text: > Go down
  You descend the staircase.
  
  Down here the air is cool and dry and still. Along the walls are stacked the castle's butts, rack upon rack, enormous barrels corked to keep fine beverages in store. The greatest barrel's big enough to contain a hundred smaller.
  
  Upward a staircase runs to the kitchen.
  
  > examine the barrels
  Each butt's emblazoned with an emblem to note what the barrels hold, although it'd take an alewife in the know to sort through them. Apart from the greatest barrel, here's a smaller stamped with a dragon, and another with a bear, and one painted with a harlequin.
  
  > look at the dragon
  The dragon on this barrel's long and snakish. More a wyrm, bearded and lacking wings. It's painted in green pigment that's faded toward grey.
  
  > examine the bear
  This barrel's more than blazoned with a bear. The animal's been branded straight into the butt, burned with black ashen lines. Posture: statant.
  
  > examine harlequin
  Cheeky's the harlequin stamped on this butt. The picture's checked in yellow paint and represents the fellow with a bottle tipped to funnel liquid underneath his domino.
  
  > examine greatest
  Across this giant barrel's face is stamped an emblem picturing a maiden wrapped in spikes. Hard to determine whether she's in agony or ecstasy, but there's wincing involved in either case.
  
  > eat the dragon
  Green tea pours from the dragon's tap, piping and steeped precisely right. Its warmth spreads through your body and its flavor's clean and bracing with the slightest bitter hint beneath the humblest sweetness.
  
  > eat the bear
  Turn the bear barrel's tap: kvass bubbles over your tongue, fizzing with carbonation from black bread fermented to sour sublimity. That tang's delight if delight's something someone could barrel.
  
  > eat the harlequin
  Lemonade flows from the harlequin's hogshead. Refreshing streams, tart with citrus, chilled, sweetened with sugar. There's crushed ice mixed into the drink, and it's crushed twice between your teeth.
  
  > eat greatest
  How odd. There's no leakage when you begin to turn the giant barrel's tap. It turns and turns, yielding no liquid anywise. A disappointment, certainly, to anyone after a drink, but this barrel's still filled with something worth seeing.
  
  Its face opens, swinging back for a door. Inside the barrel's quite empty. It seems there's a passageway to the north.
  
  > Go north
  Your footsteps echo against wood. Well, go ahead, keep clambering about, knock for another door—aha, you've found one at the barrel's back. With a heave-ho you push it ajar and step northward into a different room.
  
  > go north
  Dungeon (east cell)
  Against one wall towers a pastry maiden with its cage ajar, and in that cage a secret passage leads southward through the toothpicks. Although their panel's been sprung wide, a skewered corpse still dangles from the spikes.
  
  Westward an open doorway leads to the dungeon.
  
  > Go east
  Dungeon (east cell)
  Against one wall towers a pastry maiden with its cage ajar, and in that cage a secret passage leads southward through the toothpicks. Although their panel's been sprung wide, a skewered corpse still dangles from the spikes.
  
  Westward an open doorway leads to the dungeon.
  
  Your breath's still reeking with onion.
  
  > go south
  You creep through the secret passage.
  
  Down here the air is cool and dry and still. Along the walls are stacked the castle's butts, rack upon rack, enormous barrels corked to keep fine beverages in store. The greatest barrel's opened to reveal a hidden passage to the north.
  
  Upward a staircase runs to the kitchen.
  
  > Go upward
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Pandemonium, thou art a castle kitchen. White toques bob as sardine chefs labor over cutting boards and coals, stirring saucepans, stuffing pastries, rolling dough as flour thickens the air. Footmen teem around counters, poised to carry dishes to the banquet hall.
  
  Northward you could follow the footmen; westward a door opens to the castle gate; stairs wind upward to the pantry and downward to the buttery.
  
  Another footman carries toast points into the banquet hall.
  
  Now the odor in your mouth begins to dissipate.
  
  > Blow
  You blow out the onion's tearjerking odor. All the chefs blink and sniff, then resume their duties. They're single-minded creatures, these sardines.
  
  > Go upwards
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Stoop, stoop! You'll knock your head on vegetables above, enormous bundles that drape from the ceiling's beams. Here are eggplants in a clump, and turnips rocking where you've nudged a brace.
  
  Northward a door leads into the storeroom, westward you'll find the gatehouse, and downward a stair spirals into the kitchen.
  
  > examine the vegetables
  No vegetables are quite as large as these eggplants and turnips at the front, but even the more reasonable radishes, the more diminutive endives, the peas in pods would outweigh a toddler.
  
  Why, hullo, here's a sardine from the storeroom. Slips inside an eggplant skin, quite like a footman in that purple livery, and then wriggles downstairs.
  
  > eat the vegetables
  You've got a selection to choose from, darling.
  
  > eat the turnips
  You're already wearing a brie rind.
  
  > go to the north
  Not a chamber often visited by the nobility. Five metal tins against the walls, lined in neat rows as barracks beds. One lid has been halfway uncurled, and there beneath its foil sardines slumber in oil. They'll stir when they're needed downstairs.
  
  Southward you'll find passage to the pantry.
  
  > examine the tins
  Each tin comes packed with sardines fin to fin. There's nothing like rolling their metal lids away to glimpse those slumbering little fish. Rest assured, these are packed with their heads still intact. Only the freshest sardines to serve this castle!
  
  > eat the sardines
  Heavens, yes, why not sample some sardines? One slips right down your throat, leaves your lips smacking with oil. Another slips down as deliciously. They come packed in tins for a reason, you see. They know that one's never enough. When you're done, you have emptied a tin.
  
  > eat the sardines
  More sardines, please. Another tin! You peel its lid backward to inhale the oily flavor that wafts from within. Their eyes are open but they're fast asleep. These sardines can sleep in your belly once you've swallowed them. One, two, three, four, let's stop counting. How many come packed in a tin? Not enough!
  
  > eat the sardines
  You've developed a taste for sardines, it appears. Plunge your hands quick into another tin, raise out the oily slumberers, hold them over your mouth, then slurp them down. They don't object. They're perfectly content to serve someone. Now here's another empty bed.
  
  > eat the sardines
  My, at this rate, you'll have eaten the room! Another tin unlidded, more sardines pulled from their beds, and more smacks from your lips with each swallow. Your cheeks are speckled with their shining scales. Your tongue quivers with salt. They are a most addictive dish. Over your shoulder goes the empty tin.
  
  > eat the sardines
  At last, the last tin in the room. Savor these slumbering sardines. You'll have no more from this storeroom. Peel back their metal lid with tenderness. Observe their skin when you lift them aloft, how it glistens. They disappear into your mouth, tails sticking through your lips till you swallow. Rattle the tin for more; you'll find none left. Now lick the oil from your fingertips. There, you've finished.