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Chapter 28 - Orphan
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 18:00:04 +0000 UTC“Okay, take your kitchen shears and cut along the top of the shell. Just let it chip off. Don’t go all the way. Don’t hit the meat.”
Nori demonstrated as she spoke, taking a cluster of acorn barnacles that looked like three volcanoes stuck into a ball, the recesses of each section holding a chunk of meat. She worked the edges to widen the hole, bits of shell exploding off her heavy iron scissors.
“You wanna try?” Nori held the cluster of barnacles out to Nyima. It had been nearly two weeks since Nori called the orphanage her home, and she could name all of the children—even the ones that only came by once or twice. Almost none of them had been given Chef names. Their parents hadn’t bothered to raise them, nor had they bothered to name them in the fashion of superstition. They were truly left with nothing.
“Ew!” Rabten pointed at the barnacle and jumped up and down. “I saw its tongue!”
Nori turned it toward her to see a little brown tendril unfurl and stick out. She turned the barnacle back toward the children and shook it at them. “It’s going to get you!”
They shrieked and grabbed each other. Nori just laughed and got back to cutting. None of them would dare touch the barnacles now, but she spoke through her process anyway.
“Now we dunk it in some water to get out the sand and bits of shell.” She dunked the cluster into a bucket of water and then set it onto a tray. She grabbed another cluster of barnacles and got back to cutting as the children asked their usual round of questions.
“Is it true that in Ambrosia City you have dessert with every meal?” Nyima asked as she randomly broke into jumping jacks.
Nori laughed as she cut. “No.”
“Most meals?”
“Ehhh. No. But! I’ll tell you what…” For the first few days, Nori downplayed everything Ambrosia City had to offer. But then she realized that in telling them tales, she wasn’t rubbing it in their face. She was giving them a fantasy. An escape. It nourished them as well as any appetizer. “Sometimes, we have two desserts in the same meal.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes three!” Nori snapped her shears together with extra force to build excitement.
“No way! Like what?”
Nori closed one eye and thought about it. She hadn’t had a trio of desserts in years, so she had to think up a set on the spot. She stalled for time.
“Well, in a duo, you can have opposing flavors that play off with each other. But in a trio, you don’t want too much going on. You want something in common.”
“Are you a good Chef?” Pema interrupted as he rocked back and forth on the other side of the counter.
“Well…I’m a Yellow Jacket, which means I’m still learning.” Nori saw that wasn’t the answer they were looking for. “But yes, I am a good Chef.”
That got them smiling. “Where is your jacket?”
Nori sucked in her bottom lip as she remembered. The last time she had seen her jacket, it was crumpled up halfway beneath her bed. Maybe Blanche had picked it up and folded it. Poor Blanche, all alone in that room. No roommate. No girls. Blanche needed girls—Nori hardly ever managed to meet that need. And Archie and Sutton could be so aggressively boyish. At least Barley was good at reading people. Maybe he was giving her a more neutral option.
“Back in the Monastery.”
“Tell us about the desserts!”
Nori laughed. She thought she had gotten away with it.
“Well…If I were making a trio of desserts right now…” She used her scissor-bound pinky to scratch her chin. “I’d start with a dark chocolate and orange tart. It would have this crust. You sprinkle sugar and cocoa powder and cinnamon.”
None of those ingredients were native to Khala, but that just made it all the more magical to the deprived orphans. For once, they were still as they imagined the flavors. It must have been hard for them. Citrus in particular was a rarity in Khala, only found in the greenhouses. An orange was worth its weight in gold.
“And then, since that is a really heavy dessert, I’d want the second one to be lighter, but still have some of the same flavor profile. A crème brûlée martini.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s this drink—you couldn’t have it until you’re older. But it’s creamy and sugary and sweet.”
The children broke out in a chorus of ooo’s and aaa’s.
“And finally…” Nori found her own mouth watering. She hadn’t eaten any better than the orphans in a while. Her mind took her back to her final years in Uroko. For ten days straight, she had asked their personal Chef to make a particular dessert.
“Bananas foster,” she said.
“Banana fosters?”
