Chapter 18 #2
I turned. She looked exhausted, her face pale beneath the moonlight, but she was standing. Nutmeg clung to the folds of her shawl, her amber-bright eyes unusually wide.
Relief should have rushed through me after the bakery’s unusually violent move. Instead, I merely observed that they were safe. The shallow response frightened me more than the unfamiliar meadow stretching beyond the bakery.
As though my emptiness had been written plainly across my face, as obvious as frosting on a cupcake, Nutmeg gave a small, distressed chirp and floated over to nuzzle my cheek with her soothing warmth.
I remembered how dearly I cared for her and knew I ought to gather her close, but that fondness had become only another memory, my previous affection more fact rather than a feeling.
“Granny,” I whispered. “I can’t feel anything.”
Her expression softened with quiet sorrow. “You’ve endured a great deal.”
I pressed both hands against my chest, as though I might awaken my heart by force. “It took him. It took everything.”
She soothingly smoothed my hair back. “With time, your emotions will return,” she promised.
“Our feelings are never experienced only once. They are woven through every season of our lives, returning again and again as we continue to love, to hope, and to grieve. This time, with the bargain broken, nothing will ever steal them from you again. Whatever grows within your heart will remain yours.”
Once, those words would have filled me with dread. Now they offered something else: a quiet hope.
Granny drew me into her embrace. I allowed myself to rest against her because I knew it was what she needed as much as I did.
At first I felt only the familiar weight of her arms around me.
Then, little by little, the warmth of her embrace reached the quiet places within me, bringing with it the faintest measure of comfort.
I slowly returned her embrace, holding her with a gentleness I could not yet feel but still wished to give.
Eventually I stepped back and returned inside. The recipe book lay open upon the kitchen floor. The crack through its spine remained, but the pages no longer shimmered with magic. I knelt beside it and turned to the Homecoming Loaf Recipe.
Its page had become blank. I flipped through the book. The tracking tart had vanished. So had the memory cakes, the courage confections, and every enchanted recipe I had ever baked.
Only the ordinary pages’ recipes remained: oat muffins, honey bread, carrot cake, lemon scones. Simple recipes written in Granny’s familiar hand and the unfamiliar script of our ancestors, requiring nothing more costly than flour, time, and patience.
The book was no longer hungry. I ought to feel relieved.
Instead, I closed it and lowered myself onto the floor.
Granny quietly lit the lantern that had gone out in our quick journey, while the extinguished oven cooled.
Outside, insects began their evening song, blissfully unconcerned with curses, bargains, or wandering roads.
Granny settled into the rocking chair beside the hearth. “We should rest,” she said quietly. “Morning often carries answers that night refuses to give.”
I nodded because I could think of nothing else to do, but even after I’d returned to my bedroom I didn’t sleep. The room felt strangely empty without Gabe’s familiar presence filling its quiet corners.
I slipped out of bed and curled up next to the window as the moon crossed slowly overhead.
Some foolish part of me kept expecting him to appear along the path.
Perhaps the curse had released him only a short distance away, or perhaps the bakery hadn’t traveled as far as it seemed.
Perhaps his impossible sense of direction would fail him in precisely the right way and lead him straight to our door, or perhaps with the curse finally broken, he would somehow find me no matter how far the bakery had carried us.
But the darkness remained empty. Still I waited, watching the meadow until silver moonlight gradually softened into the pale gray of dawn. Yet he never came.
As the first rays of morning painted the sky in gentle pastel hues of pink and gold, I remembered the moments Gabe and I had sat together at this very window, watching the sunrise spill across the treetops.
He had been the one to awaken the wonder I had almost forgotten how to feel.
The memory lingered, quietly unlocking another, followed by another.
He would have never have allowed me to spend the entire night awake by myself.
He would have brewed my favorite strawberry cream tea and stood beside me at the window, studying the unfamiliar meadow with the same determined concentration he gave every mystery.
Before long, he would have fetched my parchment and ink, eager to explore every winding path together.
As each memory settled gently beside the last, a feeling tightened my chest. There was no one standing beside me at the window.
