Hilda lying on the bed, face down, cloak still over her shoulders.
"Holy Bejeebus," he muttered. "Should have told me you're wearing yourself out, dumb witch."
He undid the button and chain from her cloak, put it on the chair, and then he carefully picked her up, to put her on the bed in a more normal way.
"Uh?", she mumbled. "I'm not dumb." Then she sunk away in sleep again.
William stood by her bed and watched her for a few minutes. The wicked witch remained asleep, which put his mind at peace. He wanted to stroke her hair, but did not. He did not want to do anything that would wake her up.
He'd let her sleep until dinner was ready. Dinner. That would mean another battle with the loony-bin she called her kitchen. William repaired to his guestroom where he first changed into the more normal clothes Hilda had gotten him. If those got messed up, it would not be too bad.
"So, are you winning?"
The sound of Hilda's voice made William turn around. He let go of the spoon that did not want to stop stirring and saw the witch standing in the door opening. She wore her pink nightgown with the skulls and the brooms. She also laughed loudly when she saw William's front side.
"I have my answer," she snickered, "but do go on, I can do with some entertainment."
"Good to see you. Did you get some rest?" William almost instinctively ducked as he noticed a bowl flying to the stove.
"Hey, that was good!" Hilda sounded genuinely impressed. "Really, that stupid thing knocks me in the head at least once a month."
William nodded. "I sometimes feel I get the hang of this." A cloth folded itself around his neck. "Sometimes, see, it's the things like this that get to me." He undid the cloth, threw it on the worktop and said: "And now you stay there!"
"It helps when you put a kettle on it," Hilda advised him.
"Really?"
Shlop said the cloth, and William peeled it from his neck again. This time he held it in his hand until he had located a kettle. Then he put the cloth on the worktop and placed the kettle on it. "Warned you enough." The cloth made a few more attempts to fight itself loose, but it gave up after a while.
"Thanks, Hilda," William said with a wink. "Now, you go in. I'm getting there." He grabbed a large piece of cloth and picked up a hot iron pot. He put that on the massive granite table. The soupbowl that he had put there already started moving over to the other side.
"Don't tell me it has a problem with soup," William muttered, as Hilda watched with baited breath how he was going to handle that one.
"It doesn't. It's just hot stuff it doesn't like," Hilda informed him, feeling that she should assist him somewhat as he was obviously doing his best in her rather selfsufficient kitchen.
"Oh, is that all," William said, making Hilda very curious what he was going to do. He walked to a large cabinet he had discovered in the kitchen. He'd seen it another spot a few times, but for now it remained where it was. "Right, then."
William opened the top door of the cabinet and grabbed a small sack. Hilda stared as he did so. She knew what it was, and she was absolutely baffled that he had found it. Without a word William walked back to the granite table and dumped the sack in the large soup bowl. The bowl immediately stopped its evasive action, as if it suddenly was a normal, unmagical one.
The sack was ice cold.
"Now stop, William. Tell me how you found that thing," Hilda said as she walked over to him. "Nobody knows it's there!"
He turned to her and smiled, his face smudged with green vegetable streaks, a trace of tomato and some flour. "I banged my finger when I wanted to bang the chicken meat. The damned cutting board jumped away, I guess it took things personal. So I asked the house if there was something around to cool down my finger."
"And the house told you." Hilda looked around the kitchen, her hands on her hips again. "Is that so, house? Are you making things easy on him?"
"How about less difficult?", the house tried.
"Hmmm. I think you and I need to have a proper talk one of these days. Witch to house, you know."
"Hardly," said the house, "it's been so long ago that I am surprised you remember that exists."
As this conversation was taking place, William took the cooling sack from the stunned soup bowl and ladled the soup from the hot pot in it. The weight of the soup then prevented a further retreat of the bowl, hence all things soup were settled.
"Don't you go smart on me, house, after all I am the one that painted you a few years ago, remember?" Hilda walked round in the kitchen, trying to outsmart the house.
"And I am the one who had to bother you for it for some century. Remember?"
