Page 15 of The Lone Wolf Café
And despite my better judgment, I was determined to figure out why.
Chapter Five
The rest of the day was quiet. Since Rowena decided my kitchen witch duties wouldn’t officially start until the next morning, I didn’t have any baking to do.
The problem was, Rowena put me to work cleaning instead.
I fought to hide my scowl as I watched her through the kitchen window, holding a broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other.She gets to make tea,I grumbled as I raked my broom across the worn hardwood.And I have to sweep the floors.
Thankfully, it was a proper broom with strong bristles – not one of those impractical cinnamon brooms from the general store. Within twenty minutes, all the dust and debris from the little kitchen was swept into a neat pile in the corner.
Once the sweeping was done, I wiped down the counters, scrubbed the sink basin, and emptied the oven’s ash pan. When the most important tasks were out of the way, I decided to tackle the cupboards.
And they were a mess.This Rune person clearly wasn’t the cleanest witch, I grumbled as I carefully plucked measuring cups and mixing spoons from the precariously stacked piles in each cabinet. The ones on the bottom were covered in dust from lack of use, and my wolf nose twitched every time the particles got kicked up in the air.
Once I had the first cabinet emptied, I realized how grimy it was on the inside. The bottom was discolored and stained, and the shelf liner was peeling up in the corners. I decided to pull it off entirely, wincing as I did so, until a faint squeaking sound stopped me in my tracks.
Oh gods… not mice…
The kitchen cabinets were dirty, but notthatdirty. If there was a rodent infestation, we were in big trouble.
My wolfish instincts pulsed in my mind, urging me to hunt down whatever was hiding in these cabinets. I blinked a few times, allowing my vision to adjust to the darkness, and crawled into the cabinet until I was in past my shoulders.
All I could smell was the thick, choking stench of dust. I sneezed, and a small cloud of it flurried up in my face. I grimaced.
There was another squeak, louder this time.
I reached into the back corner until my fingers touched the wooden sides of the cabinet. Nothing.
Where are you, little mouse?
I sneezed again, kicking up more dust. But this time, a small, swift breeze swept past my nose, trailing over my shoulder and out into the kitchen.
A breeze.
Inside a kitchen cabinet.
I froze as the wind picked up again, dancing in odd patterns through the cabinet, kicking up dust in its wake.
It looks like… it’s running…
I gasped as the wind gathered into a little ball in front of my face, swirling and twirling and whipping like a tornado as it began to take shape.
Ears formed, then paws, then a long, thin tail.
My mouth dropped open in awe. It was an air elemental. A tiny one, in the shape of a mouse.
“Well hello there,” I greeted with a wide grin. “At least you’re not the kind of mouse I was concerned about.”
The air elemental squeaked again, its little windy nose twitching. It even had whiskers made of tiny streams of air.
It looks hungry.
But I had no idea what to feed it.Fritzi eats ice chips, Mavro eats charcoal… what does an air elemental eat? I can’t exactly hand it a pleasant autumn breeze.
I crawled out of the cabinet, nearly bumping my head as I did so, and scoured the kitchen for food. I was familiar with the old stereotype of mice eating cheese, but the thought of crawling back through the portal and being ankle-deep in freezing snow made my skin prickle. Even if Fritzi was an adorable little helper.
After about ten minutes, I had several offerings for the little creature. There were fresh apples in a wicker basket on the counter, so I scraped off a tiny piece and made a mental note to eat the rest of the apple later. I also grabbed a shelled peanut out of a bag in the pantry and clipped a sprig of rosemary from Rowena’s potted herb garden.
