Outcast of Narnia

Chapter Ten: Making Honey Cakes

Susan thought she had never before known what it was to be tired. Not during exam week. Not when she had to get up for school after a late-night card party. Had it been three days since she began fetching and carrying for the old women? They granted her a few hours' rest on a hard pallet in the sleeping cave. She had slept right through the awful moaning that rose and fell through the passages, day and night. She wanted to say, "Aren't I older than all of you? Don't I deserve to be respected?" But it was hard to tell exactly how old the women were, such was the collection of warty noses, stringy grey hair, and sagging chins.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the lid of a polished pot as she picked it up to scrub, and turned away quickly. Yes, Susan the Just (and justly beautiful, she had always thought) had become Susan the Ugly, the Accursed, the Horrid. She could not begin to think what Payton would think if he saw her. "Wouldn't even turn his head or tip his hat in the street," she grunted, taking off the lid, sloshing some water into the sticky pot, and picking up a handful of sand to scrub the bottom again with her raw hands. "Or worse. He'd stop and offer to help me across." How many days had her bones been old?

The pile of pots was clean and shiny, and she was scrubbing the last corner of the floor when she saw a dozen or so of the old women gathering in a round alcove at the side of the cave, and the rest preparing for bed. She hurriedly mopped the rest of the floor and began to follow the last of her coworkers towards the sleeping cave.

She expected that not even the worst of the moaning could keep her awake tonight. The moaning was usually louder in the sleeping cave-it increased in volume the further back one went, and was loudest back by the storerooms. Just as she raised her hand to open the curtain leading out of the kitchen cave, she heard the women coming out of their alcove, and the eldest of them, Meara, called out to her.

"Oh, Susan-most beautiful of the beauties..."

Susan looked back. "Bed is not yet for you, most beautiful of the beauties," said the woman, and cackled a fine witch's cackle. Before the sun rises, you must bake us some honey cakes for our festivities tomorrow."

"But surely," gasped Susan, in her own cracked voice, "someone else would be better at it than I."

"These cakes can only be made by the most beautiful of the beauties."

"Well you can see I'm not that," said Susan, turning away.

"We won't know that until you make the cakes," said Meara.

She set out a bowl, spoon and several baking pans, and opened an old book to a cracked page. Susan looked at the ingredients. "Lion's breath! Where am I going to get lion's breath?"

If you are the most beautiful of the beauties, you will know how to find the lion's breath," said Meara, blowing out the nearby lamps, and leaving only two lamps burning near Susan.

"The last bank of ovens is left lit for you. Mind you follow the instructions exactly. No step may be skipped. We will see what you have done in the morning."

Meara and the rest left the room together, with purpose. Susan wondered if they were going to bed. Perhaps they never slept. As she left, Susan whispered to her back, "but what if I can't bear the moaning?"

She tried not to think about it, and turned back to the cookbook. Most of the ingredients, with the exception of salt, were not to be found in the kitchen. She would have to go to the storeroom. She took up a basket over one arm, grasped a candle firmly in one hand and steeled herself to go back into the passage.

Walking carefully along the uneven floor, she strained her ears for moaning. But it seemed to be dying down, and in its place there arose a powerful and beautiful humming that made Susan want to cry. It seemed to her like liquid sound, like visible noise, like the richest cordial she had ever drunk.

She followed the sound down the passageway, past the last storeroom, and went through a gate, which was usually locked, but now stood open. "You ninny," she said to herself. "You'll never get 'un-olded' if you don't follow instructions." But she had to keep going toward the sound, which now filled the air around her. The tunnel was long but it grew lighter as she neared the end, and she found she no longer needed her candle. At the bottom of the passage she splashed through a puddle or two, then peered again into a large cavern edged by alcoves of varying sizes. It was from one of the first that the sound was emanating.

She peered around the mouth of the alcove and saw the group of old women. She counted them. There were thirteen. Each was holding a small cocoon in her arms and singing softly to it. Other cocoons were whimpering in smaller nest-like openings at the sides of the room. She glimpsed the one of the cocoons and shrank back. It had the face of an evil sprite, twisted and in pain. But as the women sang and hummed, their voices wrapping around one another like molten sugar, the face softened. The fingers shortened and became less bony. The ears grew smaller. The spine straightened. The sprite was becoming a miniature dryad!

She breathed in sharply. No one had seen her yet but any minute their song might end and she would be discovered. Although she could hardly bear to leave the smooth beauty of that sound, she backed slowly up the passage to the storeroom as the light dimmed and her candle grew brighter. Inside the storeroom, she found flour, oil, honey and sweet spices, everything but Lion's Breath. After a futile search through the dusty shelves, she sighed and returned to the kitchen.

The recipe was written in old-fashioned letters that she could barely read. As she began to work through it, she reached a line of ancient script which said: "stir thee the oil and honey together nine hundred strokes, for only in so doing may the worlds be brought together."

"Nine hundred strokes," she said to herself, reading the line again. "How shall I ever keep count?"

She thought to herself that she could do a hundred at a time, then stop and make a mark in the spilled flour with her finger. After five hundred, she thought she would just close her eyes for a few seconds. She woke with a jerk and saw that it was nearly three o'clock in the morning, and there were still only five marks in the flour. Guiltily, she began to stir again but could not prevent herself from dozing off at five-hundred forty-six. Even the clock striking three was not enough to wake her.