The Faeman Quest

Eight

It was sooo exciting. Mella had never seen a human kitchen before and this one was absolutely nothing like the kitchens of the Purple Palace. They were huge, with great black log-burning stoves, enormous roasting pits and no less than seven rainbow-coloured flavour chambers humming with spell power. This human kitchen was extremely small by contrast, with no roasting pit at all, no open fires of any sort and no stoves that she could see, while the only thing remotely like a flavour chamber was a white metal box on a countertop that would hardly hold a chicken, let alone an ox. All of which begged the question: how did these people cook? There was nothing, absolutely nothing, here that looked like it might do the job. Yet there were pots and pans hanging from hooks on the ceiling, so cooking must be done somehow.

‘What’s that?’ she asked Aunt Aisling, pointing to a coffin-sized cabinet standing upright by one wall. Like much of the equipment here, it had been painted white, so it was unlikely to contain a corpse. But you could never be sure. Some of the earliest faerie histories mentioned humans who ate each other!

Aisling glanced at her in surprise. ‘It’s just a refrigerator. Don’t you have one at home?’

Mella almost winced. Home was supposed to be New Zealand where, she supposed, they must have refrigerators, whatever refrigerators might be. But she recovered quickly. ‘Oh, yes, of course. It’s just ours is a different… design.’ She’d have to be very careful. The last thing she needed was to raise Aunt Aisling’s suspicions, although Aunt Aisling was very, very unlikely to guess where she really came from. Mella allowed herself a small, secret smile.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Aisling asked.

Mella’s smile vanished abruptly. Her father had warned her there were two drinks that were dangerous to faeries when they visited the Analogue Realm. Well, not dangerous exactly, not poisonous or anything, but tricky. One was coffee, which seemed to have very little effect on humans – all it really did was keep them awake – but acted as a psychedelic on faeries, triggering visionary experiences. The other was tea, which Aunt Aisling was offering now. The trouble was, Mella couldn’t remember what Henry had told her tea did to faeries. He’d only mentioned it once when she was a lot younger and hadn’t really been paying attention. She hesitated, realised hesitation might seem suspicious, realised tea drinking was a common ritual among humans, tea drinking was expected, tea drinking was probably compulsory in New Zealand, remembered too that she was only half -faerie so it would probably have no effect at all, then said, ‘Yes, please.’

‘You put the kettle on,’ Aisling said. ‘I’ll find the pot. Earl Grey all right for you? Mother never seems to have anything else.’

Who was Earl Grey? What was Earl Grey? Maybe there were different types of tea. She took a deep breath. She was committed now, so it hardly mattered what type of tea she drank: she didn’t know what any of them was likely to do to her. ‘Yes, fine,’ she said. She’d read somewhere that human girls her age would signify assent by saying Cool, but she’d also read that the English always drank tea hot, so that would hardly be appropriate. Analogue life was proving a lot more difficult than she’d anticipated.

The kettle was easy enough. The design was much the same here as in the Faerie Realm, and while the kettle on the countertop was smaller than those in the Purple Palace kitchens and there was a funny little tube sticking out the back at the bottom, it was definitely a kettle. She picked it up and once again looked around for a fire. ‘Where do I put it on to boil?’

‘Is there water in it?’ Aisling asked.

Oh Gods, Mella thought. Where was the well in this little kitchen? Did it have a pump, or would she have to draw water in a bucket? There were no spells, that was the trouble. You had to do positively everything yourself. She shook the kettle experimentally and discovered to her relief it was already half full. ‘Yes, there is.’

‘Plug it in beside the sink.’

Plug it in? When the servants wanted to boil a kettle without using up a spell cone, they hung it over an open fire. But plug it in? How did you plug in a kettle? To play for time she moved slowly over to the sink – she knew what a sink was – and looked around vaguely.

‘Plug’s beside the microwave,’ Aisling said helpfully.

