Chapter 39
As I’d suspected, the Studie of Elfhame was difficult going. It didn’t help that I was trying to decipher the faded writing by flickering candlelight late at night. Or that the archaic language had me puzzling out every other sentence.
I alternated this frustrating pastime with prising open the pages of the recipe book. Unfortunately, this proved even more aggravating. For every tantalizing page I was able to peel apart, two others stayed stubbornly glued together. After a mishap where I tore some of the writing entirely away, I proceeded very carefully.
With trial and error, I discovered that I could gently dampen the page, wait a day, and have a bit more success with my peeling attempts. I made agonizingly slow progress, however, and when my impatience got the better of me,
