LUCKILY, THE MASTER’S WALLS were thick. No one rushed to the window.
How could it be Wormy? Why was he here? Had something befallen Mother? Was she ill? Was he looking for me to bring me home to treat her?
I squeezed my hands together. Let Mother not be sick!
Wormy made his way to the tea table and, without having to shoulder anyone, reached the teapot, where he poured two cups. More of the young people ambled to him. A young man asked if he was staying long in the neighborhood.
“I’m off in the morning.” He didn’t reveal his destination.
But first he was staying the night. I had to talk to him!
“I see.” His questioner was too polite to probe further.
I wished he’d been rude!
The man added, “Some of the young people would have liked to become better acquainted with you. I admit I would have.”
Wormy bowed and blushed, but not as hotly as I’d have expected. While I was gone, had he grown used to such attention?
Another young gent chimed in. “City folk rarely journey here. They don’t discover how welcoming we are.”
A maiden nodded eagerly.
Wormy was a catch!
Someone else spoke. The tea would be cold by the time he escaped. The bold young woman returned to the window and gazed out.
I had forgotten how bright the night was.
“Someone’s watching!” she cried. “Big! A bear!”
I ran. They’d know from my boot prints that I was no bear. Would the master guess who I really was?
People exited the house. Cries followed me, but no pursuit. They seemed to be satisfied with scaring me off.
Where to go?
Not to the drying shed and its meat sticks, where I’d been before, where I would be sought if anyone realized my identity. Not to the stable, where the guests’ horses would be. Not to the barn, where overflow steeds might be.
The pigs were kind enough to let me in their sty. I liked their scent, and they seemed not to mind mine. Best of all, they were warm. Snuggling with them reminded me of the nighttime comfort of my band. Soon, I slept.
“Evie-ee?”
SSahlOO was dragging Wormy away, and I had to save him, but I was trapped in a morass of leather pillows.
“Evie?”
I woke. Still night, still bright. Still an ogre.
“Evie?”
Wormy! There he was, only a few yards away, facing the barn, his back to me. The master and the servants I’d encountered before were beside him, also facing away. Two of them held lanterns, but they carried no axes or scythes or rakes.
They all wore cloaks. I couldn’t tell if the too-thin man had put on flesh.
I hoped to get out of the sty before anyone saw me in here, but the hogs didn’t cooperate. They made noise moving, and they squealed and grunted.
“Evie!” Wormy hurried to the pigpen, then drew back as the combined stink of them and me reached him.
The bold young woman at the party hadn’t wanted to shoulder through a few people, and here I was, shoving through pigs, holding my carpetbag over my head.
“I’m smelly, Wormy.” Defiantly, I added, “I don’t mind it.” The healer took over. “The stench may scratch your throat.”
He touched his neck and kept his distance. I wished the others weren’t here so I could tell what he was feeling.
“Is Mother ill?”
The master frowned. I supposed he was thinking, This man knows an ogre’s mother?
“No, but she’s worried.”
When Mother worried, she forgot to eat. “Tell her to drink auntwort tea. That will soothe her. Don’t let her get too thin, and tell her I’m fine.”
“She keeps saying she misses her healer girl.”
“You’re female?” the master said.
“Does anyone else in Jenn miss me?”
He shrugged.
“My patients have found other healers?”
Another shrug. Of course they had.
“I haven’t, Evie.”
“Are you sick?”
“I’m as ever.”
But he looked better than that. My stomach growled. I tingled my confused ogre-girl tingle.
“Why are you here?” Oh! “Did the fairy tell you where to find me? Did she transport you?” Did fairies do that?
“The fairy?” the master echoed.
“I haven’t seen her. She didn’t tell me anything. I came on Biddable.” His horse. “Evie, you have only twenty-four days left.”
He’d kept track! I wondered if he was going to propose again. What would I say? “Why are you here?” Then I rushed to explain it. “On business for your parents?”
He squared his shoulders, a gesture that looked less absurd than I remembered. “I came in hopes of finding you or at least getting word of you.”
“For Mother?” Or for yourself?
He nodded.
Oh. For Mother.
He shivered and hugged his cloak.
The master and the others clutched their cloaks tight, too. The master proposed continuing the conversation in the house, then thought better of it, considering my odor. At his suggestion, we went to the barn, and I saw him notice that the beasts were untroubled by me.
I asked him my most important question: “Master, has a trader been by, a Master Peter?”
“Tall?”
I nodded.
“Rakish?”
Jaunty. “I suppose.”
“He was here half a year ago. I’d send him packing if he came again. Our last kitchen wench sighed over him until her wedding day to another fellow.”
He was lovable, so naturally I wouldn’t be the only one to love him.
Wormy frowned. “Who is Master Peter?”
“I met him on the road.” I didn’t want to explain the rest of it.
“Oh.” He waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, he asked, “Are you still on your way to the Fens?”
“No. I lived there for a while.” Why did I feel ashamed?
“Did you learn persuasion?”
I nodded. The master and the others already knew.
“Then you’re coming home?” He sounded eager.
“I can’t. Persuasion doesn’t succeed if there are more than three people and only one ogre. In Jenn, they’d kill me before I could persuade anyone.”
“Oh.”
The young girl servant stifled a yawn, which set off a round of yawns among them, except for Wormy.
What was he feeling toward me? What would I say if he proposed again? I continued to grieve for Master Peter. At bottom, Wormy was still just my childhood chum.
But now he made me tingle, too—as almost everyone did.
He didn’t propose. Had he stopped caring for me?