We came into the kitchen, which could have been imported from a 1950s TV set--a very large cooking set, since there were two six-burner stoves in a room that was bigger than my now-deceased trailer.
I looked around, but none of the people in the kitchen was Donna Reed or June Cleaver .
.
.
or Gabriel Sandoval, either.
The glistening white appliances were rounded in a manner my eyes found odd, and the three refrigerators had silver latching handles and Frigidaire stenciled in silver across the top.
People with silver collars were preparing food and drink--and didn't seem to notice our presence at all.
The woman we'd followed here put the cutting board on the counter next to one of the sinks and began to fill the sink with water by working the hand pump that it had instead of a faucet.
"Excuse me," said Ariana, walking up to a man who was stirring something in a pot that looked like oatmeal.
"Stir the pot seventy times seven," he said.
"Where are they keeping the prisoners?"Samuel asked, putting the push into his voice that the really dominant wolves could.
His voice echoed oddly in the room.
Slowly, all the action in the kitchen came to a stop.
One by one, the six people wearing silver circlets around their throats turned to look at Samuel.
The man Ariana had spoken to stopped moving last.
He pulled his spoon out of the pot and pointed to one of the seven rounded doorways.
The others, one by one, pointed the same way.
"Forty-seven steps," the oatmeal stirrer said.
"Take the right tunnel," said a man who'd been chopping turnips.
"Eighteen steps and turn," said a girl kneading bread.
"The key is on the hook.
The door is yellow." "Do not let them out," said a boy who looked about thirteen and had been filling glasses with water from a pitcher.
"Resume your tasks," said Samuel, and one at a time they did so.
"I think that's the creepiest thing I've ever seen," said Jesse.
"Are we just going to leave these people here?" "We're going to get Gabriel out and Phin," said Ariana.
"And then we'll take this to the Gray Lords, who have forbidden the keeping of thralls.
Only the fairy queen can release her thralls, and the Gray Lords are the only ones who have a chance of making her do that.
In the Elphame, she rules utterly." "What if she's enthralled Gabriel?" "She won't have," said Ariana positively.
"She promised Mercy, and breaking her promise would have dire consequences.
And my Phin is protected against such a thing." The path we took from the kitchen was less grand than the one we'd taken into it.