Photography by Sabine Pentecost

Terry’s partner, Sam, had found it first. Buried in the rubble of a dilapidated 11th-century stone house, in an archaeological site two kilometres from Catania, Sicily. Parchment paper, with text written in the most faded of Latin. It took them weeks to decrypt it. Turns out it was a recipe; one they had never heard of before.

At first, it started off like a recipe for every other arancini ball. But as they deciphered more of the recipe, they realised just how out of this world their discovery was. From the soul of a lobster, tears of a raven, flesh of a freshly sprouted mushroom, to the shell of a newly laid egg, it was clear that this was no ordinary recipe. Some—scream of a banshee, hopes and dreams of a failing artist—were so abstract that they weren’t even sure what to make of it.

Then, the moment they uncovered the last line of the parchment, they both knew, within a heartbeat. They needed to recreate this recipe, no matter what.

Whoever eats of this shall be able to conjure up mystical arts.

In other words, magic.

The night before their next expedition—to fetch all the ingredients listed on the parchment—they were lying on the couch in their Melbourne apartment, staring at the parchment on the table.

“I dunno, Terry, do you think we can actually do this?” said Sam, hands shaking. Terry held her partner’s hands tightly.

“We probably can’t recreate it one hundred per cent, but we’ll do our best. We have to.”

Ever since she was a child, Terry had always wanted to perform real-life magic. It was something that was once a mainstay of ancient times, and something her ancestors could once do. To be able to even perform a simple feat of magic was worth everything to Terry.

Once back in Sicily, they frequented many of the markets there for the more basic ingredients. Sam, being a bit of a chef, helped immensely in choosing the freshest of ingredients. They visited a local mushroom farm for the flesh of a freshly sprouted mushroom. Nearby was another farm that sorted out their need for the shell of a newly laid egg. Sam and Terry visited the local cemetery, where there was a flock of ravens grieving for one of their own that had fallen. According to the makeshift tombstone, it had died of a heart attack after encountering the mushroom farm’s scarecrow. Sam went up to one of them carefully and collected a couple of tears for the recipe into a jar, before paying respect to the fallen raven.

Scream of a banshee seemed flat-out impossible—surely wayward spirits don’t exist, right? But exist they did, as Terry and Sam would find out at the very same cemetery. And the banshee’s scream was deafening beyond belief. It nearly knocked out Sam, and Terry was left temporarily deafened by the encounter. Fortunately, as they managed to run away in the nick of time, Sam had recorded the shrill shriek on her phone. They both discussed the logistics of adding said shriek to the recipe and determined that, rather than wasting a brand new expensive and, more importantly, inedible phone, they would just playback the shriek on repeat while cooking.

Soul of a lobster seemed to be a dead end at first. Upon some deep thinking, they decided to approximate it by collecting a fresh lobster from the market, boiling it, and collecting the steam in a jar. They both agreed that if a soul existed, some fragments of it would be present inside the steam, and promptly moved on to the next set of ingredients.

As for the last ingredient, the hopes and dreams of a failing artist, Terry decided to bite the bullet. After all, her recent sculpting hobby was going nowhere, and it showed in the lumpy creations that formed from her many attempts. They decided to serve one of the less lumpy sculptures—a meagre attempt at recreating their house cat, Milo—on the side as an accompaniment to the main meal itself. An accompaniment that was to be looked at in small doses, and not to be eaten.

The first steps of cooking were easy, other than the banshee’s unholy howl echoing in the background. Sam’s experience in the cooking industry proved to be quite integral in blitzing the first part of the recipe. Even the outlandish ingredients were expertly prepared alongside the more mundane components. However, they ran into a problem with the eggshell, which was making the uncooked filling’s texture quite gritty. Terry resolved herself to an hour’s worth of cracking and crumbling the eggshell in a mortar and pestle, until it was all a fine dust, perfect for the filling.

Soon, the filling was ready and simmering. Terry and Sam looked at each other nervously. They had one nagging question on their mind: was it enough? Would they be able to reawaken magic back into their magicless realm?  Would Terry finally be able to follow in her ancestors’ footsteps?

Sam continually added more raven tears as the mixture bubbled, before seasoning and transferring the mixture into the fridge for an hour. Afterwards was the final assembling, which they did until they had 12 balls made, which went into the fridge for another two hours. They were then coated in a pastella—a mixture of flour, and what was left of the tears of raven—and breadcrumbs, before being fried until golden brown.

Terry took the first bite. Then another, and another, until it was all gone. It was tasty—Sam’s involvement made sure of that. And the texture was enjoyably unique, despite all the unorthodox ingredients. But no magic feeling. Sam went ahead and ate the next ball. No magic tingling either.

“I’m sure it’ll work out. Let’s sleep on it,” said Sam, hugging Terry before she went off to bed. Terry grabbed one of the remaining balls and ate it. Then another one. Surely something was bound to work out.

“You know, eating them until you’re sick doesn’t sound like the best idea.” Terry turned around to see Sam in her pyjamas.

“But it has to work. Otherwise, all our hard work—”

“Would still mean something, right? I enjoyed making these with you. Didn’t you? Now come on, let’s go to bed. We can worry about them in the morning.” They went to sleep after that, preparing supposedly magical arancini balls is tiring work.

When they woke up, still no magic. All day they tried everything—magical incantations, random waves of the hand. Terry even pulled out a supposedly magic wand (from a street vendor in Sicily) and tried some spells. Still nothing. They both sighed and stared at the full moon, eating what was left of the arancini. For Terry, no magic meant her dreams were shattered. And there were few feelings as bad as that.

Then she turned to Sam, radiant as the moon itself, and smiled. While the experiment itself was a dud, the journey surely was not.

And the arancini balls were rather tasty indeed.