I was summoned to be micromanaged by… a chicken? (Part 2)

“Hurry!” Korvan squeaked behind the door.

I scurried to the wardrobe and opened it. Korvan was right, there were some fresh clothes there I could use. I undressed myself quickly and picked out a new off-white blouse with long sleeves and small green leaves embroidered around the neckline. I took out a long, flowy black skirt, this one simple and without any underskirts or ornaments. I wrapped an apron around my waist and stepped back. I found my leather shoes lying on the floor next to the bed, so I put them back on. I took the Obedience necklace and hid it in the pocket of the apron. I didn't feel right about using it, but at least I needed to have it with me, so they wouldn't use it against me again. The headdress was left alone on the bed. Instead, I weaved my hair into one thick, firm braid and used the colorful ribbons I had to tie it.

I stepped out of the room and closed the door behind me, ready to meet my fate straight on.

“Finally!” Korvan said.

He flapped his wet black wings twice, and suddenly, he was sitting on my right shoulder. For being a chicken, he was really small. He looked more like some adolescent chick.

“Let's go!” he screamed directly into my ear. “We have a lot of work to do! Let me start by showing you around.”

After an hour, I was not sure if having Korvan with me was a delightful or dreadful experience. He was extremely bossy and loud. After a few minutes, my head was already hurting from his high-pitched voice. But he showed me multiple rooms and hallways in the castle and told me where all the things I needed were. Though very loud, he was useful, I must say.

“If you will need something, you can also ask me and I will bring it to you, “ he explained to me. “Of course, it is a bother, but His Highness asked me to help you. So you are lucky that I am serving you, human, “ he said, smugly.

“I told you, my name is Zora,” I reminded him.

“What does it matter what you are called? Puny human.”

“Such a small body, such a big ego,” I said.

He pecked my earlobe. I winced in pain.

“You should be grateful, girl. If it weren't His Highness, you would already be dead, lying somewhere at the bottom of a ravine. Those stupid humans just stuff any girl in a carriage and send it here, expecting a miracle to happen. Maybe if they used their heads for a while, that village would be a better place.”

“Why did he save me?” I asked.

“He was simply curious,” Korvan explained. “He heard villagers singing and laughing, and he wondered why it was the first time they were celebrating an offering. Usually, they are weeping and gloomy, but now they were overjoyed.”

“I wonder why,” I said, my voice full of spite.

“So, wench, tell me! Why were they happy you were going to die?”

“It is very simple. I am not from their village.”

“They kidnapped somebody else? But the next village is very far…”

“Korvan.”

“What?”

“What happened to the previous brides? You told me the dragon did not eat them. Where are they, then?”

“It is His Highness for you, not any dragon. And as for the other brides…There is no need to dwell on the past.”

“Wait–“

In the dimly lit hallway, I saw two glowing yellow eyes. I froze in place, expecting another supernatural creature. But instead, a black cat appeared before me. I sighed, relieved.

“Korvan,” the black cat said with a clear female voice, “who is that person?”

Maybe I was not supposed to get comfortable with a random black cat so quickly.

“That is my new servant, Vesna,” Korvan said. He puffed feathers on his chest proudly.

“Did you just not say before that you are supposed to serve me?” I asked.

I received another sharp peck on my earlobe.

The black cat looked at me, her yellow eyes glowing like two lanters in the darkness. “Are you a new sacrificial bride?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The cat came closer. “You are not trying to run away. Instead, you are walking around with Korvan on your shoulder and exploring the castle. Why?”

Because I have nowhere to go.

“That is kinda hard to explain,” I said.

In this world, you could be superstitious and believe in dragons and talking cats, but you should never talk about different worlds, or you will be deemed a lunatic. A lost cause. A few looks from the other villagers were enough to keep my mouth shut.

It's not like I did not want to run away. But if I wanted to return to my world, I would have to find a way first. I was summoned here by some kind of weird ancient spell. I was guessing, it won't be possible to return just by boarding some carriage with horses and expecting them to cross some kind of cosmic dimension. So until I find a way to be transported back, I am not leaving a place where I have a place to sleep and food to eat. I am not equipped to survive without electricity or the internet, you know?

“Hm, strange girl,” the cat said.

Before I was able to say something back, she disappeared into the darkness.

“Don’t mind Vesna,” Korvan said. “She was always such a snob.”

Glad I was not the only one receiving names or colorful adjectives.

“Well, time to go to the kitchen. If you want to make yourself useful, you should cook,” Korvan said. “I will taste your food myself to check if your skills are good enough.”

“What is this room?” I pointed my finger at a heavy wooden door leading to the room we had not checked out yet.

“That is a library of His Highness,” Korvan said. “We can move on.”

“Why? I want to peek inside. Can’t I? Is it forbidden?”

“It is not. But what are you going to do there, girl? Looking at the leather covers of books and imagining what they are about?”

I blinked. “Why should I? I will just read them to find out.”

Now it was Korvan, who blinked, surprised.

“Wench… Do you know how to read?”

“Umm, yes?”

“Let's go to the library. Now!” Korvan demanded.

