I don’t really know where to start. I guess the best way would be to put pen to paper, and not let the ink pool under the nib. I guess I should start with my background, just in case people might actually read this gibberish.
I was born into misfortune, marked by the fact that the moon wasn’t present the night of my birth. My mother died before I opened my eyes to the world, but that doesn’t bother me since I never knew her in the first place. Why should I weep for someone I’ve never met? Whenever I tell a person that, they always shoot me a sour look, but I’ll never hide the fact that I’m completely content with not knowing my mother because that’s just who I am. No amount of slight is ever going to change that.
The only person I’ve ever cared for is my father. He was, and still is, a baker. I will never get used to waking up and not smelling a plume of yeasty fragrance wafting in from under my bedroom door. And when I say “fragrance,” I don’t mean the smell of bread. No, I don’t even know what “bread” smells like anymore. I don’t claim to be a master baker, but when you’ve grown up making bread, eating almost exclusively bread, and living in a bakery, you tend to forget what bread smells like.
There are some times where I detect a fragrance of sorts emanating from bread. Maybe it’s a loaf of something foreign to me, or I’ve just spent a couple of nights away from the bakery. Even then, the fragrance doesn’t register as “bread.” In a particular bread-originating aroma, I smell up to half a dozen or so different scents. I can always distinguish the different varieties of yeast, flour, salt, sugar, barley, oil, cream, and even various chemical additives. Oh, and honey. Honey is always particularly fragrant in bread.
We had it pretty good in the city. Our residence was a floor above the bakery, so there was no walking to work. On a typical day, I’d wake up, shamble to the washroom, and wash my face. After I got myself looking slightly presentable, I’d come down the stairs to find my father already sliding the first loaves out of the oven and onto a wooden peel. He’d turn his head to me and smile, sweat dripping down his face. After acknowledging me, his attention would shift back to the bread. He’d been up for hours, so the hickory wood in the oven was engulfed inside and out with flame.
Dough was prepared the night before and baked from dawn till noon. In that time, over thirty loaves could be baked. We weren’t exactly royal bakers, but we didn’t bake for peasants either. All of our loaves were white and soft, far softer than any other bakery in the city. We baked with only the finest wheat from the heartlands, and it really showed. Our clientele knew what they were buying. They ranged from rich merchants and puffy nobles to thin scholars and arrogant champions. Anyone of esteem outside of the royal family would send for their servants to buy a loaf for their lunch. The only group of people who didn’t send someone else to buy our bread for them was the champions.
Particularly deep-pocketed champions were regulars at our bakery. Some would show up on their off days and buy a loaf for dinner. Others who were raised in wealthy households would buy our bread as field rations for their various adventures.
My father didn’t seem to mind, but I personally took insult to these particular champions. After making the transaction, they’d wrap the loaf in linen and stuff it into their bag, waiting to eat it hours or even whole days later. By the time they got around to eating it, it would be a cold, hard rock. The fact that these uppity champions were too important to eat cheap biscuits or crackers in the field like a normal soldier made my blood boil.
Of course, most champions didn’t do this. It tended to be the champions that had no common sense or budgeting skills. Sorcerers, knights, and others born into wealth made up the majority of these idiots. But I digress.
I’ve been writing for some time now. My candle seems to have shrunk a sizable amount, and there’s a couple of hours worth of wax collected in the bobeche.
Words sometimes escape me. The particular art of constructing sentences and paragraphs is still very new to me. I’ve never had any trouble speaking, of course. I’ve been crafting sentences for as long as I can remember. I’m just not used to putting thoughts on paper. I’ve never thought about it before, but much more conscious thought goes into writing than speaking. But that is why I’m writing in the first place. I’ve only recently been taught how to write.
My father and I were well off, but we’re not particularly rich. Since school wasn’t an option, and he’d rather me help in the bakery, I’ve never received any kind of education until just recently. Because of this, he taught me how to read by himself. He also taught me basic numbers, just enough to not get ripped off at the market.
One might think it outrageous that a young man such as myself might barely know how to write, but my father never saw much use in teaching me. Being a baker, the most I might write would be the week’s expenses and earnings in our ledger. But even then, I would be writing nothing but numbers.
“But what about recipes?” You might ask.
“Wouldn’t you record and pass down your baking techniques to your offspring?” You ask again, wildly impatient for an answer.
