Chapter 31: Now We’re Cooking

It took them another two weeks before they were ready to implement their design and test it out elsewhere. Surprisingly, it wasn’t building a new grill and figuring out how to scale up their freezebox that took up most of their time, but getting permits and Mack’s consent in writing to be processed before Wil could alter the land.

Of course, they did both at the same time, but between Bram and Thomas working together closer and a string of work orders to fill out, the days passed by in a dreamlike daze. One by one they disappeared, and their deadline loomed closer and closer, albeit with far less dread. They likely had enough to give Cloverton, but Wil couldn’t shake the feeling that he still needed more.

“Are you ready?” Wil asked Darlene as she slipped on a disgustingly bright maternity dress in their bedroom.

Rather than be ashamed at her growing size and inability to fit into her favorite clothes, she’d made a habit of choosing loud, obnoxious colors and maintaining her short, spiky hair in different wild styles. He loved that she took everything in stride, and faced the world with pride. Darlene was here, her clothes didn’t fit, and she was happy with herself.

“Almost,” she said, pulling the dress down. After admiring herself in the mirror, she turned to Wil to ask, “Does this dress make me look fat?” It was accompanied with an over the top pout.

“I’m pretty sure being almost eight months pregnant makes you look fat. The dress is…something, though.”

Darlene turned around, twirling bright purple and blue flowers against a pink background. “Gotta look my best for our great success, don’t I? Mack’s life is going to be changed forever.”

Wil pulled her into a hug, breathing her in. “You’re just saying that because you’ve been craving meat lately.”

She pushed him away, laughing. “So what?”

Wil drove them to Mack’s Shack, where Bram and Thomas were already hard at work. Mack and Candy stood together out front, talking to Bob and Sharon. He parked beside them in the area that had formally been for carts and carriages. He helped Darlene out and they came up.

“Hey you two!” Sharon pulled them both into a big hug. “You have no idea how excited I am for this. How are you feeling, sweetie? Any pain?”

Darlene laughed. “Every day. My feet hurt, my back hurts, everything’s sore and bloated. She won’t stop kicking, but at least the puking’s over.”

“You keep saying she,” said Wil. “I’m telling you, it’s going to be a boy.”

Bob shook his head. “Don’t count on it, Wil. If she says it’s a girl, it’s a girl.”

Mack cleared his throat. “If this doesn’t work…”

“It’s going to work,” said Candy as she slapped Mack’s arm. “Wil’s good at what he does.”

“Aw, thanks,” said Wil. “Your confidence means a lot to me.”

Darlene groaned, rolling her eyes. “Aw shucks,” she said. She thickened her accent and kicked the ground. “I’m just glad to have helped.”

Everyone, including Wil, had a good laugh. He kissed Darlene on the cheek and stepped inside. The Shack was devoid of people, save for Thomas and Bram working together in the back. Here, Thomas truly had a chance to shine. As bright as Bram was when it came to magical theory, he wasn’t much of a handyman.

“Wrench next,” said Thomas from his position on the ground. “We’ve almost got this.”

They’d torn out the big woodfire stove nicknamed Betsy that Mack had been using for going on twenty years. In its place was a sturdy, shiny sheet of metal three feet wide and ten feet across, sticking straight out of the wall. It was supported by four thin legs spread out along the outer edge, stabilizing it. The metal was a dull, almost reflective silver in color, with an upraised lip before dipping down to four equal sized sheets of metal, each connected to a mechanical dial in the front.

“Are you sure there won’t be a problem with having the runes on the bottom?” Bram handed the requested wrench to Thomas. “It looks so plain with them out of sight.”

“Better them out of sight than easily damaged or messed with,” said Wil. Both of them jumped, then looked at him. “That’s going to be the hardest thing moving forward. Making sure we can fit the runic configurations in a place where they won’t get nicked or changed at all.”

Thomas patted the bottom of the stove. “Everything looks good here, and it’s protected by a plate that I’ve attached to help protect it. We’re more likely to break the dial than anything else. Those are a pain to make, but when we go into full operation we can outsource that to someone else.”

Bram chuckled and shook his head. “You really can’t help yourself but to jump right to the end, huh? We haven’t even turned it on yet and you’re already thinking years down the line.”

“I’m a divination specialist. And while I may not be especially good at predicting the future with magic, I am still good at predicting the future. And we’re done!” Thomas tightened the final nut and slid out from under the grill. “We already set up the new and improved ice box. The Freeze-it, we’re calling it.”

Wil helped him to his feet and ran his hand along the new stove. It was funny, how much time they’d spent on this and the Freeze-it. It wasn’t hard to get the assistance of one of the local metalworkers, Anthony Bahks, to help them with the measurements and use of some of his equipment. Carefully engraving the proper runic configurations into the metal and making sure only the right parts of the oven would heat up were trickier, and then there was making sure there were slots for batteries.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The Freeze-it had been similar. Mack’s meat storage room had been emptied and then lined with its own sheet of metal. They’d almost encountered resistance when it came time to slot the batteries in to the side, as it involved cutting holes in the wall, but Mack didn’t need that much convincing. At every step of the way, Wil’s greatest contributions seemed to be his reputation in the community, and his raw magical strength.

“Then I guess I better do my part, right?” Wil said.

“Well, given we’ve been slaving away over this project for hours, yes. Get your ass moving, McKenzie!” Thomas made a shooing motion, and Bram joined in a second later. They couldn’t be called good friends yet, but they’d made an effort at getting along, at least.

