AT DAWN, fresh hunger woke me. My arm no longer ached. When I untied the bandage, I found the wound not red, not swollen, not even needing another bandage.
I crossed to the house in a light drizzle. Inside, I crept upstairs and sat at my vanity table to consider the hairy, blotchy nightmare in the looking glass. I tried to make the small, bloodshot (still hazel) eyes sympathetic but couldn’t judge my success.
Ogre hunger and human nausea warred in my belly.
If this was to be my shape, I had to ogrishly persuade people not to mind. “Friend . . .” Too raspy. I swallowed. “Dear friend . . . Beneath this . . .” This what? “. . . this odd exterior, I’m really—” I couldn’t say aloud who I actually was, even to myself. “I wouldn’t harm anyone.”
Even I wouldn’t believe me. I spent the next half hour practicing, until I thought I detected a scintilla of improvement. Then I stepped into the hall, though I should have listened at the door first. Bettina, our maid-of-all-work, was sweeping.
“Eeee!” Her broom clattered on the tiles.
Use a sweet voice. “Kind Bett—”
She flew down our stairs. I heard the front door thud.
Rupert, our manservant—big, young, bovine—gawked from the stair landing above. After an instant, his cry was as high-pitched as Bettina’s. He stood frozen, afraid to pass me on his way down.
Honey voice. “I’m harmless. A healer, too, like your mistress.”
His eyes bulged. He clutched his head. To save him from apoplexy, I backed into my room and stayed there until I heard his boots clumping down the stairs.
I reemerged into the silent hall. Last year, I’d hardly left Rupert’s bedside when he was desperately sick with fever, and he’d lived, even though I’d had no purpline to dose him with at the time.
His decamping gave me an idea. In his room, I sat at his shaving table, poured water from pitcher to bowl, and applied his razor to my face and the back of my hands. That done, I took his pig-bristle brush and attacked my fingernails, succeeding in freeing them almost entirely of grime—which half of me missed when it was gone. Then I stripped out of yesterday’s tattered gown and donned his spare breeches and worn linen shirt. The fit was fair, too tight here, too loose there. His boots, miraculously, pinched only a little.
Much improved, I told my ghastly reflection. My pores were vast, my lips thin, my forehead low. I wondered if another ogre would recognize me as female. I addressed my reflection. “You’re not so frightening anymore . . .” I grinned. “If you don’t show your fangs.”
The grin turned down. Who could possibly love me?
Daily, before breakfast, I visited patients. My roster for today: Mistress Poppy, who had birthed her first child the night before last; Master Caleb, who was probably at his ovens, though I’d ordered him to rest his knee; and Master Kian, whose cough had alarmed me. I plotted a route to each one that would avoid the trafficked thoroughfares.
Mistress Poppy had a younger brother my age, whom I’d never met. Perhaps he’d be visiting the baby. Perhaps he had odd tastes in sweethearts and would like the looks of me. Perhaps I’d like the looks of him—not just as a meal.
I had to eat.
As I descended to the kitchen, I thought of the chunk of bacon in the larder, which was all the meat we had left. But a side of mutton rested on the table, and Mother stood behind it. She must have sent Rupert to the market at dawn.
I framed my face with my hands. “Better? I shaved.”
She managed to hide her dismay, but I felt it. “You look distinguished.” She took a step toward me and stopped. Her eyes watered, but I didn’t sense sadness.
“Evie . . .”
“What’s wrong?” Silly question. Everything was wrong.
“Dear . . . er . . . I’m sorry. You smell.”
“Smell what?”
“Just smell, love.”
Me? I smelled fine: squirrel, beef, sweat, blood.
Ugh! I’d thought to clean only my hands. The mutton, sadly, would have to wait. I pumped water from our iron sink into our biggest pot and hefted it over the fire, which I now could accomplish easily.
When the water was finally hot and off the fire, it was hard to bathe without looking at myself.
While I washed, Mother butchered the mutton into chops and fried them according to my instructions—in suet, without any repulsive herbs or vegetables.
Finally I was clean, though my ogre side thought me dull and unsavory until I greased myself up eating the mutton with both hands. Then I ruined it all by washing them again. So it would have to be, or my patients would retreat when I approached.
