“Bella! Are you packing up for the day?” Jane strolled up to her friend’s stand, disappointed. “That’s a shame. I wanted to get your opinion on something.”

  “I’m packing up, but I was packing up to see you. I can do that here, too. What do you have?”

  Jane swung a cloth bag filled with a dozen keln onto Bella’s front counter. “Try these. Tell me how close I got.”

  “Oh, wow. Gladly.” Bella tore off a big chunk from one of the flatbreads and dipped it in a bit of oil. She took a bite and closed her eyes, tasting it carefully.

  “Well?” Jane asked.

  Bella swallowed, opened her eyes, and nodded. “It’s good. Do you want me to be more honest than that?”

  “Please.”

  “Do you know the term ‘commercially acceptable’? Good. This is that. I could absolutely use this in my shop, and my customers absolutely wouldn’t complain about it. In fact, I demand you make me a couple dozen of these every morning, and I’ll pay.”

  “My shop isn’t open yet, and there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  “Then open it already. And yes, there’s a ‘but*.’*” Bella took another nibble, as if making sure of something, then set her chunk of keln down. “In my book, there are two kinds of food you can sell. One is just good enough that nobody complains. If you sell that kind of food, people come back when it’s convenient. You catch people who are passing by.”

  “But nobody says ‘wow’?” Jane guessed.

  “Right. Nobody is going to complain about this keln, but nobody is taking a long walk to get it, either. No shame in that. It just means yours is about as good as everyone else’s. You could do herb mixtures in it, and please do, but that’s what everyone else does. It’s still not going to be a big ‘wow’ type of thing.”

  “Well, give me a little while to figure it out.” Jane sighed. “I can’t open the shop until after the next rest day, anyway. My head won’t be clear until that event is over.”

  Jane knew she had made a mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but it was too late. Though it had been two days since the party, she had avoided telling Bella the details of her date, somehow.

  Now the jig was up.

  “Jaaaaaaane.” Bella drew out the word long enough that she was able to walk around her counter and throw an arm around the girl. “You wouldn’t be keeping something from your good friend Bella, would you? Something to do with a nice boy you won’t admit you had immediate strong feelings for?”

  “I won’t admit that. Gross.” Jane shook her head. “But yes, he asked to take me to the base of the waterfall on the next rest day. Since I’ve never been.”

  “Oooh, smooth. He must have been listening all through the party, trying to find something like that to use as an opportunity. Good for Allen! I didn’t know he had it in him.”

  “Well, he did.” Jane sank onto one of the stools. “And yes, I’m incredibly nervous about the whole thing. What do I do?”

  Bella sat down on the stool next to her and playfully kicked at Jane’s feet. “I think what most girls would do is make everything seem like the boy’s fault, more or less. Like it’s his job to make sure things go well. It kind of is, which makes that easy. It’s what I do with Brit.”

  “Wait, you and Brit are seeing each other?”

  “Not yet.” Bella smiled. “A fact which he thinks is entirely his fault.”

  Jane tried to remember the party. Though the alcohol made things a bit hazy, it did seem that most of Brit’s interactions with Bella had him on the back foot, like he was afraid of what she might do or say at any moment. Even so, he’d kept going back to the well, trying again and again.

  “I don’t think I have it in me,” Jane said weakly.

  “That’s good, because you don’t. And you definitely shouldn’t try to force something that’s not you. Just be yourself, and try to keep in mind that he isn’t any better with people than you are. I’m actually astonished he’s made it this far, this fast. If you remember he’s feeling the same way you are, maybe it will help.” Bella ripped off a bit of keln and nibbled on it. “As for the bakery, what’s the plan there?”

  “Oh, this and that. For once, I don’t have much planned for the next few days. I think I’ll just be working on this keln, and cakes. And organization.”

  “Meaning?”

  That was quite a question. Jane knew she didn’t have the whole answer yet.

  “I have to figure out how to run a bakery. It’s a big job.”

  —

  Back at home, Jane finally got started on that big job. She sat down at her counter, pulled out a brand new notebook, and wrote down everything relevant to her task.

  The first category was for things she knew. She knew how long it took to make cookies, and how long a loaf of bread occupied an oven. She knew how much time those objects then needed to rest, how much time they could be expected to keep, and even how much gold they all cost to make.

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  Gold was another area of known facts, all by itself. She knew for sure that she had less and less of it these days, and that while she’d be fine for a while yet, she needed to stop spending it and start making it as soon possible. Even a partial opening of her bakery would drain a lot of that money. Whatever she did, it needed to work, at least to the point where it covered its own costs.

  Her walks around town hadn’t been a waste, either. She knew what other people were charging. Luckily, the cost of baked goods didn’t seem to vary much.

  She studied the list once it was written, then sighed.

  I know all that, yet I still know so little.

  Her unknowns had stacked up higher and higher as she thought about things, and they were still rising. Customers might realize she was open again if they walked by, but she had no way to ensure that anyone who wasn’t in eyeline would know she had goods to sell. They might want her baked goods the very first day she laid them out, or they might already have those needs covered. She might sell every last scrap her ovens could turn out, but it was equally possible that she would get stuck with a mountain of leftover bread.

  With no way to resolve those unknowns, she decided to work on problems she could solve. That meant turning to the comforts of math.

