An Unexpected Gift (1)
Winter-Ascend had ended, and the fever of the festival finally cooled.
Anyone looking up could tell the sky over Iceland had endured long enough.
As if it had been waiting for exactly this moment, heavy snow began to fall across the entire region.
With the anniversary past, everyone returned to their unchanging routine—wintering.
And a few changes settled into Karem’s daily life as well.
Every few days he held a technical exchange with Jigmeser.
To put it more plainly, Karem passed on the recipes and applications he remembered, while Jigmeser taught him the recipes and fundamentals he himself knew.
Karem found it hard to get used to.
Teaching an old man so much older than himself… and when that old man piled on excessive, overly familiar flattery, the whole thing felt downright burdensome.
Yet Jigmeser was deadly serious about cooking.
And Karem could feel the exchanges themselves becoming flesh and blood to him.
What he had lacked was the basics.
Even if he had once been a full-time professional, it had all begun as a hobby, after all. Starting from applications left him short on foundations.
In that sense Jigmeser, for all his years, made an excellent teacher.
And because Karem himself was brimming with the will to learn, he absorbed every fundamental and every trick the dwarf taught him the moment it was offered.
Some people simply taught better than others, or so the saying went.
Each exchange session left Karem feeling his skill climb higher.
The other change was the way people looked at him.
To anyone who knew nothing of Tutatis or Maoines, the shift was only natural.
He might be the exclusive chef of a great mage, but few had ever seen him in person. Their paths rarely crossed, and he was still young, so hardly anyone had paid him much mind.
Then one day the young lord and lady suddenly took an interest.
Next the head chef of Winterhome—a man of no small influence—began bowing and scraping with flattery?
Even those who had once passed him by like a cow watching a chicken now changed their attitudes, hoping a few crumbs might fall their way.
“Yes. That’s everything.”
“The quality is even better than usual.”
“Hahaha. I picked them out especially carefully, hoping you’d look kindly on us.”
Just like the warehouse hand who was now openly going out of his way for Karem.
At first Karem had felt awkward about it, but now he could accept the attention with a smile.
Compared to Jigmeser’s burning, hand-rubbing sycophancy, this was nothing more than a little charm.
Mary set down the large and small boxes of provisions, and Karem immediately began checking every item with her.
“The onions are firm, the ginger looks fine… everything really is better than before. Doesn’t the main kitchen usually get first pick?”
“Ah, you’re not wrong.”
“Then?”
“Jigmeser-nim asked me personally, on his way out, to set things aside for you whenever I could.”
For a single heartbeat Karem’s vision swam.
In that blur he thought he saw a smooth-shaven old dwarf giving him a needlessly dashing smile and a thumbs-up.
He shook it off and decided to take the bright side.
Better ingredients never hurt, after all.
Clearing his mind, Karem turned to the spices.
Their fragrance was relatively mild, but considering the era and the storage conditions they were excellent.
Then, inside a wooden box divided into fine compartments for the spices, he found something suspicious.
“Hm? What’s this?”
A tiny wooden barrel, small enough for a child to lift with both hands.
“Whoa, it’s heavy.”
“Karem Hubae? What is that?”
“I’m not sure either. Feels like liquid?”
When Karem lifted it he felt a heavy sloshing inside.
Definitely liquid.
“And the seams are sealed with beeswax? Hey! What is this?”
“Huh? That was in there? Hang on.”
The warehouse hand studying the wooden inventory board scratched his head in confusion.
“No idea. It’s not on the list.”
“Didn’t you pack these yourself?”
“I’m vegetables. The spice guy stepped out a little while ago.”
Not knowing anything outside your own section—same everywhere, apparently.
While Karem felt a strangely familiar sense of kinship in the oddest place, Mary’s curiosity was piqued as well; she came closer.
“Cork stopper soaked in beeswax, and every single seam on the lid and base sealed with wax.”
“Almost obsessive.”
“It might be something valuable.”
Even the rarest wines—one cask a year if you were lucky—weren’t sealed with this much paranoia, as far as Mary knew.
It could be something dangerous, of course, but that seemed unlikely.
This was Winterhome, the most tightly guarded place in all of Iceland.
After checking the board several more times the warehouse hand simply shrugged.
“Well, it’s not on the list, but it was in the box, so just take it.”
“Really? Is that all right?”
“Of course. If they stuck it in without even marking it, the whole mess is on the spice guy.”
Free was free. Karem accepted at once.
If he took it to Catherine, even something dangerous would get sorted out somehow.
“Shall I carry it up to the Mage’s Tower for you?”
“No need. A handcart will do. Actually, I’ll borrow one myself.”
The warehouse hand’s considerate offer—meant to get on Karem’s good side—was cut short by Mary’s iron resolve not to lose even a scrap of work.
She secured a handcart and loaded the boxes herself.
Even though she was a Brownie, to the eye she was only a slender, pretty young woman; the warehouse workers stared, but she ignored them and hefted the loads with ease.
Karem waited quietly. When Mary finished and nodded, they left the food storehouse together, pushing through snow so thick they could barely see a step ahead.
A festival with crowds always meant a headache of cleanup afterward.
The festival itself was long over and the snow was falling hard, yet Winterhome still bustled.
