9. The Wrong Choice

Chef’s hands moved as if possessed by someone else. The rough bumps of the Barachts alternated with the smooth, slippery stalks of the Fishfool. Regularly, she brought her fingers to her nose to smell what she was doing.

No, she thought, this smells wrong. She threw what she had so far into a jar that she found behind her, and started again.

“Please hurry. We need it now!” Minneka yelled from outside the wagon. She pulled at the door, but it wouldn’t open. As if it was locked, but her wagon didn’t even have a lock! Chef’s thoughts kept yelling at her for being naïve and bad, but she tried to banish it.

Seeds. She felt seeds. This felt familiar, as if she’d held it many times before. Then it couldn’t be the Dinodear, which she only recently held for the first time.

This ingredient was also stashed somewhere else, and she started again.

“Almost done!” Chef yelled over her shoulder, as if it mattered where she looked in the pitch-black darkness of her wagon. Her fingers found different seeds, bigger, stronger. She had wasted quite some time and ingredients now, and panic found a home in her heart.

She pulled everything from her cupboards.

She squished several plant stalks and collected the juice that flowed out of them. Shortly after, she dipper her finger inside and smelled the liquid that stuck to it. Yes, she thought. This feels better.

Her cauldron had already warmed up. Strings of hot water jumped over the metal edge and sizzled upon contact with her wooden floor.

Chef collected everything she had prepared and threw it in there. The Dinodear should come first. Seeds take a while to dissolve. Then the Turnbacktulips and Bumpbarachts. The Fishfool should surely come last, as I already extracted its juice.

Minneka was finally able to open the door. Somebody had thrown a wooden beam against it to jam the door.

“Now, Chef. Now!”

“It’s not yet—I don’t know if—maybe I have—”

Light from the hallway illuminated her cauldron. Her recipe, which was hopefully Snakesoup, was a light green pudding of which the solid ingredients started to dissolve. And as that happened, the scent became nicer and the water more translucent.

By the time Minneka emptied the cauldron into a clean jar, the recipe had no color, no smell, and no taste. In her panic, the fox knocked over multiple jars. Her tail swept a mandarin off of its tree and Chef had to dive for it to prevent the unwanted ingredient from entering the Snakesoup too.

“Thank you,” Minneka said as she ran away.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Chef mumbled.

She was left behind in the marble hallway, alone. She left her wagon, but didn’t travel far. Exhausted, she fell down, with her back against her front wheel. If only I made the right medicine, she thought. Please, return with good news about the Lion King’s survival.

Waiting was unbearable. Time and again, she wanted to run from the hallways, look for the king herself, and administer the medicine herself. By the looks of it, though, she was nearer to the stinking stables than wherever the royal bedroom would be.

So she waited. Until the sun rose again and sunlight finally revealed the full beauty of the marble room.

Until sunlight revealed the contents of her wagon.

The jar in which she had stored the poison from the Poison Belt, had fallen, and was completely empty.

Chef hit herself on the head. I added poison to the recipe. I added poison—

A group of Lion Guards stormed into the hallway. Minneka preceded them, looking anxious. Behind her was—Perzwa? What was he doing here? His expression was devilish.

“The king is dead!” he screamed. “And she poisoned him!”

“No, no, no,” Minneka said. “She is good. She has—”

Two guards lifted Chef off the ground. The others pointed through the open door at the overturned poison jar.

Minneka fell silent. She looked at Chef in disbelief.

“I … I … it was an accident,” Chef mumbled, as metal rings pressed against her wrists and they pushed her away from her dear Wagony.

“My my, an accident?” Perzwa grunted loudly. “The Good Chef, the best cook of the continent, poisons someone by accident? I don’t believe a word of it!”

Chef lowered her head as they led her to the palace dungeons. The king is dead, she repeated in her head. And it’s my fault. I’m not as good as they all say. Without my recipe book I am … nothing.

“This is treachery of the highest order! This deserves the punishment of death!” Perzwa yelled. The joyful, interested boy from before had been an act. This was his true personality.

Minneka stomped her foot and silenced Perzwa by throwing her cloak over his head.

“Ridiculous! We are not barbarians! I demand Chef be released and merely banished to Floria.”

“The Lions decide,” a guard growled.

“What lion?” Minneka asked. “There is no successor within the royal family! In the absence of a king, I am in charge. I am officially your queen until we solve this issue.”

The guards froze in place, but did not turn around. Chef’s wrists already burned from the handcuffs as she clung to Minneka in hopes of being saved.

“Our king has died!” a guard yelled. “Our species. I think we decide.”

“No. And you know Sulliwe would have wanted you to follow his laws. That is an order.”

The guards grunted, but dropped Chef. Perzwa climbed into her wagon and came back holding Chef’s new, invented plant. Once a thief, always a thief.

Once everyone had left, Minneka nudged the sad chimpanzee out of the room.

“It was an accident, that it was,” Chef mumbled. Her voice wavered. “You have to believe me. You believe me, right? Right?”

“I believe you,” said Minneka. Chef expected to be led outside. She hoped it. The fox would tell her she was banished, but at least she would be free. If she stayed queen, Chef would even have a powerful friend in Traferia and be safe.

But Minneka took a different pathway that also led to the dungeons.

“Indeed, it had to appear an accident.”