“Pass down? Of course. Record? Not a chance.” I would say, taking a long draw from my pipe, with a sagely look about me. You see, a good breadsmith never needs a recipe. A royal baker or a patissier might hand recipes down, master to apprentice. But in a situation such as mine, there is no need to record our technique. I was taught how to make bread by instinct, just as my father was, as was his father. A recipe might even make the bread worse.
You see, many different atmospheric factors you have no control over can affect the baking, or more accurately, the proofing of the bread. When you let a bread rest, different factors can prevent it from rising, or make it rise too much. Factors such as temperature, humidity, and even atmospheric pressure can affect the dough. Of course, those factors can be counteracted during the processing of making the dough. That’s why, if you follow a recipe exactly to the tea, your bread will almost always never turn out perfect. Making bread requires flexibility.
When kneading, a good baker will use his deft hands to figure what the dough is missing. The two most common ingredients that are usually off balance are what we call the “wet” and the “dry.”
“Wet” can refer to several different ingredients. Usually water, but sometimes cream or milk. If the dough seems too frail or flakey, then it needs wet.
“Dry” almost always refers to flour. If the dough is tacky or sticky, it usually needs more flour added.
Of course, when baking, one must account for the fact that some doughs are meant to be sticky, or that some are meant to be flakey. But there are half a million other intricacies that go into forming dough, much less baking it, so once again, I digress.
Besides baking, there is one other skill that my father has had me learn. But for you to fully understand why I was taught this skill, and how my father learned it from his father I’d have to make a full dive into my family history, and that isn’t something I’m willing to do at this moment.
However, theoretically, if I were to sum it up in a short sentence, it would go something like this: “one of my ancestors was a hero-baker.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You’re a descendant of a hero-baker? That hero-baker?” You gasp, not believing the words that you just read.
But of course, that hero-baker! What other hero-baker exists in this world? Surely you’ve only ever heard of the one.
I, Myca, son of Denton and Gaela, am the direct descendant of none other than the savior of all creation, the great Simon!
Of course, this information is a secret orally passed down generation after generation in our family. Up until very recently, our bloodline has been privy to only me and my father.
But, just as how one day all bread must be eaten, all secrets shall reveal themselves in time. That’s just how the intermingling of time and curiosity affects our reality.
Really, I’m surprised it took the scholars as long as they did to track down Simon’s lineage. Apparently they’d been trying for centuries, somehow to no avail.
But, the scholars, adept at sticking their long, warty noses where they don’t belong, picked and probed at documents, deeds, letters, ledgers, artifacts, and certificates all over the known universe.
Eventually, after seven long centuries since the unfortunate departure of my forefather Simon, they finally put all pieces of the puzzle together and tracked his bloodline down to me and my father. The last surviving members of Simon’s bloodline.
When they finally tracked us down and knocked on our door one particularly warm evening, (damn near breaking it down) they seemed to have been taken aback. Absolutely shook. Personally, I don’t blame them.
For one, we were bakers. That much seemed to make them stop in their tracks. Who on earth would believe that, after seven hundred years, our family would still be bakers? And incredibly adept ones, at that (personally, I’d like to believe that we were better bakers than Simon, given the massive culinary development over these past seven hundred years). Most families tend to lose their traditions after three or four short generations. But no, seven hundred years, and we’re still baking bread with the best of ‘em.
The other thing that surprised them, more than the fact that we were still bakers, is that we knew of our ancestry prior to their visit. Much like our craft was passed down, we also passed down the history of our bloodline. Which to be fair, isn’t as hard as they made it out to be.
With most families or clans, their claim to relevant ancestry stems from some ancient tale that can’t be proven and has most likely been distorted over the generations. But our family’s claim is simply to one single man, and a household name at that. It’s fairly difficult to forget that your ancestor is Simon when there are statues of him all over the country.
We didn’t discuss this with the scholars while they stood under our threshold of course. After initial greeting and pleasantries, we invited them inside our house, into the sitting room. My dad isn’t much of a conversationalist, so I kept them busy, talking about this and that, while he shuffled out to the kitchen to get refreshments.
“Tea or coffee?” His voice rang from down the hall.
“Coffee!” Shouted one young, lanky scholar, looking over his shoulder towards the hallway. He wore a bare brown garb and a tight tonsure. He bore no religious symbology, even though he struck me as the most obvious looking monk I’d ever seen. I’d later find out that he had been banished from the church after asking too many dangerous questions. He still dressed like a monk out of habit.
