So what was supposed to be a nice easy catch-up week ended up being the busiest week of the entire quarter. A bunch of friends kind of decided to all fly up to visit from home over one weekend, so we were caught off guard and kept very busy with them. Which created a backlog of work. But I digress. We're beginning the second wave of the story, where everyone has settled into a new place in the world, and MK is now beginning to learn more about the Boggans and their history.
Chapter 8. Roasted Fish
MK sniffed the bowl full of blackish muck that Amianth had given her. "What is it?"
Dagda scooped the sludge with his hand and slurped it up. "It's good! Try it. You look pale. It'll make you feel better."
She sniffed it again. "Okay, but what's it made of?" MK prodded it and it was clammy to the touch. She wrung her hand, flinging the muddy speck from her fingers.
"We harvest it from the mushroom farms. When plants die, we collect them and let the fungi grow in it. They produce this," Amianth said. "You do look pale. When did you last eat?"
MK paused. "A few days ago." She dipped her fingers into the bowl again and scooped a small quantity and raised it to her mouth. After squeezing her eyes shut, she gulped it down.
"Are Stompers supposed to turn green?" Dagda asked.
MK opened her eyes. "No." She leaned over and vomited bile.
"Oh!" Amianth leaped to her feet.
The bowl slid out of MK's hand as she dry heaved several more times, breathing heavily. An acidic burning filled her mouth, and she spat a glob of saliva that could rival a professional athlete's. "Ugh." She sat up, blinked in slow motion, and looked at the Boggans through half-closed eyes. "Yeah, I can't eat this."
She pushed herself away from the vomit and sank down to the ground.
"What can you eat?" Amianth asked.
"Fresh things." Her voice cracked. "I need water."
Amianth's pattering footsteps faded as she hurried to get MK what she needed.
"Um, are you all right?" Dagda shuffled where he lay.
"Don't even think about sitting up," MK growled, voice muffled by the floor.
"Here, Stomper." A cool bone dish touched her hand, and MK looked up to see Amianth was sliding a bowl full of water toward her. MK took it and gulped it down in one go. She gasped in relief at the hydration. The ache in her limbs faded slightly, and her head throbbed just a bit less.
"Hi, Dad," she heard Dagda say. She and Amianth turned toward the door. Mandrake entered the room like a dark wraith.
"How are you feeling?" Mandrake moved around and sat beside Dagda.
"I feel fine. MK won't let me sit up."
"Indeed?" Mandrake turned toward her.
She nodded, staggering back into a full sitting position. "He thinks that"—she winced— "because he feels better, he won't reopen his wounds if he starts running around the creation."
"I wouldn't run! I just want to sit," Dagda protested, but a hand from his father silenced him, and he pouted resolutely behind Mandrake's back. MK stifled a laugh and the effort made her stomach cramp.
"You do not look well," said Mandrake.
"She can't eat the mash," Amianth said canting her head towards the spot where MK turned her stomach out. Amianth and Dagda had cleaned their own bowls. "It made her sick."
"You need Jinn food."
Somehow Mandrake's comment made MK defensive. "I need fresh food, is what," she repeated. "Stuff that hasn't, you know, been through a few cycles of decomposition."
"Like what?" Dagda asked.
She shrugged. "Birds, mammals, fish, fruit, leaves, roots."
Dagda balked. "All of them?"
"No, not all of them, but some things from every type. Some plants are poisonous, and some animals aren't very good to eat."
"I could find you something." Amianth glanced at Mandrake, soliciting permission.
"Wait, it's not going to be dangerous for you, is it?" MK asked. Most of the food she would be eating was not to be found in the Wrathwood.
"That would depend on you," said Mandrake. He was watching her with a curious expression.
"I can find something in the Neutral. It doesn't have to be in Jinn territory." Amianth got to her feet, taking Dagda's bowl from him.
"That's far, isn't it?" Dagda interrupted as he handed her his dishes.