“Bananas foster,” Nori corrected. “You cook bananas in orange juice and lemon juice and brown sugar and cinnamon. Then you put some rum and banana or orange liqueur in the mix and flambé it. You end up with mushy bananas in a syrup that is so sweet and flavorful. You put it on vanilla ice cream. Ooo, but I like it on pancakes!”
“Whoa. Is that your favorite dessert?”
“Hm. I do really love lemon curd…”
“I like lemon too,” Nyima said with a cute little grin.
“Well good! Because we’re ready for our next step, and wouldn’t you know it…It needs lemon!”
Nori moved over to the pot of boiling water, the three orphans following right at her heels.
“Alright, we pour in some rice wine vinegar…” The water turned into a pale golden yellow. “And some soy sauce.”
The red-brown soy sauce spread in the turbulent water, coloring around the outside before penetrating the center. She waited for the sauce to darken before adding more, turning the mixture into a deep golden brown.
“And now, we put in our clusters.” She dropped the barnacles into the pot, air bubbles pouring out of the shells. “And let them cook.”
“Why are you teaching us?” Rabten asked. “We have you to make it for us.”
Nori smiled and tussled the boy’s hair. She didn’t need to wipe off her hand first—his hair was certainly dirtier than her hand. But that was just life.
“You won’t have me forever. I’ll be going home soon.” Nori wondered when that would be. She knew her message had been delivered, and apparently it had been heeded, as no one had come for her. She figured she had maybe two or three weeks before they’d leave for the north. “So you need to learn. And then you can teach the other kids.”
“Do you have parents?” Pema asked with the whimsy of a child that had stumbled upon a profound question.
Nori considered the question as she used chopsticks to take the clusters of barnacles out of the pot and put them in a bowl of ice water.
Did she have parents? The two people that had birthed her were still alive, but when was the last time they had been parental? Was he still a father when he made her cook for twelve hours straight during the Festival of Ambrosia? Was she still a mother when her hand fan left a bruise on Nori’s hand?
It had been nearly a year since Nori had seen either of them. She had only written one letter—and only to incentivize Tataki to get her kulkida rice. Nori had received a return letter, but never read it. It remained unopened in a drawer. Just like the rest.
“Not really,” she said at last.
The children were unphased by the answer. It was their reality too. More than it was Nori’s, really. She felt guilty. As bad as she had it, at least she had it at all. She was never pulling out her baby teeth while sleeping on the street.
“Alright, now that we stopped the cooking process and cooled them off, we can pick out the meat.” Nori slipped her chopsticks past the shell and pulled out the meat. The part closest to her, the nail of the barnacle, was disgusting to look at—brown and hard and scaly like a callous on a toe. But once she managed to wiggle that meat out and turn it around…
The Beggar’s Delight, they called it. A little chunk of gold-white meat with clumps like lobster meat. Tasting closer to crab than clam, it was Khala’s best kept secret. To Uroko, it was just ship scum. Not worth harvesting. But Khalyans knew the truth. It was one of the most flavorful, delicious bites that the ocean had to offer. Nori chewed off all the good bits, her body melting along with the piece of meat in her mouth.
“Me next, me next!” the hungry children chanted, clamoring over each other.
“Just one each!” Nori said. “We’re setting the rest aside for the stew. I gotta cook a lot more barnacles.”
The children groaned in disappointment. Nori sighed. She couldn’t stand to see their disappointed faces.
“One barnacle each,” she reiterated. “But…I’ll make it the best bite you’ve ever had.”
Nori walked over to the stew and looked around the counter for the lemon she had used. It had been squeezed and zested nearly to its limits, just a little wadded up ball of white fibers. But maybe, just maybe, she could get a little more out of it. The orphanage provided hundreds of meals per week, and they only had two or three lemons to use across all of them. She found it and walked back to the children.
“Okay, take the meat out and hold it out for me.”
They did as she instructed, holding their little chunk of meat and watching Nori with wide eyes. She closed her eyes in deep focus, filling the rubble of the lemon with essence in the hopes of finding just one fiber that might still respond to her. It took her several seconds, but she found it. She coaxed it to produce juice, concentrating, concentrating, concentrating. Finally, it released just a bit of liquid. One, two, three drops for three pieces of meat. The lemon was truly spent, nearly ready to turn into dust. But she did it.
