He dragged me towards it, and in a moment of blind terror I realized he meant to throw me in. He was so strong, much stronger than he ought to have been for his size, and he’d pulled me easily stumbling down the stairs after him. But I wasn’t going to let him put me in the fire. I wasn’t a lady-like quiet girl; all my life I’d spent running in the woods, climbing trees and tearing through brambles, and panic gave me real strength. I screamed as he pulled me close to it, and then I went into a fit of struggling and clawing and squirming, so this time I really did trip him to the floor.
I went down with him. We banged our heads on the flagstones together, and dazed lay still for a moment with our limbs entwined. The fire was leaping and crackling beside us, and as my panic faded, abruptly I noticed that in the wall beside it were small iron oven doors, and before it a spit for roasting, and above it a huge wide shelf with cooking-pots on it. It was only the kitchen.
After a moment, he said, in almost marveling tones, “Are you deranged?”
“I thought you were going to throw me in the oven,” I said, still dazed, and then I started to laugh.
It wasn’t real laughter—I was half-hysterical by then, wrung out six ways and hungry, my ankles and knees bruised from being dragged down the stairs and my head aching as though I’d cracked my skull, and I just couldn’t stop.
But he didn’t know that. All he knew was the stupid village girl he’d picked was laughing at him, the Dragon, the greatest wizard of the kingdom and her lord and master. I don’t think anyone had laughed at him in a hundred years, by then. He pushed himself up, kicking his legs free from mine, and getting to his feet stared down at me, outraged as a cat. I only laughed harder, and then he turned abruptly and left me there laughing on the floor, as though he couldn’t think what else to do with me.
After he left, my giggles tapered off, and I felt somehow a little less hollow and afraid. He hadn’t thrown me into the oven, after all, or even slapped me. I got myself up and looked around the room: it was hard to see, because the fireplace was so bright and there were no other lights lit, but when I kept my back to the flames I could start to make out the huge room: divided after all, into alcoves and with low walls, with racks full of shining glass bottles—wine, I realized. My uncle had brought a bottle once to my grandmother’s house, for Midwinter.
There were stores all over: barrels of apples packed in straw, potatoes and carrots and parsnips in sacks, long ropes of onions braided. On a table in the middle of the room I found a book standing with an unlit candle and an inkstand and a quill, and when I opened it I found a ledger with records of all the stores, written in a strong hand. At the bottom of the first page there was a note written very small; when I lit the candle and bent down to squint I could just make it out:
Breakfast at eight, dinner at one, supper at seven. Leave the meal laid in the library, five minutes before, and you need not see him—no need to say who—all the day. Courage!
Priceless advice, and that Courage! was like the touch of a friend’s hand. I hugged the book against me, feeling less alone than I had all day. It seemed near midday, and the Dragon hadn’t eaten at our village, so I set about dinner. I was no great cook, but my mother had kept me at it until I could put together a meal, and I did do all the gathering for my family, so I knew how to tell the fresh from the rotten, and when a piece of fruit would be sweet. I’d never had so many stores to work with: there were even drawers of spices that smelled like Midwinter cake, and a whole barrel full of fresh soft grey salt.
At the end of the room there was a strangely cold place, where I found meat hanging up: a whole venison and two great hares; there was a box of straw full of eggs. There was a fresh loaf of bread already baked wrapped in a woven cloth on the hearth, and next to it I discovered a whole pot of rabbit and buckwheat and small peas all together. I tasted it: like something for a feast day, so salty and a little sweet, and meltingly tender; another gift from the anonymous hand in the book.
I didn’t know how to make food like that at all, and I quailed thinking that the Dragon would expect it. But I was desperately grateful to have the pot ready nonetheless. I put it back on the shelf above the fire to warm—I splashed my dress a little as I did—and I put two eggs in a dish in the oven to bake, and found a tray and a bowl and a plate and a spoon. When the rabbit was ready, I set it out on the tray and cut the bread—I had to cut it, because I had torn off the end of the loaf and eaten it myself while I waited for the rabbit to heat up—and put out butter. I even baked an apple, with the spices: my mother had taught me to do that for our Sunday supper in winter, and there were so many ovens I could do that at the same time as everything else cooked. I even felt a little proud of myself, when everything was assembled on the tray together: it looked like a holiday, though a strange one, with just enough for one man.
