Feed the Dragon Something New or Be Dinner novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Moonrise
She falls out of a grill fire into a dragon's kitchen and is told to cook something he has never tasted by moonrise or be dinner. She makes rice balls with her last sauce, and his hand shakes as he eats: 'Tomorrow, the same, shaped by your hands.'
Riko Hayama was scrubbing the grill at the yakitori shop when the coals went white and the floor dropped out from under her.
She landed on her hands and knees on warm black stone.
Her bandana hung crooked, her jacket stank of chicken fat, and her grill brush was still in her fist.
Above her hung copper pots.
In front of her stood an iron range, with a fire banked low in its belly.
It was the best kitchen she had ever seen, and she had no idea how she had got into it.
"You are late," said a deep voice.
A man sat on the pass counter at the far end, with his boots on a stool and his arms crossed.
He was very tall and broad, with short messy red hair and two small black horns curving from his temples.
A pale scar ran through his left eyebrow, and his eyes were amber, with pupils like a cat's.
The skin of his forearms, where his dark robe fell open, was patterned with fine black scales.
"Where am I?" Riko said.
"Mount Kurosumi. This is my kitchen. I am Kagiro."
"I'm calling the police."
"I do not know what that is."
"Then I'm calling someone else."
"No one will answer." He did not seem angry about it, only tired. "My cooks keep running away. Last night I lit the old hearth in that range, and it gave me you."
"I'm a grill cook," Riko said. "I do skewers."
"Good. Then listen, because I will say this once."
He stood, and the room got smaller.
"Cook me something I have never tasted by moonrise," Kagiro said. "If it is not new, or if it is not good, you are dinner."
Riko looked at him.
"Dinner," she said. "As in, you eat me."
"Yes."
He said it the way a man reads a menu.
Her heart began to slam against her ribs.
She was terrified, and she knew it, and she also knew that being terrified had never once made a pan hotter.
"How long until moonrise?" she asked.
"Four hours."
"What do you have?"
A stout old man in a brown work robe waddled out from behind the range, rolling a clouded eye at her.
"Rice, bean paste, kelp, river fish, pickled plums, mountain mushrooms, eggs, and a charcoal store you will not believe," he said. "I am Daigo, the steward. Please do not cry on the rice."
"I'm not crying."
"Good. The last one did."
Riko stood up to wash her hands.
A big hand closed around her wrist.
She had not heard him cross the floor.
Kagiro had turned her arm over, and he was looking at the pale shiny scars that ran up her forearm from wrist to elbow.
His thumb rested on the worst of them, and it was warm, warmer than a man's thumb should be.
"These are burns," he said.
"Seven years on a grill station. Everyone has them."
"Fire hurt you, and you walked back to it."
"It pays rent."
"I do not know what that is either."
"Let go of my arm, Lord Kagiro. I'm busy."
He held on for one more breath.
Then he opened his hand, slowly, and his thumb dragged along the scars as it left.
Riko pretended she felt nothing, and it was not a good pretense.
She washed up to the elbows and found the rice, a barrel of it, short and pearly and stored well.
In the pocket of her jacket, where she had stuffed it that morning, was a squeeze flask of the shop's house tare, the dark sweet-salty glaze from the yakitori pots.
It was nearly full.
It was also the only piece of home that she owned.
She stood there for a second, holding it.
Then she unscrewed the cap.
She cooked the rice and let it steam dry, and she salted her palms, and she shaped the rice into triangles with her bare hands.
She pressed each one until the grains held together and the middle was hollow for a pickled plum.
She laid them on the iron over a bed of small coals, and she turned them until a golden crust formed on every side.
She brushed on the tare, and it hissed, and the smell of burnt sugar and soy rose through the kitchen.
Daigo's nose twitched.
On the counter, Kagiro had gone completely still.
Moonrise came through the high window as a thin silver line.
She put three rice balls on a plate and carried them over herself.
"Eat," she said. "Hot. Hands are fine."
"You do not order me."
"It goes cold in two minutes, and so might I."
His eyes held hers a moment longer.
Then he picked one up with two fingers, and bit.
He chewed with his eyes shut.
It took a long time.
His jaw moved slowly, and the plate in his other hand began to tremble, so that the two other rice balls rattled against the clay.
Riko held her breath.
Kagiro swallowed.
"I have not tasted this," he said.
His voice was rough, not at all deep and cold the way it had been.
"Is that good or bad?" she asked.
"It is new."
"That isn't what I asked."
He ate the second one, and the third, and he turned the plate over and found nothing on it.
Then he stood, and she saw that his hand was still shaking.
"Tomorrow," Kagiro said. "The same, for breakfast, shaped by your hands and no one else's. And at dusk, a dish I have not had. Every day until midwinter."
"And if it's not new?"
"You know what happens."
"Eighty-nine days of this?" Riko said.
Daigo, behind him, held up eighty-nine fingers, and then ran out of fingers and looked embarrassed.
The dragon lord walked out without another word.
Riko looked at the empty plate on the pass, where not a single grain of rice was left.
"Four cooks before you," Daigo said quietly, wiping his hands. "None lasted past the third day."
"Then I'll be the fifth."
"Good," said the steward. "Because he has never asked for anything by name before, and he just asked for yours."
She frowned.
"He didn't say my name."
"No," Daigo said. "He asked for your hands."
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