Once it caught, the flames rose higher and higher until they were taller than a man. Feeling as though they were enjoying an early-morning campfire, the patrolmen even began singing and laughing. Had ordinary neighbors behaved this way, someone would have shouted to ask if they were mad. But given who these men were, no complaints reached them. Neighborhood children slipped outside too, joining the men to dance and play.
Then four or five men appeared from Mast Street, their arms full of supplies. Ashabel, walking in front, was skipping like a child. At the sight of the fire, he bounded up like a ball and ran over. Pushing his way through the men, he exclaimed, “Wow! What’s this?”
“A fire, country boy. Never seen one before?”
Ashabel suddenly bowed his head to stifle a laugh. None of the men noticed. Presently, he looked up, tapped the shoulder of a man nearby, and made him look behind.
“Brothers, this is no time to play. See that? The captain ordered it all delivered.”
When the men turned, they saw that porters had reached Hawk Square and were looking around. The things they carried were hardly fit to be dumped on the earth. Twenty cleaned fish, butter, loaves of bread, a sack of potatoes, onions and carrots, bunches of herbs… That much was all very well. But twenty live chickens were packed tightly into a bamboo basket, flapping and struggling. Rosa came out with a board under each arm and saw them. Ashabel spotted her too. Grinning as though he had been warned of something, he approached.
“You said forty chickens, didn’t you? Buying them at dawn like this, there weren’t enough already killed. Anyway, once you’ve killed them, they’re all the same, aren’t they?”
Pretending not to hear Ashabel, Rosa walked toward the porters. Perhaps a little irritated, he followed.
“But listen, I bought everything I was told to. You said you were doing all this alone, right? And that fire. What kind of cooking are you going to do over it?”
Without turning or slowing, Rosa replied, “You must not come from here.”
She went to the porters and promptly indicated where each item should go, as though she had thought it all out in advance. Setting the boards on the ground, she called Harat.
“You see those chickens? Boil some water on the stove and bring it out. We’ll pluck them.”
Glancing at the chicken basket, where feathers floated through the air, Harat shouted at Ashabel.
“Hey, you bastard! When are we supposed to kill and pluck all of those?”
“Oh, don’t ask me. I was told to buy them, so I did. How was I supposed to make them have enough chickens? Shall we make pens once we’ve got plenty of feathers?”
Ashabel joked, but he was not entirely without a guilty conscience. Harat went inside, and Ashabel met Rosa’s eyes. Rosa spoke.
“You. Come here and peel those potatoes.”
“Huh? Why me?”
“You delayed everything, and now we’re going to miss breakfast. If you don’t like it, kill the chickens yourself.”
“Oh, stop making a fuss. Just cut their heads off one by one with a knife. What’s difficult about that?”
“Try it that way, if you want to see headless chickens running all over the yard.”
Ashabel stuck out his lower lip and looked at the chickens. When Rosa saw him turn back toward the sack of potatoes, she added, “You don’t look stupid. I doubt you’ll do it all by yourself. There are plenty of men doing nothing over there.”
Turning away, Rosa drew a dipperful of water from a jar and began washing the other vegetables. Ashabel watched her back, then suddenly hoisted the sack and ran to the fire.
“Brothers! Let’s roast some potatoes here. Peel them for us, will you?”
When you build a campfire, you tend to want to roast something over it. The men readily agreed and began peeling potatoes. There was no shortage of knives at their belts. In fact, potatoes did not need peeling to roast in a fire. But since this was their first fire, there was no reason for them to know that. While they worked, Nana appeared from somewhere, set an empty tub beside them, and went away. They began tossing their peeled potatoes into it.
After washing the vegetables and fish, Rosa brought a large bowl and tore bread into pieces. She added butter and mixed it through, then sprinkled in finely chopped onions, rosemary, and parsley and kneaded the mixture firmly. She packed it into the fish, sewed their bellies closed with a needle and thread, and put them into a cleaned water tub. The process was quite complicated, but her hands moved so quickly that filling the great tub with twenty fish took barely ten minutes.
Then Harat arrived carrying a water jar full of boiled water. Rosa added a little cold water to cool it, then went to the basket of chickens. Harat glanced at her and asked, “You’re doing it yourself?”
Rosa looked back at him.
