wham!” She waved her cane. “You'll be bleeding in the gutter. I'd learn to live with it, if I were you.”
“How?”
“She wasn’t that clever.” Anna patted his hand. “If you can’t be a baker, find something else to cook. Now, I must get back to my bees.”
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