“What’s that?” Archie pointed at a compact array of dirt disks stuck to a stone wall. Near the monastery, none of the buildings had the disks, but the farther out Hawthorn led them, the more the disks appeared.

  “You don’t know?” Hawthorn asked, his mouth open in his typical grin. He looked at Barley, who barely contained a laugh as he shook his head. “Well, you’ll find out soon enough.”

  Archie squinted to try to see better as they walked past the wall. The circles definitely weren’t part of the wall. They reminded Archie of the mud pies he’d make as a kid. While they didn’t get close, Archie could smell grass mixed with something else. Almost all of Khaldeer smelled like that—even the most urban parts.

  As they neared the outskirts of the city, the buildings got more sparse and community gardens were replaced by real farms and goat pens. Hawthorn pointed out the occasional chicken coop—the sign of a rich man in Khaldeer.

  “What great weather,” Hawthorn said as he held his arms out and looked up to the sky, beholding the day. “Not too cold, not too warm. Just a little breeze.”

  Archie begged to differ. Tired of his Chef jacket being covered, he had stretched it to fit over three layers of shirts. While Hawthorn called it the perfect summer day, Archie would call it a chilly mid-autumn one. In Ambrosia City, summer meant stiff air, humidity, and sweaty underwear. In Khaldeer, it meant the air could still shock your lungs in the morning if you breathed in too hard—which Archie was doing. No matter how hard he sucked in air, he could never seem to catch his breath.

  “Man, if you’re struggling now, just wait until you get some altitude,” Hawthorn teased. “Air is gonna be awful thin up in Jakha. Even I was struggling up there.”

  Archie closed his mouth into a frown, forcing heavy breaths through his nose.

  “What’d you do for them when you were there?” Barley asked. His troubled breathing seemed harmonious compared to Archie’s ragged gasps.

  “Pretty standard stuff. Sowing and whatnot. We got called away early, actually. Someone spotted a yeti a couple days north.”

  “A yeti?!” Archie’s excitement outweighed his exhaustion. “You guys actually see yetis?”

  “Oh, well, I saw this one from quite a ways away. It was my first time seeing one, but I know they sometimes come down the mountain a bit. Generally, we steer clear of them. They’ll go back on their own.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Hawthorn realized he hadn’t given Archie the answer he wanted. “Sometimes a yeti will get aggressive,” Hawthorn continued. “Usually they’ll attack a shepherd. Take his flock. Sometimes more. We send some fighters to take care of it.”

  “Did you fight this one?”

  “Nope. Just monitored it for a bit.”

  Archie was relentless. “Do you know anyone who has fought a yeti?”

  “Yeah. They send Picea all the time to deal with the unruly ones. If you’re looking for tips, she’s your lady.”

  Archie imagined the great blonde woman wrestling a yeti into submission. He didn’t have half her muscle, but maybe he could make up the distance with some clever pastamancy. He wished he was training with her, not going out into the fields to help with yaks.

  They crossed the halfway point of the Khaldeer Valley, leaving the city and entering the flat stretch of grasslands where the farmers and shepherds worked. They passed several herds of yaks and goats and sheep before someone called out to them.

  “Hawthorn!” A tall man, perhaps in his late thirties—the dirt on his face made it hard to tell—waved as he rounded up a group of yaks. As he ran around the cattle, his long black hair bounced, the back of it reaching his shoulders and the front drooping past his eyes and stopping just short of his hooked nose and dark mustache.

  “Buart!” Hawthorn ran to meet him, colliding in a brotherly hug. “These are my friends, Archie and Barley.”

  Archie had half a mind to reintroduce himself as Archie Kent, but figured his family legacy wasn’t going to get revived in a yak farm in a faraway land.

  “Hello,” Buart yelled. “Thanks for coming all the way out here to help.” He beckoned them over with a wave of the hand. “Come on over and I’ll get you started.”

  The three Chefs followed Buart over to a small, single-story stone building with a pen outside. He pulled a yak by a rope connected to its nose ring, leading it into the pen and stopping next to a pile of thin, flat rocks.

  “So Head Chef Picea said your yaks have a reputation,” Barley said as he closed the gate behind him.

  “Meanest in the land,” Hawthorn added.

  “That’s right!” Buart brushed back a lock of hair and smiled, revealing teeth that shone in contrast to his muddied face. He seemed as chipper as Hawthorn, even in all of the mud talking about how difficult his job was. Archie found that baffling.

  “Most yakdaws were born into it,” Buart continued. “Fathers and fathers of fathers that built up a herd. Not me. No yaks to grow up with. But once my muscles started coming in, I started working for another yakdaw. Then the muscles kept coming.”

  He flexed an arm. Even with his padded overcoat, the shape of his bicep popped out. The yak next to him started to shift from one leg to the other, but Buart patted it to calm it down.

  “There was one yak in particular that gave the old man a tough time. Real wild one. I was the only one that could handle it. He wanted to get rid of it. So I took it. Started a herd of one. I was lucky it was a girl,” he laughed. “By the next year, I had sold enough milk and fur to have just enough to buy a yak with a good temperament. So I used the money to buy two with a bad temperament.”

