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Chapter 28 - And Up Again
🕑 Added 2024-12-22 14:00:05 +0000 UTCAll eyes fell on Archie as he set up his stove in Pomona’s kitchen. They had seen all sorts of magic in their first semester at the Academy, but Archie’s rotten stink bomb was a first. He tried to ignore them, crouching down to adjust the damper and sliding it back and forth so that he wouldn’t have to stand up and be seen again. If anyone stared too long, Nori shot them the evil eye.
“New partners, everyone!” Pomona called out as she entered the kitchen. “No repeats!”
Nori sucked in her bottom lip and looked at Archie with worry. “You gonna be okay without me?”
“What?” Archie snorted at the ridiculous question. He wasn’t a child. “Yeah, I’m fine. But I’m not letting you use this stove after I did all the work. Shoo.”
Nori shoved his shoulder and ran over to Cress before anyone could claim her.
A pair of hands grabbed Archie’s shoulders from behind. Archie tried to turn, but the hands steered him and kept him facing forward while the body behind ducked left and right. But the mischievous laugh gave him away.
“I’m going to try to switch rooms with one of the other guys,” Archie said. “Sleeping beneath you is torture.”
“Hey, show some respect.” Oliver twisted Archie around and approached the stove. “You’re talking to the youngest Chef on Northgate.”
“Northgate?”
“You know, the…all the bars. Just north of the gate to the Crown. Northgate.”
“You got the job?”
Oliver grinned wide, his shiny teeth illuminating the room. He grabbed Archie’s shoulders again and shook him. “I got the job!”
Archie laughed as he swiped Oliver’s arms off. “Well, the youngest Chef on Northgate farts in his sleep.”
“We’re gonna kick you out,” Benedict added from the row behind them. Oliver turned and threw an air punch at Benedict.
“Congrats, though,” Archie said. “For real.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the connect. Next time you go, I’ll be sure you get free drinks.”
Archie thought of the rainbow-colored vomit he had left in the toilet. “I’m never drinking again.”
Oliver raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, we’ll see. They’re gonna start teaching me how to make some easy drinks, first. Give me a year or two and I’ll have us all bouncing off the ceiling.”
Archie thought back to the first-year feast and laughed. “Just don’t get stuck up there again.”
Oliver punched Archie’s shoulder, somehow catching the exact same spot as Nori. Archie grabbed a spatula and was halfway to spanking Oliver with it when Pomona’s sweet voice interrupted the violence.
“We’re going to start easy today and then do something fun in the afternoon. So let’s do mushroom stew. Try to feel the essence through your knife as you chop.”
After an uneventful morning, Archie took his lunch in Pomona’s kitchen, stealing his teacher away from the rest of the students.
“The elevator noodle, huh?” Pomona snickered, her smile pushing little round pouches into her upper cheeks.
Removed from the context of a lecture, Archie was rediscovering how beautiful Pomona was. Her golden-brown, curvy hair. Striking blue eyes. Perfect smile. He shook off the hypnotization, focusing on the ridiculous size of her head instead.
“Yeah, you could probably learn it now. Now’s usually the time you all start really making strides,” she said. “I figured it out my first semester here. I was the only one that managed that. Drove Colby mad.”
“You and Head Chef Colby were students together?”
Pomona nodded.
Archie thought of the crow’s feet around Colby’s eyes. “But he’s old,” he said.
Pomona lifted a finger to her lips, shushing him as she winked. “We even had the same sponsor. We were like you and Nori but with like…five times more fighting. And then he left at the end of the first year to go cook for the king of Labrusca.”
Archie blinked.
“Yeah, I may have figured out the elevator before him, but no one could touch Colby in the kitchen.”
A mature realization went through Archie’s brain, reminding him that everyone had a story, even if he couldn’t see it.
“So the elevator noodle,” Pomona said. “It’s easier to expand than contract. The way I thought of it…you’re putting your essence into the noodle, binding it, and pushing it out to expand. Contraction is tough because you have to spread your essence through the entire length of the noodle. That’s what, fifty feet? Hard to stay connected to your essence fifty feet away. But once you get that, you just…pull your essence back together. And of course, expansion, you have gravity on your side. Contraction…that platform is heavy, but you’d be surprised what you can do with essence.”
Archie thought of Blanche’s advice. “I was thinking of starting with a smaller noodle.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Tie a rock around one end. Work on it every night before you go to bed…I bet you learn it in two or three weeks. You’re really talented, you know.”
Warmth flooded Archie, forcing an unconscious smile. He imagined the inevitable history books that would be written about him.
Archibald Kent’s exceptional talent was noticed immediately by his teacher, Pomona. Later, when asked what she thought about him becoming the youngest White Jacket ever, she said, “I’m hardly surprised.”
“Alright, don’t bother with the stoves,” Pomona told them after their lunch break. “Time for a little game. New partners. No repeats.”
