Page 16 of Prima (After the End #8)

“I’ve seen her make it. Many times.”

But he’s right that she doesn’t have any hands-on experience. She’s plenty satisfied to serve the few dishes in her repertoire over rice and has been content to leave the making of flatbreads, steamed breads, and anything else that might involve dough to more adventurous cooks.

This is, in fact, the first time she’s opened the bag of flour that came as part of the raft’s supplies.

She sets the flakes of dehydrated scallion that she found in the understructure to soak. “When it’s reconstituted, you won’t be able to taste the difference.”

He is peeling a pear squash. “Trust me, I will.”

She laughs. “I can’t believe no one else finds you funny. Are you much meaner with other people?”

He stills for a moment, before another strand of green peel falls off the edge of his knife. “I don’t speak to many other people. Or maybe I should say, I’m full of lies and platitudes on most occasions when I do speak.”

But he has been truthful with her. Or at least, not full of lies and platitudes.

“Who wants you dead?” she asks.

They did not have time to discuss it in the urgency of the moment, but the torpedoes from the midget sub had been launched not for her, but for him.

And they came only hours after he made an appearance at Work Camp 66.

Somebody there must have submitted a report, either deliberately or inadvertently, in their official capacity, and someone else had been watching.

“Probably the eleventh prince. He and Prince Four are full brothers. They’ve been trying to undermine the Noble Consort’s brothers because her son, Five, has a lot of popular acclaim for the throne and Four considers him a threat.

The Noble Consort has been my mother’s protector these many years—in the Potentate’s Palace, like on any battlefield, you must form alliances.

And anything that threatens the Noble Consort’s position also threatens my mother’s well-being. ”

He cleaves the peeled squash in half, scoops out the inedible parts, and then cuts each half into paper-thin slices.

“I was in Risshva because I caught sight of Eleven crossing into Risshvai waters. The Potentate does not like his sons getting chummy with foreign powers on their own. If I could obtain evidence that’s what Eleven was doing, I’d weaken those two brothers enough that they’d leave the Noble Consort’s family alone, at least for a while. ”

“Did you obtain that evidence?”

“Nothing definitive, but Eleven doesn’t know what I have or don’t have.” He slides the pear squash slices into the soup. “I’m sorry that my troubles put you in danger. Thanks for turning away the torpedoes, by the way. Wish I could have ‘seen’ it.”

“Prince Eleven doesn’t know about your Sea Sense?”

Or he wouldn’t have sent a piddly little sub equipped with only two torpedoes.

He shakes his head. “My mother was very careful that I not catch anyone’s attention.”

Hers was discovered to much fanfare and honor. Of course, this also means that for the rest of her life, she will be called up anytime New Ryukyu’s security apparatus needs civilian help to defend the borders.

“Do you have a concurrent ability?”

Sea Sense occurs in about 0.1% of the population, one in one thousand. But it is said that one in ten of those with Sea Sense—the precise percentage has been difficult to come by—are gifted with an additional ability.

He is now slicing calamari, his motion swift and elegant. He stops for a moment, nods, then resumes his work without looking at her.

She hasn’t expected this admission—back home, her Sea Sense is public knowledge, but her ability to detect ill will remains a secret known only to her mother and herself. For him to acknowledge that, when even his Sea Sense is kept strictly confidential…

They fall silent.

When he finishes cutting the calamari, he puts the pices to marinate and cleans his chopping board. “I have a spare chopping board. Do you want to use that to roll out your flatbread?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She hasn’t given any thought as to how she ought to continue with her flatbread.

He probably senses that, and returns with not only a clean chopping board, but a straight-edged bottle that she can use for a rolling pin.

She looks uncertainly at the bottle. He laughs softly. “Should I prepare some rice rations anyway?”

“No, let’s eat handmade food.”

“Some people’s handmade food is why we have rations in the first place.”

She cackles and presses the bottle into her ball of dough.