  Hawthorn laughed as he introduced himself to the yak with a pat on the nose. The yak twitched away from the first attempt but allowed the second.

  “Turns out,” Buart continued, “that every yakdaw has a yak or two they’re willing to sell for cheap just to get it off their hands. And so…” He gestured out at the herd of yak out grazing. “I built my herd on rejects and troublemakers. Got about twenty now.”

  Archie envied the man. As different as their lifestyles and circumstances were, he had built a legacy despite starting with less and not even becoming a Chef. Archie admired the ingenuity and the work ethic.

  Buart nodded at the yak. “This one hasn’t been extracted since Winter’s Blossom. Should be a good harvest. Got your slabs there. I’ll bring another around in a minute.”

  “Alright, we’ll take it from here,” Hawthorn said. Once Buart left, Hawthorn turned to Archie and Barley. “One of you want to go first?”

  Archie realized he had never questioned what his job actually was. “Um, I’m sorry. First to do…what?”

  “Extraction,” Hawthorn answered. He laughed. “I mean, I guess we can milk them too, but Buart can manage that on his own.”

  Barley looked down in shame. “We don’t know how to do extraction,” he admitted.

  “Oh, right, you guys have just done the one year. Yeah, they taught us in our second year. Wanted us to have better mastery of our essence before trying it so we don’t hurt the animal.”

  “They teach it to us in our third year,” Barley stated.

  “What? That’s crazy.” Hawthorn smiled and shook his head. “I mean, I knew the Academy was more cooking focused, but still. The Monastery teaches us extraction in our first year. If they didn’t, people would starve.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Are you in your third year?” Archie asked, eager to get the conversation away from his shortcomings.

  “Yep. Got two stripes my first go around, like you. Missed it by a point. Bad foraging score. Then got my yellow jacket the following midterms.” He looked at his green sleeves with pride. “Managed to ace the exams this last year. I was second in my class!”

  “That’s so weird to me,” Archie said. “The foraging score. The fact that you’re graded differently.”

  “Up until you’re a Blue Jacket, each of the Culinary Academies gets to do their own thing. You guys do two cooking challenges right? I guess it makes sense that you wouldn’t have foraging. You guys probably don’t need it down there. You know, Uroko has two cooking categories too. Probably why all the best Chefs come from there.”

  Archie scowled. “All the best Chefs come from Ambrosia City.”

  “No,” Hawthorn said with a playful dip of his shoulder. “The best Chefs go to Ambrosia City. Your food culture is just other food cultures.”

  Archie couldn’t wait for their next spar.

  “Alright, well, enough chitter chatter,” Hawthorn said. “Looks like I’m doing triple work. Can’t have you wasting the yak’s essence.”

  Archie and Barley shared a sigh. Neither enjoyed being useless.

  “But here,” Hawthorn said. “Archie, you first. Come here. Put one hand here and the other on the yak.”

  Hawthorn directed Archie’s hand toward a rectangular slab of stone. “Do you know how extraction works?”

  “Sort of.” Archie thought back to Simeon, one of the few Chefs that lived in Sain, and his pig sty. Archie always loved watching the Chef turn stone into meat.

  “Well, I’ll give you a little refresher, then. Try to feel the essence as I explain. But don’t interfere.”

  Hawthorn put his hands next to Archie’s, one on the stone and one on the yak.

  “So the idea is that we can extract meat from the animal without hurting it. Extracting really isn’t a perfect word for it. It’s more like we’re transferring the essence of meat from the animal to the stone.”

  The yak started moving restlessly again. Archie felt the yak’s essence prime and shift toward Hawthorn.

  “The essence in the yak is sort of in the…let’s say spiritual shape of meat. We extract this spirit of meat from the animal without extracting the physical meat.”

  Archie felt the stone change before he saw it change. The essence of the yak flowed into it, causing it to start turning pink.

  “Using our body as a conduit, we move this spirit to the stone. Stone is good for it because since it’s not food, it has no spirit. We don’t have to wipe anything away. And we use the stone’s physical frame to contain the spirit of meat. That’s why we chip the stones into little slabs.”

  Deep pools of red formed on the rock as an edge turned to a shiny white.

  “It’s all about minimizing the work the yak essence has to do to transform the stone. When an amateur does it, they might hurt the yak. And they’d probably use all of its essence just to make one piece of meat.”

  Archie felt the process finish. Instead of a stone, he held a slab of meat that started to bend away under its own weight.

  “Cool,” Archie said.

  “Alright Barley, you’re up,” Hawthorn declared as he tossed the meat onto a large wicker platter.

  The yak started pawing at the ground as Barley squatted down next to it. Archie steered clear of its head as he walked away, not wanting to get too close to its forearm-sized horns.

