March 16, 1807.
Faubourg 9. Between two collapsed chimneys. Noon sun.
The game began with a name.
Not shouted. Not written. Whispered by a girl missing two front teeth.
> "This one's Garnier. He stole the flour and gave it to ghosts."
She pressed her thumb into the wet clay, shaping a crooked nose and a heavy coat. Another child giggled.
> "No! Garnier doesn't walk. He floats. Like this."
He lifted the figurine by its feet and spun it in the air, mimicking a bureaucrat caught in a dust storm. Laughter scattered like birds across the courtyard.
Twenty children. Mud-covered. Thin. Bright-eyed.
Knees caked in ash, palms speckled with dry dough.
No parents in sight. No guards nearby. Just the old chimney that once fed a bakery fire.
And in the center of their circle: a dozen clay effigies.
Some bore names.
Others — just shapes.
But each one held a truth: a scar, a gesture, a stain of ink or ash too specific to forget.
Jules crouched nearby, arms around his legs, watching.
One boy slapped together a lumpy figure with a lopsided hat.
> "This one's the man who said the lists were fake. He had a nose that twitched when he lied."
> "What's his name?" another girl asked.
> "Doesn't matter. He's just called 'The Smiler.'"
A hush fell.
That was part of the rules.
Once you gave them a name, you had to give them a sentence.
The girl leaned forward and declared:
> "I give him to the flour. Let him choke sweet."
The others clapped twice — solemn, ritualistic.
Then another child stood and pointed at an empty patch of ground.
> "That one's for someone we don't know yet."
The group paused.
Jules tilted his head.
> "How do you name what you haven't met?"
The child just shrugged and whispered:
> "That's the one who watched and never helped.
We'll name them when the smoke tells us."
They built a hollow shell. No face. No name. Just a figure made of fingerprints.
Someone brought a shard of blackened glass. They placed it into the faceless head.
> "Now they can see us."
---
By the end of the afternoon, the children had made thirty figures.
They arranged them in rows.
Not random. Not playful.
Like a trial.
A broken cobblestone became the judge's bench.
A soup ladle became the staff of justice.
Each figure was given a line. A title. A sentence.
And then, quietly, the children began to bury them in flour.
One handful at a time.
No shouting. No banners. Just game rules.
But Jules felt it — something new.
Not rage. Not grief.
Memory, turned into ritual.
A culture, born between bricks.
He looked to the faceless one again.
It was crumbling already.
And still, no one gave it a name.
---
March 17, 1807.
Same courtyard. Early morning. Thin fog.
The old man came without warning.
He walked with a limp, dragging a cart behind him — wooden wheels squeaking, covered with canvas that smelled of ash and thyme. The children, still half-asleep and chewing last night's crusts, looked up warily.
He said nothing.
Just set the cart down and removed the cloth.
Inside: sacks.
Not heavy ones. Not state-marked.
Not sealed in wax.
Hand-wrapped.
Simple.
Inside: flour.
Real.
Coarse.
Warm to the touch.
Jules stood first.
> "Why?"
The old man looked at the boy and replied without blinking:
> "Because you're already baking history. Might as well let it rise."
The children surrounded the cart, reaching for fistfuls.
No one fought.
No one laughed.
They moved with purpose — as if the flour were sacred.
They didn't shape effigies today.
They shaped bodies.
---
By noon, the courtyard was filled with ovens.
Not real ones — outlines drawn in ash and brick, smoke made from chalk and spit.
But the figurines were no longer for play.
They were for baking.
One by one, the children placed their dough shapes on flat stones warmed by sun and candle.
Each had eyes. Mouths.
Hands.
One had a scar. Another, a burned sleeve.
A third held a scroll — made from a leaf, rolled tight.
---
They weren't judges anymore.
They were reminders.
Each loaf bore a mark: a press of thumbprint on the back, and a line scratched with nail.
Not names. Not curses.
Stories.
> "This one ran food to her neighbor when the riots began."
"This one kept his bakery open even when soldiers came."
"This one held a child so they didn't die alone."
The children no longer buried the loaves.
They wrapped them.
And when evening came, they went door to door.
Not shouting. Not asking.
Just placing them on thresholds.
Some were taken in silence.
Some were returned, with small coins or scraps of wool.
But others — others were found the next morning, untouched.
And those, the children marked.
With three small dots on the doorframe.
Jules asked why.
A little girl answered without turning:
> "Because those are the houses that don't remember."
---
That night, a woman from the Ministry arrived to speak with the children.
She wore grey. No guards. No voice raised.
She asked:
> "Why are you doing this?"
A boy handed her a loaf.
> "So the city doesn't forget who fed it."
> "And if we outlaw this?"
The boy looked at her calmly.
> "Then we'll start making you."
