To the Academy!
The brewery on the outskirts of Nuardel, after Kang Jinwoo had gone.
Eilenna, mistress of that brewery and maker of the finest wine, had lately been living with scarcely a moment to breathe.
With a splintering crack, she unleashed her power, and a tree shot up in an instant, tall enough to raise a treehouse. The elf who owned the house clapped her hands in delight.
"I'll be able to decorate it even prettier than the one I used to live in!"
"Then that's a relief. I really am sorry about wrecking your house..."
With this, the restoration of the outer district's homes was finished. Eilenna wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and finally caught her breath.
It had been a botanical rampage, born of a friendship with Kang Jinwoo that had grown a little too fierce and a little too crooked. Rather than pile on further punishment, they had ordered Eilenna—the one responsible—to restore every place her surging plants had damaged. She had taken no part at all in Jinwoo's kidnapping. Her intentions had been something else entirely, but in the end her actions had served Nuardel's defense, and that was weighed in her favor. The punishment was waived.
She went on cutting the gnarled roots still littering the ground with magic and hauling them away, over and over. An elf who had been watching her tidy the landscape spoke up.
"Lady Eilenna, surely you don't have to do the work yourself. Couldn't you simply command the plants to see to it?"
"Ah, well..."
The Liliendra bloodline could wield the World Tree's vitality more efficiently than any other. That gift, however, came with a single fatal catch. It could hasten a plant's growth, and nothing more. Steering them, or turning them back, was impossible.
"In any case, it's the World Tree's vitality. I can't go spending it however I please just to make things easy on myself."
"Wow... You really are Lady Eilenna!"
The truth would have been far too undignified, so Eilenna sidestepped it with an answer that would do. Well... it wasn't exactly a lie. That ought to be fine.
In her fight with Arthur and Kailan, the plants she had handled like her own limbs, the ones she had sent surging up beneath their feet—all of that had been her art. She could not command the plants, but she could guide the direction of their growth, answering Arthur's and Kailan's movements the instant they moved. Her control and her instincts were so extraordinary that elves who didn't know better often gasped, Wow, she's controlling the plants! and got the wrong idea entirely.
As if that were even possible...
Eilenna muttered it to herself. She had always used the gift for winemaking alone, yet it was a power that could be turned to a great many things—raising a house, as she was doing now, or binding broken fixtures tight with vines and roots until they held again. What she had was nothing so limited as a knack for growing crops. It was inexhaustible.
"Eilenna. You'll need to step outside for a while."
"What?"
Elioren, who was hardly likely to miss a possibility like that, shoved her out onto the construction site at Silbaerin. The work here was all but finished. She had just been about to make a little wine and rest, and now this?
"The outside world, all of a sudden? No—before that, why me?"
"Because your ability suits the work, of course. And... this isn't merely a request."
He was dumping a nuisance on her, and if that wasn't merely a request, then what was it? Eilenna held him with an insolent look that said, go on, then. Let's hear it.
"I didn't think he'd be asking for help so soon, but it comes from Sir Jinwoo."
"I'll go! Should I leave right now?"
And so Eilenna's stretch of hard labor in Silbaerin was decided.
Fortunately, she was no common laborer. She was a craftswoman. Put in three to five years on a site like this and a human would already be counted a seasoned hand—but an elf tradeswoman who had lived well past a hundred years, a walking plant-fruit (she was not), belonged to another order entirely. Not a mere veteran. Something close to a god.
"Whoa!! This is an industrial revolution!!!"
"Deputy master of the builders' guild! Lady Eilenna for deputy!"
"Look at that—no foundation, and she just slaps a roof together. Precision past the limit."
"That right there is genuine biotechnologia."
"Could you say that in words I understand...?"
Talk that only humans in the building trade could follow left Eilenna dizzy. Dizzy or not, she put her back into the work she'd been given.
Today's piecework, so... I'd better hurry if I want to see Jinwoo!
The humans called it yarikiri: finish your allotted share and you could leave at once, whatever the hour. Their language was a mystery she could never quite solve, but yarikiri, at least, she liked. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could go see Jinwoo.
A deep groan of wood, then a tight creak—roots and vines grown by her power lashed the factory tent fast. Today's quota was done.
"I'm heading in first!"
"Yes, big sis! Take care!"
Eilenna went off humming, her step light. Set beside Nuardel, the work was exhausting enough, but she didn't mind. What would Jinwoo have ready today? Pasta? Bibimbap?
