People of the Summit (3)
Monia took the claw knife—smeared with pig fat and dulled from long use—and ground it against a nearby stone until the edge came back.
It was nowhere near as fine as the flat whetstones Chester had spent so long hunting down and hauling all over the house, but when she needed a quick edge, this would do.
She swirled the sharpened claw knife in the river to rinse away stone dust and claw shavings, then carried it back to the pig she was still dressing.
The animal had already been bled and skinned; now it lay butchered into the cuts Chester had taught her, a pitiful ruin of meat. And the poor creature’s ordeal was far from over.
Monia worked the claw knife with firm, steady strokes, parting flesh until she found the bones hidden inside, then carefully scraped every scrap of meat free from them.
“Hoo.”
Once she had cleanly drawn the spine from the carcass, she sliced the body lengthwise with meticulous care and spread it thin and wide. She snipped the tough sinews and stabbed and scored the meat all over with the claw knife until the whole slab was tender.
Then she packed in the seasonings, aromatic herbs, and finely chopped fruit she had brought from home, rolled the pig tightly, and bound it fast with cord.
She could not remember the name of the dish, but among the countless meals she had eaten in her former life there had been something very like it.
“I never got to make this before because we couldn’t spare that much meat—and now look at us!”
There had been plenty of chances, of course. But whenever meat and fruit grew abundant they had always thrown themselves into making preserves first; lavish cooking with big cuts of fresh meat had simply never been an option.
“How are you going to roast something that thick?”
“Well, if I want the flavors and aromas to soak all the way through, a low fire in the kiln would be best… or I could just cut it into pieces and grill them!”
“Do whatever you like.”
While he spoke, Chester sliced the pork belly thin, cut it into neat squares, and laid the pieces out on leaves. He had deliberately kept them thin so they would cook easily on the griddle.
Those guys look a little put out.
Black Wind, whenever they ate together, liked to cram whatever he was eating into his mouth until his cheeks bulged and then chew with noisy gusto.
Looks like the rest of them feel the same.
They glared at the thin slices with open dissatisfaction, as if asking why anyone would ruin good meat that way.
Others, meanwhile, seemed to be holding a full-blown debate over the purpose of the cutting.
Watching them split so cleanly into the ones who used their heads and the ones who didn’t was honestly pretty funny.
Do they have factions among themselves too?
The ones who didn’t use their heads… if he had to give the factions names, maybe call them the Warrior Faction. Earlier, when the warriors had been squabbling, the ones who did use their heads—the Head Faction—had looked on with clear disapproval.
Still, it’s nothing like the dark, sticky faction fights among the nobles back home. Thank the gods for that.
Noble faction wars, political games, and backstabbing produced schemes so vile you wondered how human beings could sink so low; they poured out as naturally as breathing.
Chester had never wanted to look too closely at those garbage-level human spectacles, yet as Monia’s personal butler he had never been able to avoid the uglier face of noble society entirely.
Compared to that, these guys are angels.
A little mutual grumbling, nothing more—and even that looked like nothing worse than brothers who got on each other’s nerves and scuffled now and then.
The young warrior Black Wind had knocked out earlier had woken up, shrugged the whole thing off, and was already playing with him again.
“If we’re using the kiln, maybe we should roast one whole after all? They’ll figure out how to eat it.”
“Yes! We’ve got so much meat—let’s try all sorts of things!”
“You look like you’re having fun.”
Monia hummed under her breath while she worked, wriggling her whole body so that anyone could see how happy and excited she was.
“Heh heh heh. I never knew how wonderful it could feel to eat without worrying about what comes after! Every single meal I used to think, ‘If we eat this now and then run short of preserves when things get dangerous, what will we do?’ I never once ate with a free heart!”
“Uh… you did?”
Chester was a little taken aback. He was careful about winter too, of course, but he had never felt the same gnawing anxiety Monia described. Preparing for winter was simply habit.
In a poor village, people died in droves every winter; the entire community turning out for winter preparations was the most natural thing in the world.
If someone had asked whether Monia even possessed the concept or the word “winter preparations,” Chester would have answered without hesitation that she did not.
