He was half listening.
“Small, squishy reptile.”
“Amphibian, actually, but I’m talking about culinary equipment. I believe they have been out of fashion for some time, but a salamander is essentially a thick disk of iron with a long handle.”
Green lost the thread of his morbid thoughts and remembered wondering about the tools next to the cabin’s fireplace.
“I think I saw one in the cabin, right? I wondered what that was for.”
“Just so, though you can use a hearth shovel if needed. The last,key step of cheese on toast involves heating up your salamander red-hot. Truthfully, this is the first step. You set your salamander in the fire as soon as the idea for the meal occurs. That sort of forethought was usually involved in older recipes. I always thought it added to the satisfaction of the finished product. Careful intention. Ritual.”
Green felt wrung out and on the edge of tears.
“Now, my favorite part. With the Cheshire mixture spread on your toast, you pull that almighty hot salamander from the fire and hold it just above the cheese. It bubbles and browns and the cheese sinks into the bread, components fusing into a greater whole.”
Dusk proper had arrived when they pulled into Candle-Fly Camp.
Green looked to Dancer’s office.
The light was on.
Her body was not broken and spread out by her front door.
“Have you ever had it, Mr. Green? Proper cheese on toast?”
“No. It sounds…pretty good.”
“Sometimes I think people deny themselves comforting tasks like making handcrafted meals because they are told so often how convenient their lives are. They begin to think that instant, soulless nutrition is all they need. Nonsense, of course. Go ahead and drive straight to my camp. I can abide a vehicle for one night. This vehicle has served with honors.”
Green hadn’t realized until that point, but Valentina hadn’t complained once about being a passenger on the drive back, not even with his erratic driving.
She hadn’t betrayed an ounce of fear or anger as he took mountain roads at unsafe speeds.
Damn. I must be truly pitiable.
“I’ll understand if you wish to go straight to bed,” Valentina said. “But, if I can tempt you, I have everything we need for cheese on toast and I can have the cabin hearth alive and crackling faster than you’d believe. Full moon tonight. Clear. Crisp. The cabin will be warm enough to leave the door open and let the smell of leaves in. Itwill be too cold to fret about insects. Probably not a thing to be missed.”
“What about the wolf?” he asked weakly.
“My camp is safe, Mr. Green. Our home is a safe place to rest. Put your faith in that.”
In the last light of sunset, Valentina looked very much like a witch.A witch,Green thought,who is on my side.
He decided to trust her.
He didn’t seem to have much choice.
“Okay,” he said. “I think cheese on toast would be nice.”
And it was.
“Gather what you need fora hike, Mr. Green,” Valentina called from the steps of her trailer while Green pumped water into his jug.
The pump handle was so cold he worried his skin would stick. Silver frost rimmed the clover at the pump’s base, the morning sun still too low to sweep away the night’s lingering chill.
“How far?”
He realized his question didn’t matter much the moment he asked it. It wasn’t as though he knew what he should pack for either a short hike or a long hike.
