ToastedTHG: Giving-Katniss-Bread Fanfiction (Part 2)
Yes, I am a self-promoting loser. :P But over the years I’ve enjoyed rewriting the bread scene in various contexts, so here’s 7-yr-old Appalachian Hansel & Gretel!Everlark (from Breadcrumbs) for you...
It had been a little after Mama and the baby died, and Papa was in a bad way: spending their trades on liquor; not to carouse, simply to numb the grief. He sat in The Hob for an hour or more while Katniss stood outside with her empty basket, waiting to see how much money remained to buy bread and flint and soap.
Sometimes there was nothing left, and they returned to the cabin gray-faced and empty-handed. There was plenty to live on in the woods, of course, but some days proved leaner than others.
That day Papa had been especially long in the tavern, and Katniss’s small stomach was growling like a sleepy bear cub as she lingered outside the bakery. If the baker was there, she could have had a rabbit bun, maybe even two of them, but he was away for the afternoon, and his wife was none too generous. Katniss watched wistfully through the window as the baker’s youngest son pulled a pan of perfect little rabbit buns, golden and steaming, from the oven, but his mama cuffed him smartly when he tried to put them in the basket his papa carried around for handing them out. The baker’s wife preferred to give the little buns to the children of paying customers, not hungry urchins in the street.
Katniss wasn’t quite starving, but Papa’s trades – and hunts – had been poor of late and she was very hungry, so she went round the back of the bakery to the wide raised platform the family used as a bird feeder. There was almost always something there – broken cookies, stale bread, burnt crusts – but that day there were only crumbs.
Buttery shortbread crumbs, though, and much better than nothing. Katniss was picking them up and stuffing them in her mouth, a pinch at a time, when the back door crashed open and the baker’s youngest son came hurrying out with a pillowcase, half-filled with something-or-other, in his hands. He went straight to Katniss at the bird feeder, thrust the neck of the pillowcase into her hands, and ran back inside. Katniss heard a fleshy thump and a cry of pain from within, almost before the door had closed behind him, and she ran away as fast as she could.
She didn’t dare to look inside the pillowcase till she was hidden in the alley alongside The Hob, and when she finally did her mouth fell open like a fish’s. It was an entire batch of little rabbit buns, so fresh and hot that the pillowcase steamed when she opened it; a cloud of moist heat, smelling dizzyingly of honey-bread. Her stomach gave a ferocious growl, a bear cub’s no longer.
Some of the little buns had stuck together; they were that warm and soft, but Katniss didn’t mind two pins. She crammed three of them into her mouth in rapid succession, nearly burning her tongue on the doughy insides, then ran headlong into the tavern to find Papa, her pillowcase-sack held triumphantly aloft.
The grizzled old barmaid, Sae, had chuckled at the sight. “Reckon your girl’s bagged a coon, Jack,” she teased, taking away his empty mug.
Papa turned to Katniss at once, the liquor forgotten in his concern, for she’d never set foot inside The Hob before, but his concern quickly turned to astonishment when she showed him the contents of the pillowcase. “These are Mellark’s buns,” he said in wonder. “Did the baker give you all of these?”
“No, his boy did,” Katniss answered, still confused by that part of the story. “I was eatin’ crumbs from their bird feeder out back and he ran out and gave ‘em to me.”
Papa’s face fell at that. “You were eating crumbs from their bird feeder?” he echoed sadly.
He never drank in The Hob again.
They rode straight home after that, singing silly old songs and eating rabbit buns all the way, and when they got there Papa went out and shot a proper rabbit for stew, with plenty of fat roots and spicy wild greens. He made Katniss drink as much goat’s milk as she could, warmed with a little of their comb honey stirred in, and put her to bed early in the little trundle-drawer.
And all the while she clung to the pillowcase, even after it was empty. It smelled of soap flakes and fresh honey-bread. That smell was life, and the start of a new one for her and Papa.
Once Papa’s drowsy lullabies turned to snores, Katniss sat up, tugged off her own pillowcase, and replaced it with the one from the baker’s son, crumpled from several hours grasped in her little hands. She fell asleep that night, and many nights after, breathing in honey-bread and life, curled round the fragrant pillow as she slept.
The pillowcase lost its sweet bread smell after just one wash with their rough lye soap, but Katniss slept on it every night just the same.