“Are you good at killing chickens?”
“I can kill one. What’s being good at it got to do with anything?”
“Then wait beside me.”
Rosa set the knife on the plank she had brought to use as a chopping board. Then she sprinkled coarse chicken feed beneath one bird’s rump, caught the head of another as it poked through a gap in the basket, and stabbed between its comb.
“What are you doing? Scratching its head?”
Before Harat finished speaking, the chicken went limp. Rosa sprinkled feed again and caught the next chicken by the head. In that fashion, five birds in succession quietly died in the blink of an eye. Opening the basket’s mouth, Rosa took them out, cut off their heads on the board, drained the blood, and tossed them into the jar of hot water.
What followed went like clockwork. Rosa caught the remaining chickens while Harat took the first from the water and began plucking them. But before he had plucked even half, she had killed them all. The only implement she had used was a single chicken feather.
Then Rosa began plucking. While Harat finished about three, she plucked all the rest, removed their innards, stuffed them, and sewed them closed. Harat could only grunt and mutter, “Well, I’ll be…” At last, he set his bird down and watched. After finishing the chicken he had been handling as well, Rosa stood and pointed to the cauldron she had rinsed earlier.
“Take these tongs and put half the stones from around the fire into the cauldron.”
By then Harat was ready to do whatever she asked. Without even questioning why stones should go into a pot, he got up and dragged the cauldron to the fire. The flames had weakened a little. The men had finished peeling the potatoes and were now arguing over how to cook them. When Ashabel looked to Rosa for a solution, she silently pointed at the tub of potatoes. He quickly snatched it up and hurried over. The others shouted in alarm.
“Hey! You bastard, what are you doing?”
Rosa took the potatoes, cut them roughly into pieces, and spread them across the bottoms of the pans she had cleaned. She packed the chickens on top, seven or eight in each of five pans. Then she wrapped pieces of leather over them and tied them tightly with string. Handing one to each of the men who had chased after the stolen potatoes, she had them carry them to the fire.
By then, the others had begun to think something might come of this and crowded around. Rosa took the tongs back from Harat, broke up the fire, and removed every ember. She added fresh logs, this time arranged radially, then had the cauldron set over them. The stones already inside had heated it thoroughly. She put the embers into the cauldron, set the pans on top, filled the gaps between them with the remaining stones, and placed a few more embers over the pans. Last, she put the lid on the cauldron, leaving a little gap.
The men, who had somehow done all of this by promptly following Rosa’s instructions, looked expectant, as though a magnificent meal were on its way. Rosa sighed.
“Now wait.”
“How long?”
“Well, an hour or two?”
“What?”
Complaints poured out that they would starve while waiting, but Rosa walked away without appearing to hear. Harat waved his hand.
“You lot act like you’re possessed by ravenous spirits. What have you got to complain about? Lift your heads and look at the sun. That young lady took only about an hour to prepare food for eighty of you. All you lot know is how to complain about a piss smell when someone goes to the trouble of cooking for you. You have no idea how much work this is.”
Of course they did not. While the men looked at each other and smirked, Harat shouted angrily.
“The way that young lady killed twenty chickens, plucked them, and even stuffed them… It was just like our captain going into a Shadow Hunt!”
That brought an immediate response.
“Oh, he’s gone mad.”
“Make a comparison that makes sense!”
“Of all the things to compare him to, you drag the captain into this? You chicken-brained fool!”
Rather than resist, Harat traced an esha in the air, meaning “drop dead,” and ran away.
Several men chased him. The rest peered at the cauldron, sniffing, brought over more firewood to poke unnecessarily at the fire, or went inside to wash their faces at last. Standing near the fire, Ashabel suddenly looked around. As the man who had bought that enormous quantity of ingredients, he surveyed the empty baskets and sacks, potato peelings, and chicken feathers that were all that remained. Harat’s words were beginning to sound increasingly plausible.
He hurried over to Rosa.
“Rosa, couldn’t you keep living with us and make us things like this every day?”
Ashabel had even brought out the familiar form of address for an older sister to show friendliness. Rosa merely glanced at him as though wondering what the boy was talking about and went on with her work. She was preparing the seasonings to go over the roasted chicken. But Ashabel was not easily discouraged.
