Randi kept the bakery after her husband died, because the oven was still hot and nobody else came. There were nine in her house that winter. Pehr, Bett, Timo, Nadya, Lasse, Wren, Halvar, Jonna, and the baby Osa, who slept in a box beside the flour bin. The flour was the reeve's. He had said the bin at the top of the lane was not hers to open, and she had opened it anyway, at night, with a bread knife, while the children slept.

Her husband had told her the rule once, standing in flour up to his knees. A loaf baked out of taken flour feeds as many as it is broken among, and not one more. Held whole, it feeds one, and that one stays hungry. She baked it on a Monday. The crust came out the colour of a chestnut and cracked as it cooled, and the whole room smelled like the inside of a warm oven.

She cut the loaf on the board. Nine pieces, one for each, and a tenth for herself, because she was hungry too and nobody was going to hand it to her. She slid the tenth piece under the checked cloth that covered the table and pressed the cloth flat over it. It sat there a little while.

Then it changed. The crust of the hidden piece went pale and chalky under her fingers, the way a crust goes when the bread is old, and her stomach made a noise she was ashamed of. She broke it. No steam came out. She broke it smaller. Nothing came. It was not bad. She licked the crumb and it was sweet enough. It was not bad, it was whole. She had kept it whole, and whole bread feeds one, and the one was her, and she was hungry.

She put it down and called the children in out of the cold. They came stamping. Pehr was first, then Bett, then the rest of them in a noise of boots and wet shawls, and the baby last, wailing because somebody had taken her blanket. She gave each one a piece. Nine pieces on nine plates, and no more, and the tenth had been hers, so there was nothing left in the world to give.

They ate the way hungry children eat, with their fists. Osa got a crust in one hand and a hand of it over her ear. Butter went round the board until the wood shone. The oven ticked as it cooled, and the wind pushed at the shutter, and nobody said anything for a long time. “Is that real bread?” said Jonna. “It is,” said Randi. Then they put their plates down and went up the stairs, and Jonna looked back twice to be sure of it.

Randi sat alone with the checked cloth. She picked up the grey piece and turned it over. It was the size of her palm and it was hard as a stone, and it was still whole, because she had hidden it instead of breaking it. She put it in her apron pocket, and it stayed there.

The cloth lay open on the table where the loaf had been. It was red and white and checked, and it was empty, and nobody put anything on it again.