This was the life I’d chosen long ago, yet once I’d come to know something different, solitude could never feel right again.
The quiet ache returned, small yet unmistakable.
I missed him.
My breath caught. I pressed one trembling hand against my chest. The ache remained, beautifully painful, and I embraced the discomfort. “I miss him.” The words were like a revelation, as radiant and unexpected as the sunrise spilling across the meadow.
Unable to keep it to myself, I hurried down the stairs, where Granny sat knitting in her rocking chair. She looked up as I entered, and her needles stilled. Her eyes widened as she searched my face, seeing something there that had not been present only moments before.
“I miss him, Granny.”
This time the words carried more than memory; they carried feelings I’d once thought lost forever, quietly stirring within the empty places of my heart, waiting for me to recognize them again. Hope followed, not bright or triumphant, but gentle as the first warmth of morning touching frost.
Then the fear I’d spent my entire life trying to avoid followed. What if I never found him? What if the bakery had carried us to opposite ends of the world? What if he believed I had willingly let him go?
The fear sharpened until tears blurred my vision. I reached up, almost in wonder, and brushed one away as it slipped down my cheek. A soft laugh escaped me, sounding as fragile and astonished as the tears themselves.
Granny’s knitting tumbled forgotten into her chair as she rose. “Cecelia?”
“I'm afraid.” The confession would once have sounded like defeat. Instead, it felt like proof that the feeling I’d thought gone forever still remained.
Her face brightened with such overwhelming relief, causing another emotion to quietly stir within me within me—joy, small as the first green shoot after winter, but unmistakably alive. Joy that she was here and that I didn’t have to walk this new beginning alone.
I began to cry in earnest. Granny gathered me into her arms, and this time when she enfolded me relief spread warmly through my chest. Nutmeg burrowed beneath my chin, radiating her warmth as I cradled her close. Affection flickered gently to life, no longer remembered but felt.
The emotions didn’t return all at once. They came like the first scattered drops of rain after a long drought. Grief. Hope. Fear. Relief. Joy. Affection. Each one small enough to hold, yet each one entirely my own.
The book had never destroyed my heart, it had claimed every new feeling before it had the chance to grow. Now that claim had finally been broken.
For years, every emotion had been drawn into the bargain before it could take root.
Now there was nothing waiting to consume them.
They could grow as they had always been meant to flourish—slowly and naturally, nourished by remembered joys, fresh sorrows, quiet mornings, unexpected laughter, and every ordinary moment still waiting to be lived.
I looked towards the empty meadow. My love for Gabe had not yet returned, the one gift I had willingly offered to the magic. Perhaps it would take time, needing to be rediscovered through shared days, familiar conversations, quiet breakfasts, and countless small choices made one after another.
But I no longer mistook absence for permanence. I missed him. For now, that was enough, as was the hope that one day we would find one another again, even when no ancient bargain bound our paths together.
No magic would lead him back to me, no wandering would carry him to my door. If we found each other again, it wouldn’t be because fate had compelled us. It would be because somewhere beneath the same stars…we had both chosen to keep walking towards home.
I rose and reached for my maps. Granny watched quietly as I scrubbed the worktable clean and began to unroll them.
Long into the night I pored over them, trying to place where the bakery had landed and retrace the path to the forest. At last, as the eastern horizon lightened, I sighed and rolled them up. I couldn’t make any real progress until I had seen our new home.
Granny insisted that I rest for a few hours and eat a meal before heading out, but by mid-morning I’d laced my boots and tied my cloak around my shoulders, its pockets restocked with everything I needed for exploring and mapping.
My first discovery was surprising. The bakery sat in a daisy-filled meadow flanked with aspens, but just beyond the trees I found a small village, bustling with life.
Eagerly I approached the center of the village towards the bustling market, questioning the villagers about the local geography.
I pieced together the information to surmise that the bakery had moved north of the forest, though I wasn’t sure how far.
I was about to turn back towards home when I spotted a wizened woman sitting at a tiny booth where she sold knitted socks and scarves. Her work reminded me of Granny’s, and I paused to admire it.
“Passing through?” the woman asked conversationally.