Elwanda

Chapter 7- Kitchen Witchery

For almost a week, Elwanda tried her best to evade Raevern, but the man was relentless and followed her everywhere.

In contrast to Penelope's description of his character, he was something of a chivalrous gentleman; poetic to a fault, adulated her with every sweet phrase on earth and offered to buy whatever she wanted. When she complained about it to the cook, Calley strongly advised to milk him dry.

"The bastard hasn't even got a bloody brick to his name, but if he wants to spend his last dime in the hopes of sleeping on you, then let it be so." She snarled. "Empty his dirty pockets and leave him crawling for scraps."

Elwanda giggled, shaking off chaff from the tray in her hands.

She had grown to like Calley very much and spent time with her whenever Penelope was unavailable.

By luck, Raedrim had found his daughter a job in the market. After her morning chores, she went straight to work. Because of it, Traya scarcely visited the inn, leaving Elwanda all by herself with the likes of Raevern.

As she quickly came to discover, the inn was quite an immoral place and was slowly turning into a full-time whorehouse without the knowledge of Raedrim, who was usually away. Nobody could dare tell him.

It was a tad normal to glimpse tenants frolicking harmlessly even when the merchant was present, but Elwanda had accidentally walked into some ungodly scenarios on too many occasions.

"Here in Valbell, we make love, not war." Raevern had defended once, grinning. "War is for the foolish. Love is for the wise."

Calley scowled when Elwanda told her of his response. "He's the fool! Very soon he'll wake up and realize he's got a gangly face covered in gray beard with no money, no wife, no children, and no place to call his home. He thinks dear Raedrim will let him be a tenant forever? Wait and see, then, shall we?"

Smoke filled the kitchen whenever Calley opened her pots – six of them, boiling atop different hearths placed on special platforms tall enough for her to see into. Elwanda marveled at how the cook attended to each pot without giving it much of a thought, and the meticulous way she monitored every one to keep any from burning up.

"Where did you learn how to cook, Cal. . . Dorothee?" Elwanda asked, putting down the tray. She often forgot to address the lady by her first name.

The kitchen was the most marvelous sight in all of the inn, flooding with so much herbs and vegetables that it resembled more of a forest than a kitchen.

Calley chuckled proudly. "Hard to believe, but I was six years old when my father first taught me. Hard to believe too, no, that twas a man who showed me the magic of meals?"

"Hard to believe of course, but I admire you. You have a multitude of talent that I believe can be shared equally amongst a crowd."

A little laugh came from the cook. She wiped her wet hands with a clean towel and moved to a shelf to retrieve a fat brass pot filled to the brim with stems and leaves.

"I never stopped working hard at harnessing both my love and skill for cooking. Whatever I have earned now is because of hard work and not a know-it-all attitude, allow me to highlight that."

Elwanda frowned, staring at the stems. She was usually fascinated by growing things especially ones she did not know of. "What do you call those?"

Calley glanced at the pot in her hand. "Mugwort."

"What is it?"

"My! Did you not grow these in your native land? Mugwort's wormwood, just like sagebrush and tarragon. We use them all for medicine and flavouring, but you ought to be careful, most of them smell horrible. Mugwort doesn't."