The soup was thin today.

I stirred it with the wooden spoon and watched the surface ripple. There were turnips in it. Maybe three, maybe four, cut into chunks the size of my fist. There was barley, a handful at most. There was water. There was salt, because salt is cheap and it makes everything taste like something even when there is nothing in the pot but water and salt.

I stirred it again. The soup did not get thicker. It never does.

"Edgar," said Corporal Mills, appearing at the edge of my cooking fire like he always did, at exactly the same time, every day, with the same expression on his face. "How's the soup?"

"Thin," I said.

"Right." He nodded, as if this was the answer he'd expected. "Right. Well. The men will eat it."

"They'll drink it," I said. "Eating implies there's something to chew."

He smiled. It was a thin smile. Thin like the soup. "You're a cheerful fellow, Edgar."

He walked away. I went back to stirring.

This is my job. I am a cook in the army of Lord Marshal Beaumont. I cook the soup. Every day. The same soup. Thin soup with turnips and barley and salt. Sometimes there is meat if we've had a victory. Sometimes there is nothing at all if we haven't. Most days, there is turnips and barley and salt.

I have been cooking this soup for eleven months. I can predict exactly when it will boil. I can tell, by the sound of the bubbles, whether there is enough water or if I need to add more. I can taste, from three paces away, whether the salt is right or if I've added too much.

I know this pot the way a man knows his own hands.

The camp is loud today. There are men everywhere—running, shouting, carrying supplies, sharpening swords, checking horses. There is a sense of movement, of preparation. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, we will march. Or maybe we will fight. I don't know. I don't ask.

I cook the soup. That is my job.

At noon, a man in shining armour came to the cooking fire. He was tall and blond and handsome in the way that men who have never been hungry are handsome. His armour was polished to a mirror shine. His cloak was red. His sword had a jewel in the hilt. He looked like a man from a painting, not a man from a camp.

"Cook," he said. His voice was loud and confident, the voice of a man who has never been told no. "Bring me a proper meal. Not this... whatever this is."

I looked at him. I looked at the pot. I looked back at him.

"This is the meal," I said.

He frowned. "I said a proper meal. Meat. Bread. Wine. Not this water with bits in it."

"There is no meat," I said.

"No meat?" He laughed. It was a short, sharp laugh, the kind of laugh a man makes when he is surprised and doesn't want to show it. "You're feeding an army on turnip water?"

"Not an army. Soup."

He stared at me for a moment. Then he turned and walked away, his red cloak swirling behind him. I watched him go. I knew him. He was one of the Chosen—the men who had been marked by something, I don't know what, something that made them different from the rest of us. They came into camp like this, all confidence and armour and jewels, and they spoke to men like me as if we were furniture.

I stirred the soup.

In the afternoon, I noticed something.

It was small. The kind of thing you notice only if you're paying attention, which I am, because when you cook soup for eleven months, paying attention is the only thing that keeps you sane.

A group of soldiers was standing near the supply wagons, talking. Among them was the blond man in shining armour—Sir Gareth, I think that was his name. He was telling a story. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I could see the way the other men were looking at him. With admiration. With something like worship.

He raised his hand to emphasize a point. And I saw it.

His hand moved. And then it moved again. The exact same motion. Same angle. Same speed. Same everything.

I stopped stirring. I watched him.

He raised his hand again. Same motion. Same angle. Same speed.

I felt something cold in my stomach. Not fear. Not exactly. More like the feeling you get when you look at something and realize it's not what you thought it was. Like looking at a painting and suddenly seeing that the face is wrong, the perspective is off, the colours are too perfect to be real.

I watched Sir Gareth for the rest of the afternoon. Every time he raised his hand, it was the same. Every time he turned his head, it was the same. Every time he spoke, the cadence of his voice was the same.

Same. Same. Same.

That night, I sat by my cooking fire and stirred the soup one more time and went to sleep in my tent. I dreamed of the soup. I dreamed that the pot was infinite, and I was stirring it forever, and the soup never got thicker, and the turnips never multiplied, and the salt was always exactly the same.

I woke up and stirred the soup.

The next day, I noticed something else.

Two soldiers were arguing near the water trough. One of them was young—maybe nineteen, with a face that still had the softness of boyhood. The other was older, maybe thirty, with a scar running from his ear to his jaw.

"I'm telling you," the young one said, "he was there. At the battle of Crécy. I saw him. He stood on a hill and shot three men in a row. Three. With one bow."

The older one shook his head. "You're seeing things, Tom. You were sixteen at Crécy."

"I'm not! I saw him! He was—like I said, like a painting. Shining armour. Red cloak. Jewel in his sword. He was—"

"Sir Gareth?" the older one said.

The young one nodded.

