People of the Summit (4)
The People of the Summit only came to their senses once Chester and Monia had finished cooking and were getting ready to eat.
The cuts of meat Chester had prepared, along with every dish Monia had wrung her mind dry inventing, were all ready. Spices, fruit, seasonings, meat, and rendered pork fat had come together into a fragrance that drew every eye among the Summit folk to the food.
It was something that simply did not exist in their lives.
The gamey reek of prey. The scents left in the tracks of what they hunted. The fresh green breath of the overflowing wild where they lived, and the sweet honey-smell of flowers. The iron tang of blood from a dying kill. That was the whole of what “smell” meant to them.
Anything beyond that had never been needed in their world—and had never been there at all.
So what was this, now?
The scent rising from pork fat melting before the hot flames struck their noses with dizzying force. Fruit and herbs that had drunk in the liquefied fat and then exploded with heat into aromas they had never once known—strange, deep, and impossible to forget.
A fragrance that could never have belonged to the lives of the People of the Summit: a smell designed for no purpose but to wake hunger and pull it forward, so that the taste of food might shine all the brighter.
The little elder absently picked up the dish set before him. Steam was still pouring off it, but he had no idea that heat meant “smoke,” and he touched it without a second thought.
—Hwoah!
He flinched at the burn—then realized it had only been the suddenness of the heat, that he could hold it without real harm, and took hold of the food again.
“Oh. He’s just grabbing it bare-handed.”
“That works?”
“Their palms are thicker than ours. Maybe that’s why they can handle the heat.”
Chester and Monia, of course, could not manage bare hands, and were eating with tools as they always did. The rest of the Summit people, though, were all lifting roasted food and meat straight to their mouths with their fingers.
When the little elder opened his jaws wide, thick, elongated canines like thumbs showed themselves. Perhaps because they lived so largely on meat, every other tooth was pointed as well, not only those oversized fangs.
He bit down hard the way he always did with raw flesh—and the meat, tenderized by the fruit, collapsed the instant his teeth met it.
Meat this soft? Incredible! It’s like chewing water!
Wondering, the little elder studied the cross-section of the bite he had taken. Unlike the solid slabs he usually ate, the meat here was already trying to fall apart along its grain.
He nodded as if he understood.
Ah—so when you roast meat with the little sun, the fat inside melts? And as the fat melts, the meat comes apart! So meat is held together by fat!
Whether his guess was true or not, no one could say. Asking Chester or Monia would not have helped. No one here possessed precise knowledge of cooking.
“Mm. This pig’s a bit tough.”
“The first one we ate was really soft and good.”
“Looking at the size, that one must have been a piglet. Chicken or pig, the young ones are always tenderer and tastier.”
“If you soak a young chicken in sweet liquor and eat it, the meat gets so soft it’s almost shocking. Delicious.”
Chester and Monia were calling the pork tough, but even that “slightly tough” meat was astonishingly tender to the People of the Summit.
And Monia’s cooking did not stop at mere tenderness.
The little elder kept chewing, wanting to linger over the way the meat dissolved and spread through his mouth—and the longer he chewed, the more the layered seasonings she had packed inside seeped out.
Just as the taste of the meat and the melted fat began to coat his tongue, the chili powder hidden within arrived and stabbed his palate with heat.
—…!
His eyes flew wide at the first “spiciness” of his life, a pain he had never known—but before long the fruit nested in the rolled, layered meat came tumbling through his mouth as well. Its sweetness gently covered the assault of the chili; meat and oil mixed with the heat and turned into something rich and many-colored.
The deep savor of meat whose umami had bloomed over the fire. The soft sweetness and richness in the fat. The bright sugar of fruit and its faint acidity. And last, that lone, insistent heat that kept appetite alive so the palate never grew tired of the gentler flavors.
When the final fold of meat came apart, a new taste rose—the pepper Monia had buried at the very heart of the dish.
Hot. Yes, it was hot. But it was a different heat from the chili that had tormented him a moment before.
Above all, the fragrance was different. Even amid so many tastes, scents, and depths blending and softening into one another, the pepper never lost itself. Its aroma and character rose from his mouth straight into his nose.
Delicious! It’s delicious! I’ve never eaten anything like this! I don’t know how to say it, but it’s delicious!
With no vocabulary for such variety, the little elder could only chant delicious, delicious inside himself, chewing and chewing the food that was already gone, savoring every last ghost of it.
Ah. I’ve finished it.