  Archie reflected on the essence he felt. He stared off into the distance, a wonderful daydream taking him over. He was back in Ambrosia City. Back at the Academy. Back with all of his friends. Quince would teach them about extraction. But Archie was already an expert. He’d perform extraction with such expertise that the other students would be forced to admit their inferiority.

  The yak’s groan brought Archie back to reality. It kicked back, sending mud flying from its hoof.

  “Uh, hey Archie?” Hawthorn asked, his voice showing uncertainty for the first time since Archie had known him. “Can you try to calm her down?”

  “Uh…” Archie took a step toward the yak, who responded by spinning its head left and right, swinging its horn back and forth. It pawed at the ground, shifting around with increasing intensity. Archie raised a hand, hoping to pat it like Buart had.

  But the yak didn’t know Archie like it knew Buart.

  The beast let out a loud grunt and swung its head at Archie. He managed to step back just in time, the horn swinging a foot from his face. With Archie out of the way, the yak shifted its attention to Hawthorn and Barley. It stomped its back leg near Hawthorn, prompting him to dive away.

  Barley fell from his squatted position, landing near the yak’s front. The beast recognized Barley’s vulnerability and capitalized on it, pivoting and swinging its head down. The horn headed straight for Barley’s stomach.

  Before Hawthorn could manage a yell, Archie managed the situation.

  His conjured noodle wrapped around one of the yak’s horns, pulling it away just enough to cause its horns to swing harmlessly through the air. As Barley rolled to safety, the yak changed targets.

  It charged at Archie, head lowered. Archie couldn’t pull the yak with it charging at him, and he didn’t have time to think of another solution. He braced his arms in front of him and tried to activate his sugarskin. But he knew he would be too slow…

  Bamboo shot up from the earth. The yak crashed into it with a crack!

  Archie looked around. Hawthorn had a hand planted firmly on the ground, his jovial expression having been replaced by that of a fighter. He had saved Archie.

  The yak swiped sideways at the bamboo to take it to the ground, then held its head up, its bloodlust sated. The bamboo faded away into nothing.

  In the distance, Buart laughed. “Are you guys okay?” he yelled.

  “We’re good!” Hawthorn yelled back. He shot Archie a wild smile. “Pastamancy. I like it.”

  “I—it—you,” Archie stammered, adrenaline having robbed him of his ability to speak. “You saved me. Thank you.”

  “You did good at first. But once it charged you, you froze up. Shoulda taken out its legs.”

  Archie had thought himself a fighter ever since Tarragon had recognized his potential. But Archie realized having the spirit of a fighter didn’t mean you knew how to fight. “Sorry.”

  “Ah, you’re fine. Barley, you good?”

  Barley had scooted back on his butt until he hit the pile of stone slabs. “I’ll be okay.”

  Hawthorn clapped once and returned to his jovial self. “Alright, well, I’ll handle the rest of this one by myself, then. I don’t think she likes Archie.”

  The yak grunted to confirm.

  “You guys go help Buart out. You may not be able to help him as Chefs, but you can at least be a ranch hand for him.”

  Archie didn’t need another reason to get away from the yak. He hopped over the fence, waiting for Barley before walking over to Buart.

  “We can’t do extraction,” Barley confessed to the yakdaw.

  “What kind of Chefs did they send me?” Buart said with a laugh.

  “We’re sorry,” Archie said.

  “We’ll do whatever else we can to help,” Barley blurted.

  Buart looked at Archie. “Is that right?” he asked. “Anything.”

  “Anything,” Archie echoed.

  Buart pointed at a nearby pile of mud. “See that? I need that.” He pointed at another pile. “And that.” Another pile. “And that.” He pointed at a yak that had squatted down to defecate. “And that.”

  Archie took a closer look at the pile. Not mud. Yak dung.

  “You want us to…” He felt his stomach tighten and twist.

  “Just you,” Buart said. “I’ll need the big one to help me chop some wood and load it up on the yaks.”

  Archie went pale. “Why…What…”

  “If it’s alright, I’ll help him out first,” Barley said. “Then we’ll chop wood.”

  “Ain’t no sweat off my brow,” Buart answered. “Just spread it out near the pen so it’ll dry. Don’t put it on my walls.”

  As Archie understood more, he only grew more disgusted. “Your walls…”

  “Hey, have fun with it,” Buart said before leaving to take another yak to Hawthorn.

  Archie looked at Barley with questioning concern. Barley nodded to confirm his fears.

  “Remember those disks you saw on the wall?” Barley asked with a grin.

  “Oh no…”

  “Yep. That’s one way of drying them.”

  Having one question answered only led to a bigger question. Archie looked at the pile of dung and then back to Barley. “Why?!”

  “It’s fuel,” Barley stated. He set to work with the familiarity of a true Khalyan, scooping up a heaping pile of dung and slamming it against the ground to compact it. He picked it up and slammed it down again before carrying it to the next pile. “Since we don’t get as many trees, we burn yak dung year round. It’s what we cook with.”

  Archie thought about that morning’s fry bread. Bubbling in that oil. Cooking over flaming…

  “You what?!”