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It was during a resupply run to the Gestral village that Sciel brought up the door.
“I can’t believe you didn’t mention it to us after the arena.”
Sciel laughs quietly at Lune. “Well, I was a bit preoccupied with being in shock you were all still alive…”
Maelle steps forward, her fingers resting on the doorknob. “And you didn’t try to open it yourself?”
“Of course I did. Wouldn’t open for me, though.” Sciel watches over her shoulder, her gaze tracing the golden border of the doorway. The neat angles and sharp points could not look more out of place among the crimson foliage and stones of the village. “You’re telling me you know where it leads?”
Verso stands at the back of the group, dread gnawing a hole in his stomach. He really should say something. A reasonable excuse was all he needed. You all go ahead. I’ll take care of buying supplies. Or maybe I should check on Monoco, make sure he hasn’t gotten into trouble while he waits for us. But would any of them really believe he’d rather haggle with the Gestral merchants than see what was behind the mysterious door? A door he, presumably, in all his years had never been able to open?
Before he can finish weighing the decision, he hears the click of the knob’s tumbler turning, like a gun being armed. Maelle looks back at him, her eyebrows raised. “Come on, Verso. Don’t you finally want to see what’s in there?”
“Sure,” he hears himself say. “Let’s check it out.”
Maelle pushes the door open, leading the way inside. Lune rests a hand on her shoulder, peering into the semidarkness, the hazy light reflecting off the copper fixtures. The room, a fine and well-stocked kitchen, seems like it should be warm, air thick with residual heat and spices and salt. However, like all the other rooms in the manor, the atmosphere is tepid, sterile. Verso can immediately see it in Maelle’s face, her excitement doused as all her senses vie to warn her that something’s not right, not natural about this place despite its aching familiarity.
The small group spreads out as they move further inside, Verso making sure to linger on the fringes, close to the wall. It was one thing, certainly, for a bedroom or a study to feel untouched, but one only needed to glance around the kitchen to see it was only recently abandoned. On one of the counters, vegetables have been lined up to be chopped on a cutting board, potatoes and carrots and onions as if the chef was planning a soup. A leg of jamon de Bayonne waits to be sliced into delicate ribbons of red and white flesh. Pastries, crisp and golden, waiting to be served with coffee for a morning breakfast that would never come in this timeless place.
“How long has all this been here?” Lune asks aloud as she picks up an apple to examine, as fresh and red as if it had been plucked from the tree hours ago. “Does the Curator…”
“He brought me food while I was staying here, but I never saw where he got it from,” Maelle says. “Hard to imagine him cooking anything. I assumed he just sort of…” She shrugs, holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers over a tourtière. “Manifested it.”
“This is great though, isn’t it?” Sciel smiles at the rest of them, gesturing with her arms wide at the apparent bounty laid out in front of their little party. “There’s so much here, we won’t have to go foraging for weeks, maybe even a few months if we ration it well. Not that I imagine we’ll need it for that long, one way or another, but you know. Nice to have.” She plants her hands back on her hips, looking down at a fanciful fruit tart, its sliced strawberries still moist and glistening. “Nicer than bartering for scavenged expedition supplies with the Gestrals. I’m getting a bit sick of powdered milk and tinned sardines…”
Verso listens quietly, pretending to be interested in the bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. He doesn’t think about the hunger digging its fangs into his belly, doesn’t think about the fact he knows exactly how that jamon would taste, how savory and nutty it would be melting against his tongue. Even at his hungriest, when Monoco had dragged him, skin and bones, back to their camp in the mountains, he couldn’t bear to be here. Not on his own, alone with him.
“Don’t suppose the Curator will mind,” Maelle is saying. “I’ve never seen him eat anything. He doesn’t even have a mouth. And nobody else lives here… We can ask him back at camp, just in case.”
Lune eyes the counters with skepticism, poking a fingernail through the skin of the apple. A little bit of juice wells at the cut. “The title of Curator implies he’s keeping this for someone, doesn’t it? Is he the one who’s frozen this place in time? If so, for who…?”
“Reminds you a little of that fairy tale, doesn’t it?” Sciel leans on the counter near Lune, studying the fruit along with her. “The starving children lost in the woods, coming upon a house made of sweets… Perhaps that’s what the Paintress does, in the end. She eats us up. Shame with just us, it’s barely more than a mouthful.”
Verso speaks up for the first time since they’d entered the manor. His voice is hushed. “Dinner is prepared, and the table is set for someone who’s never coming home. That’s what it feels like.”
Maelle looks at him, pursing her lips. It seems like she wants to say something, perhaps to ask him who he thought the Curator was waiting for, but something stops her. He gives her a little shrug. “Just the impression I get. You’ve seen how awful my poetry is.”
“Should one of us try it?” Sciel suggests, her voice rising slightly in pitch. Verso imagines it’s the same tone she used with her students when trying to get them back on task. “Make sure it tastes how it looks?”