“Alright, alright,” Wil said. He backed away from them, ducking melodramatically as they leaned in to shoo harder. Once outside, he stopped to kiss the back of Darlene’s head again as he headed behind Mack’s Shack to the small patch of unused land in the middle of town.

They were lucky, in so many ways. It would’ve been a choice place to build another business, or even some housing. But while Harper Valley grew faster than ever before, developing the unused land was still a slow, long term process. Another few months and Wil might not have had the freedom to play around and reshape the region.

The leyline came alive at his touch and filled him with power. It snaked across the land in a wave parallel to Mack’s Shack, along a small treeline. Wil let go and abandoned himself to the process. After moving leylines around for two months now, it had become second nature. The ground shifted beneath his feet, trees moved along as well, roots and all carried with the dirt.

The zigzag of the leyline stretched, and turned itself around, forming a loop at the end of a line. Wil pivoted, guiding the stream of magic along as it circled in on itself, forming the rune for Feed. In the future they’d experiment with others, but it was what they had for now. The land settled, and he released the leyline.

When Wil opened his eyes, he winced. It wasn’t as drastic as the damage on the Stevenson farm, but developing the land there would be problematic. The trees had moved and formed a circle, with rocks spiraling inwards into an upraised spire of land. For a fifty foot radius or so, the land wouldn’t be able to be easily changed, lest they disturb the leyline.

“Did it work?” Bob asked as he came back around. “I heard a bunch of noise back there. Sounded like some trees split in half.”

“No,” said Wil, “they just walked around some. The leyline feels right to me, and it should be able to power anything within half a mile or so of it. So all that’s left is trying it out and making sure everything is safe.”

“Excellent!” said Sharon, clapping her hands once. “I think we could all use a bite to eat. Especially Darlene.”

Darlene looked irritated, but then shrugged and nodded her agreement. “It’s going to be a relief when I go back to eating normal amounts of food. You could stand to go on a diet with me, afterwards.”

“Me?” Wil asked, feigning hurt.

“Not on my watch,” said Mack. “If this works the way you say it will, you eat for free here forever. You’ll never be in want of good food. Let’s go check this out!”

One by one they all poured in to where Bram and Thomas waited, sodas in hand. Wil escorted Darlene in, his arm thrown around her shoulder. She leaned into him and they waited as Mack went up to the stove.

“The dials work like this,” said Thomas, gesturing to the stove. “There are five different settings, based on the heat you need. The first one can be summed up as keep warm, and the last one is ‘boiling water’ temperature, and the middle are…”

“Somewhere in the middle?” Mack asked, making a face. “I know my way around a stove just fine. It might take a little bit to get used to it, but no problem. Candy, you want to get me today’s lunch?”

Candy crossed the line separating customers from employees and went to the storage room, where Bram waited. He held up a hand and pointed to the dial at the door, as well as the bar keeping it shut.

“First thing you have to know is that you want to set the Freeze-it to ‘neutral’ before you open it. You do not want to enter this thing when it’s too cold, or get stuck in it. This setting right here?” He pointed to the most prominent marking on the dial. It was a partial rune, not a number. “This is a simple freeze, and you shouldn’t need to adjust it much more than this. But this…” he moved his finger over to the other prominent marking, on the far side of the dial.

“This is blizzard. It’s really good for flash freezing things, but it takes a lot of power and I repeat, you do not want to be caught inside while it’s on. I don’t think you’d last long.” Bram clapped his hands together and leaned against the doorway. “Any questions?”

Candy stood there frozen, one hand halfway to the handle. “Is this thing safe?” she asked.

“It’s safe if you and everyone else take all the proper precautions,” said Wil, coming up to the demarcation line as well. “We kept it really simple on purpose, but you shouldn’t let anyone back here to mess with it until we collect enough data.”

Candy’s hesitation stretched on another few seconds before she nodded. She touched the bar locking the door, then stopped and set the dial to neutral first. She opened the heavy metal door, and shivered at the blast of cold air that escaped. With one more nervous look she dipped inside, grabbing a box and darting back out.

She set it beside their new stove, and Mack turned on the stove to the second to highest setting. He held his hand out over it and his mouth formed a surprised O. “It’s working!” He licked his finger and tapped the stove, pulling it away instantly. “It’s warming up fast, too. You’re sure this won’t burn my place down?”

“If we did our job right, it won’t heat anything but the metal in the center. Which will of course radiate heat in the area, but Bram is already working on a solution to that.”

“Oh yeah?” Mack’s head craned over his shoulder at Bram. “Like what?”

The giant brought his hands up and wiggled his fingers. “Like maybe some kind of heatsink up on the ceiling, siphoning heat in the area and making everything around it cooler as it vents the heat through the roof.”

“Imagine that in the summer,” said Thomas. He straightened his bowtie, looking pleased with himself. “You are in a position to be the first nonmagical person to have an entirely magical eatery in the world, by the time we’re done.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Mack, “but I’m open to more improvements. For now…You want rare or medium rare?”

“What if I say well done?” Thomas asked with mischief in his eyes.

“Then I say ‘get out’,” Mack returned with a wolfish grin.

The kitchen erupted with laughter. Bob and Sharon took stools at the counter, while Wil and his team grabbed a nearby booth. Mack pulled out some frozen hunks of ground beef, already formed into patties and threw it onto the new stove. The sizzling hiss was the sweetest sound they’d heard in weeks.

“So, success,” said Darlene, taking an offered drink from Candy before the waitress joined Mack back in the kitchen.

“Success!” Bram echoed, raising his bottle of grape soda in a toast.

“Success,” said Thomas, a small, contented smile on his face.

“So,” said Wil. “Now what?”