-Chapter Eleven-

Axion didn’t get a chance to acquiesce or refuse. The door rattled in its frame as someone unlocked it, shoving it open with somewhat less force than Sid had. Karlene knew it was Milly almost before the woman’s tree-trunk frame became visible. Rowe was behind her, bearing ropes. For Axion, Karlene assumed. She curled her fingers to keep from fiddling with her cuffs. Milly saw, and smirked.

“If the princeling is done enjoying his breakfast?” Milly swept a clumsy, mocking curtsey and gestured grandly towards the door as Rowe finished binding the cooperative Axion’s hands. When he said nothing, Milly cackled and walked out, trusting Rowe to herd them after her, which he did.

“Why do I never see anyone but you people?” Karlene asked Rowe. “I saw plenty of people the first day out in the courtyard, but now only you and Nix and Sid. And the hag, here. Is no one else allowed inside?”

Without looking back at her, Milly raised a short cudgel hanging from her belt and shook it threateningly. Karlene was somewhat surprised at her own lack of fear. She wondered if, after Diom’s tender ministrations, she’d ever have a healthy fear of physical harm ever again.

“Most live in camps spread out in the forest,” Rowe answered, stretching massive arms above his head with a grunt. Milly glanced back to scowl at him, but ignored her. “In case this place is ever found, most of us will be safe.”

“Then why do you three always stay?”

Rowe patted her on the head, an easy gesture for someone his size. “Because we do,” was all he said.

Both she and Axion relaxed somewhat when they were led not to Diom’s open-air study, but instead to the kitchens. There, they were put to work alongside the drudges beneath Milly’s barbed command. Axion’s hands remained bound, which made all but the most simple tasks difficult. He was put in charge of stirring the three massive cauldrons of porridge that were suspended over coals hot enough to scald if one stood too near. Karlene was shown how to make the porridge, pouring bags of stale oats, dried peas, hunks of potato more gray than not, and huge dollops of nearly rancid, congealed fat drippings into the cauldrons as Axion stirred. It was, she knew, what she’d eaten yesterday. She knew she’d eat it again, though her insides would not thank her for it. Food was food, and she couldn’t afford to be picky.

“I’d kill for some monkey bread,” she mumbled to herself, watching the oily clump of fat slip free of the giant wooden spoon she was using to scoop it out of the bucket in her other hand. In lieu of the mind-tumbling information she’d managed to glean from Sid and Axion, her thoughts had turned to her stomach’s nagging for real food.

“Beg pardon?” Axion asked. The eyebrow went up along with his voice at the end of the inquiry.

“Monkey bread,” Karlene repeated with a sigh. “I’m going to ask my mom to bake me whole pan of it when I get home.”

“Your mother bakes?” He’d released his hold on his own stirring spoon with one hand, flexing the cramping limb before switching to do the same for the other.

“She tries,” Karlene shrugged. “Monkey bread is easy, though. Just dough, some spices, sweet syrupy sauce of some kind, done.”

Axion was silent for a moment. Then, “Cridolains,” he said. “I’ll have cridolains made for me by the platter.”

She hadn’t missed the ‘made for me’ part. She recalled Milly’s ‘princeling’ jibes.

You’ve got to be kidding me, she thought, a suspicion beginning to grow. Still, she asked, “What are those?”

“I don’t know if you have anything similar, but...well, suffice to say it is the cooked limbs of an eight-legged sea creature we have here, cut into shorter pieces, hollowed then stuffed with minced sweetmeats and spices, breaded, then fried.” He gave her a sheepish smile. “I ate enough of them as a child to guarantee a rotund youth had I not also been...active, shall we say.”

“Pizza,” she said next, adding to the list. “Large circle of flattened bread dough, covered with sauce, meats, cheeses, sometimes vegetables. Small pickled fishes, too, if you like the taste of death. Baked then usually consumed with an unhealthy amount of beer.”

“Panzim,” was his addition. “The thick skin of an exotic fruit, coated with sugar and left to dry. The flesh of the fruit is vile, but the skin becomes sweet and chewy.”

“When I was taken to Pyroxis,” she said suddenly. “They bought me something to eat from a street vendor.” She described it. “What’s it called?”

“Longfolds, I think is the common vernacular,” he said.

“You think?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever had it.” He sounded almost aloof.

“You’ve never had a hotdog?” She raised her own eyebrow this time.

“Is that what you would call it?”

“Obviously.” She rolled her eyes.

“If you had a name for it, why ask?”

“It wasn’t really a hotdog, just pretty close to one. It’s something we have back home.” She shrugged when answering.

They fell silent, moving together to the next cauldron. Karlene wondered, absently, what they planned to do with so much of the decidedly unappetizing bubbling messes. Even when she’d seen the courtyard occupied with a fair number of people, she still thought this too much food. They couldn’t think to let it keep? Were they trying to give their whole cult food poisoning?

“You truly are from somewhere else?” He asked her, and their silence had gone on long enough that the sudden question surprised her. She blinked at him, feeling mildly incredulous.

“Of all the things we’ve talked about, hotdogs is what convinces you?”

His lips quirked. “I’m told mine is an odd way of thinking.”

“I’ll say,” she murmured, turning back to her task of adding more fat to the mix. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but… No, I’m really not from around here. I don’t think. Hard to say for sure, since, you know, other worlds aren’t supposed to exist. Not like this.”

“Oh? How should they exist?”

“With big blonde vikings wielding magic hammers and hot little shit adopted brothers,” she muttered in reply, then sighed. “I don’t know. Just...this wasn’t what I would have-”

It took Karlene a half moment, perhaps longer, to register what had interrupted her. An explosion. Another half second to force her thoughts through her confusion, through the lack of logic, and to realize she was laying flat on her back, everything hurt, and her ears were full of a ringing roar.

Beside her, Axion was gasping. She saw more than heard when his compressed chest finally expanded as he recaught the wind that had been shoved out of him. He was covered in a fine layer of dust, and at his feet one of the giant cauldrons had been tipped over to spill its viscous contents across the flagstones.

Axion reached for her, and she took his hand and let him help her to her. Together they scrambled to their feet, staring through the haze of dust and smoke…

And out into sunlight. Where the massive hearth had been, there was now a giant, ragged hole the size of a wagon, letting in the late morning sunlight.

The glance they exchanged was a brief one, enough to ensure they were on the same page and neither had gone insane from sudden head trauma. Then they were running for the gaping hole in the wall, Karlene’s burst eardrums ensuring she didn’t hear Milly’s shrieks and the pained moans of the drudges behind them.