“I’ll do it.” Lune picks a paring knife out of the block and cuts a small slice of the apple. Its flesh is white and creamy. “In the… spirit of adventure.” She scoffs lightly. “Can’t be worse than that omelet we tried to make with the snake eggs.”
“I didn’t think that was so bad,” Verso says. “Bit dry, but-”
“Ugh!” Lune cups her mouth, spitting the apple into her palm. Her face twists in disgust as she cracks the fruit in two and peers into the core. “It’s- it’s rotten, or stale, something’s wrong with it!”
It tastes like paint, Verso thinks. They aren’t the first expedition to set foot in this mausoleum of a house, not the first to be fooled by the storybook perfection of the kitchen.
“Are you sure you didn’t just get a bad one? The food he gave me tasted alright,” Maelle says, going to Lune’s side to look at the apple. It appears perfectly normal, not a seed out of place or a hint of decay.
Sciel picks up the knife and cuts a piece from a carrot, gingerly biting into it only to spit it out just like Lune. It’s the same with the wheel of hard cheese, the bread, even the croissants under their crystal cloche, tasting of grit and oil beneath their deceptively delicate, buttery layers. “You’re kidding!” she exclaims, wiping her mouth with a dishtowel. “All of this… It’s…”
“It’s just for show.” Verso grins wryly over at them, twirling a sprig of rosemary between his fingers. “That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it? Seems sort of obvious now. Why keep a kitchen full of real food when you never have guests?” He glances at Maelle. “Almost never.”
“That’s why this sort of thing only happens in fairy tales, eh? No candy house for us…” Sciel sighs as she sticks the knife back into the block, tossing the towel over a chair. “Guess we’ll have to stick to fishing with Lune’s thunder spells.”
“Right. Nobody’s going hungry on my watch.” Lune smiles, but Verso can hear the disappointment in her voice. She carefully sets everything back in place, just how it was when they found it, minus whatever little bits they’d taken as samples. It’s such a kind gesture, Verso doesn’t have the heart to tell her that, even if they’d completely upended the kitchen, it would have been restored to its original state the moment the room was out of sight.
He trails after the rest of the team as they leave the room, the ladies falling into discussion about what they should get from the market this time, how much they had of this or that supply and whether they should focus on tints or risk expired rations. Verso waits until they’ve rounded the corner before he quickly turns back and lifts the cloche, grabbing a pastry and tucking it into an inner pocket of his coat. Then, without missing a beat, he follows after.
They camp on the beach that evening, near a serene cove. Its turquoise water proves ideal for electrocuting. It’s Sciel’s turn to cook tonight, and she makes them all a delicious dinner with the stunned fish that float to the surface, fried up in the oil they’d bought from the Gestrals.
Verso stands at the edge of the water, Monoco joining him in the comfortable silence they so often shared. Carefully reaching into his jacket, he withdraws the pastry. It’s been slightly squished despite his best efforts to keep it safe, and he’d no doubt have to shake the crumbs out of his pocket later. He savors the first bite, the chocolate inside molten from his body heat, its sweetness foreign after so many years living off the wilderness.
The Canvas used to be kinder. It used to be impossible to take two steps without running across bushes full of juicy berries or trees heavy with fruit. He knows this from an echo of its creator’s memory, even if the taste of it was a ghost on his tongue. It was a paradise, falling to its knees to provide for the child gods that had given it life. Still, it tried when it could muster the strength, wherever the nevrons hadn’t cleaved the land barren in an attempt to starve out the expeditions on top of their slaughter.
“What’ve you got there?” Monoco asks quietly, breaking him out of his thoughts.
Verso waves the half-eaten pain au chocolat at him. “Just a little something I found along the way.”
“And you didn’t bring me one too? Some friend you are.” Monoco pushes him playfully, the gesture still nearly sending Verso stumbling.
“Careful! Nearly made me drop it…”
The Gestral huffs a laugh, though Verso can feel the intense look he’s being given from behind the painted slab of that mask. “You told me… You never wanted to see the inside of the manor again,” Monoco murmurs. “Your lips were frozen shut so you could barely speak, and still you begged me not to take you. Why now…? Was it as terrible as you thought it’d be?”
“It…” Verso realizes he hadn’t thought about it. He’d gone in there prepared to shut down inside until they left, but sitting in that kitchen, watching the three of them try to solve the puzzle of the produce… in a way, it had been nice. A little mystery to ponder, in between carving out a bloody path through the continent. It made him think about being with his sisters again, trying to decipher a recipe in their great aunt’s handwriting while preparing a meal. Poring over the ingredients, trying to decide if they could substitute this for that, and why did it still not taste right, and…
He takes another bite of the pastry, chewing thoughtfully. Maelle’s laughter drifts over to them from the fire, probably something Esquie said. It’s a strange feeling to have both his heart and his stomach full, if just for one night. “You know, I actually wouldn’t mind going back sometime.”