Archie looked around the kitchen, making the mistake of locking eyes with Hyssop. She looked back at him with sad, lonely eyes. The same pathetic eyes that Nori had during the Induction Ceremony. Archie forced a smile and walked over to her.
“Partner up?” he asked.
She nodded, pulling nervously at one of the coils of brown hair that framed her face. The rest of her hair was pulled tight—too tight—into a bun that stretched the skin on her forehead. Archie wondered if she wouldn’t be so wound up if she let her hair down.
“Thanks,” she said. “This partnering up stuff stresses me out. Junie and I feel like outsiders sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “We’re cooking for Prince Waldorf all weekend. You and Nori get Saturdays off—me and Junie don’t even get Sundays off like everyone else.” She took a deep breath, realizing that she had started down a Hyssie fit. “And what we go through…it’s kinda hard to relate to anyone else that isn’t also going through it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s awful. Waldorf. Awful.”
“Alright, class,” Pomona said. “We’re back on berries. Blueberries, this time. Not cooking, though. We’re going to try to make them bouncy.”
Pomona took a blueberry in each hand. She dropped the first one, which hit the ground and split open.
“Blueberries have a sort of leathery skin. The first step is to make that skin strong enough to withstand the fall. But in doing so, you might turn it into a rock.”
She dropped the second blueberry. It clunked on the ground. She took two more blueberries.
“Bring the natural elasticity of the skin back, find that property with your essence, then enhance it.”
She dropped another blueberry, this one bouncing back up to her hip, then her knee, then settling on the ground.
“And then load it up with enough essence that it can continue the process.”
The final blueberry bounced up to her shoulder, then up again, only losing an inch or two with each bounce.
“I’ll come around to help. See if you can get all the way up to bouncing it to each other.”
Archie took a blueberry between his fingers. Without even meaning to, he identified it as a rabbiteye. There was even a faint hint of a signature—somehow, he knew Quince had grown these.
He gently squeezed the blueberry, feeling the natural elasticity of the skin, and rolled his fingers around it, coating it with essence. When he dropped it on the table, it bounced up three inches.
Hyssop tried to copy him, but her blueberry just hit the table and rolled. She sighed.
Archie shrugged, trying to cheer her up. “My sponsor had me and Nori picking blueberries for a month. If we were doing apples, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
“Must be nice to learn something cool. Only thing I’ve learned is how to cook faster.”
Archie reloaded essence into the blueberry and bounced it again, this time catching it in his hand. “Is it that bad?”
Hyssop stared at him through her eyebrows. “Head Chef Pomona says it’s hard to do magic angry, so…” She took a deep breath. “Let’s focus on this for a while.”
“Sure.”
By the time Hyssop could bounce the blueberry off the table, Archie was bouncing it off the ground. He looked around at the class, pleased with himself. Only Nori could keep up. Even Julienne was still dribbling his blueberry on the table.
He bounced the blueberry to Pomona as she approached.
“Wow, look at you,” she said as she caught the blueberry and assessed its essence. “You know, some Chefs really take to cooking. Others are naturally good at the more practical stuff. I was in the latter. Maybe you are, too.”
“Maybe I’m both,” he suggested without a hint of humor.
She chuckled as she bounced the blueberry back. She snatched Hyssop’s off the counter and rolled it around her hand.
“You’re basically there, Hys. Don’t be afraid to put more essence in it.”
“I don’t want it to pop.”
“If it pops, it pops.”
Pomona tossed the blueberry back to Hyssop and continued around the class.
Hyssop shook her head. “It’s weird having someone be nice to you in the kitchen.”
Archie saw a chance to satisfy his curiosity. “That doesn’t happen much in Prince Waldorf’s kitchen, I take it?”
“Nope.”
“What’s it like?”
Hyssop took a deep breath. “If he’s not around, it’s busy. There’s twenty of us in there most days. The kitchen is big, but there’s only so much counter space. So we squeeze in. Stand with your feet close. Elbows tucked into your body. Don’t turn too fast.”
She tossed her blueberry on the ground. It bounced up to her ankle.
“And of course, we work fast. But that’s easy compared to when Prince Waldorf comes into the kitchen. Sometimes he doesn’t even wait for things to finish cooking. He just pushes you aside and eats raw ingredients. And the…the things he says. He’s…”
She looked around and decided it was better to stop there. She bounced the blueberry up to her knees.
But Archie wasn’t satisfied.
“What does he say?”
Hyssop scratched her head. “One time, I was complaining. I didn’t realize he was in the kitchen. He…he walked behind me. Real close.” She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face. It was as if he was standing behind her at that moment.
“He said I didn’t have to cook for him. That he had other work for me. That I could take off my Chef’s jacket…as long as…as long as I didn’t have anything on underneath it.”
She dropped her blueberry. It splattered on the ground.
