text: [Themes: Food, Fantasy, unreliable narrator, constrained protagonist, fairy tale, secret passages, fantasy, child protagonist, magic, ghost, library]
  
  > Look around
  Gaze down the hall and you'll gaze down a valley between smashed dishes. Above that valley rotates a boned chandelier, below that chandelier a table stretches the hall's length, and around that table prowl Earl Escargot, Dame Demitasse, and Mistress Caviar.
  
  > eat Caviar
  "Lovely," says Mistress Caviar. "Yes, snuggle right here, closer, sweetheart, closer and I'll show you a good time. Let me just wrap my roe around your shoulders—wait, don't bite! That doesn't mean to bite harder! No, don't swallow!"
  
  Her black pearls almost purr as you pack them into your mouth, rolling across your palate, popping with rich salted bursts. You hold the sea upon your tongue. You hold the rarest sturgeon's ancient taste, subtle as butter, decadent as macadamia, mild, refined.
  
  Meanwhile there's a shriek across the room as Earl Escargot guzzles Dame Demitasse, tentacles coiled around her handles.
  
  > eat Escargot
  "Oh my, that glimmer in your eye...  I don't care for it," says Earl Escargot. "Actually, I doubt we would agree with each other. No, put that fork back onto the table. A fork won't do you any good. Oh, no, there's no need for a fork!"
  
  He rocks back with a crash; upward you roll atop his shell, fork plunged into his face, yanking the earl out yard by yard to rehouse him inside your mouth. Garlic butter and parsley drip between your teeth. "I should have never been so succulent!" are his last words, and then you tilt his shell to slurp the sauce.
  
  Across the floor, skin fractured, spills Dame Demitasse.
  
  > look at Demitasse
  Fine porcelain flesh, veins patterned cobalt blue beneath the glaze, teacup eyelids, ceramic handles curving from her skull, that skull's cap sawn and sundered with coffee brimming inside: here's the magnificent Dame Demitasse. She exhales steam. Roasted aromas, wooden, malted, floral, toasted, waft in her wake. Perhaps each time she lifts her arm, her china chips a little more, joints delicately splintering, but no beauty was ever forged without pain poured into the crucible.
  
  "That stupid snail," murmurs Dame Demitasse.
  
  > eat her
  "I knew you were suspicious," says Dame Demitasse. "It's the dungeon where you belong! You'll bleed for this!"
  
  Cream—banish it; and sugar—sacrilege. Her body's brewed with depth blackness alone could sound. Down, down you drink her coffee and down, down your tastebuds plunge into a richness roasted, velvet with flavors imparted by the darkest drips. All that's bitter is glimpsing her bottom once you've drained it. Nothing remains but shattered porcelain with cobalt veins.
  
  Frypan Fredrick hops from the broken heap. His hop's lopsided: some tendon twisted.
  
  > eat Fredrick
  Zounds, sirrah! How you leap even limping! Frypan's reluctant, as you may well understand, to have himself swallowed again. He jumps onto the banquet table, crouches, rotates on his haunches, and out shoots his tongue to batter you with fried batter. Crumbs scatter. Stumble back, regain your balance, never surrender.
  
  > eat Fredrick
  Pounce, my dear, pounce before Frypan pounces. No, not here,
  here; no, not there, there. His fried legs fly over
  your head. Dishes break when he lands. He's left, right, near, far, tripped—yes, tripped on his long pointed toes. Haute couture takes another toll. You have him, no, you don't have him: he's leapt to seize the chandelier. He swings most wildly.
  
  > eat Fredrick
  You must know what you want...  well, maybe, perhaps...  not this...  or
  that... 
  something else...  we don't care for it...  but on second thought...  take
  it
  away...  no, bring it back...  enough, you'll eat what you've been
  served,
  and you'll like it.
  You jump.
  Shadows race across walls, chased by the swinging chandelier. Frypan scrambles higher but your teeth sink into his ankles. His tongue tangles the candlesticks. No more swinging: he's straining as you yank him down, each gulp another tug. Tender meat shreds. Grease coats your throat. Breadcrumbs crumble. He croaks.
  
  Into the banquet hall crashes the chandelier, table smashed, ends upturned, cutlery raining as the ceiling collapses. Sardine tins tumble through the broken storeroom floor. Discarded dishes slide to bury everything in shattered crockery, and out you topple into the kitchen, still licking Frypan's grease from your fingers. With that, we do hereby adjourn this evening's meeting of the Amuse-Bouche Quartet.
  Second course: eaten.
  Kitchen
  Nobody now remains to tend this kitchen's hearth or knead the dough rolled on the countertops. Neglected saucepans cool. Flour has settled on the floor, tracked with footprints.
  
  Westward a doorway opens to the castle gate; stairs wind upward to the pantry and downward to the buttery; northward the banquet hall lies in ruin.
  
  > Go north
  There's barely room to peer inside now that the ceiling's caved. Only rubble and smashed dishes still settling in pockets under the debris. This banquet hall will hold no further feasts.
  
  > Go west
  You stand before the castle's only gate. Through this passage must pass all seeking admittance or leave, whether they be the fairest or most squalid amongst us.
  
  Southward the great drawbridge has been lowered.
  
  Walk northward, noble guests, to the courtyard; slink eastward, servants, serfs bearing supplies, through that low kitchen door. All to their stationed ranks.
  
  > examine the gate
  No less sturdy than the drawbridge are these walls that create the gate itself. They're soda bread, extremely hard, and no might you muster will bring them down.
  
