THEY LAUGHED AT HER BLACK BREAD—UNTIL THEIR WHITE FLOUR WAS GONE

CHAPTER 1 — THE GIRL WHO BAKED BLACK BREAD

The village of Bellmere had always believed that good bread should be white.

The whiter the loaf, the richer the family.

At least, that was what the wealthy families liked to say.

Every morning, the merchants’ wives walked through the village market carrying baskets of soft white bread made from finely sifted wheat flour. Their loaves were golden on the outside and pale inside, light enough to tear apart with two fingers.

And then there was Clara.

Clara lived at the edge of the village in a small wooden cottage with her widowed mother.

She was twenty-three, with long dark hair, clear gray eyes, and a quiet beauty that made people notice her even when she tried not to be noticed.

But what people noticed most was her bread.

It was dark.

Almost black.

She made it from rye, crushed barley, wild seeds, and whatever grains she could gather from the fields after the harvest.

When she carried her loaves to the market, people laughed.

“Look at that!”

“Is she selling bricks?”

“Who would eat bread that looks like burnt wood?”

The richest merchant in Bellmere, Lord Edmund Vale, laughed the loudest.

One morning, he picked up one of Clara’s loaves and examined it with disgust.

“My horses wouldn’t eat this.”

The crowd laughed.

Clara simply took the loaf back.

“My mother taught me that food doesn’t have to be beautiful to keep someone alive.”

Edmund smirked.

“Perhaps that’s why your family is poor.”

Clara said nothing.

She returned home before sunset.

That evening, her mother watched her place several dark loaves inside a wooden chest.

“You shouldn’t let them hurt you,” her mother whispered.

“They don’t,” Clara replied.

She tied another bundle of dried wild seeds.

“They laugh because they have never been hungry.”

Her mother looked at her daughter carefully.

“And what makes you think they will be?”

Clara glanced toward the mountains.

The sky was unusually red.

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

“But winter feels different this year.”

That night, Clara began preparing more bread than her family could possibly eat.

She dried rye.

She collected wild grass seeds.

She stored barley.

She even gathered roots that most villagers considered useless.

People continued laughing.

But Clara didn’t stop.

She was preparing for a winter no one else believed was coming.