Mikhail thought the baker’s glittering black eyes were one of the most ominous pairs he’d ever seen, and he was used to the solid yellow glare of the turquoise puffball clinging to his shoulder. It was odd, what he’d grown used to at Wizurg Magical Academy.
Pepper cheeped in agreement.
Odd. I didn’t even say it out loud. The bite that had given him the trick to understanding the deadly creatures seemed to be ever-drawing the two nearer.
“Pies!” Liza whispered excitedly to him. The floating fire extinguishers hovering over her shoulders gave a clanking dance. “I love hand pies.”
“Not pies,” the beady-eyed man sniffed haughtily, and burst into a flurry of rapid French that Mikhail didn’t follow. “Pastry. I am a pastry chef. And nothing so mundane as hand pies when I will show you the most beautiful tart.”
Someone near the enormous kitchen door snickered.
Chef ignored the juvenile humor, which was inevitable given the pack of adolescent wizards staring at the man. “Next year, you make your own crust. This year, basics.”
He pursed narrow lips together and used air quotes around the last word.
“Bah. Leaving out the most important step, as if it were not the most basic building block to a good pastry, as if you should not start with good fundamentals, but no, anything beyond biscuits is too hard for first years. Filling only. D’accord.“
At least, that’s what Mikhail thought the chef said, but he was soon too busy to notice the eccentric chef’s quirks. Instead, he was covered in flour, rolling premade dough and creating a filling from the directions on a small white card.
Liza was similarly sprinkled across the table, while Pepper taking a nap atop the pile of satchels that overflowed the entrance cubbies. “Seems weird to take a cooking class.”
“Pastry,” she corrected him without looking up rolling out from her own dough. A half-grin gave her away. “Besides, he’s not wrong. Can’t get to kitchen witchery without having the basics down.”
“Is that why the ingredients are so unusual? I don’t recognize half of what’s on the list.” He didn’t want to, either. The item listed as “hiwort” had resembled a slug far too much for his taste. It had even wiggled.
It would, however, have been nice if he’d known kitchen witchery existed. Most days, Mikhail carried a serious disadvantage, not knowing anything most of his peers considered normal.
“Oh, it’ll be delicious,” she murmured. “No matter how odd the ingredients are. That’s Chef’s gift. The question you should be asking isn’t whether it will taste good.”
She paused to fold her circle of dough into quarters and lifted it into a pie tin.
He couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “No?”
“No,” she agreed, her fingers flying around the edges to flute the crust, nearly as fast as Chef’s had been during the demonstration. “The question you should be asking is, what will happen after you eat the pie?”
***
A slight twist to Padre’s prompt this week: Despite the unorthodox ingredients, the pie was delicious.
Mine went to Becky Jones: The classroom came alive with each lesson…unfortunately.