In Nuardel and in Silbaerin alike, Kang Jinwoo had always cooked for her. His dishes had widened the horizon of a woman who had lived in a world as narrow as a well. Every one of them was distinctive, delicious, brimming with ideas—enough to snap, in a single stroke, the long slump she had fallen into over her wine and the food meant to go with it.
Was that why? Whenever she thought of Jinwoo, her heart beat faster, and a joy she had no words for crowded her head until it was full. Even so, she did not call it love. From the day she was born she had kept romance at arm's length, and she had never really had a friend worth the name.
Jinwoo and I are muses for each other. Friends. Partners.
And so she bent the feeling toward another meaning. He was human, and she was an elf. He could hardly become someone to love, and even if he did, nothing waited at the end but grief over the difference in their years. Then a question occurred to her. If that was so, why had she once laid a village to waste to keep Kang Jinwoo safe?
Jinwoo is fragile, even for a human. Of course he needs protecting.
Brilliant at what he did, and without a shred of skill for fighting or for keeping himself alive. Exactly the sort of person who could be snatched away without a sound. So she had protected him. For a friend. With no particular feeling in it at all.
She walked on, setting her thoughts of him in order, and before she knew it she was at his door. She drew one easy breath and went in.
"Jinwoo, I'm here!"
"Oh. Nice timing."
Today's meal was pizza, it seemed. Kang Jinwoo was just about to slide one into the oven. Only the shape was different—far thicker and more generous than the pizzas she knew, more like a pie.
"Lady Eilenna, are you fully prepared to up and die?"
"Uh... huh? What are you talking about?"
Die? Did he mean the pizza? How was an elf supposed to die of pizza? She studied the thick pie in his hands with a wary eye, and caught the faintest scent of meat. A gamy reek no ordinary human could ever have smelled, as if the World Tree's own sap had sharpened her nose.
"Jinwoo, is there meat in that pizza?"
"Yeah. I put in a little sausage... don't tell me."
"Melted cheese is fine, but... I can't eat meat."
"Ah."
Dismay spread across Kang Jinwoo's face.
Stay calm. This was within expectations.
No. Honestly, I hadn't expected it at all.
The first day she came to help with the build, I'd asked, and she'd said it was fine so long as the cheese wasn't raw. So I'd made it. I never thought she'd balk at a pie packed with spinach, cheese, and tomato sauce, with only a little sausage besides. Not every elf ate nothing but vegetables. I'd assumed she could manage some. Elves simply aren't drawn to meat; eating it doesn't send them into an allergy and ruin their health.
Either way, the plan had to change. The Chicago pizza with the sausage could go to the human laborers. I'd make another.
"Then I'll make you something else. Just wait a moment."
"Ah, no! I can eat anything else. Really."
"Tsk. No. Sit and rest."
I waved off the fretting Eilenna, went into the kitchen, and set out different ingredients. Zucchini, squash, and... artichoke.
Not an artifact. An artichoke—an ingredient a Korean might well find unfamiliar. It looks like someone crossed a succulent with a pinecone, a strange little thing, and yet from the Mediterranean clear across Europe it turns up on tables all the time. This world shared enough of Earth's European ecology and foodways that I'd come across artichokes in the market ages ago. I rarely reached for them and had figured I'd never have a reason to. In the end, here I was.
Things like this never stop being strange. Who looks at one and thinks, yes, I'll eat that? They worked out how to eat this, and never even considered the tomato...
Anyway, I stripped the outer leaves until the tender inner ones showed. Off came the tough stem and the sharp tips of the leaves, and once only the pale yellow heart remained, the prep was done. Half of it went in the scrap pile. No wonder they called it a noble's vegetable. And yet Europeans put it on pizza and blanch it to dip in mayonnaise—an everyday thing. The flavor, at least, was guaranteed.
Fat hissed as I seared the artichoke over high heat with rounds of eggplant and zucchini. I'd meant the sausage to give the pie its body, and now I couldn't use it, so the vegetables would have to be roasted into something with weight. Salt them, brown them properly, and they could go straight on as a Chicago topping. Spinach, eggplant, zucchini, and artichoke folded together, and tomato sauce and cheese packed every gap until nothing was left empty.
There's a saying about taking chicken when you can't get pheasant. In a world where chicken is all there is, this is the delicacy. This is fine dining. Eilenna was a lacto-ovo vegetarian—dairy and eggs, yes; meat, no. For her, then, this artichoke deep-dish could stand in for the pheasant. For the beef.