We pushed back the heavy wooden door and arrived at the small personal library of His Highness. All walls were covered by bookcases filled to the brim with different types of books. Some were new, some old, some thin, some thick. Some of them were bound by leather, others by some kind of cloth.

I was enchanted by them immediately. I wanted to go to one of the bookcases and take out the first one my eyes would land on. But instead, Korvan told me to walk to the middle of that room, where there was a study desk and a comfortable chair.

“Here is one book,” he told me. “Open it and start reading it aloud.”

I went and took the closed book from the desk. There was no picture on the cover, only text.

“Medicinal Herbs and Their Usage,” I read.

“Good,” Korvan said. “Now skim through this book and find me an entry about mugwort, but you cannot look at the drawings to identify a correct page. Instead, at the back of this book, there is something called abendis.”

“Appendix,” I corrected him. “Yeah, I know. So you want to see the entry about the mugwort? Let me find it.”

I opened the book to the back and quickly found the number of the page number I had to open. I flipped the book until I saw the beautiful botanical illustration of the mugworth pop up.

“This is it,” I told Korvan. “Common name: Mugwort. Latin name: Artemisia vulgaris. Warming and bitter. Known to bring vivid dreams. Used in teas or burned as an incense.”

“That’s enough,” Korvan said. “So you know how to read,” he muttered to himself.

His big ego was now deflated, scruffy wet feathers dropped. In this world, probably only aristocracy or rich people could read, not some simple village girl. They were not expecting that I would be able to. This surprised this proud little fella. I swear he was feeling down. I could see it in him. I would never have guessed that even magical beings can have an inferiority complex.

“Do you want me to teach you ?” I asked him.

I could see a big spark in his round black birdie eyes showing up.

“Would you?” he asked.

“Of course,” I smiled at him. “We do not need to bother with writing. We can only learn how to read instead. It will be easy. You are quite intelligent after all.”

He perked up, shifting from foot to foot on my shoulder.

“You will be the first zmok in history who can read!” I encouraged him.

“We can start tomorrow, right in the morning!” Korvan chirped. I could hear happiness in his voice. “I will bring you anything you want if you will promise to teach me.”

“I don’t want anything, Korvan,” I said.

I knew better than to request things from a zmok.

“We will only need some books and papers with writing instruments,” I told him. “You will find them in the castle somewhere, right?”

“I will prepare them tomorrow.”

It was hard to stop smiling now. He was like an excited small child.

“Okay,” I said. “Where should we go now?”

“We need to prepare dinner.”

“Is His Highness coming to eat?” I asked.

I could not imagine a dinner where you have an enormous dragon sitting on a chair, holding a small silver spoon with its two talons, trying to eat some soup.

“His Highness comes after the nightfall and always eats alone.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

He showed me the whole castle except His Highness' bed chambers, but we did not meet him anywhere, and I would bet you cannot fit an enormous beast into the chamber built for a regular human.

“We can look to see if we will spot him,” Korvan said. “He is usually flying around, guarding his territory.”

We stopped in the hallway near one of the windows and opened it. While we were exploring the castle, the sun had already started to set. Now it was almost fully behind the horizon, its golden rays coloring the whole sky in bloody red. But we did not see any dragon flying nearby.

“Maybe His Highness went somewhere far today,” Korvan was thinking aloud. “Anyway, let's hurry to the kitchen. You must be hungry, too.”

I went with him and ended up in the last room he had not shown me yet – the kitchen. It was a simple area with a hearth and a few working surfaces carved out of wood, scarred by the years of knife marks. I could see a lot of things hanging from the roof or on the walls, starting with different iron pans and wooden ladles, up to the bundles of garlic and aromatic herbs. The open shelves were full of glass and clay jars, each of them hiding some kind of delicious treasure under the lid.

Needless to say, I was stumped. I had an induction stove back at my home, and it has been years since I've been on some barbecue, to witness grilling something on an open fire. Not to say I never did it, it was usually some of my other family members who took care of the fire and meat. So to use the hearth to cook something, well… I told you I cannot survive in this world…

“Why are you standing here?” Korvan asked. “We need to start moving.”

“I do not know how to cook,” I lied. “If I use the hearth, everything will be burned.” That one was true.

“I knew it, such a useless girl,” Korvan sighed. “What can I do with you? Is this why they were celebrating that you are leaving the village? Because you are good for nothing?”

That one sound ensured me he is definitely enjoying this play.

His words were harsh, although I knew he was not trying to hurt me. He was just looking for another way to boost his ego. But to be honest, for people from this world, maybe I was useless for real. I was not able to make my fire. I was not sure how to live in such an environment. Life in my world was just too easy, too comfortable.

“His Highness told me I need to take care of you, anyway,” Korvan continued. “And you promised you would teach me how to read. I guess I could spare some time to cook you something or teach you how to use the hearth.”

“Oh, Korvan, that would be amazing,” I said. “You are so skillful and nifty! What would I do without you? I would surely die. His Highness must be so proud to have such a useful companion.”

“You think so?” he asked.

“Of course, I do,” I said.

Okay, he was definitely blushing now. Even though I couldn't see it because of his black feathers. Do birds even blush? But he does, because he is an imp, right? Even though he has an extremely sharp tongue, I just couldn’t hate this puffy little creature.