Not all heroes wield swords. Some wield cast-iron skillets and boundless compassion, and somehow, that turns out to be just as formidable.

Paisley Dell, the halfling chef at the heart of my book Cooking Up Magick, is a protagonist who doesn’t start out with a prophecy or a destiny tattooed on her soul. She begins her journey with a family heirloom frying pan named Grace, a notebook full of recipes, and a grief she avoids by mentally mashing it into a compost heap. And yet, from the first pages, I think she’s hard to look away from.

What makes Paisley interesting to me isn’t her power. It’s the particular weight she carries. Her journey outward into the world is also a journey inward through guilt, obligation, and a fierce, almost stubborn belief that caring for people matters. I want to take a closer look at what drives her, what haunts her, and why her brand of heroism has stuck with me.

A Promise Forged in Tragedy

Paisley doesn’t leave home because she’s restless or bored, though she’s a little of both. She leaves because she made a promise to a dying friend, and she’s not the kind of person who breaks promises.

Losing Prilani sits at the center of Paisley’s psychology like a stone dropped into still water; its ripples touch everything. Two years after the death of her friend, Paisley is still training with the Captain of the Watch, still saving money, still preparing to fulfill her vow to Prilani and follow her dreams. The grief hasn’t faded. It’s transformed into fuel for her quest.

I was careful not to let Paisley off the hook emotionally for this. She tells others she’s placed the blame for Prilani’s murder where it belongs. But underneath that, there’s something more complicated: a woman who carries guilt anyway because she loved someone and couldn’t protect them. Paisley’s guilt isn’t self-pity. It’s the dark side of her empathy.

In Cast Iron and Magick, the prequel to book one, I originally wrote that Paisley saved Prilani. I realized, however, that to get Paisley off her duff and out the door when she’s so comfortably rooted in her environment, something extreme would have to happen. Something needed to drive her and keep her going when it would be easier to go home when things got tough or scary. So I changed the ending to give that kind of backstory.

Compassion as a Catalyst

Her stated reason for traveling to Garastrade is to learn dwarven recipes. On the surface, that sounds modest for an epic fantasy protagonist. But watch what she does with that goal. She doesn’t want to collect recipes the way a scholar collects specimens. Paisley wants to learn them so she can make travelers feel less homesick. She wants to hand someone a bowl of something that tastes like their grandmother’s kitchen and watch the tension leave their shoulders.

This is Paisley’s superpower, and it works on multiple levels. When she makes baltinghommer for the dwarves staying at the Rosebud Inn, the scene is her philosophy in action. She listens, she learns, she executes, and then she watches the effect ripple outward. Buckley’s description of her cooking as “magick” isn’t just a title drop. It’s an accurate read on what she does with care and attention.

The same impulse that drives her to learn different cuisines drives her to help a wounded stranger on a battlefield, to feed injured soldiers in a healer’s infirmary, and to stay up late translating a cookbook with a half-orc who reads Dwarvish. Paisley’s compassion isn’t passive. It’s relentlessly active. She feeds people—literally and figuratively—in practically every situation she encounters.

What I hope the book shows is that this kind of care isn’t weakness. Her instinct is always to help the elf, the half-orc, or the dwarf in front of her. That instinct is exactly what the world needs. It’s what makes Paisley dangerous in the best possible sense.

When Paisley enlists her elf friend to help her search through dead bodies to find supplies for her new half-orc friend, Idari says, “Paisley, I am not enjoying myself right now, but I find your selfless enthusiasm for helping people and your capacity to care a refreshing thing. That is why I am helping you.” Imagine a jaded 1,000-year-old elf who has lived through a genocide saying that. Paisley’s kindness is a strength. She is one person doing hard things for the right reasons and inspiring others to do the same.

Unconventional Hero

There’s a particular kind of fantasy hero the genre has trained us to expect: someone who discovers their power and learns to wield it. Paisley Dell does that eventually. But what makes her arc satisfying to me is that her power was never really the point. She was already doing the work before the magick arrived. She was already crossing cultural divides with a skillet and a genuine curiosity about how other people lived. She was already carrying the weight of someone she loved and couldn’t save, and choosing to move forward, anyway. The sorcery is almost incidental, a new tool in the hands of someone who already knew what she was building.

The question I keep asking throughout this book is this: what does it look like when someone who genuinely believes in the power of care is thrust into a world that runs on violence and greed? Paisley’s answer is messy and imperfect, and deeply human. 

Who’s your favorite unconventional fantasy hero? Drop a comment over on my Instagram or Facebook. And if Paisley sounds like your kind of protagonist, her journey is waiting for you in Cooking Up Magick, available for pre-order now.