“Tea please,” Nasally uttered the next, barely loud enough for my father to hear. He was the most serious looking out of the three and by far the oldest. He wore a crimson tunic over linen tights. His face was that of a weathered gray fox, whiskers and all. He kept his knobbly nose to the sky as if he was tracking something particularly pungent. He also seemed to act like he had better things to do. In fact, he came off as entirely uninterested in anything we had to say.
But, reading people is one of my many specialties, especially when it comes to eyes. This grumpy old fox’s eyes held absolutely no secrets. Anytime I mentioned anything having to do with Simon, his eyes lit up with passion, even though the rest of his body didn’t follow through. The way he didn’t act interested even though he was fully engrossed was almost cute.
The third and final scholar answered with a resounding “Coffee.”
The volume of the man’s voice was neither loud nor quiet, but it somehow boomed and resonated throughout the house and my ears. It carried perfectly through the air almost as if it was projected with magic. From his atmosphere alone I could tell he was the leader of the three. His giant arms were folded over his massive barrel chest that threatened to explode out of his black linen shirt. He sat with tree-sized legs crossed beneath a green plaid kilt.
The monk and the fox sat on our leather couch and the leader sat in an oak chair all by his lonesome. I held a conversation with the monk, and he sat leaning forwarding, obviously giving his full attention to what I had to say.
“So, you’ve known your entire life?” He asked me.
“Yes, for as long as I can remember,” I respond.
I sat in my favorite chair, fashioned from an ash stump and wrought iron. It’s much more comfortable than it sounds, I assure you.
“How does a child keep a secret that long?”
“Well,” I start, beginning to ponder. “Nobody’s going to believe a boy when he tells them he’s the descendant of Simon, are they?”
“Ah, excellent point.” He says, seeming satisfied with my answer.
“So,” a nasal voice filled the air. “Why keep this a secret from humanity?”
He pauses. I start:
“I-“
“Surely, in the past, oh, I don’t know, seven hundred years, there were a couple of points in history humanity could have used a helping hand from the descendants of a figurative god, right?” He asks, not expecting an answer.
I almost began to say something, but then I realized he’s just waiting for me to say something so he can interrupt me again. After he shot me a pompous look, he started again.
“Maybe your ancestors could have shown themselves in the turmoil following the fall of the Old Empire to unite the lands? Perhaps they could have supported the new king of Droy when the kingdom was split in shambles. Maybe then civilization wouldn’t have been set back some two hundred years? What about the Great Orc Wars?” He shrieked, out of breath.
He inhaled deeply. The monk looks embarrassed, and the leader didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. In fact, I think he was mouth breathing a little bit.
“What about when…” he goes on. And on. I’d never even heard of half of these events and countries he mentioned. I’m almost convinced he started making words up by the end of his outburst.
“Well, what do you have to say for yourself? Are you proud that your ancestors are cowards? What reason do you have for keeping Simon’s lineage a secret?” He spat.
“Oh wow, three questions at once.” I seem to remember thinking.
Sweat dripped from his brow and chin, and his nose ran like the wind. I waited for him to clean himself, soiling his kerchief.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s a secret at this point. We’re just perfectly content with being bakers, not heroes.” I say.
“P-perfectly-“
“Perfectly content,” I say, cutting him off. “Even if we did claim his blood, no one would believe us, and we’d be lynched by a dozen families that also claim his blood. It would be a no-win situation.”
“Yes but now you have proof!” The monk chimed in this time. “Rock-solid proof!”
He opened a patchy satchel he’d been carrying and retrieved a leather-bound book with stray pages poking out from beneath its covers.
“This here, this book,” he said, gesturing the tome wildly. “This is the key to your ancestry. This one volume holds centuries of information on your ancestors. Here, take a look.”
He set the book on the coffee table and opened it. He rotated it around to where I could read it, and flipped through the pages, giving me a small lecture on the migrations of my various ancestors.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit, but the topic of my ancestors did excite me to an extent I’m not willing to admit. Growing up, my father made sure to pass down the teachings that Simon passed down to his on, but nothing more. He seemed to not take an interest in anything other than baking.
I leaned forward and followed along with the monk’s musings. He enthusiastically highlighted a man here, a woman there, several centuries of my lineage. Some were bakers, some were warriors, and some were neither.
By the time the monk had come to a stopping point, my father walked into the room carrying a wooden tray. Atop the tray sat five mugs, two full of tea and three with coffee.