After a minute she realizes that he is standing right next to her, watching her work.

She glances over her shoulder at him. They gaze at each other for two seconds.

Then he points at the chopping board. “Handmade food doesn’t get made if hands aren’t moving. ”

She laughs some more.

Her unskilled but strong hands flatten the dough without too much problem—the dough has rested enough to become soft and pliable.

But what next? “My aunt rolled sheets of dough into tubes, coiled the tubes into fat rounds, and then flattened the rounds. But how does that create layers? Wouldn’t it just return to being a solid disk of dough? ”

The boy looks at her in incredulity. She has no choice but to bat her eyelashes at him, a damsel in grave culinary distress.

In response, he lifts a tin of oil and pours liberally onto her sheet of dough. “I don’t know what your aunt does, but to laminate dough, some kind of fat must be involved.”

“But her dough didn’t look greasy.”

“Then she used solid fat, which I don’t have.” And then, after a moment, “At least I was trained at the palace kitchen; you would be wise to listen to me.”

She cackles again. “I don’t have much of a choice now, given that you’ve already poured oil all over my dough.”

She adds salt and the rehydrated scallion, then copies what her aunt used to do to the best of her ability. While she does her work, he removes the soup pot from the portable stove, stir-fries the calamari at high heat, then sears the scallops.

“I decided to do my dishes first. Your giant flatbread will take some time to cook through.”

She grins down at her giant flatbread. She made enough dough for five or six flatbreads but she can’t be bothered to repeat the process five or six times.

He offers her a piece of the freshly sautéed calamari.

“Yum. So good.” He’s cooking on a professional level.

Then she tries a scallop and is speechless. Now this is cooking on a poetic level. It’s a scallop. It tastes like a scallop, yet it is also the ocean itself, made juicy and sweet. It is sunset, sea breeze, soft, still warm sand—and adventure.

“Wow,” she murmurs after a while. “You really are qualified to find fault with my cooking.”

He laughs briefly, places the pan, freshly cleaned, back on the stove, and pours in a generous glug of oil.

“That’s right,” she says. “My mother always says that for me, since I lack good culinary instincts, I should just use more oil. I see you’re already applying that here.”

He laughs again, puts down the oil, and stands in place to watch her, half a step to her left and about that much behind her. If she leans back, will he remain where he is and allow the contact?

“Isn’t the pan—and the oil—hot enough?” he reminds her.

Well, that’s why she’ll never be a great cook—she’s always thinking about other things when she makes food! She slides the thick slab of dough into the pan. He immediately takes the chopping board to scrub it with sand. When he comes back—does he stand even closer?

“Your silent judgment makes me nervous,” she says, even though it’s not at all what he might think about her cooking that agitates her.

A beat of silence. “Why do you even cook? Surely, as the future Sea Witch, you have better ways to use your time.”

The average resident of Dawan might not have heard about the leadership structure of New Ryukyu, but he must know that there is no real Sea Witch, that the big-direction decisions are made by the Secretariat, a seven-member body whose members serve overlapping seven-year terms, a new one rotating in every year, the longest-serving one rotating out.

That said, two centuries ago, Dawan attempted to invade New Ryukyu.

The Prima who not only successfully expelled the invaders but took one sixth of Dawan’s territorial waters for New Ryukyu got so carried away on her popularity that she refused to relinquish power when her time came.

It took fifteen years and a civil war to finally push her out and the damages to the rule of law and civil society needed decades to repair.

It's not difficult to imagine how the Potentate of yore, defeated and humiliated, made up the story of the monstrous Sea Witch, rather than admit that he was bested by a country led by a woman.

It is a bit surprising the myth has endured for so long, but then again, the fantastical is always more fun to believe in than the mundane.

She is not going to turn into any kind of fiendish demigod, much to her regret.

There is a 25% chance that after she finishes her Grand Tour, she will be selected for the honor of serving on the Secretariat, as the representative member of her age cohort.

