“Now you know I’m not one to cause a fuss,” Dorothy whispered, “but I fear your risotto may have turned my sweet Caleb into a cannibal.”
Flynn stopped just shy of dropping the tray of soiled dishes he was carrying. He’d been in the middle of busing tables, in between braising a hamhock, starting a fresh pot of soup, and mulling over which of a half dozen applicants should be his newest hire for the kitchen — his fifth this month. But now Dorothy, the sweet older lady from down in the Hollows, had his full and undivided attention.
“A-a cannibal?” Flynn asked, an easy octave and a half higher than his normal speaking voice. He then broke out in a burst of laughter that could best be described as frantically casual. “Y-you, you think my risotto…caused your child…I mean, that’s…”
He laughed again, again frantically casually.
Dorothy looked down at her feet. “I know how it sounds, Mr. Flynn,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the din of the busy dining room. “And the last thing I want is to be a bother, you having to keep up with your fine new restaurant and all. But I’ve had to lock the boy under the stairs, on account of him eating Father Rudd’s face and all.”
A sudden feeling of weakness came over Flynn, and his tray of plates clattered onto the countertop with a sharp noise that drew eyes from all across the dining room. He blanched and waved to the room with a sickly smile. Gradually, everyone went back to their meals.
“Your boy,” Flynn hissed, turning slowly back to Dorothy, “ate Father Rudd’s face?”
Dorothy nodded, still staring at the floor. “Have you not heard? It was during morning vespers today. Half the town was there. Wee Caleb had been sweating and mumbling to himself all morning. Then alls of the sudden, he just…leapt up from his pew, latched himself onto the poor man’s lapels, and just set to….feasting, like.”
Flynn’s face had gone fully green; his eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets. “And, and, and…” he gaped, “…and what makes you think my…my cooking has anything to do with this…horror?”
Dorothy took a deep breath.
“Well, see…last night, I brought Caleb here for supper. We hadn’t had so much as a crust of bread between us for a week. We were saving up, you see, to sample your fine cooking.” She looked out around the dining room; there wasn’t a single empty table. “It’s all anyone in the valley’s been talking about since you first come back from your adventuring and hung out your shingle.”
“Me, I’d never heard of anyone opening a kitchen just for mushroom dishes before. It sounds like the kind of thing a body might see in one of the big coast towns, but I figure, ‘Maybe Mr. Flynn saw such a thing when he set to traveling with that fine fae lady who came through the valley some years hence.’” Sheepishly, Dorothy glanced up at Flynn. “The one with the antler horn crown.”
“Cheryl,” Flynn mumbled, his mind suddenly far away. “Cheryl Doomflute.”
“Aye.” Dorothy nodded. “What an impressive lass she is, to hear the minstrels’ songs of her. Traveling the countryside. Putting wrongs to right. Protecting the downtrodden. Why, I heard tell of a time when Cheryl Doomflute and a ‘trusty companion’ of her’s went sightseeing in the Deep Dark Below, and they came upon a village of diggers who were beset by a colony of creatures who’d been the creation of a foul wizard’s enchantment.”
All at once, a chill ran through Flynn’s blood. He looked over to Dorothy. Dorothy looked back at him and gave him a little smile.
“Mushroom folk, they were,” she said. “Man mushrooms and woman mushrooms and boy and girl mushrooms walking around, talking…eating people’s faces… Have you ever heard of such a thing, Mister Flynn?”
Flynn’s eyes narrowed.
“So Lady Doomflute,” Dorothy continued, “she’s got a great and abiding love for all things natural. So she tries to find a way to break the wizard’s curse. But no luck. And she tries to lure the beasties into a far distant part of the underground where they won’t hurt no ones. Again, no luck.”
“So in the end, when it comes down to a question of the lives of the diggers or the shadowy half-lives of the mushroom folk, Lady Doomflute produces her shillelagh…and proceeds to put down the whole rabid lot of them. Dozens. Dozens and dozens of the most fearsome creatures ever you’ve seen. Dispatched, quick and sure, in a whirl of spinning wood. Leaving naught but huge piles of spongy fungus.”
In the kitchen, Flynn could smell his hamhock burning. Dorothy sat down at the counter. “Pour me a drink, would you, Flynn?” she said. Laugh lines etched outward from her eyes as she smiled.
“As I reckon it, the Lady Doomflute continued her travels, heading south. But little is told of her ‘trusty companion’ and what became of him. Or what became of the mortal remains of the mushroom folk, for that matter. Though I found myself wondering about them yesterday evening, as I sampled your fine risotto…which truly is delicious, by the by…though I found the texture of the mushrooms in it…somewhat offputting.”
“And I also wondered about them later that night, as my dreams were haunted by strange, ungodly images, and voices impelling me to feast on warm, wriggling flesh.”
“And I wondered about them again this morning, when my wee Caleb woke up with a string of drool hanging from his lower lip, complaining of a hunger that wouldn’t go away, no matter what I put in front of him.”
“And I certainly wondered about them at vespers,” Dorothy said, staring dead into Flynn’s twitching, bloodshot eyes, “when Caleb ate the face off a holy man.” She leaned in then, and whispered: “And it was all I could do to keep from joining him in the feast.”
Flynn shuddered visible and pulled away.
“Wh-what do you want?” he stammered.
Dorothy looked out at the dining room, filled to the rafters with eagerly paying customers. “Half,” she said with a sneer. “And burn all those foul, bewitched mushrooms in your cellar. Tonight.”
# # #
Later that night, Dorothy rode her old nag out to the old church at Wyndcress and Aesic. Having tied the horse to a tree, she sat her aging bones onto a log by a small fire. Nearby, a brown bear snored in the tall grass.
“Tis done,” she announced with a grin. “I watched him set the fire meself. Downwind of town, like you said.”
Cheryl Doomflute’s shoulders relaxed visibly. “What a relief,” she said. “And Father Rudd?”
“The old rascal took up stage magic when he was younger to entertain the young’uns.” Dorothy stretched her back, which was sore from the ride. “Once I gave him that anonymous donation on your behalf, he was only too happy to play along. Even introduced a dab of fake blood into the proceedings to make the whole thing more convincing.”
Cheryl laughed, which turned gradually into a weary sigh. “You know, I wouldn’t give up this life I lead for anything, but sometimes I think the clean-up afterward will be the death of me.” She shook her head. “Serving the corpses of evil myconids to his friends and family. For Daerdra’s sake…I have the worst taste in sidekicks.”
She looked up at Dorothy’s face, illuminated by the fire. “I owe you one, Ms. Dorothy.”
“Not at all,” she said with a grin. “Now, should the town ever find out that wee Caleb actually is a cannibal, we can just blame it on Flynn.”
Cheryl cocked her head to the side. “Wait…what?”
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Excerpted from “Pirogi of the Damned” by E.V. Toombs. Unused submission for Vagabond Monthly’s Blood in the Kitchen anthology, Riverwood House Publishing, 1979.
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