The older one sighed. "Tom, Sir Gareth wasn't at Crécy. He wasn't born yet."

The young man opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "But I saw him. I saw him with my own eyes."

"Did you?" the older one said quietly. "Or did you see what you were told you saw?"

I was listening. I always listen. Cooking soup makes you a good listener, because when you're stirring a pot for six hours straight, your mind wanders, and when your mind wanders, you hear things.

That evening, I sat by my fire and watched the soldiers. I watched them talk and laugh and argue and pray. I watched them do the things that soldiers do when they're not fighting. And I noticed, for the first time, that a lot of what they were doing was the same thing they'd done the day before. And the day before that. And the day before that.

Same conversations. Same jokes. Same arguments. Same prayers.

Not similar. Same. The same words. The same phrases. The same gestures.

I felt the coldness in my stomach grow.

I started keeping a notebook. I don't know how to read or write properly—I know a few letters, enough to sign my name, enough to keep a basic record of supplies—but I managed. I wrote down what I saw. Every day, I wrote down the things that were the same.

Day 47: Sir Gareth told the same story to three different groups of men. Word for word. Same pauses. Same emphasis.

Day 52: Two soldiers argued about the same thing they argued about last week. Same words. Same tone. Same ending.

Day 61: The chaplain preached the same sermon he preached three weeks ago. Changed one word. That was all.

Day 73: A messenger arrived with orders from Lord Marshal. The orders were the same as the orders from last month. Same strategy. Same targets. Same everything.

Day 89: Sir Gareth raised his hand the same way. I counted. Twelve times. Every motion identical.

Day 101: I asked the young soldier Tom if he remembered the battle of Crécy. He looked at me with those wide, confused eyes and said, "I don't know. I think I was there. I think I wasn't. I'm not sure anymore."

I closed the notebook on Day 110. I didn't need to write anymore. I knew what I needed to know.

The world is not real.

Not all of it. Not any of it. But the parts that matter—the parts where the fighting happens, where the heroes are made, where the stories are told—those parts are not real. They are a script. A performance. A machine that runs on the same gears, day after day, year after year, generation after generation.

And I am the only one who knows.

Not because I'm special. Not because I'm smart. I'm not. I'm a cook. I cook soup. That's all I've ever done. That's all I'll ever do.

But I cook the soup. And when you cook the soup for eleven months, you notice things.

Like how the soldiers always eat the same amount. Like how the rations are always exactly enough and never too much. Like how the battles always end the same way. Like how the heroes always shine and the villains always fall and the story always goes exactly the way it's supposed to go.

I tried telling someone. Once.

It was the chaplain. Father John. A good man, in his way. He spent his days praying and comforting the wounded and burying the dead. He was one of the few people in camp who seemed real, because at least his rituals had variety. Different prayers. Different sermons. Different faces to mourn.

I found him in the chapel tent, kneeling before a wooden cross, his head bowed.

"Father," I said.

He turned. "Edgar. What is it?"

I sat down across from him. I looked at his face. His eyes were red. He'd been crying. Again.

"I have something to tell you," I said. "Something important."

He nodded. "I'm listening."

I told him everything. The same motions. The same conversations. The same battles. The same heroes. The script. The machine. The world that is not real.

He listened. He didn't interrupt. He didn't look away. When I finished, he was silent for a long time.

Then he said: "Edgar, the world is a difficult place. Many men find it hard to accept. Some men... some men construct stories to make it bearable."

"You don't understand," I said. "It's not a story. It's a machine. Everything is the same. Every day. Every word. Every battle. Every hero."

He reached across the table and put his hand on mine. His hand was warm. Real. "Edgar, you've seen things. Things that are hard to process. It's normal to feel—well, to feel that nothing is real. But feelings aren't facts, my son."

I looked at his hand on mine. I looked at his face. And I knew, with a certainty that went deeper than thought, that he believed what he was saying. He truly believed that the world was real. He truly believed that his prayers mattered. That the cross meant something. That the dead meant something.

He was real. And he was wrong.

I stood up and walked out of the chapel tent. I didn't look back.

Now I cook the soup. Every day. Thin soup with turnips and barley and salt. I stir it. I taste it. I add salt if needed. I let it boil. I serve it to the men.

They eat it. Some of them complain. Some of them don't notice. Sir Gareth eats his share and tells me it needs more seasoning. I tell him there's nothing more to add. He laughs and walks away.

I go back to my fire. I stir the soup. I watch the bubbles.

And sometimes, in the space between one stir and the next, I think about the notebook. About Day 110. About the coldness in my stomach that has not gone away, not once, in eleven months.

The soup is thin today.

It will always be thin.

I stir it. I taste it. It needs more salt.

I add salt. I stir. I wait for it to boil.

The men will eat it.

They always do.

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