To her, winter had meant nothing more than watching snow fall, strip the leaves from the trees, and bloom into pretty ice flowers on bare branches while she enjoyed tea parties.
Well… real ease only comes after you’ve lived through that kind of situation and come out the other side.
Even Chester, once he was old enough to help with winter stores, had been tense. The winter before, one of his friends had starved to death.
But after living through it again and again—after being dragged into the mountains by his father on those freezing, brutal days to help with the hunting—he had grown used to it.
Used to the cold, the barrenness, the merciless winter that would snatch a life for the smallest misstep.
The first time he realized winter was coming he had been unprepared and worried; now they had stocked enough, and Black Wind had given them solid information about the season. There was nothing left to fear.
All they had to do was stay alert and careful.
“I’m finished over here.”
“Me too! All that’s left is the cooking!”
“Good.”
When Chester beckoned that it was time to go, Black Wind sprang up, scooped the pile of dressed meat they had gathered, and began dancing and bouncing his way back toward the house.
The rest of the Summit people immediately swarmed after him in a noisy throng.
—From now on my friend Chester make small sun!
The moment Chester began preparing to start a fire, Black Wind noticed and promptly summoned all his friends to gather around.
“…….”
Monia, who had just brought the firewood, and Chester, who was stacking it into a proper campfire shape, suddenly found themselves surrounded by a dense, jostling crowd of Summit people and looked at them with open discomfort.
Feels like the temperature just jumped.
Just how much had Black Wind been talking about fire to make them stare with such hungry curiosity?
Chester, who had no idea that Black Wind called fire “the small sun,” could not understand their over-the-top reaction.
Of course, to the Summit people the reaction was only natural.
To them, fire was a fragment of the sun that sometimes fell to earth together with lightning from the sky.
No matter how strong a race they were, no matter that they ruled the island, they knew they could never truly defy the great and vast thing that was Nature itself.
And now Chester—with that frail little body—was about to create with his own hands the very small sun that great Nature occasionally dropped to the ground. How could they not watch with breathless excitement?
—Can he? Really can?
—With arms thin like twigs he make small sun? How?
—Maybe he call down falling light?
—No way! If he can do that he not weak.
—But he say he can make small sun.
—Mm. That true.
—Shh! He move! He move!
—What he do?!
—He touch stick!
—Why he touch that?!
—! He breathe!
—That normal, who say stupid thing just now. Was it you? You the one they call baby-head?
—Not me! Ugh, stop hiding behind me! You did it!
The Summit people grew so excited they kept shouting and snorting; their hot breath and snorts whipped Chester’s hair this way and that.
“…….”
“…….”
Monia raked back the strands that had blown across her nose and were blocking her eyes.
—Hah! What that?! What meaning that action have?!
And the Summit people assigned deep significance even to that small gesture while they waited for the small sun.
“They look exactly like the village aunties making a fuss over a traveling circus troupe’s tricks.”
—Ooooh! He start chanting! He really call down falling light!
—Sorcery! He sorcerer!
Leaving the fussing crowd alone, Chester began teaching Black Wind how to make fire without a lighter.
The method itself was the same.
He simply had to walk through the steps the lighter had always let them skip.
He scraped long, thin shavings from a stick with his knife and gathered a thick pile for tinder. He cut a small groove in a piece of wood, set a straight stick into the groove, and spun it to create friction heat.
Keep at it long enough and the powdered wood abraded by the spinning becomes charcoal; that charcoal goes into the tinder.
Blow air into the tinder and charcoal until a flame appears, then carefully build from small twigs upward until you have a proper campfire. Done.
If the work is done right and the air flows well, the fire feeds on the twigs, grows of its own accord, and finally settles into a steady blaze that consumes the larger logs.
“Ta-da.”
The instant Chester showed them the finished fire—
—Real small sun!
—He make small sun!
—Woooah! Amazing! So amazing!
—Black Wind words true!
The Summit people exploded with excitement and began leaping and thrashing as one.
“…….”
Chester watched their reaction with a faintly overwhelmed expression and turned to Monia.
“Shall we just grill some meat?”
“Yes…….”
Monia nodded with a look that was somehow tired as well.
They left the Summit people—so overexcited they were either bouncing wildly by themselves or punching one another—and quietly began to cook.