William put the soup bowl on the stove to make sure it was keeping warm. Then he tried to open the door of the oven to see how the chicken was doing, but the door would not yield to his pulling. He yanked the door a bit harder, and was warned not to do that again by a deep metalic moan that seemed to come from inside the oven.
"Do you think it is such a fun thing to paint you in the same boring colours every few centuries?", Hilda argued. "Why didn't you go for purple? The door will open when the stove thinks it's done, William."
"Oh, thank you." Shaking his head for the umpteenth time he got up and stood leaning against the cupboard, following the verbal battle between the witch and the house.
"Purple really is not a colour for a house," said the house, "we have had this discussion before. It is also the only real discussion we've had in the last six or so centuries, so I am refraining from saying it is a meaningful one."
William decided it was time to cut up the salad. He had found real salad, that did not move, talk or fly, and he was very excited about that. He picked it up, rinsed it in a bucket that always seemed to contain clean water and shook the water off it. Then he carefully approached the cutting board, the same one that had jumped away from him before.
"I'm going to use a knife, okay, but it's nothing personal. I'm the cook, you're the cutting board. It's as simple as that." The board remained where it was, as William looked for a proper knife. There were many knives. But not the one he had in mind.
"Next time, house, you are going to be purple in all colours of the rainbow," Hilda stated, proving that she had not slept enough, "and not matter what you say or do is going to change my mind. Got that? I am the witch and you are the house. It's as simple as that."
"Oh. Really. And do you already have an idea where you are going to sleep then? And where you will store your clothes?", the house threatened her, "because if you paint me purple, you've slept the longest time of your life under my roof."
"We'll see about that," spat Hilda.
"I need a salad-cutting knife," William said calmly, as not to upset anyone. Or anything. Something whizzed past his head. It touched his ear. It ended up in a wooden beam in the wall. It was a knife for cutting salad.
William closed his eyes, swallowed hard and breathed in and out a few times. He watched. The knife was still there. Carefully he examined his ear. It was still there, and there was no blood coming from it. "Holy Bejeebus, a knife-throwing house."
"Kitchen," said the house.
"Oh. Right." William reached out and was relieved the knife did not give him a hard time while he pulled it from the wooden beam. Also the cutting board cooperated, so after not very long the salad was cut up and in a bowl of its own. A bowl that had no visible problem with being filled.
During that time, Hilda and the house had taken their discussion into the living room and the stove door was banging wildly, making a racket that would have woken the dead.
"Alright, alright," said William who raced to the stove with a couple of rags to hold the cast iron plate with the chicken. His intentions were noble, but the door kept banging open and shut, making it impossible for him to get to the chicken. The book salesman was getting very fed up with this kitchen. He took one of the rags and slapped that agains the noisy door, really hard. "And now you
cut it out, or you're going to be replaced by a campfire!"
It was not clear if the door had gotten tired of the banging at that moment, or if William's approach paid off, but the door opened and remained open. As William reached inside, the fire retreated so he would not burn his hands, and the chicken was out of the oven.
From there on it was a matter of cutting up the chicken into handy pieces, which was quickly done by a big cleaver that took honour in its trade. William stood by and watched as the sharp metal object went crazy for a while, delivering the chicken in chunks that McDonalds could only dream about.
The now tame soup bowl kept calm as William carried it to the living room and put it on the table. He saw Hilda sitting in her chair already, a disappointed look on her face. "What's wrong, Hilda?", he asked.
"Hmmf. Nothing."
"Really... you could have fooled me..."
"Argh, stupid house, that's all. Next time we'll paint it red, white and black." She frowned as she looked at William. "Now, honestly, those are not colours for a house, are they?"
"Don't ask me, honey, I'm just visiting," William bailed out and retreated to the kitchen for the rest of the food.
"Coward!", Hilda spat after him, but as he entered the kitchen he could hear her laugh, and a grin made itself comfortable on his face.
16. Low down couch
Dinner was done, the dishes had done themselves, which was a very convenient trait of the kitchen, and Hilda had watched how William had lit up the fireplace with some