Amianth shrugged. "Grackles are fast. It's up to the Chief."
MK's mind raced through all the possible options that required the least amount of potentially risky interaction. "What about fish? Are those easy to get a hold of?"
Amianth's golden eyes brightened. "That's very easy. I don't even have to leave Wrathwood." She dashed away, vaulting out of a window with feline ease.
"You are a strange one, MK." Her name sounded foreign on Mandrake's tongue. Until then, only Dagda had called her by her name; Amianth insisted on calling her "Stomper" as a pointed display of exclusion. A shiver went through her—had she passed some sort of test to earn that privilege? "Your concern for the health of others extends even when you yourself are unwell."
MK gave a dry laugh. "Yeah, well, nurses and doctors are always the worst patients." At their questioning expressions, "You spend so much time caring for other people, you forget you're a person too."
"Hm." Mandrake clapped Dagda lightly on the shoulder, contemplating. He stood, and MK wondered if he wore the bat skin cloak everywhere he went. It was a bit melodramatic. "You should listen to MK," he told Dagda. "She's right after all."
"I feel fine!" Dagda said, looking very much like he wanted to jump out of bed from the amount he was squirming.
"Even so," said Mandrake as he left the room.
Dagda sighed with impressive theatrics. "This is so boring."
MK felt the dizziness of hunger sweep over her again. "If I lie down and take a nap, I'd better not catch you breaking the rules. Otherwise, once Amianth gets me fed, I'm coming after you."
Dagda cringed at the steel in her tone. "You're going to make me lie here all by myself while you go to sleep?"
"Yes, and you're going to live with it. I'm wiped out." MK curled into a fetal position and tucked her face into her knees. Her thoughts swam like blind fish, jumbling together until they fell silent all at once.
She awoke to Amianth prodding her in the shoulder. In her dream, she'd been back home, wandering through the house and calling for her father. He hadn't been answering her, and as the waking life sharpened into focus, MK remembered why. Not for the last time, she envisioned her dad mussing his hair, pacing around the kitchen in a fit of indecision about where in the space he needed to be to conjure a meal.
Amianth hovered over her, dangling a dripping fish by the tail. "Is this good?"
The fish resembled a guppy, but at their size, it extended to nearly the length of her arm. "Yes, this is fine. Can you build a fire?" Both Boggans looked at her, perplexed. A smile bloomed across MK's face. "Want to see how Stompers make food?"
Twenty minutes later, MK sat holding the fish on a skewer over glowing embers. The coal couldn't have been more than a few specks of molten gravel that had crumbled from a briquette, but at their size, it provided ample heat to make the fish crackle as its skin turned golden brown.
"You burn your food?" Dagda asked. They strategically set the ember near his bed where he could easily watch. MK had been unwilling to test his obedience against the strength of his natural curiosity.
"Nope. We cook it. Just enough so the flesh is no longer as raw, but before it blackens and becomes inedible," MK said. She took a gulp of the gourd of water that sat beside her, rubbing away the cold sweat that rolled down her brow. She hoped the heat wouldn't make her pass out before she could get her strength back.
Dagda craned his neck. "Why?"
"The heat kills things in the meat that could make us sick." She struggled to recall her brief experience in pediatrics, when she had to avoid using excessively technical words in front of her young patients. MK escaped that branch of medicine after her first semester. "It also makes it taste better for us."
"Stompers are weird," Amianth said. She sat with her knees tucked to her chest on the edge of Dagda's mattress.
MK's lips quivered with a barely suppressed smile. "We are, aren't we?" Her mind meandered back in time to her suburban Rochester apartment where she and her mom created chaos in their tiny kitchen as they tried to make the fanciest dinner for two that they could imagine. Nursing students didn't get much time to dabble in the culinary arts, so MK relished the memory, warding away her bitterness with every force of will she possessed.