And if she does, her rotation will not start for another two-and-a-half years.

Half of that time she will spend in various lower-level decision-making bodies, familiarizing herself with their inner workings.

The other half of the time she will travel to all the reclaimed islands of New Ryukyu, to make sure that she has seen life up close everywhere, not as someone the local officials might try to entertain and suck up to, but as just another pair of sandals on the ground, another chair pulled up at a busy noodle shop.

And during that entire time, she will have only a minimal stipend and must squeeze into shared housing and cook for herself.

“I may never be the Prima,” she says. “Just an ordinary young woman who managed to lose a whole yacht during her Grand Tour.”

“Your formidable mother isn’t the current Prima?”

“My formidable mother works for the Secretariat, but has never been one of the seven.”

Her mother might be, in her own way, one of the most powerful individuals in New Ryukyu, the gatekeeper to the decision-makers, the one constant in a rotating cast of characters.

But she rose from nothing and would never countenance her daughter relying on others to do what she could do for herself.

She glances at him. “I’m no princess.”

“Lucky you.” He points at her scallion flatbread. “Might want to flip it now.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” she answers meekly and complies.

The flipped flatbread glistens, all golden and appetizing. He leans forward for a closer look. Without her quite realizing it, her left hand lifts and takes hold of a strand of his hair. It is still a bit damp—and very, very silky.

After lunch she nearly embraced him, one hand holding his, the other spread against his nape—and she didn’t feel the least bit shy. But now this slight contact burns her fingertips. She lets go.

He glances at her, his cheekbones gilded by sunset, but only says, “Smells good. Let’s see how it tastes.”

* * *

Alas, her flatbread smells better than it tastes.

It managed to achieve some layers—the boy was correct about the necessity of fat—but it’s dry in places, too oily in other spots, and undercooked at the center because it’s so thick.

Not to mention, as it turns out, even she can tell the difference between fresh and rehydrated scallion.

And compared to his simple yet delicious soup? She would have to apprentice in his kitchen a good long time before their food could be served at the same table.

In the half light of dusk, he eats silently.

She licks the back of her teeth—might as well get the worst over with. “It’s not so bad you’re at a loss for words, is it?”

“No, it’s not so bad.”

She waits, somewhat encouraged, but also bracing for the other shoe to drop.

“It’s…it’s nice to eat something someone else has prepared.” He hesitates. “It’s nice to eat with someone else.”

She, as loquacious as she’s been with him, doesn’t know what to say.

He looks at her with those beautiful yet opaque eyes. “You must have many friends.”

“I know a great many people.” She hesitates again. “But my mother has always been wary of anyone trying to influence her through me and maybe these days I’m wary myself. So it’s likely I don’t have as many friends as you think I do, but I have them.”

“Do you eat together with them often?”

“Yes and it’s always fun.” She hesitates once more. “But sometimes I don’t particularly want boisterous companionship. Sometimes I would like to eat quietly with someone, and then to sit quietly with them afterwards.”

He says nothing for a while, until she wonders if she comes across as extremely silly to him, wanting this and that, when the women in his life have so few choices. When he himself has so few choices.

“I want that for you,” he says, his voice low, “a rich and varied life, with the whole world at your feet when you wish it, and when you don’t, a quiet, happy domesticity.”

Again, that chaos of emotions inside.

She leaps up, more as a reaction to her internal turbulence than anything else. But now she can’t just stand there.

“You know what? We never drank the spirits you brought to lunch.”

She returns a minute later with the round-bellied jar and two tiny teacups. He breaks the seal and pours the teacups full. She raises her cup.

“Thank you for that blessing. For you, I wish you—and the ones you love—all the freedom you yearn for. And when you have achieved that, all the safety in the world in which to enjoy that freedom.”

He clinks his cup with hers and tips back its entire content. She does likewise. They show each other their empty cups.

They have sealed those beautiful wishes. Now it only remains to be seen what the universe thinks of their audacity.