Free (Skeleton Key) Into Elurien by Kate Sparkes Page B

stocked than I’d expected. No refrigerator, but there was a deep pantry with a cold storage room containing pickled vegetables in clay pots. I couldn’t find any meat, but there was butter and a few eggs. Any food that might have been prepared before the attack on the palace was long gone, but I could work with this.
    I hoped.
    Auphel, who had no experience with cooking, seemed surprised that I might be willing to eat such things. She helped me build a fire in the stone oven that covered a wall of the kitchen. I had no idea how to control the temperature, but we had the place to ourselves. Trial and error would have to work out eventually.
    The kitchen became hot enough that my dress stuck to my sweaty body. I tied my hair up, but the shorter locks at the front kept falling down as I kneaded my attempt at bread. I brushed the strands aside with dough-covered hands, and they stuck in place.
    We left the kitchen to visit the orchard, and Auphel gleefully hacked apart far more apples than I needed. I mixed them with butter and something that smelled like cinnamon, then wrapped the mess inside a flat slab of dough.
    “That looks horrid,” Auphel noted, though not without great interest. “Humans have such strange tastes.”
    “It will probably taste horrid, too. I’ve never been much of a cook. More of a takeout girl.”
    Auphel’s confused look led to a discussion about my world that carried us through the time it took the makeshift apple flip to bake… or rather, through the time it took to burn on the outside while remaining raw in the middle, and then through the process of trying again.
    Explaining the use of telephones and computers to order food was nearly impossible.
    “So it’s like I said. You do know magic.”
    “No, we really don’t have it in my world. It’s technology. Research and experimentation and… physics.” I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know how it all works, exactly.”
    “But you can talk to another human on the other side of the world. Even see them.”
    “Right.”
    “Because of the electri-thingy. And machines with tiny parts that remember things without them being written down. They’re just… there.”
    I laughed. “There are people in my world who could explain it. I’m just not one of them.”
    She gave me a look that said I must be pulling her leg about the whole thing.
    We sat together on the floor, and I offered her a bite of the pastry (which was still a bit doughy in the middle, but quite delicious). She pronounced it “not bad,” but refused seconds. “Ogres don’t go in for baked goods and such,” she said. “Some of the palace monsters were cooks for the humans, but I don’t think you’ll have much luck getting them to help you.”
    “No. It’s a start, though.” I could work with this bread, and I’d see what else I could salvage in the garden. Surely there had to be meat around somewhere, but I didn’t want to ask. They’d probably tell me I’d have to kill it myself.
    The door swung open. Zinian stepped in, looking serious, and I held back the urge to vomit my meal all over the smooth stone floor at the realization that my punishment had come. Maybe I shouldn’t be worrying about food if I was doomed anyway.
    He nodded cordially to Auphel. “Having fun?” he asked.
    “I was. Why are you… What’s happening?” Her brow furrowed.
    “I need to speak with Hazel alone.”
    My heart stilled. It will be fine. Nothing to worry about. It’s just a terrifying monster who hates humans coming to tell you how you’ll be punished for pissing them all off. Not a big deal.
    I forced myself to stand. He’d already seen me on my knees, begging for my life. I didn’t feel like repeating that. I doubted I had it in me to go out with grace and dignity, but he might listen to a rational argument.
    At least they hadn’t sent Jaid or that other ogre. Zinian was reasonable, if not necessarily soft-hearted.
    I tried not to remember the cold hate in his eyes