The three orphans ate their lemony bites, the flavor making them jump around. Then they redirected their joy onto Nori, hugging and attaching themselves around her hips.
“Thanks Nori,” Nyima said.
“It’s so yummy,” Rabten cooed.
“Can I have another bite?” Pema asked.
Nori laughed and hugged them back. The sudden shift in her lifestyle had not been easy on her, but moments like this made it worth it.
“Ahem,” someone coughed from behind Nori.
She turned to see Clove in the doorway.
“You have a visitor,” she said.
Nori smiled as her heart skipped a beat. Was it time to leave? Had Archie come for her? She scratched at the clumps in her hair, awareness of her appearance dawning on her for the first time in days. She didn’t need to look good, but she didn’t want him to see her quite like this.
But then she studied Clove’s face. For as much good as the woman did, she never wore a smile. But even with that, something about her expression seemed especially sour. She looked at the children, making it clear that the lack of details was for their benefit.
Nori tried not to frown as she looked down at the children. “Hey, why don’t you guys go check and make sure there aren’t any dirty bowls in the bunkroom, yeah?”
The children were young but wise enough to understand that they weren’t really being asked. Nori and Clove waited until the kids were gone before they continued.
“A guard,” Clove explained. “Waiting outside for you.”
Nori closed her eyes and sucked in her bottom lip. Had Dashi found her?
“I don’t want him coming in here,” Clove continued. “These kids got all kinds of stolen things in here. Don’t want them getting found.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Nori nodded and tried her best to regain her composure. She got halfway there. “He asked for me by name?”
“That’s right.”
“Which name?”
“‘A Urokan named Nori’ is what he said.” Clove looked over her shoulder to make sure he hadn’t followed her in. “He wasn’t asking if you was here or not. He was asking you to come out.”
“Was he Khalyan?”
“Couldn’t tell. Didn’t get the chance to ask.”
Nori took deep, barely controlled breaths and used both palms to flatten her bangs against her forehead.
“Can’t have him coming inside,” Clove reiterated.
“Okay. Okay. I’m going.” Nori took one last deep breath. “I’m going. Don’t let any of the kids see. And stay clear.”
Clove nodded and stood aside for Nori to pass.
Nori rubbed her fingertips together. It was good that she had just held the lemon. That would make it easier for her to style her essence into acid. Her fingers glistened as she stepped outside.
The guard turned as she approached. He wore studded leather armor, and his face failed to give away his nationality. Nori studied it. Urokans were usually paler than Khalyans, but that was only if the person had the luxury of staying indoors. Guards rarely had such luxury, and this guard was no exception. His tanned face and deep set eyes said nothing of who sent him. At least his chest wasn’t emblazoned with the emblem of the Stags. That relieved Nori enough to keep her from launching into an attack.
“You’ve been summoned,” the guard declared. “Your presence has been requested. Immediately.”
Nori kept one foot inside, hiding her acid-dripping arm behind the door frame. “Requested? Or demanded?”
The guard sighed, any hope he had of this being easy blowing away with the sea breeze. The transformation of expression was one that Nori had seen time and time again. She did have a habit of not making things easy.
“I’m not going to drag you there,” the guard said. He didn’t want a fight. That was a good sign. “But if I go back empty-handed, he might send me back here with a group and some more colorful instructions.”
“He?” Nori’s fingers tensed, acid running off of them in a solid stream as she waited for the answer.
“King Tritsun.”
Nori’s hand relaxed. The guard tossed a canvas sack at her.
“He told me, ‘something to fit her better than her previous dress.’” The guard nodded inside. “I assume you have a bath in there?”
Nori peered into the bag to see a silky blue fabric. “We have a bucket and a brush.”
The guard turned and leaned against the wall. “You have thirty minutes. Told me to get you there by sunset.”
“And then what? What is this about?”
“Dinner,” the guard stated with finality. He took a chew stick out of his pocket and started to chomp on it. There would be no further answers from him. That much was clear, even if the purpose of the dinner wasn’t.
Nori nodded.
“Alright then.”