  Over the next few hours, she moved various baking and prep time figures around, trying to figure out the most efficient way to stagger each part of her baking. She got there. There were probably little inefficiencies she’d work out along the way, but she ended the thinking portion of her day with at least one of her major unknowns resolved. So long as she woke up on time the day of her bakery’s reopening, she’d be able to get her tables stocked.

  Though I do need baskets and tablecloths, if I want it all to be pretty… With a satisfied smile, she added a new category to her list. I guess I’m going on another walk.

  —

  The next three days were spent on cakes. Not eating them, although that did happen as she got more successes under her belt. Learning to bake them was a substantial job in and of itself, even with her magic book of cooking science eliminating most of the guesswork.

  Between big batches of cakes, she also worked on her breads and cookies. Not only did she smooth out little imperfections in her finished products, but she also found new efficiencies in the way she mixed and loaded things into pans and ovens. All the while, she watched over her little jar of yeast, feeding it fresh flour and magic from time to time as it became more and more actively bubbly.

  When Bella stopped by in the early evening on the day before rest day, Jane had all sorts of surprises for her.

  “That’s a lot of cakes,” Bella observed, staring at the laden counter. “And cookies.”

  “Yup!” Jane tossed a bag of assorted cookies at her friend and smiled as the substantial weight of it caught Bella off-guard. “Eat those. Take home what you can’t. I’m drowning in this stuff.”

  “Why did you make so much?”

  “Oh, you know.” Jane took out her broom and started sweeping her work area, which was absolutely covered with the evidence of a day spent not caring much about spills. “I’m trying to pack years of experience into a few days. I can’t stop working, or I’ll never get there. And I can’t eat that fast, so it sort of builds up. Really, take whatever you want.”

  “Does it help? I mean, cooking everything you possibly can like this. I’d think that at some point you’d get into diminishing returns.”

  Jane smiled. Accepting the perfect setup with grace, she slid another bag a bit closer to Bella. Her friend set down the cookies and opened it, jolting in shock at the aroma.

  “No.” Bella’s voice was hushed with awe. “How could you have?”

  “Call it magic. Come on, try it. I want to see how close I got.”

  Bella pulled a piece of keln from the sack and took a bite straight out of the circular loaf, without bothering to tear or cut away a more polite section. When the bread hit her tongue, she groaned.

  “Oh gods, Jane, you’ve done it. It’s the exact same. You really won’t tell me how you figured this out?”

  “That’s a state secret. The less you know, the better.” Jane gave her a half-smile. “Sorry, that’s really almost true. You are better off not knowing how I discovered the key.”

  “Even so, this is a big deal, Jane. If you are the only person in town who knows how to do this, you are guaranteed to have business. Forever. I can’t tell you how much people miss Shelby’s keln. They’ll mob you for this.”

  “Actually, I don’t think I’m going to keep the key itself a secret,” Jane said slowly. “Shelby did, but that was fair. It was her little technique. All I did was learn from that and spend a few days figuring out how to get the best results. And it’s benefited all my baking. It wouldn’t be fair to keep that a secret forever.”

  “Well, there’s forever, and then there’s forever.” Bella took another bite of the bread. “Couldn’t you keep it secret a little while? And then make a big deal of it when you share it?”

  “That does seem fair.” Jane thumped down into a chair, thoroughly tired. “I’ll promise you that I’ll do that, if you can tell me what to do with Allen tomorrow. He’s going to be here in the morning. What should I do? What should I say? What should I wear?”

  “All three of those are easy. You do whatever you want, which I suspect is being very nervous around someone who should not make you nervous at all. You say whatever you want, which he will treat like holy words falling straight out of scripture.”

  “But what do I wear?”

  “Easiest of all. You need boots, and a dress long enough to keep you from getting hit by foam all day.”

  “Hmm. I have my comfortable dresses, but they aren’t very pretty. I was hoping you’d say something else.”

  “That’s why we have shops. And I know the ones that stay open a bit later on the day before a rest day.” Bella stood and held out her hand to her friend. “Come on. Your first dress is on me. Shopping will take your mind off of things, anyway.”

  It did. Bella led Jane to various shops where women’s clothes and accessories were sold, providing support and guidance along the way. After a visit to a tailor’s for a dress, a trip to a cobbler’s to resole and shine up her good boots, and a stop at a hat store for an enormous straw hat to keep the sun off her face, Jane really did feel calmer.

  At the house, she repaid Bella by dumping two dozen keln into a sack and shoving the whole thing towards her.

  “Won’t the fact that I have these ruin your surprise?” Bella protested.

  “Nope! Just don’t tell anyone where you got them. Let people guess. It will build up intrigue.”

  “They’ll figure out it’s you! We spend all our time together!”

  “All the better, then. Let word spread, and when I open my shop, they’ll come running.”

  Bella burst out in a loud laugh, filling the room with the sound of it in the big, boisterous way only she could.

  “Where did my poor, sweet, unconfident Jane go? All I have now is this business monster. What will I do?”

  “I suspect you’ll get by,” Jane replied dryly. “Now, away with you. I need to take a bath and wash my hair, then go to bed before my worries come back.”

  “Will you stop by tomorrow night to fill me in?”

  Jane hesitated. “I’ll need to be getting ready for the bakery opening the next day…”

  “Say no more.” Bella held up a hand. “Enjoy the day. But you will give me all the details at some point. Promise?”

  Jane smiled. “Promise.”