13. Gelatinous Ooze
13
Gelatinous Ooze
JACOB
In the morning, she starts in, almost before I’ve finished my bow.
“You have to learn to eat foods you don’t like.”
“Is this about the Finnish paving tar?” My nose wrinkles, and she points at my face.
“See? That. We can’t have that. We have to address it,” she declares, “or the press is going to eat you alive.” Her voice drops. “I can’t let that happen.”
“You think that’s going to tip the scale? My expression? We can clean up my beard and these clothes and maybe even make me smile like a zekle all the time, but I’ve got problems before I even walk through the door.”
“What problems?” she snaps. “We can solve the problems. I’m not going to give anyone a reason to talk down to you.”
I shake my head, shoving my hands into my pockets. “They’ll eat me alive no matter what I do. I’m an American bastard—”
“Stop it,” Alma shouts, pounding the table with the flat of her hand. When the last echoes of it die away, she closes her eyes. “That is the last time I hear you speak of yourself that way.”
I shrug. “I don’t care what anyone says about me.”
She takes a long drag of air. “Of course you do. This thing”—her hand waves to my tired suit and my loose posture—“is part of who you are. It’s casual, it’s American, but it’s also an act.”
I could say a few things about her smooth hair and perfect makeup. “I’ve never tried to hide who I am.”
Her jaw sets. “You’re smart, Jacob. You figured out that when people were being dismissive about your abilities or your speech or your mother”—I tense—“you wouldn’t play their game. You’d rather flip over the game board than give them the satisfaction of beating you.”
“Did you get that from the dossier?” I grit out. “What else do you think you know about me?”
“I know you’re loyal. I know your family and your home mean everything. You don’t want the people you love to think you’ve outgrown them.”
“Are you a fortune teller, Alma?” I ask, shifting under her close examination. “Am I having my stars read? Is failure supposed to bring shame on the House of Gardner? It won’t fly. I have a great uncle who died in a shootout after robbing a bank. My cousin owns a junkyard.”
She shakes my arm. “Stop it. Just admit you’re getting good at this—the forms of address, making a proper bow, the correct way to eat peas—when you’re hardly even trying. Think of how good you could be if you tried .”
As refined and royal as Alma is, she’s a dog with a bone. There’s no wrestling her out of an idea once she’s fixed on it, and soon she adds another element to our routine each evening—the preparing and consuming of culinary abominations from around the world.
She’s still engaged. I tell myself that I’m not enjoying it too much. It’s a lie.
Over the course of several nights, we eat cheese with live insect larvae, pickled seal flippers, and a kind of fish that, if prepared improperly, will lead to a sudden, violent death.
“You can’t be serious,” I told her one night over a dish of gelatinous ooze. “I thought we were going to try things like haggis and cheese in a can.”
“Haggis is delicious.” She scooted the dish closer. “I’ve sincerely eaten every one of these things on diplomatic missions for my mother.”
I prodded the ooze. “Have you ever wondered if people hate Sondmark and this is their way to make sure you never come back?”
She propped her chin on her fists. “Dig in, Jacob.”
The way she says my name is what keeps me doing this, night after night. Every second we spend together, I have to act like I’m not interested, like her nearness means nothing, like I wouldn’t crawl over broken glass if she asked me to.
When it’s my turn to offer her a dish, I start simple, bringing Alma a container of raw pickled herring. She takes one look and smiles. “I’ll dish them up.”
I get a fire started in the fireplace, bending low to blow the embers into life, and wander around the sitting room, picking off the remaining sticky notes—vocabulary lessons which remind me of the man whose country and language she’s forcing herself to adopt—and toss them into the fire.
The frustration of her engagement feels like an ache in the palms of my hands, and I open a folder containing translations of select human interest columns from the Sondish news outlets to distract myself.
Over the last weeks, I’ve learned that the press is divided about the wisdom of Princess Clara’s lawsuit. Prince Noah receives generally positive coverage except from the Daily Worker , whose columnists refer to him as “an inherently exploitative product of monarcho-capitalistic hierarchies.”
Princess Ella is a favorite, but the image the press has is one of their own creation, cobbled together from her candid photos and off-the-cuff remarks. The press is eking every bit of newsprint from Princess Freja’s elopement that they can, running constant photos of the newlyweds touring some of Florence’s best museums or wandering through markets.
