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Chapter 17 - Learning to Chill
🕑 Added 2025-02-17 18:00:12 +0000 UTCA thousand smells filled the kitchen. Mint, rosemary, thyme, and something lemony that Picea identified as a mint leaf called lemon balm. Turnips, parsnips, onions, all serving as a complement to the savory smell of bone broth. From separate corners of the kitchen, the smells of gutted fish and fresh bread battled.
Unlike the Academy, the Monastery still served as the main kitchen for most of its graduates as they fed the masses. Nearly twenty Chefs worked in the kitchen—this being just one of the Monastery’s four. Their jackets covered the middle of the ranks, some Yellows, a lot of Greens, some Blues, some Purples.
The only Red Jacket—Picea—led the only Orange Jackets—Archie, Barley, and Sutton—through the kitchen. They stopped at one of the work stations, Picea examining a little personal fridge that rose from the ground to her hip.
“This one?” she asked a nearby Blue Jacket.
“That’s right,” he answered while chopping carrots. He took a risky look up away from his knife, then back down to his carrots, then back up. He stopped chopping and pointed the knife at the Orange Jackets. “They’re not doing it, are they?”
“You didn’t earn your blue jacket without learning mint, did you?” Picea retorted. She nodded at Barley. “This one’s better at mint now than you were last year.”
Barley did not appreciate the attention. He took a step behind Archie as if that would hide him.
The Blue Jacket sighed and Picea laughed. “Don’t worry, we still have a couple of heidrun blocks downstairs. I’ll top one off and bring it up. This lot is just here to learn.”
“Thanks, Kyrjha,” the Blue Jacket said before returning to his work.
Picea opened the empty fridge and fumbled around the bottom floor of it for a moment before finding a latch. She pulled off the thin metal floor, revealing a small tray full of icy cyan slush.
“Kyrjha?” Archie asked.
“I’d explain,” Picea said as she looked around for a rag. “But if I don’t let Sutton do it, he might burst.”
Archie turned to Sutton. His knowledge and compulsive need to spread it had turned his face red and forced him to clench his jaw. With Picea’s permission to explain, he exhaled and began, the pressure of wanting to share knowledge forcing him to speak so quickly that his words almost slurred.
“A chosen warrior. It’s an ancient word from the Einla region. There is a belief that there are those that choose to do battle and those that are chosen. Selected by a higher power to be a warrior.”
Those that are chosen.
The phrase colored an old sketch of a memory. Archie at the Festival of Ambrosia, sitting on the floor of one of Sain’s community kitchens, crying as he believed he would never manifest. Then someone gave him a lemon. Some woman.
Before he could picture her, the thought slipped away, interrupted by Picea.
“You got the academics of it right,” she said as she sopped up the slush in the fridge with a rag. “But you failed to mention that it is a great honor and compliment. The greatest a warrior can get.”
Picea tossed the rag in a sink and waved for them to follow her. She led them to the edge of the kitchen and down a staircase that went into the ground. Each step felt like submerging into icy water, the cold air far surpassing the typical chill of the underground.
The tunnel was small and all mud. Picea grabbed a lantern from the wall and walked twenty feet to the end of the tunnel. She moved the lantern across the wall, finding a small handle sticking out of the mud. She turned it and opened a wooden door that had been packed with mud for insulation.
The heat rushed from the tunnel into the dark room, replaced by the coldest air Archie had ever felt. His goosebumps turned into full body shivers. Picea’s lantern illuminated the room, revealing stacks of ice bricks and shelves full of trays of cyan slush. The boys followed her inside, clutching their arms in the freezing cold.
“Alright Sutton, next question,” Picea said. She grabbed a tray. “What’s this?”
“Heidrun milk,” he stated proudly.
“And what is heidrun?”
“It’s a type of goat found in the coldest parts of Khala.” He answered the next question before it could be asked. “They eat the leaves of the laeror tree, which can grow in extreme cold. It turns their milk cyan.”
Archie’s ears perked up. “Special trees?”
“No relation,” Sutton dismissed.
“I like having you around, Sutton,” Picea said. “Saves me from having to explain things. Tell them what makes the milk special.”
“It retains its temperature much longer than water. It’s what allows fridges to work for so long. Because of this, it is Khala’s most profitable export.”
Picea shrugged at Archie and Barley. “And there you have it.”
“What does it taste like?” Archie asked.
“It tastes like your tongue getting frostbite.” Picea laughed, then got very, very serious. “Seriously, though. Don’t drink it.”
“So you just lower its temperature and stick it in the fridge?” Archie asked.
“Basically. But it’s harder than it sounds. Remember—it retains its temperature. That works both ways. You could freeze a gallon of water easier than a drop of heidrun milk. It takes me a couple of hours to freeze a tray, but I’m not as good with mint as I should be.”
Barley shifted around anxiously. “You said this would help with my endurance? Isn’t this too advanced for me?”
Picea shrugged. “You could probably work up to it quicker than you think. Stamina aside, you seem pretty good at mint magic. Your natural affinity to it means you’ll learn quicker. Maybe I’ll have you practice on the real thing next week. For now, I have a better idea for training.”