I took it up the stairs carefully, but too late I realized I didn’t know where the library was. If I’d thought about it a little, I might have reasoned out that it wouldn’t be on the lowest floor, and indeed it wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out until I’d wandered around carrying the tray through an enormous circular hall, the windows draped with curtains and a heavy throne-like chair at the end. There was another door at the far end, but when I opened that I found only the entry hall and the huge doors of the tower, three times the height of my head and barred with a thick slab of wood in iron brackets.
I turned and went back through the hall to the stairs, and up another landing, and here found the marble floor covered in soft furry cloth. I’d never seen a carpet before. That was why I hadn’t heard the Dragon’s footsteps. I crept anxiously down the hall, and peered through the first door. I backed out hastily: the room was full of long tables, strange bottles and bubbling potions and unnatural sparks in colors that came from no fireplace; I didn’t want to spend another moment inside there. But I managed to catch my dress in the door and tear it, even so.
Finally the next door, across the hall, opened on a room full of books: wooden shelves up and up from floor to ceiling crammed with them. It smelled of dust, and there were only a few narrow windows throwing light in. I was so glad to find the library that I didn’t notice at first that the Dragon was there: sitting in a heavy chair with a book laid out on a small table across his thighs, so large each page was the length of my forearm, and a great golden lock hanging from the open cover.
I froze staring at him, feeling betrayed by the advice in the book. I’d somehow assumed that the Dragon would conveniently keep out of the way until I’d had a chance to put down his meal. He hadn’t raised his head to look at me, but instead of just going quietly with the tray to the table in the center of the room, laying it out, and scurrying away, I hung in the doorway and said, “I’ve—I’ve brought dinner,” not wanting to go in unless he told me to.
“Really?” he said, cuttingly. “Without falling into a pit along the way? I’m astonished.” He only then looked up at me and frowned. “Or did you fall into a pit?”
I looked down at myself. My skirt had one enormous ugly stain, from the vomit—I’d wiped it off best as I could in the kitchen, but it hadn’t really come out—and another from where I’d blown my nose. There were three or four dripping stains from the stew, and some more spatters from the dish-pan where I’d wiped the pots. The hem was still muddy from this morning, and I’d torn a few other holes in it without even noticing. My mother had braided and coiled my hair that morning and pinned it up, but the coils had slid mostly down off my head and were now a big snarled knot of hair hanging half off my neck.
I hadn’t noticed; it wasn’t anything out of the usual for me, except that I was wearing a nice dress underneath the mess. “I was—I cooked, and I cleaned—” I tried to explain.
“The dirtiest thing in this tower is you,” he said—true, but unkind anyway. I flushed and with my head low went to the table. I laid everything out and looked it over, and then I realized sinkingly that with all the time I’d taken wandering around, everything had gone cold, except the butter, which was a softened runny mess in its dish. Even my lovely baked apple was all congealed.
I stared down at it in dismay, trying to decide what to do; should I take it all back down? Or maybe he wouldn’t mind? I turned to look and nearly yelped: he was standing directly behind me peering over my shoulder at the food. “I see why you were afraid I might roast you,” he said, leaning over to lift up a spoonful of the stew, breaking the layer of cooling fat on its top and dumping it back in. “You would make a better meal than this.”
“I’m not a splendid cook, but—” I started, meaning to explain that I wasn’t quite so terrible at it, I’d only not known my way, but he snorted, interrupting me.
“Is there anything you can do?” he asked, mockingly.
If only I’d been better trained to serve, if only I’d ever really thought I might be chosen and had been more ready for all of it; if only I’d been a little less miserable and tired, and if only I hadn’t felt a little proud of myself in the kitchen; if only he hadn’t just twitted me for being a rag, the way everyone who loved me did, but with malice instead of affection—if any of those things, and if only I hadn’t run into him on the stairs, and discovered that he wasn’t going to fling me into a fire, I would probably have just gone red, and run away.
Instead I flung the tray down on the table in a passion and cried, “Why did you take me, then? Why didn’t you take Kasia?”
I shut my mouth as soon as I’d said it, ashamed of myself and horrified. I was about to open my mouth and take it back in a rush, to tell him I was sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean he should go take Kasia instead; I would go and make him another tray—
He said impatiently, “Who?”
I gaped at him. “Kasia!” I said. He only looked at me as though I was giving him more evidence of my idiocy, and I forgot my noble intentions in confusion. “You were going to take her! She’s—she’s clever, and brave, and a splendid cook, and—”