Rule Three
Every August the village of Sandby holds a baking contest in the school hall, and every August somebody leaves early.
This year the judges gave the award to Petra Holm for a cream cake with wild strawberries on top. The award is a small silver spoon on a wooden base. It is worth almost nothing, and in Sandby it is worth a great deal.
At half past four, Jonas Lind stood up at the back of the hall.
“That cream came out of a carton,” he said. “The carton is in the bin behind the kitchen. I'm not calling anybody a cheat. I'm saying rule three is rule three.”
Rule three is one line long: everything on the plate must be made at home. The hall went very quiet. Jonas had finished second to Petra six years running, and every person in that room knew it, so for a moment nobody was sure which fact mattered more, the carton or the six years.
Petra didn't stand up. She stayed in her chair with her hands flat on the table. “It's my carton,” she said. “My cream went sour on Thursday. It was thirty degrees in the dairy. So on Friday morning I drove to Torvik and bought two liters, and then I whipped it myself, and then I made the cake myself, at home, at five in the morning.”
“The rule doesn't say anything about whipping,” Jonas said.
“The rule doesn't say anything about flour either,” Petra said, “and nobody in this village grows wheat.”
Somebody laughed. Then more people laughed, and Jonas's ears went red, and the head judge got to her feet before the afternoon could break apart completely.
The three judges went out into the corridor for eleven minutes. When they came back, the head judge read out what they had agreed. Nobody was taking the spoon back: the cake had won on taste, and it would stay won. But rule three was too short to be any use to anyone, and it would be rewritten before next August, and it would be rewritten by Petra and Jonas together, or the contest would go ahead next year with no rules at all.
It was a deal, and everybody in the hall could see it was a deal. Jonas looked at the floor for a while. Then he said, “Fine,” and sat down.
Two weeks later the new rules went up on the notice board outside the shop. Rule three has two lines now. The second line is in Jonas's handwriting, and it says that cream may be bought, but it must be whipped inside the village.
Petra signed her name underneath it.