Picea walked over to a stack of ice, picking up an ingot-like block. With laughable ease, she snapped it in two with her hands, then snapped the larger piece in half again.
“Hands,” she commanded as she walked up to the boys. They each held out a hand, Picea giving each of them a block of ice. Archie’s covered his entire palm, the cold stinging his skin. While Archie took a pronounced breath, Barley suffered the cold in silence. Then there was Sutton.
“Ooo! Aaah!” he whined as he jostled the ice around in his palm, his fingertips delicately holding it just enough to keep it from sliding off.
“Your job,” Picea explained, “is to keep your ice cube from melting. This’ll force you to work on your endurance.”
Sutton looked at his ice cube and then back up at Picea. “I don’t know how to do mint magic!”
Picea grinned. “You’ll be one of those—uhh—what do you call them?” She snapped her fingers next to her head to try to find the term.
“Control group?” Sutton suggested.
“That’s it!” Picea pointed her finger at Sutton in approval. “You’ll be the control group.”
Sutton groaned. “It’s cold…”
Picea waved to shoo them away. “Alright, I need some time down here. Normally, Head Chef Allium handles this, but she’s out for another month. You guys go enjoy your day.”
The boys left and Picea closed herself in the ice room, keeping the only lantern to herself. The boys followed the light of the kitchen upstairs.
While Barley occupied his time by getting a bite to eat and Sutton read, Archie just wandered, his focus entirely on the ice cube. He meandered into the yard. Subconsciously, he was still an outsider. The yard—a place of training and improvement—felt the most like somewhere he belonged.
He thought back to the last time he had tried to use mint magic. He found the memory. Four, maybe five months ago. Running around Tarragon’s class with Julienne, trying a little bit of everything. While the ice cube chilled and numbed Archie’s hand, the memory of Tarragon’s class warmed him.
He narrowed his thoughts down to his competition with Julienne. They had tried to chill pebbles. Archie imagined the ice cube as a pebble and recalled the sensation of chilling it. Essence pooled in his palm just beneath his icy, numbing skin. He used the cold as inspiration, invoking the feeling in his essence.
He felt his essence change, but he did not push it up into the ice cube. He knew he had chilled his essence, but if it was still warmer than the ice, he could end up accelerating its demise. Archie had a great deal of confidence, but his trip to Khala thus far had been a series of humblings, not triumphs. He decided not to risk it, instead focusing on maintaining cold essence inside his hand.
With his free hand, he tapped the back of his other hand. A little chilly. He tapped higher up on his arm, confirming a difference in temperature. He had figured out the how. Now it was just about mastering the how well.
Archie felt an internal tug to increase the intensity of the training. He could grab a second ice cube to force him to use essence in both hands. Or he could summon noodles with his other hand. Picea had told him he needed to work on multicasting. This could be his opportunity.
But then he thought about Nori’s advice.
Don’t fixate. Chill out.
But how could he not? For a few short, blissful weeks, he had shed the burden of expectations. Of legacy. He had thought of himself as Archie, still a teenage boy, just figuring out his place in the world. But now that he might have a way to restore essence to Sain—to bring life back to his home—the pesky burning of purpose had resurfaced.
He kept a constant, trickling supply of essence going into his hand. After a minute, a deep, unsettling numbness started in the scar on his leg. Archie hated the feeling, but at least had found it useful as a barometer for his own fatigue.
Don’t fixate. Chill out.
What if Archie returned home empty-handed? What if the grove wasn’t real, or the yetis wouldn’t part with an acorn, or the Bhantla wouldn’t help them? That wouldn’t mean the end of Sain. In fact, Sain was probably busier now that it had been in over a decade, spurred on by Arty’s newfound skill. Part of Archie ached to be back there with him. Cooking in his childhood kitchen to a full crowd. Swapping tips with his father as if he were a peer.
But no, the world was much larger than Sain. Archie needed to allow himself to experience it. To learn. To grow. Optimism swelled within him. Good things would come in time. He didn’t need to fix the world’s problems today. He just needed to keep improving himself. It was like Nori said. If he didn’t fixate, if he didn’t obsess, he could be a better Chef. A better person. One day, his time to help the world would come. He just needed to keep working to be ready for that moment.
He took deep breaths and stared at the ice cube, trying to quiet his mind. As he found his own essence, he found peace. The tangible horrors of the world faded away, replaced by the abstract existence of essence. He felt it flow through his body.
Months ago, in his inexperience, he had felt his essence move around his body like a big blocky thing, shelves of ice suggested into directional shifts by the current. Now he felt the paths it wanted to take, water finding its riverbed. He felt its supply. Its destination.
When he tried to manipulate the essence into producing magic, he no longer felt like he was yelling in the dark. Instead, he had met his essence, exchanged names, and was learning how to hold a conversation.
Archie paced slowly around the yard, the ice cube barely sweating. If he thought of anything else, he thought of his mission. He never noticed Blanche watching him from the garden and never noticed the flowers that she conjured in his path, hoping to get his attention.
Comments
Adunn
Honestly it’s better if he doesn’t notice.
