A long time ago, there was a man, and this man made the most important, necessary, life-giving, in-all-senses-of-the-term VITAL substance known to us all.
No, not water. That’s harder to manufacture.
He was a baker. And he baked bread.
He baked the BEST bread.
The problem with making the best bread is you grow concerned with all the people wanting a slice of the action. Everyone in his village, in the city, in (as far as he knew, he didn’t travel much) the WORLD lusted for the merest crumbs of his labours.
So he hired some of them, as guards, to keep the bread safe and secure.
Then he hired guards to watch the guards. Who, themselves, needed guards, and guards for those guards, and well I’m sure you can see where this is going don’t you.
Anyways, it came to pass that so many of the guards were tied up in watching guards that were watching guards that were watching guards that were, in turn, distracted and nervous due to being watched, that nobody had been watching the baker. Or where he’d been putting the bread.
There was a great interest in finding those two things at that moment – principally for purposes of payment – but as the efforts bore no fruit or bread or anything much people soon gave up and wandered away, disappointed and breadless. But the legends remained.
And somewhere, too, did the bread.
This was all a very long time ago, when people didn’t know any better. Everybody in the rest of this story had no damned excuse.
Especially Edd. Edd with her old worn bag over her shoulder, walking so carefully through the gates of the old city. Edd with her furtive looks and darting eyes. Edd so obviously getting away with something that four separate merchant guards almost detained her on principal, saved only by the obvious and odious emptiness of her old worn bag. A proper thief would have standards, or at least one standard.
But Edd made her way in, like a salmon wandering upstream, and at last she stumbled into the old city’s marketplace, held her old worn bag above her head, and yelled the following.
“I have come and I will bring the bread!”
Which got the same reaction as ‘I know where Jack buried the spare beans’ or ‘I’m going to go and catch the end of the rainbow.’ A couple people threw (stale) bread at her, and someone took her hat off her head and dropped a few coins in it and put it back on.
“Thanks,” said Edd, “but I was looking for more.
The hat was removed again and more metal was added to it.
“No, like, in terms of support. I’m not looking for money, I’m looking for bread. And I will find it. And everyone will love it. It’s going to be amazing.”
“That sounds interesting,” said the hat thief, whose name was Mun. “I will accompany you on this pointless endeavour if you let me keep this hat.”
“Fine,” said Edd. “But give me back the money first.”
So they walked together down the long surly alleys of the old city, which had emerged where buildings argued over who was going to stop first, and they stopped for lunch.
Mun had bread. Edd had bread.
“This bread is pretty garbage,” said Edd. “When I find us the good bread, we’re going to be set for good. Everyone will remember and love us forever and ever.”
“Damn that’s good,” said Mun. “What’s so great about this bread in particular?”
“It’s extremely tasty.”
“Oh.”
After five or six near-robberies, an exciting chase sequence, a dance number, and a soliloquy, they stood at the heart of the old city. You know, just slightly farther left of center than most people think it is.
“Now I must use the secrets that my great-aunt told me,” said Edd.
“Sounds great,” said Mun. “And I’ll hit the secret switch.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The secret switch. About a hundred years back this wall over here was getting rebuilt and they found a big secret switch inside it. It used to open up a big trapdoor in this plaza, but it was rusted shut. They fixed it up too and I think the guy over here was using it as a cellar, but then he died and it might be empty now.”
“Fine,” said Edd. “Please hit the stupid secret switch. Thank you. Let’s go.”
It was actually full of casks of oil, but nobody was around, so they passed unchallenged.
Past the oil cellar and through the side-tunnel and under the old bridge and beyond the farthest dregheaps there was a maze of twisty little passages, none of which looked quite like another.
“This is what my great-grandfather told me about,” said Edd.
“Wow,” said Mun. “Did he say if it was up the fork or down the warren or through the hen’s teeth?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Loads of kids play down here. My auntie showed me a lot of these tunnels. Is your path up the hen’s teeth? I hope it’s the hen’s teeth. See, when I was really little I’d hang around there a lot and once I swear I saw a giant lizard, and hey wait up.”
It was through the fork. Mun complained loudly until Edd told her to shut up.
They stopped outside a deep pit. Bones crunched underfoot, rot swept into nostril. The air felt inquisitive in the least friendly way.
“What?” asked Mun.
“Go on,” said Edd.
“What?”
“Go on and tell me how your cousin’s friend’s so-and-so’s told you all about this. Go on and tell me how the great and terrible wortalask has been dead for fifty years and all the cool kids had a tooth they pulled out of its rotten old skull. Go on!”
“What? I’ve never been this far. No-one’s ever been this far. There’s bones and stuff. Nobody was dumb enough to try.”
The pit belched and heaved and the wortalask crawled out, broadside-first. Six big legs like an elephant’s opposing three little legs like a stork’s. It peered around its own ass in a surly, myopic way and hissed.
It still extremely had all its teeth, which had grown significantly.
“Woah,” said Mun.
Edd strode forwards with determination in every vein of her body. She held up her worn old bag and rubbed it on the wortalask’s face, slapped its rump three times, gave it a skritch behind each of its five ears, and gave its face a good tussle. It collapsed, burping happily.
“Did your great-grandmother tell you that trick?” asked Mun.
“No,” said Edd. “But she said you just had to make it look good.”
Down under the pit.
Under the shaft
Under the crawlspace
Under the big rusty grate
Under the big stone circle
And just beside the enormous combination lock
There was a door.
Edd and Mun looked at the combination lock and then at the door.
“Now what?” asked Mun. It seemed to be a fair question since there were eighty keys on the lock, none of which were numbers or letters.
“Now,” said Edd, “I use what’s in the bag.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“I told you during the soliloquy,” said Edd, who felt she had a right to be irritated. “Weren’t you listening?”
“I got embarrassed and stopped. It was pretty loud and people were trying to sleep.”
Edd sighed and opened the bag and opened the box and opened the jar and opened the tin.
“That’s overkill.”
“That’s prudence. Anyone could’ve stolen my wealth from me.”
“Your wealth smells funny. What is it?”
“The perfect dipping mix for the perfect bread. Passed down to me, after so many years.”
Edd held the sauce next to the lock and squinted a lot until the blobs and shapes within it congealed into something that looked familiar, then punched them in.
And with a groan, the door slid open under weight of years.
And with a sigh, the two women peered inside.
And with a creak, the gentle gust of fresh air made the dessicated, emaciated, mummified corpse of the long-lost baker fall over precisely on his face, which broke with a blunt ‘crunch.’
“Wow,” said Mun.
She poked at a loaf, stale as dead sea air. “Wow,” she said again, looking up at the colossal, endless ruin surrounding her. “Wow.”
“Huh,” Mun concluded. She looked at Edd, who was looking at the bread, which was beyond looking at, and shrugged. “You want to get a pizza instead?”
The pizza was pretty good.