That night, and every night that week, and every morning that week, and even during some lunch breaks, Archie immersed himself in study, possessed by a singular focus to never turn that elevator wheel again.
He started with a six inch strip of fettuccine. Per Pomona’s advice, he cooked it with an extra heap of essence so that it would feel more familiar to him. He let it dangle from his fingers, pushing essence into it. At first, the essence would accumulate in the noodle and reach a point of oversaturation, leaking essence into the air and back up into Archie. But as he learned to control it, the essence stayed in the noodle, packing itself denser and denser.
On the first night, he managed to turn the six inches into seven and almost eight. The next morning, he spread his essence throughout the noodle and then brought it back together, shrinking the noodle by half an inch.
In class, while they reduced the sauce of chicken marsala, he didn’t waste time waiting, multitasking with another noodle. His progress excited him so much that he stayed up late practicing, feeling in the dark for the change in the noodle. Not even Oliver’s farts could distract him.
By the end of the second day, he could expand and contract the noodle to double—or half—its length, even with one end of the noodle tied around a fist-sized rock. He turned a foot-long noodle into five feet, slinging it around the top bunk to slap Oliver.
During their lunch break on the third day, he challenged Nori to a game of tug-of-war. While she yanked on the ten-foot noodle as hard as she could, Archie barely pulled, letting his essence do the work. Other students took up the challenge, pulling as hard as they could, even doubling up and still being unable to move Archie. The craze lasted well into their afternoon classes, but Pomona didn’t stop them.
Archie thought Barley would be the biggest challenge, but by the time the strongest student stepped up, Archie had only gotten better at contracting the noodle. With Barley defeated, Archie thought that was it.
Then Julienne stepped up.
Despite being the skinniest boy in the class, Julienne gave Archie the most difficulty. Archie felt another essence in the noodle, diluting his ability to contract. After a brief struggle, the noodle slipped from Julienne’s hands. Archie wondered if he would have won if Julienne had also spent the last few days practicing.
“Alright, everyone got a turn,” Pomona said as she walked up to the noodle. “Let’s get back to cooking.”
She grabbed the end of the noodle. In the blink of an eye, it was whipped out of Archie’s hand, contracting from ten feet to just a few inches. Pomona threw it at Archie with a wink. He stared at the noodle, amazed at the massive amount of essence that still remained in it.
“Oh, look at all of these bright smiling faces,” Colby called out to the students that ate their breakfast in the lounge. “Oliver, I’m surprised you’re up this early. Aren’t you working nights now?”
“Up early? Don’t you mean out late?” Oliver looked out the balcony in confusion. His head rolled around as it turned. “Wait, that’s the sun? Oh man. They had me try a new drink they’re working on. Makes the night sky as bright as day. I didn’t realize it switched.”
Even Colby laughed as Oliver swayed down the hallway. Then his smile shifted.
“Archie and Nori, you’re with me. Let’s go.” Colby nodded to the elevator and started walking.
Nori raised her eyebrows a couple times at Archie. He shushed her.
“I’ll give you a choice, Nori,” Colby said. “Fishing or apple picking.”
“I’ll get the ladder out of the greenhouse.”
“Alright. And what about you, Archie? Excited to spend a few hours on the lift?”
Archie stepped past Colby to open the cage door. “Actually, yeah. I’ve been working on something.”
They all piled onto the platform.
“Oh yeah?” Colby asked. Nori looked away so that she wouldn’t get caught laughing.
“Yeah,” Archie said. He walked up to the wheel, lifted his hands to it…and then took another step toward the edge, his hand hovering near the noodle that ran down the length of the elevator shaft.
“Oh,” Colby said in a rare, proud tone. “You figured out the elevator?”
“Sorta.” Archie shrugged.
“What does that mean, sorta?”
“Well, I figured out how to release all the tension. But not how to stop it. It’s pretty much a freefall.”
Archie grinned, his fingers an inch away from the noodle.
“Wait!” Colby lunged at Archie.
Too late.
Twang!
The platform hurtled down, the air whooshing past, Nori’s black hair flying straight up. Colby screamed as he regained his footing and launched himself at the noodle, flicking it and arresting their movement. Archie and Nori absorbed the lost momentum in their knees, crouching down to the floor, but Colby, in his running stance, didn’t have a strong enough base. His body slammed down against the platform.
“What the…Archie…” Colby panted as he rolled onto his back. He looked up at Archie, who reached out to the noodle again. “No!”
Colby scrambled to get up, the fear of death making him uncoordinated. Archie plucked the noodle. And the platform…
…slowly lowered itself.
“Just kidding,” Archie said. “The first couple of times I did it were pretty rocky, but I figured out how to control it yesterday. I can go up, too, but it’s still pretty slow. Good thing I’ve got all morning to practice, right?”
Colby glared at Archie but could say nothing. He shook his head as Nori laughed.