I built the pizza exactly as before, minus the sausage, and slid it into an oven hovering around four hundred and eighty degrees. Thirty to forty minutes. When the Maillard reaction bloomed across the cheese and the crust had gone properly crisp...
A rush of gold: cheese boiling up, and the smell of tomato sauce tugging at the appetite. Eggplant, zucchini, artichoke, spinach—every one of them carried its own mellow sweetness, and that natural sugar drifted through the restaurant, easy and pleasant. Fresh from the oven, so I let it settle a little, then eased it from the pan and onto a plate.
"Chicago pizza, done. Let's try it first, together."
The only deep-dish pizza of its kind in the world, made for Eilenna, was set on the table.
In truth, Eilenna's power was weaker here than it had been in Nuardel. The World Tree's vitality did reach as far as Silbaerin, but beside the heart of it, that reach was a thin thing. Even helping expand Kang Jinwoo's factory, she had spent twice the strength she should have, and her stamina was badly worn down.
How did he know I was worn out, and make something like this...
As if he had accounted for exactly that, the meal waiting for her was generous to a fault. And when she had said she couldn't eat what he'd first prepared, he had taken it apart and built it anew in no time at all. Marveling at the skill of it, Eilenna looked at the pizza before her.
Nothing like the pizzas she had seen in Nuardel—not in thickness, not in shape. Had she not smelled it, she would have taken it for some peculiar pie. Three of the margheritas Kang Jinwoo had made in Nuardel, stacked—no, five—might have come to this. For the first time in her life, food overwhelmed her. She was still failing to grasp how one even began to eat it when Kang Jinwoo cut into the pie, slow and easy.
The knife sank. The cross-section opened, and the filling packed inside spilled out in a slow pour. At the same moment the aroma locked inside the dough burst free, and a gooey pizza-smell several times thicker than before rolled over her. Eilenna's body gave a small shiver.
"Here. Try this. It's hot, so careful."
"Uh... okay."
He carefully set one enormous slice of Chicago pizza on her plate. Even cut free, it still wore its grandeur like a threat.
Too big. And... hot.
Pick it up and the filling would run everywhere, so she took up fork and knife instead. She gathered the slice so that every ingredient would reach her at once. Then she opened her mouth as wide as it would go and took in a great bite of pizza.
"Mm—heeheehee."
"Huh. Wh-why are you doing that?"
"Heehee... hehe."
The instant the Chicago pizza was in her mouth and she bit down once, laughter broke out of her.
It sinks in. Such a solid, comforting taste...!
Tomato sauce still fresh after thirty minutes in the oven. Cheese she didn't ordinarily care for, binding every piece together and carrying the salty savor. And above all, the kick: eggplant and zucchini bursting with juice at every chew, and sweet artichoke. That mellow juice ran into the already bright tomato sauce and tore straight through the crisp, thick crust, scattering whatever held it together—just as Eilenna herself had been scattered, dazed by this burly, burning pie.
How had he kept the crust crisp while taking all that richness of juice with it? There was only one way to answer. Eat.
She chewed, and chewed again. Worn raw from the labor, her body begged for calories down to the last cell. The moment she understood that this food was a superb source of energy, she gave herself over to the meal.
I see. The texture is like that tart from before.
At last she had the crust's secret. A tart, too, has to hold the shape of its dish, and so it is made with cake flour. Eilenna had no notion of cake flour, all-purpose, or bread flour. Her palate, honed over a long life, knew it anyway.
The tart had been a festival of sweetness climbing all the way to the crown of her head and soaking into her mind. This Chicago pizza was energy itself. Sweet vegetables, high salt, high heat on the tongue. A ferocity that beat without mercy on the very tongue she used to taste wine with such care. She chewed and swallowed through the dizzy rush in her keen taste-buds, and vigor poured into her whole body at once.
"Haa... I'm recovering. I can feel the strength moving through me."
"I made it because I thought the work might wear you out. Glad it was worth it."
The right dish, chosen for her tastes and for the state she was in. In Kang Jinwoo's warm cooking she could feel it, plain as anything: she was being hosted. She was being looked after. And so Eilenna had no choice but to make a great decision.
"I—I want to go to the capital with you too!"
"Sorry? You as well, Lady Eilenna?"
The resolve not to go back to Nuardel even after the building was done, and the greed to feel more of this warmth at his side—together they filled her heart to the brim.