Ordinarily, by midmorning I had at least five people waiting in the apothecary, but today my sole patient was Wormy, complaining of an itch behind his ear, which I dosed in an instant while resisting the temptation of his earlobes. I wondered if he’d invented the itch just to comfort me for having no patients.
He thanked me for the treatment and started for the door. Usually, he lingered.
“Wormy?”
“Evie?”
“Are you angry at me for saying no?”
“I’m not!” I felt his shock. “You had the right.”
Then why was he leaving so soon? “We’re still friends, aren’t we?”
“I’ll always be your friend, Evie.”
“Thank you, dear. I’ll always be yours.”
He left—as it turned out, just to visit Mother in her study.
When I opened our door to the street, I discovered that, despite a light rain, a mob had collected. My stomach roared at the sight of so much food.
They were armed with bows and arrows, rolling pins, knives, pokers. I stared down at the humans from the top of our steps. They stared up at me. The rain seemed to pause midair.
I supposed the clothing and the shave made them uncertain. They were two-legged sheep!
A woman’s voice wavered. “Is that the ogre?”
Not trusting my voice, I shook my head and began to descend our steps.
“It is the ogre!” I recognized Rupert’s voice. “It’s wearing my clothes!”
Everyone rushed at me. I ran up the stairs and threw myself back at the house. A hatchet whizzed over my shoulder and vibrated in our wooden door, which I cracked open and squeezed through. Once inside, I shot home the bolt.
Mother and Wormy stood in the vestibule. Mother was biting her lip. Wormy’s eyes were enormous. Pounding reverberated through the door. They were going to break it down!
I had to flee.
Mother’s thoughts must have followed mine. “They’ll have stationed people behind the house.”
I nodded. What then?
“Mother, Wormy, go to the back door. If you hear them come in here, run out there.” I didn’t think anyone would hurt them outside, but a mob indoors would be in a fever. “Go!”
Mother cupped my cheek, as if I were still lovable, then hurried away. With a backward glance, Wormy followed. After a moment, I flung open the door to find fists and weapons waving in my face.
But nothing landed. The pack drew back a few feet. I bared my fangs and roared, truth giving my voice power: “I’m hu-u-ungry!”
They retreated farther. Rain deadened the quiet.
I spoke softly, lying (I hoped), but they didn’t know. “If any of you enter this house, people will die.” Taking a chance, as if I were unworried, I turned my back and reentered. In the vestibule, I waited a full five minutes, but the assault on the door didn’t resume, a small victory for the ogre. Would they disperse?
Mother and Wormy were no longer at the back door. In the kitchen, Wormy said Mother had retired to her study. He stood at the iron sink, piercing a side of boar with a hook. Where had the treat come from?
I sensed his happiness. “Why are you happy?” My instant anger flared. Was he glad I’d been punished for turning him down?
His pleasure changed to confusion. “How do you know I’m happy?”
“I can tell what people are feeling. Maybe that helps ogres persuade.”
“But you can’t persuade, right?”
“No.”
The hook was in the boar.
“Where did this come from?” I hoisted the roast onto the steam-jack, where it spun slowly on its own axis. In just a few minutes, pork perfumed the air.
“I got it at the market.”
How kind of him! “Thank you.”
“The butcher’s boy helped carry it.”
I nodded and remembered my question. “Why were you happy?” My tone was accusatory.
“Because nobody hurt you at the door. Because you’re all right.”
Oh.
Who could love such a creature as I had become? Soon even Wormy would stop liking me. “Sorry! Everything makes me angry. And I can’t stop being hungry.”
“I’m often hungry, too.”
Which angered me. A human appetite was nothing like what I was enduring.
He added, “I wonder if the fairy knew.”
Which mollified me. “I don’t know whether it would be worse or better if she did it without realizing. Why does she care if I get married? Or if I turn down a hundred offers?”
“Do you think she’s married?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe someone turned her down.” As always, a good conversationalist, Wormy continued to speculate. He went on and on, and I stopped listening, though I used to enjoy his notions, but now the sizzle of boar fat had more significance for me than words.