---
The next morning, outside three bakeries, these words were scratched into the frost-glass:
> "Eat to remember.
Choke to forget."
---
March 18, 1807.
The River Market. Before sunrise.
They appeared without noise.
Baskets of small bread effigies—cracked, rough, and warm from hidden ovens—placed beneath stalls before the vendors even arrived. Wrapped in paper marked with soot-lined fingerprints, sealed with thread pulled from rags.
No two loaves looked the same.
But each bore a face.
Some smiling. Some scarred. One missing a mouth entirely.
No price. No seller.
Just a phrase carved faintly into the crust:
> "This is what you left behind."
By midday, they were everywhere.
A priest held one during a sermon and wept.
A merchant tried to bite into one and cracked a tooth.
A soldier crushed one beneath his boot—and found flour stained red beneath.
Someone tried to sell them for coin.
The basket was burned the same night.
---
In the 3rd arrondissement, a child delivered a loaf to the mayor's assistant.
It was shaped like a woman holding a basin.
The assistant smiled awkwardly.
Took it inside. Placed it on a mantle.
That night, the mantle collapsed.
Not from weight. From heat.
The loaf had been laced with coals.
Inside was a note, burned along the edges:
> "Some symbols are meant to warm.
Others—meant to sear."
---
At a Ministry checkpoint near the Bastille ruins, a cart was stopped.
No papers. No identification.
Inside: dozens of small wrapped loaves, all faceless.
The guards confiscated them. Logged them. Laughed.
By morning, seven of the guards had gone home with slices.
By afternoon, none of them could speak.
Not from poison.
From guilt.
---
And back in Faubourg 9, Jules knelt beside the chimney circle.
He held a soft loaf in both hands. New. Unmarked.
The girl who had first named "the one who watched" sat beside him.
> "You didn't mark this one," she said.
Jules looked at her.
> "Because it's for someone we haven't met yet."
She tilted her head.
> "Another traitor?"
> "No," Jules whispered.
"Someone who's still choosing."
She thought for a moment.
Then took a small twig, dipped it in ash, and wrote on the bottom crust:
> "Choose well."
---
That night, a loaf appeared at the gates of the Ministry.
No shape. No scar. No face.
Just a single handprint — made from ash and warm flour.
No threat.
Only a note folded inside:
> "Even the powerful must eat."
"What you swallow now — you will become."
And beneath it, in smaller print:
> "We are no longer hiding.
We are fermenting."
---
March 19, 1807.
Southern Wall District. Dusk.
They started to follow the bread.
Not the children. Not the bakers.
The figures.
Everywhere the loaves appeared — at fountains, in alley shrines, on church steps — so too did witnesses.
Some came in silence. Others wept. A few brought chalk. Others brought nothing but breath and memory.
And then—people began to respond.
---
On the east-facing wall of a gutted townhouse, someone painted a mural:
a child holding a burned loaf above their head like a crown.
Behind them, shadows of men in robes and uniforms melt into ash.
No names.
No politics.
Just a gesture.
Two days later, that wall was whitewashed by order of the Council.
By midnight, the same image appeared again — three times larger — across the outer wall of a grain silo. This time, someone added a phrase beneath it:
> "They fed us silence.
We kneaded it into fire."
---
In a wine shop near the Pont-Neuf, a man began slicing the bread into words.
Literally.
He shaped each loaf into letters.
Sold none.
Nailed them onto doors.
> "M"
"O"
"U"
"T"
"H"
A week later, the full message was visible across five windows:
> "Mouths do not stay shut."
---
By the end of the week, dozens of silent monuments stood across Paris:
Loaves suspended from bell ropes.
Bread carved into seals and placed in windows.
Wheat patterns shaped on rooftops in crushed limestone.
The Empire called it symbolic terrorism.
The people called it ritual.
---
Inside a Ministry boardroom, Garnier paced.
He hadn't slept in three nights. The scent of flour followed him like a curse.
> "We banned the distribution," he muttered.
"We burned the ovens."
> "And yet they rise."
Fouché sat across from him, perfectly calm, sipping broth.
> "Because they're not distributing," he said.
"They're remembering."
> "Bread was the first symbol.
Now it's just language."
> "And you can't burn language."
Garnier slammed his fist on the table.
> "So what do we do?!"
Fouché smiled faintly.
> "You don't silence the bread."
"You rewrite the recipe."
---
That night, a letter reached Étienne.
No stamp. No signature.
Inside: a sheet of Ministry parchment.
And written in graceful script:
> "We propose a truce.
A seat.
An oven."
> "You bring the bread.
We'll bring the ink."
At the bottom, stamped into the corner — not with wax, but with ash:
A perfect Ministry crest.
Surrounded by seven fingerprints.