What, in the name of the Old Gods, was a microwave? For the first time since she’d arrived in the Analogue Realm, Mella began to feel she was drowning. Then suddenly she noticed the wording on the chicken-sized flavour chamber: Siemens HF26056GB 1000 Watts Microwave. Brilliant, but what now? Plug it into the microwave? No, Aunt Aisling said beside the microwave. Mella felt her mind move into a higher gear, as it sometimes did when she was faced with an emergency. There were several pieces of kitchen equipment beside the microwave, but only one of them looked anything like what she was searching for: a black rubbery snake with a short, thick tube thing on the end. A plug? It might be a plug. It might be the plug. But the interesting thing, maybe the important thing, her whizzing mind told her, was that the plug (?) looked as if it might fit into the tube sticking out of the kettle. She tried pushing it in. At first it wouldn’t go, then she twisted it slightly and in it slid! Mella set the kettle down triumphantly.

‘You’ll have to switch it on at the wall,’ Aisling said.

Mella’s eyes slid along the black snake. At the far end from the kettle, it entered the wall by way of a peculiar plate. On the plate was a switch. But Mella knew how to operate switches. She pressed this one down with a feeling of triumph. To her relief, Aunt Aisling was no longer watching her, but had opened a cupboard and taken out a smaller, pot-bellied kettle with its handle on the back. Unlike real kettles, this vessel wasn’t used in the Faerie Realm at all, but she knew what it was from pictures: a teapot. She watched with fascination as Aunt Aisling spooned dried herbs into it from a yellow container.

‘I hate tea bags, don’t you?’ Aisling said mysteriously.

‘Positively loathe them,’ Mella told her.

Minutes later, Aisling was pouring out two cups of amber liquid. ‘I do hope you don’t take milk with Earl Grey,’ she murmured.

Mella gave an ostentatious shudder as she carried her cup to the table. ‘Never touch it.’ She could wing this conversation, she knew she could. She’d winged it beautifully already because clearly Aunt Aisling didn’t suspect a thing. All she needed to do now was steer it. And keep her wits about her. And pick up as much about the Analogue World as possible. Things were actually working out rather well. Aunt Aisling was pretty stupid, according to her father’s journal. It was just as well to get in a little practice with her before she met her grandmother, who wasn’t stupid at all. She smiled benignly at Aisling and took her first sip of Earl Grey tea.

She tasted the bergamot at once and liked the way it blended into the smoky, dusty flavour of the tea itself. No wonder this drink was popular in the Analogue World: it was seriously delicious. She took another sip before remembering to go slowly. This was an infusion faeries were warned about and, while she was only half-faerie, there was still a 50/50 chance it would affect her. So careful was the keyword. ‘Nice tea,’ she remarked. It seemed a safe, sophisticated thing to say.

Aisling asked suddenly, ‘What age are you, Mella?’

‘Fifteen. Nearly sixteen. Why do you ask, Aunt Aisling?’

Aisling shrugged. ‘I was just surprised Henry let you make the journey all on your own.’ She looked seriously at Mella. ‘Without telling us. We could have met you at the airport.’

This one she’d been expecting. Mella smiled. ‘Actually, I was surprised you didn’t. I’ve been wondering if Grandmother didn’t get Father’s letter.’ She batted her eyelids innocently. This was the heart of the story she’d concocted, cunningly contrived not just to explain her unexpected appearance, but to make everyone else feel guilty about it. There was no letter, of course: how could there be?

‘Henry wrote to Mother about your visit?’

Mella nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Telling her all about my visit and asking if I could stay with her. He didn’t mind me taking the flight on my own – he said he wanted me to learn independence – but he thought Grandmother might meet me at the airport, or arrange for somebody else to.’ She took another sip of her tea and looked at Aisling benignly. ‘I didn’t really mind when there was no one there. It’s really not so far from Heathrow. I took a taxi.’

‘What?’ Aisling asked. ‘All the way from Fairyland?’