  > examine the drawbridge
  Biscotti planks hammered into a bridge. Knock these planks, slam them, batter their biscotti with a ram and they won't give a chip for all the force you've thrust into the endeavor. There's little else as durable as good strong biscotti.
  
  > Go north
  No common bailey, but a garden with walls trellis-wound. Its master hauls herself from bed to bed, throwing her tendrils out to drag her leafy head across the ground. That would be Jenny Lettucehead, the castle gardener extraordinaire. Here you're in her domain, patches plump with young cabbages.
  
  One cabbage chirps as Jenny tucks its leaves into a nursery.
  
  Northward, below a balcony, a door opens into the balance gallery, and southward are the gateway and drawbridge.
  
  > look at Jenny
  A lettucehead like hers would break the widest wheelbarrow and command every ribbon at the fair. Put away your spades and seedling dreams, farmhands; you're through. Pearl onions at her maize earlobes. Ripe cherry cheeks. Jenny, let's see your carrot jaws. A rather sharkish smile, hasn't she? Quell your concerns and count your blessings she's no predator. Soil's her standard fare, the richer, fouler the better. After a battle, when the land's imbued with rot, flowers still bloom.
  
  > examine the beds
  Her little charges snuggle in their little beds. Bald cabbage heads wrapped in thick cabbage leaves. They coo, they do, they gurgle and they mewl, these savoy babes tucked in neat nursery rows. Jenny's at one plot or another attending their chirps.
  
  > eat Jenny
  Jog after Jenny Lettucehead, will you? Perhaps you've got it in your mind to sample her salad, but you'll harvest nothing as long as she's hauling herself from bed to bed. Tuck in a cabbage here, arrange one there, she's on the move. Her vines whip wild at her sides. You're never close enough to nab a bite.
  
  > eat the cabbage
  Fasten one eye to Jenny as you pull a cabbage from a bed. Brush down those leaves, shake out soil, before munching its head, and then notice too late that Jenny's heard the crunch. She's turned toward you, and what she does is smile with delight. What's her work worth without stomachs to feed? Go on and finish munching. You've her approval.
  
  > eat cabbage
  You'll eat another cabbage babe. Knock it about to loosen clods, peel back the leaves around its face, chomp down, savor the crunch. No preparation necessary for a tender head this crisp and young.
  
  > go north
  Northward a gleaming golden door would lead into the chapel, but it's sealed. Beneath your feet, the floor's plated with silver polished to a mirror's shine.
  
  Westward and eastward you'll find tapestried chambers, and southward's the courtyard.
  
  > examine door
  No hinge, no handle, no keyhole or crack is to be seen.
  
  As you stand in the gallery, the floor sinks and you hear a hidden contraption click click.
  
  > Go east
  When you leave the gallery, its floor rises again.
  
  Across the eastern wall's hung a great tapestry woven with warfare and carnage. Your heart would have thundered in the skirmish sewn through these threads, wherein this castle's pretender found herself driven into exile. Ah, what a bloody rout that was.
  
  Westward lies the balance gallery, stairs wind upward into the bower and downward to the armory, and southward the banquet hall has collapsed.
  
  > Go upward
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Overhead's spread the nighttime sky. What once was a bower's now mere rubble with crumbled walls. Whipped-cream clouds conceal the moon, floating just close enough to taste, and there's a chill to make your blood run cold.
  
  Westward lies the scriptorium, and downward are stairs to the eastern tapestry.
  
  > look at the clouds
  Only the thinnest moonlight leaks through these whipped-cream masses.
  
  > examine the moon
  The moon's cloud-cloaked. Staring alone won't unveil it.
  
  A breeze carries soft sobbing to your ears.
  
  > go to the west
  Wisdom's stored here, the richest this world knows: how to cook well. Lox bookcases abound with shelves exceptionally stocked. You'll find more than one page worth your perusal if you're after instruction in how to prepare, say, four more courses for a feast.
  
  Westward's passage to the solar, eastward lies the bower, and southward you'll walk out onto a balcony.
  
  > look at the bookcases
  More recipes are stocked on these pink salmon shelves than you've got time to read, but here's a few you might find flavorful: Appyl Fryturs, Befe Farsed, Capons yn Dorre,
  Chawden for a Swan, Dowcetts, Gallentyne,
  Gardyn Grynes, Genoa Ryse, Gurnard,
  Lachrymose Supe, Lamprays, Mortrose of
  Fyshe, Ordyrves, Pecoke, Podyng,
  Pokerounce, Samon Rostyd, Swete Mylke,
  Tarts Owte of Lente, and Vyneagyr.
  
  > Go south
  Mind where you put your weight when you look downward into the courtyard. This wafer balustrade's not the thickest with piroulines for posts.
  
  Northward you could return indoors to the scriptorium.
  
  > examine the wafer
  Before our gardener reclaimed the yard, here's where this castle's pretender would stand, beside the balustrade, to greet supplicants gathered underneath. Few now brave pilgrimage.
  
  > eat the wafer
  Quick work, quick work indeed. Upon meeting your tongue, the wafer's porous bread practically melts. More resilient, the piroulines, whose balusters crunch as biscuits should crunch. Hazelnut chocolate fills their spiral tubes. You've bitten them to stumps now, look at that: this balustrade barely remains.
  
  > examine balustrade
  Before our gardener reclaimed the yard, here's where this castle's pretender would stand to greet supplicants gathered underneath. Few now brave pilgrimage.
  
  > eat the wafer
  Hardly much left to nibble here. Lick your finger and press it to the stumps; some crumbs stick; lick that finger clean. The slightest hazelnut flavor lingers.