“Are you a cook? Where do you work? Do they pay you a lot? We’ve got a little money too, you know.”
As Ashabel made his earnest proposal, Harat and the others circled them, picking up chicken heads and throwing them at one another’s heads. Having finished her work, Rosa watched the chase for a moment, then spoke.
“Would you want to see this every day?”
“Well, ah… No, not really. But believe me, it isn’t like this every day.”
It did not take two hours. In fact, for the past half hour, not only the fire-lighting party but men who had not lifted a finger during the preparations had all come downstairs to loiter around the cauldron. Some were playing pitch-and-toss, but anyone could see they were simply waiting for Rosa to announce that it was ready and tell them to open the pot. Above all, it smelled extraordinary. Even neighborhood children hovered nearby, hoping for a piece.
For some reason, Ashabel looked triumphant. He gathered the children, lined them up here and there, and bustled about. He did often play with the local children.
Rosa sat quietly in a corner of the square, enjoying the sunlight. She did not speak with the men, nor did she make a fuss about tidying up. Only her expression was strangely sharp. Nana wandered about alone. Curious patrolmen spoke to her, but she too said not a word in reply.
After the strange state of so many people standing idle and watching one another had continued for half an hour, Rosa finally stood and went to the cauldron. Every eye followed her. She half opened the lid, checked how far the embers had burned, and stirred the fire apart with the poker.
“Bring a plate each.”
The moment she spoke, the men standing in the square flooded into the house like an ebb tide, then surged back around the pot. With long tongs, Rosa took out the pans and cut away the scorched leather. As they opened, everyone’s face lit up. Harat muttered, “Wow. Look at how perfectly it’s cooked.”
Each pair received one golden roasted chicken, covered with sauce she had mixed on the spot using the juices from the pan. It came with potatoes beautifully cooked in chicken fat. Since some patrolmen were away, there was even meat for the children. As nearly eighty men filled Hawk Square and devoured the same meal, not a word passed among them. It was a spectacle in its own right, and people gathered to watch. If this had not been outside the House of the ShadowHawk, the smell would surely have drawn beggars too.
But a few reasonably well-dressed men, neither local residents nor beggars, were lingering at the mouths of the streets. Ordinarily the patrolmen would have watched them warily. On this day, there were so many other spectators that their presence scarcely stood out.
The stuffed roast chicken and potatoes vanished in an instant. Just as the men were polishing off even the broth, two men appeared from Mast Street. Nobody paid them any attention until they reached Hawk Square. Presently, Gene peered into the empty cauldron and spoke.
“What? There’s nothing for me?”
Only then did the men hurry over in alarm. They had not thrown any food away. Those who had eaten every last scrap were setting down their plates. The others still held plates of chicken bones and the like. Gene suppressed a smile.
“Oh, so you brought it over to share even what you’d already eaten? That’s my brothers.”
The men chuckled too.
“Sorry, sir. We were going to skip breakfast, but the sight of food drove us mad.”
“But it was really good.”
“Absolutely incredible.”
“Ah, really. For the first time in my life, I felt glad I’d been born human. How would I ever know a taste like this if I’d been born a cow or a horse?”
Arms folded as he listened, Gene glared at his men.
“Oh, it was? Then what are you bastards playing at, saying that after you’ve eaten it all?”
“Well… We’re teasing you!”
With that shout, Ashabel ran away. Gene followed him with his eyes. Ashabel ran straight to Rosa, raised both hands, and hopped about in a pantomime of worship. Rosa had been leaning against a sunny wall. She frowned at the sight.
“Oh, goddess. Stay beside us so that we may go on living as human beings. Oh, goddess, I believe.”
“Will you go away?”
“Oh, goddess, grant our captain your grace as well. He’s wasting away because he hasn’t had any chicken. Even a hawk needs chicken to live, doesn’t he?”
A few men must have thought Ashabel looked entertaining. They crept over, shouting hurrahs and pretending to bow. Others spun about, imitating the dance of praise to Heria, goddess of the kitchen. The most fervent worshipper was Harat. Returning after feeding Huka, Tahyang saw the scene and spoke to Gene.
“You’d think a mother they believed dead had returned.”
“As you’ve seen, she’s about as far from motherly as anyone could be.”
“Who knows? Look at how she takes care of her sister.”
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