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Apprentice

  Breaking Traditions, Vol 1

  Marie Brown

  ©2012

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 1

  Little Lydia quivered with a combination of excitement and fear as her father made his mark on her new contract. Finally, finally, she was going to be a baker's apprentice! She'd waited so long for this! For all of the seven years of her life that she could consciously remember, she'd wanted to be a baker, to create those magically mysterious treats that only bakers could make, to bake bread that tasted yummy instead of coarse and gritty like the stuff her mom always made. She wanted to make cakes covered in roses, and muffins with fat little heads, and cookies! And now, with the handshake her dad gave the baker's floury, massive paw, it could all begin.

  First thing, Lydia got moved in to the baker's residence. She had her bag with her, lovingly packed by her mother, who was fairly resigned to the loss of her little girl. She should be, by now, since Lydia was the sixth of eight children to apprentice. Her older brothers and one sister had moved out at a rate of one per year since she could remember. Lydia was given a small bed of her own in the baker's attic and fussed over by the baker's wife, a sweet older lady who had never had a child of her own.

  “So long since we had a little one around here,” the lady said. “Please, call me Nana. Nobody wants to be a baker anymore. They all want to be exciting things, like warriors, or mages, or clerics. Why stay home and bake when you could be out adventuring?”

  “People don't want to be bakers?” Lydia couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice if she'd tried.

  “It's hard work,” Nana shrugged. “And there's not much glamour in it. Did you ever hear a Bard's tale of the baker that saved the day?”

  Lydia giggled. “No, but I've heard people talk about coming for miles to buy Baker Danno's fancy cakes.”

  “True enough, and someday they'll be coming to buy Baker Lydia's fancy cakes. Now let's show you around.”

  Nana gave Lydia a tour of the home and bakery, a single unit of a row of businesses. Lydia liked the arrangement of living right on top of the place where you worked. Her father had to walk for almost an hour every morning and every evening, travelling to and from the lands he helped work for the local baron. He complained all the time about not having his own lands, but he was able to take care of his family on the pay he earned even when the harvest failed, because this baron was a fair man. Lydia wondered if he'd be happy for her, or think she was lazy, if he thought about her just walking down two flights of stairs to get to work. Probably happy, she decided, because she was a girl. He was much harder on the boys about laziness than the girls.

  The baker, Danno, was a large man, utterly opposite his small wife in every physical way. He had a big red face, and a big belly, and seemed permanently covered in flour. Lydia couldn't tell how much of his white clothing was really white, and how much just coated in flour. His apron had smears of things more exotic than that, bits of colors that hinted at food colorings and roses made of frosting. Lydia glanced down at her own scrawny body and wondered if she would get plump like Master, or stay thinner, like Nana.

  “Well, little apprentice,” Master said, “there's no time like the present. Let's get started. Do you know how to read?”

  “I do,” Lydia said, rightfully proud. Not everyone fresh in from the country knew their letters. She'd learned from her mother, who'd been a scribe before she met dad and started having babies. Mom made sure all her offspring could read.

  “Good! Then you can take this book over to the prep table and start learning about spices.” Master held out a book, a small volume covered in a battered leather cover, and pointed to a stool. “Off you go, now.”

  Lydia took the book, very excited. Finally, she would enter the mysteries of cooking! She knew some spices were used to flavor breads and pies and such, but not what they were, other than cinnamon and nutmeg.

  The book itself was beautiful, written carefully by a scribe, with beautifully detailed drawings of each spice in its native plant or bark form. Lydia immersed herself in it, content.

  So began her first annum at Danno's Bakery. She discovered that it was indeed hard work, especially for the apprentice, but overall she was happy. Her world revolved around the ovens now, and preparing ingredients for the day's baking, and learning how to judge when a cake was ready to remove from its pan or frost. . . pure heaven.

  But then it all changed.