MOTHER SAID she loved Father because of their friendship and her tingle. But my tingle was universal. The more delicious someone looked, the stronger I felt it. Tingle was useless!
ZEEn had enlightened me as thoroughly about the honorable Squire Jerrold as long acquaintance would have. Sir Peter was, by contrast, clever, crafty, amusing, mysterious, indistinct as fog, slippery as wet moss. Alluring.
Wormy, whom I knew best, was sensitive, sweet, sympathetic, kind, thoughtful, loyal, devoted, trustworthy. Impossibly, both helpful and helpless. As amusing as Sir Peter, but more gently so. Nervous, delicate. Always underfoot—until now.
Squire Jerrold asked, “Will everyone in Frell get sick?”
I smiled and remembered to keep my teeth together. “Anybody who hasn’t already survived the blight will catch it.”
“Will they die?”
“Your grandfather and Trunk lived. I don’t know if they were treated with purpline or treated at all. Can you tell me how many healers and physicians ply their skill in Frell?”
He couldn’t. Wormy would have known.
What was I to do here, now, in this carriage, with Squire Jerrold?
In the common way of becoming friends, I introduced the subject of books. He liked to read almanacs; I preferred novels and medical tomes. But I smiled and nodded at his preferences, so he’d know I respected them and was open-minded, and, above all, friendly.
Neither of us enjoyed poems, which made me think again of Wormy, who loved them. And Squire Jerrold and I were alike in disdaining fairy tales, upon which I now considered myself an authority. The fairy wasn’t always good!
Squire Jerrold answered my questions but didn’t expand on them or question me in turn. If he were ever to become king, he’d have to learn the art of conversation.
Or he might know it and not want a long discussion with an ogre.
But I wondered why he wasn’t more curious about the oddity that I was, beyond those aspects of ogres that might lead to their defeat.
My amiable expression firmly in place, I moved us on to music, dance, gardening. His lovely, big eyes became bigger when I said I relished performing a galloping gavotte. He said he made a fool of himself if he tried anything quicker than an allemande, and, for music to listen to, he also preferred stateliness. He enjoyed the outdoors for athletic pursuits, not for gardening.
“We both pursue what we value,” I said.
“I’m a little tired.” He closed his eyes, but his breathing didn’t deepen to sleep.
Tired of me, not tired.
If I zEEned him into a proposal, which I accepted, he’d witness my release. As noble as he was, he would stick with it to save me. Heal myself and harm him? I thought about it.
Eventually, he did sleep—and slept through the night.
I imagined my ogre self as a rowboat that held the real me. The shore was humanity, but no matter how hard I rowed, it stayed exactly as distant as it had been thirty-nine days ago, when Lucinda cast her spell.
In the morning—when I had twenty-two days left—Squire Jerrold awoke and I dabbed on fresh perfume, but my nose told me it accomplished little if I didn’t bathe first.
He asked me to judge his recovery.
“Hold out your hands.”
He did.
“Palms down.”
No sign of bumps.
“Open your eyes wide.”
Dark brown again. I felt a healer’s satisfaction. “I declare you cured.”
“Thank you!” He reached past me and pounded on the carriage wall that separated us from Trunk. “I’m sure Trunk would like to come inside a while. He can’t sleep soundly behind the horses.”
The beasts slowed.
ZEEn him! I might not have another chance. I blurted, “Do you like me?”
He blushed, and I felt his embarrassment.
I plowed on. “If I were—” Would Lucinda let me say it? No. Human wouldn’t come out. “If I were . . . an elf, for example, might we be friends?”
The embarrassment lessened. “You saved my life! I’m grateful.” He thought about it. “You brought cheer to Grandfather. If I’m ever sick again, I’ll come to you.” He turned to the window and breathed deeply. “We are friends.”
Do it!
The carriage stopped, and a moment later he went out and took my tingle with him.
Trunk came in. “Good morning, Mistress Ogre.” He leaned back with his head near the window.
I tingled again, but faintly.
A moment later, he snored, which quieted my tingle even more. He continued snoring all morning and half the afternoon. I devoured many meat sticks so I wouldn’t eat him to stop the sound.
When he awoke, he felt it his duty to take back the driving. Squire Jerrold didn’t return, however. I remained alone. Both must have preferred napping on the bench to my stink.
I wondered how Wormy would act if he were here. Would he endure my smell for the sake of my company? Would he even like it because it was mine?
No one could.
Did he still love me?
Two afternoons later, I developed a headache and dosed myself with oilybur. The headache receded, but I felt dull and low in spirits. Listlessly, I watched the landscape through the window. The low autumn sun glimmered through clouds. Two dun horses grazed among leafless trees. Nothing bright or cheery.
Forty-two and a half days wasted, nineteen and a half left, the end of possibility approaching.
If I’d had the energy, I would have sat up. Today was my birthday, November 3.
I’d never had a terrible birthday before. Mother and Wormy always made a fuss.
Last year, I’d awakened to discover that a fall snowstorm had left six inches. After Wormy came, bundled and mittened against the cold, and after the three of us shared Mother’s raisin pudding, he and I had gone to Rushy Square to make snow people.
Not your customary pile of three precariously balanced balls, though. Ours had to be realistic. And, in honor of my birthday, each had to illustrate a medical condition.
Wormy was the artist and I the scientist. I knew where the bones and muscles were, and he knew how to make the figures pleasing.
We made two, both male, one with a dowager’s hump, because men get them, too, and one with a wooden leg. We made the humpback wealthy, with the hump straining the cloth of his (snow) jacket. The ruffles in his cravat were Wormy’s crowning achievement. The peg-leg snowman was a laborer, with a rough coverall shirt and trousers rather than our gentleman’s breeches. Both wore spatterdashes to keep their feet and legs dry, but, naturally, our toiler needed only one. We spent half an hour searching for the perfect branch to be his wooden leg.
After we admired our creations, I inscribed Healer in the snow and below it my name and address. Wormy would never have taken credit, but I also wrote Artist with Wormy’s name below.
When we returned to Mother, she served us steaming cider. It may have been the best birthday I’d ever have.
I wept weakly at the memory and used my melancholy to explain how tired I felt. I should have noticed my chill, but I just sidled close to the coal brazier and spread another blanket over myself before falling into a restless sleep.
In the morning, I tried to reach for a meat stick but my hand was too heavy. And I had no appetite anyway.
This was more than sadness.
I managed to raise my thumb. The fingernail had three pronounced bumps. Ogres could catch barley blight—or I could.
“Squire Jerrold!” My voice was so hoarse I could hardly hear it. I had no strength to bang on the wall.
I closed my eyes and wondered how quickly I’d die.
With nineteen days left.
If I weren’t a stinking ogre, Squire Jerrold would have been here to dose me.
My chest was so tight I could barely breathe. After a minute, I lost the strength to remain seated and slid to the floor of the coach.
Would my corpse be human?
My mind faded out.