The Bell That Should Not Ring

There was a baker. There was always a baker, in stories like this; Iola had read enough of them as a child to know the convention. But she had not expected the baker to know her name.

Iola Vesper, eleven years a cartographer, the baker said, wiping flour onto her apron, we have been waiting for you for some time.

Iola did not faint. Iola Vesper had never fainted in her life and was not about to start. But she did sit down, quite suddenly, on a low stone wall that was not on any map, and she did stare at the baker for a long moment before she said anything at all.

"Who is we?"

The baker smiled. It was the smile of someone who had been practicing, in mirrors, for a very long time.

Everyone, the baker said. The whole city. We have been waiting for someone to come and put us back on the maps.