"My mom could cook a mean cedar plank salmon. It's a type of fish that's…slightly bigger than this one." MK wasn't sure if she was telling a story or just trying to make the memory more real by giving it voice. "Every time I tried, I would always overcook it, and it would get chewy. She knew that sweet spot with the timing. I loved coming home when I had a break, and if we were having a craving, she would cook it for me."
Dagda and Amianth only nodded, as though they feared they might break something if they interrupted. The fish sizzled and popped as MK turned it.
"I miss cooking. Mom had a book that my grandma gave her, full of recipes the family collected over the years. We said we would try to make everything in the book." MK chewed on her lip. They had gotten almost halfway through, somewhere in the pasta section, when her mom's diagnosis came.
"When you speak of your mother, it is always in the past," said Amianth.
MK pulled the fish from the fire and laid it out on a flat stone. It was no cedar plank, but it would have to do. "Mm, I think it's done," she said, sidestepping the comment. She caught the Boggans sharing a glance out of the corner of her eye. She already had that discussion with Nod. She wasn't sure she wanted to run through it again.
"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it," Dagda said finally. He was watching her saw the fish in half. "Dad never does," he added in a low voice.
MK frowned at him, but Dagda was looking away, gaze fixed on the wall. She only knew Dagda and Mandrake. As far as she knew, she had never met Dagda's mother. MK peeled the flaky white meat from the spindly fish bones and filed away Dagda's revelation for a later day. Instead, she put a smile on and held up a piece of meat in her fingers. "Want to try some?"
"Yeah!" Dagda grinned and reached to take some. Amianth tilted her head and examined the fish carefully before taking a pinch as well.
The fish was a bit dry, but MK ate with vigor, occasionally pausing in her chewing to take a breath. Scales plastered onto her fingers and arms as she tucked in, and childish joy welled up in her at the freedom to eat like a complete barbarian.
"I like it!" said Dagda.
"It's interesting," said Amianth. But she watched the fish with an intensity that belied her indifference.
MK ate the entire fish, even feasting on the head and tail which had been cooked to a crisp. The meal carried a faint muddy flavor, but after a day or two of going hungry, MK only cared that she could swallow it.
With a full stomach, MK felt herself finally able to relax. It struck her as strange that only a few days ago, she'd come to the Hollow in the most dangerous circumstances imaginable. Now she was lying on the floor chatting about food with a pair of Boggans. Even as she attempted to explain the concept of spaghetti to them, MK had to marvel that she was teaching the son of a lethal, ferocious warlord about pasta.
Fish was fine enough when there was a bit of novelty to it, but after four more days of nothing but the same roasted fish, MK found herself praying for other options. She did not dare voice her longing for the sweet nectar cakes back in the clover gardens of the Brightwood. The last thing she needed was to further alienate herself in a world where she was the only one with pink-flushed skin and flaming red hair. It took all the focus she had to avoid lashing out in irritation when Dagda made himself an even more difficult patient as his health rapidly improved.
"All right, fine, I'll let you stretch your legs," she said on the sixth day after the operation. She could see Dagda practically vibrating with excitement. "But! You have to take it easy!"
"I'm fine, MK! I feel great!"
"Dagda, I'm serious!"
His limbs trembled like a condensed spring as he stood, and in a moment of panic, she thought he was going to leap into the air. MK gave Amianth a pleading look. "Please tell me you will keep him out of trouble. No running or jumping or pole-vaulting or whatever."
Amianth nodded. "I will, Stomper." She turned to her friend. "Don't make me tell on you to your dad."
Dagda stared at her, aghast. "My own friend would betray me!"
MK put her hands on her hips. "Are you saying you would ignore my instructions and go and hurt yourself again?"
He wilted, but only just. "I'm fine, MK," he assured her again. "I've been hurt before, and I got better real fast."
"You fell off your grackle and broke your leg," Amianth shot back. "You didn't get skewered by Jinn arrows."
"Come on, Amianth, it was only one arrow. And I didn't fall! Kevrel threw me off!"
