Chapter 1 - The Bread Mentor
Looking out the window from the top floor, I see a crowd of people walking brusquely by the bakery where my husband worked to finish the bread orders in time. Everywhere around the market place, people are clutching paper bags filled with food, wrappers and knick-knacks. Mothers going from shop to shop, picking up meat products and pastries. Fathers and older men gathering in the square talking about the new republic, job openings in neighboring districts, and whether they could still make use of their mining skills in other districts. Teenage girls gathering in groups showing off trinkets that allegedly came from this or that famous shop in the Capitol.
I can see familiar faces here and there from my vantage point by the windowsill. I try to associate faces with names, but in the end, all I can see is a teeming crowd of last minute shoppers all wanting to make this year's Remembrance Day more special than the last. This is the first of three designated holidays in the new Panem, and it's meant for those that want to go back to their hometowns for Remembrance or visit other districts for a quick vacation.
For me, it's a day off. I've hunted my share with a group of former miners from the Seam. We hunt actively during spring and summer, when the animals mate and abound. The rest of the year, only those like me who think the woods look friendly even during the winter months go out hunting. Most of the game we collected the whole week are now being traded by shrewd middlemen in the Hob at three times the price we sold them for. Now that the economy's better, even lowly workers can afford a rabbit or two.
Tomorrow is Remembrance Day proper. The square will be adorned with ribbons. The small roads leading up to the meadow will be filled with families carrying picnic baskets, chairs and blankets. After a short ceremony where people lay flowers on the monument one by one and the newly elected mayor makes a speech, kids are free to run around the meadow neatly trimmed especially for that day while the adults set up makeshift tables, blankets and food.
Factory workers, apothecarists and everyone else that wants to can take the three days nationwide vacation. Everyone, except those that work in the inns, will be relaxing tomorrow. Business in the inns, of course, can't stop. Tourist season is in full swing with the multitudes of tourists coming in from other districts, wanting to experience Remembrance Day in the district where the Mockingjay lives.
The scene tomorrow will probably be a far cry from the first Remembrance Day we held in the meadow nine years ago. The day of Remembrance was once a solemn, mournful affair in 12, filled with tears and sobs. Children stood by quietly with offertory flowers in each hand, while adults went forward to touch the monument that also serves as a tomb marker at the center of the meadow.
It was during the third year that people started bringing food with them so that they can stay longer while they mourn. By the fifth year, people brought seating and more food, making the meadow their temporary home for the day. By the sixth year, everyone was in on the new way of celebrating Remembrance Day. It became a day for families to be together, sharing not tears but smiles and treats. It became the day when people remembered the past, and used the memory of lost loved ones to strengthen their resolve for the future.
Maybe it took the lot of us that long to really believe that district 12 kids are truly, irrevocably safe from the games, and the new government is gradually working out. Maybe it took that long for everyone to get over the shock of war and start living again; slowly realizing that they're better fed now and have better hope for the future. This year's Remembrance Day celebration marks the ninth year after the war. Finally, people are looking around and finding other, smaller things to worry about.
Judging from the amount of bread baking in the ovens downstairs, this year will be more festive than ever, I think wryly. I sigh and a layer of mist fills the window glass, obscuring my view. I've been in my husband's office for half an hour now and my patience is wearing thin.
I had wanted to spend an hour or two with Peeta around the monument after his work's done, and lay some of the primrose buds I picked early this morning on the monument. Some of the buds are beginning to bloom. I put two of our precious sugar cubes in the water where the primrose stalks are soaking. They'll bloom nicely by tomorrow, I assure myself.
But the bakery is still ablaze with activity two hours after Peeta told me they'd be finished with work. I hear my usually calm husband barking out orders. He sounds harassed, and I feel sort of guilty for putting pressure on him just by being there, silently reminding him that we have to go on our little date soon.
Loud bangs reach me as oven doors are slammed shut amidst snappy replies of "yes, sir" and "got it, Mr. Mellark". I considered going downstairs and lending a hand again, but thought "no" with a wide smile, thinking of what happened an hour or so ago.
I went here early, intending to help out in whatever way I can, thinking that we could get away earlier if he had another pair of hands helping out. My husband gave me a surprised look when I brusquely kissed him on the cheek and asked for something to do in the bakery.
"Are you sure, sweetheart?" he asked me, smiling at me. He was sweating bullets, but he could still talk in the superior tone he uses only when he thinks I'm about to do something I suck at.
"Oh, just give me something to do, will you?" I said impatiently and ignored all his chuckling.
Peeta asked me to fold the cake boxes and line them up in the shelf, a task that is usually reserved for the youngest trainees. When I say youngest, I mean trainees aged 12 to 15 years old, as Peeta will not accept anyone younger. Peeta has built himself a workforce of very young men and women from District 12. None of the employees working in Peeta Mellark's bakery is a day over twenty-two years old. Some of the older boys and girls have been there for over five years.
Peeta Mellark's trainees shyly came up to my husband, some with their parents or siblings, for bakery work after he posted the help wanted notice in front of his new shop one summer day six years ago. This was during the early days, a few years after the war ended, when it was clear to everyone that there will be no more reapings and parents can finally spin big dreams around their children's future. Did Peeta expect older men and women to come work for him in his bakery? Yes. But what he got was a team of young ones all wanting to learn baking from the famous victor.
Decked in what could have been their reaping day outfits, the teenage kids handed their letters of application to Peeta one by one, asking to work in his bakery part-time for the rest of the summer, and perhaps after school when the schools open. He initially refused, saying he can't possibly pay all of them, but most of the kids said they only wanted leftover bread as pay. Peeta reluctantly agreed to take in a few.
Those too young to handle the ovens were given smaller tasks, while the older kids are trained in shaping dough. Peeta himself baked the bread in the beginning, until some of the older kids started learning his methods. Soon, he had hired the older kids to work full time, and called them senior trainees to distinguish them from the younger part-timers. Senior trainees manned the counters and baked the bread. Younger trainees kept the baskets out front filled with pastries.
Haymitch would stop by before he went to the Hob to trade for whiskey. Those from the first batch of trainees were fearful of him for good reason. He would growl and act scary until they scampered off to the back of the shop, and then would laugh and tease Peeta incessantly about being a "bread mentor" to the kids in District 12.
Peeta used to act offended at the title, and shoos him away, but anyone could tell he's secretly elated to be the one shaping the next generation of bakers in our small district. Not all his trainees are cut out to become bakers, though. Many of the kids lost interest after a few weeks. But the ones that really love to bake stuck around.
I work as fast as I can as the white-aproned staff of the bakery ran circles around me as they juggled trays of fragrant bread, more cake boxes and paper bags filled with cookies with seemingly no effort at all.
Soon, it becomes clear that I can't possibly fold more than one box a minute, and Dylan, a smiling senior trainee pitched in to help me. He breezes through the whole stack in under fifteen minutes. He was a merchant's son from the old District 12, one of those lucky enough to survive the razing. He must have been eleven then, and he now lives with the handful of living relatives that survived the war.
With nothing to do but stand around and watch my baker husband create more delicious treats for the people of district 12, I volunteered to go upstairs and take orders coming in by phone. Of course, when I got there, I promptly unhooked the phone, sat by the window to contemplate the scene below and decided to patiently wait for Peeta to finish while enjoying the smell of baking bread.