And I had thoughts to think, plans to make. I couldn’t remain here, a prisoner in our house, endangering both Mother and anyone, like Wormy or future patients, who came to me.
But where to go?
Even before that, how to leave?
The boar cooked. The scent made thinking increasingly difficult, but I forced my mind to work.
Eventually I formed the beginnings of a plan, one that turned even my stomach and tightened my chest with fear.
“Will you stay for dinner? My belly says it’s almost noon.” I wondered if the mob was still outside. Wormy might not be able to leave.
“Will there be carrots in cream?” His favorite dish.
“Do you see anyone cooking it?” I mastered my rage. “Sorry. No vegetables for the time being, dear.”
We stood in silence until he said, “I’ll stay.”
More silence. Then I asked, “Wormy . . . will your family help Mother and make sure she has enough money?”
“Where will you be?”
“We’ll repay you.” If I lived.
He waved the offer away. “We’ll help.” His Adam’s apple throbbed. “I’ll see she’s all right. Where will you be?”
My answer would wait for Mother. I didn’t want to have to say it twice and argue twice. “Thank you.” I sat on the stool by my worktable.
Wormy sat on the stool next to mine, but his closeness made me uneasy, as it never had before—and hungrier. I moved to the other side of the table. I would have checked the front door, but if people were still out there, I feared that just twitching aside a curtain would bring on an attack.
Silence resumed. Ordinarily, I would have told him about the patients I’d seen, and he would have had lots of questions.
After a quarter hour, the human side of me had a question for him. “Are you used to seeing me this way yet?”
“When we’re in the same room I am. But if I go out or you do and then one of us comes back, I’m surprised. And your voice is different, so if you haven’t spoken for a while, I forget, and then I’m surprised.”
He’d chosen surprised, not shocked or horrified. He was a kind person.
“When we’re in the same room—tell me the truth!—now that I’ve been an ogre a while, do I still look as bad?”
He took a full minute to answer, and then all he said was, “I know it’s really you the same as always.”
Mother came in. The boar gleamed a beautiful brown, and I deemed it fit for humans to eat, so I put it on a platter. Mother followed me into the dining room, trailed by Wormy. In the back garden, which the dining room looked out on, the rain intensified. I wondered if the weather had dispersed the crowd outside.
But before I checked, I had to eat. Wormy carved while I restrained myself from ripping off a rib.
Hesitantly, Mother asked, “Is there anything else? Bread? Turnips?”
Wormy shook his head at her. Mother’s eyebrows went up, but she said nothing. He served me a single slice.
“I’m an ogre!”
He gave me three more slices, and then, seeing my face, four more. I began by eating with a knife and fork but forgot after a few bites. Wormy and Mother directed their eyes elsewhere.
We ate in silence. When the meal ended, I went to the front parlor and peered out the window. No one remained.
I was hungry again—or still hungry. I returned to the dining room and devoured the last chop. Mother and Wormy had waited to find out about the mob.
“They’re gone. Wormy, would you get me an armful of dried meat from your father’s smokehouse?”
He stood up.
“Take Rupert’s greatcoat. I don’t want you to catch a chill.” Sometimes, or so it seemed to me, I was entirely the human healer.
After Wormy left, Mother followed me to the apothecary and sat at my worktable while I filled a carpetbag with clean cloth for bandages, my most needful herbs, a pot of honey, my surgeon’s kit, a flask of vinegar, and my last vial of purpline. Finally, I added my gift from my only elf patient ever, a fist-size bust of me as I had been.
Wormy returned with a bundle wrapped in canvas and tied with string.
“Thank you, dear.” I resisted tearing into it and added it to my satchel.
He sat next to Mother.
“Wormy, Timon on Earl Road is a decent healer. Consult him.”
“Why?”
I took Mother’s hand, which disappeared in mine. How I’d miss her.
“Mother, Wormy, I need to learn to be persuasive.”
Mother cried, “No! They’ll eat you!”
“I hope not!”
“Evie!” Wormy’s voice cracked. “Evie-ee! Not the Fens!”
How I’d miss him, too.
Kyrria’s ogres lived in the Fens. Ogres were the only ones who could teach me. I had to go.