I slide the folder onto the coffee table and crouch in front of the dollhouse. Alma’s upcoming marriage to Pietor is discussed in the press with a breathless disregard for named sources. An anonymous vendor claims they’ve set a June wedding date. A “close friend” suggests the groom’s conservationism will play a major role in the smallest details—locally sourced and seasonal flowers, organic elderberry cake, and bee-friendly seed packets given as favors.
All this royal nonsense should be a joke, but I’m not laughing. I hate Pietor. Even if he adopted stray puppies and donated a quarter of his income to rewilding the countryside, I’d still hate him.
Alma carries a tray in from the kitchen, gently negotiating the furniture, clad in a soft sweater and dark slacks.
I look away, training my eyes on the dollhouse. Focusing on it like I’m charged with its restoration, trying to forget my reaction to her. The roofline is a mix of craggy medieval crenelations and delicate French turrets. The face of it marries Ostphalian timber framing and stone, more harmonious than the actual palace, which meanders without order along the headland. These craftsmen cut away anything which couldn’t be contained within the sharp confines of a childish rectangle.
“Ready?” she asks.
I take a breath before I turn my head, bracing myself. “Can I open this?”
“Sure.” She scoots around the coffee table, and I unfold from the crouch, taking the tray and setting it down. Our fingers brush. I scrub the sensation away on my jeans.
“There’s nothing to see. All the accessories are packed away and stuffed inside,” she continues, nodding to the dollhouse.
“Why did you put it in here if you’re just going to keep it closed up?” Other people forget to put things away, get careless or lazy. Not Alma. If she carves out room in her life for a thing, it matters.
She shrugs like it doesn’t. “It was just taking up space in the nursery. It was a gift from the government of Schwascle when we hosted them for a state visit.”
I trace a finger along the ridgeline. “You played with it?”
She busies herself, loading up a plate with the Vorburgian delicacy. Her nose doesn’t even wrinkle at the scent of pickled herring when she hands it over.
“Yes. Our British governess taught us to handle priceless things in a careful manner.” My ability to distract her with questions about the dollhouse is a sign she might not be wholeheartedly looking forward to her meal.
Going to the dollhouse, she swings the front panel wide. I expected magic. I expected the inside to match the richness of the exterior. Instead, more than a dozen ornate rooms are packed to the ceilings with paper-wrapped parcels
“But?” She doesn’t like my questions, but she doesn’t lecture me every time I ask one anymore.
She lifts a shoulder. “We were five little kids. It was fragile. No matter how disciplined we were, pieces broke. That’s what happens when something is not just for show.” Her nose scrunches in memory. “There used to be a rocking-horse. I wasn’t careful enough, and it broke,” she says, pointing to one of the highest rooms. The nursery.
“Didn’t you fix it?”
“I wouldn’t know how to fix it.” She nudges my shoulder, the light touch disturbing my calm surface. “Time for dinner,” she says, serving herself.
“That’s an…elegant portion.” I cock my brow and heap my plate.
She quickly finishes a thin sliver of pickled herring while I demolish mine and ask for seconds. The fact that she hasn’t gagged even once is disappointing, but returning the tray to the kitchen, I see the remains of the fish, lying in a row.
“Well, well, well.”
Alma brushes by me to scrape the dishes. “It’s not the right season,” she insists, filling the sink with hot water and suds. Pushing her sleeves to her elbows, she slips her engagement ring onto the counter and dons pink rubber gloves, scrubbing vigorously. Hair has worked out of her bun, and pieces of it are sticking to her skin, damp in a cloud of steam. I imagine bracing my hands on either side of her waist, pushing the hair off her neck, and following it with a kiss.
I hate Pietor.
I try to do the thing she’s trying to teach me—to carjack my human emotions, stuff them in the trunk, and drive them off a high bridge. It’s the memory of my grandma smacking my knuckles with a wooden spoon that convinces me to keep my hands to myself.
“Those herring are too lean,” she explains, attempting to sound rational. She’s adorable, and she’s failing. “They’re not in season.”
