Feed the Dragon Something New or Be Dinner novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty Years

The old village cook Teruko climbs up, tests her and says he never once asked for seconds in thirty years. Riko vows to make him. That night she slips on oil and he catches her: 'You smell of smoke and rice.'

On the sixth morning a stranger walked into the kitchen without knocking.

She was a wide, strong woman of about sixty, with a blue headcloth, flour on her hands and a basket on each arm.

She limped, and she did not seem to care.

"So you're the new one," she said.

"I'm Riko."

"I'm Teruko. I cooked in this kitchen for thirty years."

She set down both baskets, which held leeks, radishes and a plucked hen, and looked Riko up and down.

Then she looked at the rice balls cooling on the pass.

"Those yours?"

"Yes."

"Hm."

Teruko picked one up and bit into it, standing.

Riko waited.

It was the most nerve-racking chew of her life, including her first day at the shop.

"Salt's right," said Teruko. "Crust's right. The glaze is a cheat."

"It's from home."

"Where's home?"

"A long way off."

The old woman nodded.

"Good. I'd hate to think a person here put that much sugar in a rice ball."

She finished it, wiped her fingers on her apron, and took Riko by the elbow.

"Come on. Show me the fire."

The black range had two sides.

One side burned ordinary charcoal.

The other burned a deep red coal that Daigo called dragon-coal, hot as the inside of a kiln.

Riko had been burning her knuckles on it for five days.

"You're feeding it wrong," Teruko said.

"Don't stack it. Bank it with ash, and it will hold the heat all night."

She showed her, with two quick movements of a flat iron paddle.

The red coal went down to a calm orange glow.

"Oh," said Riko. "Oh, that is so much better."

"Thirty years," said Teruko, with satisfaction.

Riko liked her at once.

They plucked the hen together, and Riko learned the village's names for the mountain vegetables, and Teruko learned what a skewer was.

"You grill them on a stick? Why?"

"So you can hold them in one hand and a drink in the other."

"Hm," said Teruko. "That's the first sensible thing I've heard from a stranger."

Riko cut the hen into pieces and marinated them in ginger, bean paste and a splash of rice wine.

It was going to be fried chicken, and she knew the Lord of Kurosumi had never seen it.

While she worked, she asked what she had been wanting to ask.

"What did he say about your cooking?"

Teruko stopped her knife.

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

"Thirty years," she said slowly. "Every plate came back clean, every day. He never said good, and he never said bad."

"He must have said something."

"He said thank you. Every single time."

Teruko turned the leek over and did not look up.

"He never once asked for seconds," she said. "Not in thirty years. Not for my best dish."

Riko frowned.

"Maybe he just doesn't eat much."

"A man with shoulders like that?"

That was true.

Teruko picked up her baskets, with a grunt for her knees.

"I'm not saying anything. I'm only telling you what I saw. Cook what you like, girl."

"I'll make him ask for seconds," Riko said.

The old woman laughed, and it was a good laugh, rough and loud.

"Then I'll climb this mountain with a basket the day he does," she said, and left.

At dusk Riko fried the chicken.

The oil crackled and spat, and the whole kitchen filled with the smell of ginger and hot fat.

She took the pieces out golden and shaggy and set them on a rack.

She served Kagiro three on a leaf.

He bit into the first and went still, the way he had on the first night.

Crunch, then the long chew, then his eyes closing.

"I have not had this," he said.

"Do you like it?"

"It is new."

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true."

He ate every piece.

She had nothing to say to that, and she turned back to the stove with her jaw tight.

Later, when he had gone and Daigo had gone to bed, she carried the pot of used oil to the drain.

A little had slopped over the rim.

She did not see it until her heel hit it.

The pot flew out of her hands.

Her feet went out from under her, and for a long second the stone floor came up at her face.

Then two hard arms closed around her waist.

Kagiro had caught her in midair, and he had also somehow caught the pot with one boot and set it upright.

She hung against his chest, her bandana in his face, her hands flat on his robe.

She could feel his heart under her palm.

It was going very fast.

Her mouth was an inch from the base of one small black horn.

Neither of them moved.

"You smell of smoke and rice," he said, very low.

"Is that good?"

"It is what you smell of."

He did not let her go.

His hand was on the small of her back, and the other had slid down to her wrist, where the scars were.

His thumb moved slowly over the worst of them, once, twice.

"The oil," Riko said. Her voice came out odd. "On the floor."

"I will have it washed."

"I can do it."

"I know," said Kagiro.

He still did not let go.

At last he stepped back, and his hand slid off her wrist an inch at a time.

The door shut behind him.

She stood there with her wrist on fire, breathing like she had run up the mountain.

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