Chapter 5
The Iron Door
Inside the happy cottage, supper was as the little man promised—ruddy potatoes, sliced and fried in butter with sweet onions, tiny leaves of thyme, and coarse ground salt and pepper, all of which was swimming in a delicious bacon gravy.
The little man busied himself, skipping about his cottage, stoking the fire, and nursing the deep iron skillet that sat over a grate in the small cottage’s fireplace. The entire time, he kept Nicolas—and Magnus the thrush, who sat contentedly next to Nicolas on a low bench near the hearth—entertained with wild stories about the woods, here and there interrupted by silly jokes, which always seemed to make the little man laugh until tears trickled down his crimson-tinged cheeks. He served up supper in tin plates with flat griddle ca