“My people eat pickled herring year-round,” I say, looking up at the ceiling, crowded in this tiny kitchen. There’s nowhere else to be. I grab a towel, wiping the counters and the top of the fridge where Housekeeping has already been. “And the whole point was to eat pickled herring like a Vorburgian.”
“You don’t eat them like this until May,” she counters, the words high-pitched, desperate. “They don’t get fat until the North Sea gets warmer. Did you know that the custom started during the reign of—of…?” Her words trail off and she swipes the back of her wrist on her forehead, leaving behind a trail of soap.
“Eating raw herring is an established culinary tradition,” I say, brushing a thumb across her brow.
“It’s a dare that got out of hand,” she snaps. Alma clamps her lips together and plunges her hands into the sink. “You’ll be expected to take the first bite of the new catch when you’re king—right off the boat. They’ll like you even more if you carve it up with your own knife.”
“I already do that,” I say, reaching around her. I pinch the tail of a herring and drag it through onion and dill. “I’d never even seen this kind of fish until my first term at the Royal Academy.”
Alma sees what I’m not saying. “What happened?”
“Kind of gruesome,” I warn her. “On my first day of school, a group of boys—the best blood in Vorburg, so I was told—held me down and stuffed my mouth full of the stuff.”
Her brows lower in a snap and her eyes flash. “You had bullies?” The memory is too old to sting, but at her look, I fear for their lives.
“Not much,” I grin. “Anyway, the joke was on them. Pickled herring is the best.”
Sondmark doesn’t agree. They’re too civilized for the raw, lightly brined delicacy, plucked straight from a fishmonger’s cart and eaten on the spot. Even when they eat it for good luck, they shudder.
“You’ve got to try it the Vorburgian way,” I insist.
Her nostrils flare. “Fine.”
“You should be glad they’re so skinny,” I say. “There’s less to consume.”
With a strained expression, she draws a gloved finger down her neck, pushing the hair back. Her tongue darts between her teeth, moistening dry lips.
“You first,” she says.
Easy. Raising the herring above my head, I tilt my chin back and lower the fish to take a salty bite. I lock eyes with Alma—a taunting, rounding-the-bases, home run celebration—as I swallow. Then I catch something she wouldn’t want me to see.
Attraction.
She blinks, the flash is gone, and she lifts her chin like a baby bird. “Ah,” she prods, and the sound has me positioning the fish above her mouth. As it nears, her nose wrinkles. She closes her eyes and sways.
I steady her, snaking an arm around her waist. Her pink rubber gloves lift slightly, suspended at her side, but she doesn’t push me away. It hurts to draw air.
“That face would get you tossed out of the country,” I breathe.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she says, a fisted glove drumming lightly on my arm.
“Here goes.”
She takes a stingy bite, holding it in the well of her mouth. “Ah, aw, eh,” she breathes, gagging it down, punctuating each chew with a miserable moan. She clutches my shirt front with her gloves and burrows in my arms.
A laugh rumbles through my chest. “You’re going to have to work on your game-face before I let you loose at the St Jusuf’s Day festivities.”
“ Vede ,” she gasps, “How do you do it?” She rips a glove off and holds the back of her wrist to her mouth, gagging against my shirt. I don’t mind. “Is St Jusuf’s for singles? No one is going to want to kiss this mouth ever again.”
I give another laugh, trying to break up the incredible tightness of my chest. “The tradition is that you’re supposed to kiss someone who just ate some, too.”
The words are out of my mouth before I’ve thought them through. The realization hits both of us at the same time, and we freeze, my hand on her waist, closer even than we were on that midnight.
I’m afraid there aren’t enough wooden spoons in the world to keep me from reaching for what I want. I draw a breath, but before I can move, there’s a tap on the door and someone clearing his throat.
“ Chol nia , Karl,” I grit out.
I look up but the man at the door isn’t Karl. The stranger’s light brown hair is streaked with blond highlights, his skin has a deep, nutty tan, and his shiny half-boots look fit for grinding the faces of the poor.
“I don’t know who Karl is,” he drawls, waves of European nobility sheeting off an enormous forehead, “but I know my fiancée when I see her.” His gaze flicks pointedly to my arm.
Alma wiggles in my tight grip, a flush on her cheeks.
“Pietor.”