The girl wakes to the sound of pots beating themselves with spoons.
She lies still for a moment longer, eyes squeezed shut, trying to hold onto the fleeting wisps of her dream. Then, with a sigh, she opens her eyes and rises, brushing loose straw from her shift. The black cat who lay on the palette beside her uncoils and stretches, then wanders away.
The girl pulls on her skirt, shrugs into her bodice and laces the front. She runs a comb through her long brown hair and twists it into a knot, which she pins to the back of her head with a clip contrived of a carved stick and a bit of tooled leather.
“Just give me a minute,” she calls to the kitchen crew.
She slips out the back door to the privy, then has a quick scrub in the scullery trough. She readjusts her hair. She steps back into the kitchen, ready to face the chore of breakfast.
The pots are lined up at attention on the work table, spoons in hand. Butler and his specialized assistants wait on the other side.
“Good morning, Girl,” says Butler. His voice is a mixture of clanks, whistles and wheezes.
Butler is one of the Wizard’s student creations, repaired and elaborated over the years into the quintessential household servant. His body is a patchwork ramble of cogs and tubes, pistons and pulleys, trembling gauges and sighing bellows. It includes several useful features, such as a fan of knife-blades, a set of retractible scissors, and a multi-tiered, jangling key-ring. His eyes are polished domes of ruby glass ringed with mirrored facets; one of them is larger than the other. In his birdcage chest, there hangs a bell.
“Mornin’, Butts,” says the girl. “And what will Himself be havin’?”
Butler gestures expansively at the table, where the ingredients are laid out: A good-sized slab of bacon, a bowl of eggs, two round-topped loaves of whole-grain bread. To one side sit a dish of butter, a pot of marmalade and a china jar of tea.
“Eggs, bacon, toast, and tea,” Butler recites in the Wizard’s voice. “The eggs to be fried with the yolks whole and still liquid. The tea strong, and hot this time, please.”
“We’re doin’ our bloody best,” says the girl under her breath. Then, louder, “We’re on it, sir. Eggs and bacon, comin’ up.”
The pots wave their spoons and jostle to get her attention. First in line is the three-legged skillet. It squats patiently while she cuts four thick slices of bacon and lays them in the pan. With a jaunty curtsey, the skillet hops from the table and skuttles to its place among the coals in the kitchen hearth.
Next in line is the tea-kettle, mincing on thin, bird-like legs. The girl carries it over to the self-filling water-barrel – another of the Wizard’s little inventions. She fills the kettle with a dipper and hangs it on its hook over the fire. “Nice and hot, to heat the pot,” the kettle sings in its tiny, piping voice.
“We aims to please,” says the girl. She pats the kettle and returns to the work-table to slice the bread.
Toaster, one of Butler’s assistants, is already waiting, fork-tipped arms extended. The girl slices bread and threads the slices onto the forks. Toaster stalks over to the fire and thrusts its hands into the heat.
And just why, the girl wonders, could that clever Wizard not have also invented a thing to slice the bread and bacon, and crack the eggs, and wash up after? It’s not the first time she’s thought this, and she is no closer to an answer. Unless it’s that the Wizard likes to lord it over people and make them miserable, and that’s what she’s really there for, and not the actual cookery.
It makes as much sense as anything else she has seen here, since… when, exactly? She is sure she had a life before she came to work in the Wizard’s kitchen, and it was likely a simple one. But, try as she might, she can find no memory of it.
The girl flips the bacon. It is time to crack the eggs into a china bowl, and pick out any stray bits of shell. The old man makes a terrible fuss about shell in his eggs. The girl pushes the bacon to the far side of the skillet and slides in the eggs.
“Let up a bit, you’ll burn them,” she tells the pan. The skillet obligingly walks to a spot where the coals are cooler. “Good boy!” she tells it. The pan bounces in gratitude.
“Alert! Alert! I’m boiling!” the tea kettle whistles, waving its arms.
“Got it!” the girl tells it. She pours a little boiling water into the Wizard’s brown china teapot, sloshes it around, and dumps it into the sink. She adds two heaping spoons of tea.
“Tea’s low,” she remarks to Butler. The mechanical servant nods, and his eyes flash red. The girl pours boiling water over the tea, swirls the pot, then covers it with a quilted cosy.
“Check the eggs!” the skillet warns. The girl rushes over and flips them, just in time. She brings over the Wizard’s plate. The skillet kneels to help slide out the eggs and bacon.
When the girl stands, she finds Toaster waiting, holding out four perfect slices of toast. “Coming!” she says, setting the plate on the tray, on which she has already spread a clean linen napkin. She slots the toast into the Wizard’s silver toast rack and sets it on the tray beside the plate.
What’s left to do? A dish of butter, a dish of marmalade, salt cellar and pepper grinder. Add the silverware and a freshly folded napkin. Add the Wizard’s special teacup in its intricately decorated saucer. Those moving runes always gave her the heebie-jeebies.
All done. And the tea is probably still hot.
“Ready,” says the girl. Butler picks up the laden tray, then heads up the servants’ stairs, tray neatly balanced on one mechanical hand. The girl follows.
They reach the Wizard’s study, and she taps on the door. “Breakfast, sir!” She steps back, and a little to one side.
“About time,” says the Wizard from behind the door. He pulls it open. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in. I trust the tea is hot this time.”
“Thank you, sir.” She takes the tray from Butler and carries it into the study. There are papers on the desk, but the Wizard sweeps them to one side to make room. “Here you go, sir – a nice hot breakfast.” She smiles and attempts a curtsey.
The Wizard does not seem to notice. He has pulled up his chair, and is pouring a cup of tea. He lifts it to his whiskered lips, then jerks it away, blowing on it.
He glances sideways at the girl. “So… are we still out of sugar?”
—
Love this kitchen!