The moment he realized that and lifted the next portion toward his mouth—
—If you’re not eating, hand it over!
Something struck him, and the dish was torn away.
—Aaaah! You’re eating more than me! Give it back!
—This is mine!
—That’s Little Head’s! I’m his friend, so I get to eat it!
—I’m his friend too!
Robbed of his food without warning, the little elder shook with a fury beyond words—and then hurled himself at the insolent thieves who had dared snatch a family’s meal.
—Uwaaaaaah!
—Kraaaaaah!
Chester and Monia edged away from the rampaging Summit folk and, at a safer distance, fed each other.
“Here.”
Monia took the roasted meat Chester offered, chewed into the juice-and-flavor-packed bite, and her eyes went wide.
“Wow! That’s good!”
“Yeah? Right? It came out better than I expected. The pig itself is delicious, though.”
“Here—this is something I tried for the first time. How is it?”
This time Monia fed Chester a dish of her own. He tasted it and nodded.
“Mm. Yeah. Mm.”
Chester would eat anything edible no matter how awful it was, so his talent for describing flavor was nearly nonexistent. When it came to food, he had about as much range as the People of the Summit: Delicious! That was the end of it.
Knowing that perfectly well, Monia simply held out another bite. He took it without a word and chewed. She kept offering, and before long his cheeks were stuffed so full they bulged while he worked his jaw.
“It must be good!”
Monia watched him with a soft, helpless grin—like a hamster cramming sunflower seeds into its pouches and munching in a frantic hurry—finding him the cutest thing in the world.
While the two of them were at it, the Summit people who had floored their friend and seized the food began their feast in earnest.
Monia had made what she knew without proper ingredients or equipment, yet for everyone present it was a truly delicious meal—and a truly joyful one.
Whether the little elder, smart of head but weak of body, who had been beaten and stripped of every last bite, would have agreed… was another question.
A long table filled the center of a vast hall, crowded with people—and yet not a single soft word broke the silence that hung over the space.
At the head sat the new king, Jordy, and his queen, Tiara. Beside them, in order of the trust he placed in them, sat the new kingdom’s leading men.
Some were loyal not to the king but to the kingdom itself. Some had disliked the former king, found Jordy more to their taste, shown their skill, and been chosen. Others had been promised high office when Jordy slipped through the realm in secret and begged their help for his coup.
Or, like the man at the farthest seat, they might have been forced into cooperation by threats against their families.
Time crawled in the quiet, and then the dishes arrived.
The whole land was at war, but deep beneath the kingdom vast stores of food had been laid by against disaster. Preserved forever fresh by one of the few ancient legacies the realm still possessed, they had been turned by the kingdom’s finest chef into a display of craft.
Each plate, one could guess, had once been a work of art. Now their forms were so ruined that a casual glance could hardly tell whether they were meant for people or for dogs.
“…….”
With every course, Tiara ate in the rigid manners that had been beaten into her through hours of near-torture, her body stiff with forced etiquette.
Cold.
That was the whole of her judgment on the food.
Eaten warm, it would surely have been wonderful—but dishes left so long after cooking had lost their heat, their flavor, and even their color, turning strangely dull.
Jordy, fearing poison, had ordered three separate groups of strangers to taste every dish half a dozen ways across three stages. Even after the food reached the table it was tasted once more—so each plate passed four inspections before it ever touched a mouth.
No matter how fine a dish, after so much stirring and so long a wait it was no wonder form and taste both died.
The chef knew it, and tried—rich sauces that still sang when cold, ingredients chosen to hold their character—but effort has its limits.
And more than that—
Cold.
A kingdom built on blood was heavy and cold in spirit. In such a place, cold food—however excellent—could never taste like anything at all.
Tiara ate. She only ate.
Everyone chewed something cold with mechanical care and forced it down their throats. That was the whole of dining in this palace since Jordy had become king.
Once, meals with Jordy had been happy hours full of colors she had never known. Now even putting something in her mouth and chewing was agony.
Tiara wanted bread.
Not the ruined, near-crumb luxury loaf she had just forced down, but bread with a crust so rough and hard it could cut the mouth. Bread you could hold in one hand, tear into with a wide bite, and no one would scold you for it—someone would only smile and say, There, my girl, that’s how you eat, and be glad.
She wanted that bread torn into a stew of half-invisible vegetable scraps and meat bits, soaked warm and soft, and eaten that way.
It would have been delicious. She was sure of it.