"And I'm pretty sure you fell. Kevrel wasn't even moving when it happened." Amianth turned to MK. "They were still on the ground and Kevrel only opened his wings to take off. This dope got surprised and lost his balance—ow!"
Dagda had smacked her on the arm. "Quit it! You're making me look like an idiot."
MK waved her arms. "Hey! If you start punching people, I'm putting you straight back in bed." They protested simultaneously.
"It was a just a tap!"
"You call that a punch?"
I am babysitting children, MK thought to herself again. They reminded her of college freshmen, and she wondered again how old they were. They couldn't have been much different from Nod. And they grew up in a war.
"Just promise you aren't going to go too far and that you'll come back before sundown," MK said, massaging the bridge of her nose.
"Promise." Dagda ambled as fast as he could out the door, Amianth close on his heels. MK sighed as their voices grew distant until they fell silent.
She shoved her hands in her pockets. The space in the room stood still with the Boggans gone, leaving MK to question what on earth she was doing there. She glanced at the curtain that covered the door. If Mandrake came in to find her alone in the room, how would he react? MK wandered out into the hall. "I'd better tell him where Dagda went before he decides to ask," she said to the empty air.
MK walked slowly, trying to keep track of the twists and turns she followed as she roamed through the Hollow, dusting away the occasional silky web that brushed across her face. Everything about the Wrathwood was covered in drab grays and browns. It had its own sort of melancholy beauty, but MK found herself longing for color.
A cross breeze drifted past, ruffling her bangs, and MK followed the source. A wide doorway, lined by rib bones opened up to an outdoor platform over which she could see the expanse of the Boggan territory and the splash of green woods far off in the distance. She made her way towards it when a shrill cawing pierced the air and beats of wind drummed through the door.
Mandrake swept through the gate, nearly walking right past her before he caught sight of her pink hoodie. He wore the disgruntled expression of one who had been bickering with in-laws for multiple hours about which restaurant they wanted to host a dinner party. MK wondered if Boggans had in-laws.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
MK swallowed before speaking. "Looking for you, actually."
His eyes narrowed, and she thought she might have seen panicked worry flash through them before he reined it in again. "Why? Is something wrong?"
"No, no. I just wanted to tell you that Dagda's feeling a lot better, so I let him go outside to stretch his legs. Amianth is watching him to make sure he doesn't do anything, er, foolish."
Mandrake's shoulders dropped to a near imperceptible degree as he relaxed. "I see."
MK picked at a fingernail. "So yeah. I just thought you might want to know."
The Boggan chieftain performed his usual scan of her expression, and MK held still, waiting for him to come to his conclusions about the sincerity of her intentions. And, as usual, she seemed to have met whatever standards to he measured her against, and he nodded curtly. "You thought correctly." He continued past her.
MK watched him go, already trying to remember how to get back to Dagda's room. When everything was covered in cobwebs, all the hallways started to look the same. Mandrake paused and turned his head to glance back at her.
"My son is alive because of you, MK. I will not forget that." He disappeared down the hall, leaving her to her confusion.
She hadn't spent much time in the Wrathwood, but Mandrake was not someone she could manage to put a finger on. The stories Nod had told her painted him as a cold-blooded tyrant who thought nothing of life. MK had never seen Mandrake in battle, so she had no idea how true that was. But dealing with him in person made a note of discord ring out on her mind—the stories and what she was seeing before her kept missing a connection. MK couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not, but if she was going to stay any longer, she needed to be quick about figuring that out.
Chapter 9: Hortensia comes out June 6.
Here's an excerpt:
"For the Solstice, we are still in discussion." Hortensia paused, as though debating her next words. She turned to Dagda. "However, as Mandrake tells it, we still have an arrowhead that doesn't belong to us." Her expression was unreadable when she spoke, and Dagda wished he was as good as his dad at analyzing people. Hortensia smiled at him again. "You're strong. You won't be needing a caretaker much longer."