Servants and laborers were taking down decorations, moving artworks, sweeping trash—all the leftover work.
“Hooo… damn this snow! I can’t get used to it!”
“As soon as we get back I’ll clear the snow around the tower. And just so you know—”
“Yeah, yeah. You don’t even have to say it. I’m not helping.”
“Good. It really is cold, though.”
She claimed to be cold, yet Mary showed not the slightest sign of it as she quietly hauled the cart. She had said the words, and he knew better, but a twinge of guilt still made Karem ask,
“You’ve been working hard. Anything you particularly want for lunch today?”
“Hoo. Something I want to eat?”
“Hard labor. That tingling cold from fingertips to toes. A broth that warms you from tongue to throat all the way to your belly, and ingredients that still hold their heat?”
“Well now.”
No one could refuse hot soup in weather like this.
Just as Karem expected, a flicker of anticipation softened the wintery bluntness that usually clung to Mary.
He pressed on.
“With plenty of cream?”
“Plenty of cream.”
“And bread with plenty of butter?”
“Of course.”
Ever since they moved into the Mage’s Tower there had never been a shortage of cream.
Butter-laced bread arrived every early morning from the main castle bakers.
Cream meant clam chowder, naturally.
But the clams had run out long ago.
He could substitute fish, yet there was no fish either.
Still, Karem simply changed course.
Plain cream stew would do.
And not the kind that was cream stew in name only and mostly flour—real cream, poured in without restraint.
Besides, a slab of belly bacon, drying hard in the cold arid air, was waiting patiently in a corner of the kitchen storehouse.
A Brownie who went crazy for butter, bread, and cream indeed.
Mary’s stern face melted in an instant.
“That sounds wonderful.”
“Then let’s hurry ba—hm?”
Something half-buried between the snowdrifts caught Karem’s eye.
A thin shard of red skin, and a tiny white seed tinged with yellow.
“Karem Hubae. What are you doing? Let’s get back. For that hot soup full of cream.”
“Yes, yes. No need to rush me.”
He quickly pocketed the finds and rose at Mary’s urging.
Cream stew.
An odd stew whose origins lay in Asia.
As far as Karem remembered, it had been invented in Japan.
Of course, once one person thought of it, at least two more had the same idea.
Europe had something similar—specifically France.
“Since it’s neither of those, I’ll just call it Iceland-style cream stew.”
He dropped bite-sized, lightly seasoned chicken thighs into a heated pot.
No need for butter yet.
The skin was already sticking to the hot bottom, rendering fat and releasing oil.
The savory scent of chicken fat filled the kitchen and drifted outside.
And the hour happened to be lunchtime.
The perfect moment for hungry noses to grow sharp.
Catherine caught the smell and flung the kitchen door open.
“Oho. Chicken today?”
“Yep. I’ll simmer it with cream and vegetables, then crumble crisp bacon over the top.”
“Bacon?”
Karem rapped the large, hard, rectangular slab sitting on the table.
On the day he had first tried making porchetta, he had prepped this piece and started drying it. The bone-dry climate of Iceland had finished the job in no time.
He had known the theory only and felt uneasy, but with the help of the all-purpose house fairy Mary he had succeeded on the first try.
Of course, finishing it in the oven instead of smoking meant there was no smoky aroma.
“I can finally taste it?”
“It’ll be a bit salty. Want to try a piece by itself?”
“Sounds good.”
“Just a moment.”
He tossed the prepared vegetables into the pot with butter, seasoned them with salt and pepper, then wrestled thin slices of bacon onto a hot cast-iron pan.
They shrank almost instantly under the heat.
Karem slid the entire pan into the oven connected to the hearth.
From here it was only a matter of temperature and time.
“Hah… I wonder how many pans I ruined trying to get them this crisp without an oven.”
“Hm? Kid, did you say something?”
“Nothing. Time to add the water and cream.”
He banished the memory of scorched pans and poured cream and water into the pot—two parts to one, the same ratio he had used the first time he served seafood chowder.
The sizzling pot cooled, then came back to a rolling boil. Karem pulled the bacon from the oven at exactly the right moment.
“Must be because it’s pork. It shrank quite a bit.”
“Would you like to try a piece?”
“Obviously.”
Crunch—! The moment Catherine bit into the bacon Karem offered, she let out a genuine sound of wonder.
Even as she chewed, the crispness never faded.
“It’s like eating only the best, crackliest skin from a roast, all by itself.”
“The vegetables in the stew still need a little time.”
“Doesn’t matter. Food always tastes better when you have patience.”
After feeding her the rest of the bacon, Karem started to sit down and suddenly felt something foreign in his pocket.
Only then did he remember what he had picked up earlier. He pulled it out at once.
The red skin fragment and the white seed with a yellow cast he had found on the road.
The hot sting against his skin felt extremely familiar.
“This really feels familiar…”
“Hm? Red Witch’s Finger? Even as a scrap, why do you have that?”
“What? It was buried in a snowbank on the way here.”
“Ah—wait. Is it so small you barely feel the pain?”
Pain? Red skin. Familiar seed. This wasn’t so much pain as…
Could this be chili? But what kind of grim name was “Red Witch’s Finger”?
Karem was thoroughly confused.