MOTHER AND WORMY argued with me, but my mind couldn’t be changed. If I hoped to survive in this form, I had to have persuasion to help me. If I couldn’t persuade, I’d never be able to live among people again. I’d have no chance of finding love. I’d be an ogre forever, guaranteed.
By the time I finally exhausted them, night had fallen.
Wormy took his leave. He bowed to Mother and then to me.
I curtsied, feeling absurd.
He turned to go, then turned back, took my hand, and shook it. My appetite mounted. Inexplicably, my ears felt on fire.
We let each other go. He gazed at me. I sensed his sadness, and the tip of his nose reddened. He was fighting tears.
He wheeled on his heels and left.
I wondered if, after tonight, I’d ever see him or Mother again.
Mother kept silent vigil in the kitchen with me. Finally, the lord mayor’s bell rang midnight. Mother hugged me, though my stink had returned. I left in a soaking rain and began my third day in ogre form.
As I’d hoped, the streets were empty. Outside Jenn, the city closest to the Fens, the road forked. I took the left branch, which would eventually abut a section of the elves’ Forest and would lead to another fork. The road to the right would take a traveler to the giants’ farms and then to the Spires, the dragons’ craggy homeland.
Surprisingly, just thinking of the Spires caused my fists to ball. Still, I wished I were going there as a human among a party of healers, escorted by a squadron of soldiers. With luck, we’d collect purpline and wouldn’t trouble a dragon.
But I would turn left instead. Then no more turns; Fens straight ahead, a journey, I estimated, that would use up in total three or four days, if I could make my frightened feet hurry and hardly slept—and wasn’t murdered along the way.
People knew little about the Fens. Few traveled there unless in an ogre’s thrall, and none of those returned. Kings and queens over the centuries had tried to wipe out the creatures, but had succeeded merely in confining them somewhat.
Confining us!
The Fens’ periphery was patrolled only when attacks on people and livestock became frequent. Soldiers inevitably died.
After an hour or two, I had to rest. I hid myself behind the hedge that lined the road but found that I was too distressed and hungry to sleep.
My thoughts went to Mother, who probably wasn’t sleeping, either. On nights when we were both troubled—usually about money—we’d each go to the kitchen and find the other there. I’d brew my auntwort tea, which had calming effects, and Mother would build up the fire if the night was chilly. Then we’d sit by the fireplace with quilts over our knees and play guessing games until our yawns came quicker than our ideas.
Tonight my guessing game was: Who would brew the tea for Mother? Who would sit with her?
When my tears dried, I sat up and reached for my carpetbag and the meat sticks, then stayed my hand, refusing to serve my stomach, trying to be that much human.
Wormy was probably awake, too. He’d be worried about me and about himself—because he knew sleeplessness was bad for health, and I wouldn’t be there to dose him in the morning.
He was my favorite patient, willing to try any experiment if I was administering it. For example, when I’d presented him with a new cold remedy, snail slime and hedgehog grease, he’d drunk it down. As soon as he could open his mouth again without throwing up, he’d asked me to flavor it with anise and honey next time. Not snail and hedgehog! became a joke between us.
But his cold had vanished.
Would I have said yes if he’d waited a year or two? I couldn’t tell. At fifteen I could barely recognize my fourteen-year-old self. At sixteen, I’d be different again, especially since being an ogre was sure to change me.
I lay back down. Sleep still kept its distance.
As a human, I hadn’t liked dried meat much.
It could wait. I ground my teeth.
Wormy was precipitate. Time would have faded many of his ailments, but he wanted them gone in an instant. He might have decided he loved me five minutes before he proposed.
If I’d seen ahead, I’d have told him I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to marry. Now I’d have to if—in sixty days!—I came to love someone who loved me back. That is, if a miracle happened.
Without consulting my mind or my will, my fingers undid my carpetbag straps and untied the knots holding the bundle of meat. I sampled a strip.
Depth of flavor! Meatier than meat prepared any other way. Much better than the side of boar, lovely as that had been. I closed my eyes, the better to savor the intensity—the difference between a candle and the sun.
In a few minutes I finished the strip and reached for seconds. And held back. I should hoard this marvel for real need.
What would it be like to meet ogres as an ogre? I didn’t speak Ogrese—unless the language would flow out of me when I needed it. How would I explain myself? Would they sense the truth? Would they be able to persuade me to do anything, as if I were still purely human? Would they be kind? Would I like them? Liking them would be awful!
And how was Aeediou faring? Had Oobeeg treated her?
My thoughts revolved from one question to another until, finally, exhausted, I slept.
And woke to shock all over again that I was an ogre.
Travel on the road proved impossible during the day and even at night. After the sight of me caused a man to capsize his cart, I kept to the woods that bordered the road. I was in no danger of tripping, because—
My only company was my hunger, always loud about its need. Still, I saved the dried meat, and, one moonless night, I borrowed more—borrowed, because I’d pay when I could—from a curing shed near a farmer’s cottage. No one awoke. The dog in the farmyard rolled onto its back for a belly rub.
I didn’t eat this plunder, either, but kept myself alive on the occasional squirrel or rabbit unfortunate enough to cross my path.
As I jogged along, I remembered the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.” The Beast stays home, waiting for luck to solve his problem, which, fairy-tale fashion, it does when kind, sweet, and comely Beauty enters his palace. He loves her, and, miraculously, she grows to love him. The happy ending arrives right on time.
However, what if he doesn’t love her? She could be sour and unkind. Or she might have even more virtues than the tale bestows on her, but he still might not love her. All people should have a right to love the one they love, no matter the person’s perfections or imperfections.
I swore not to be the fairy-tale Beast. I still wanted to marry for love and to be loved. If I didn’t, I’d have regained my human form but lost my self-respect.
Some people never meet their true love.
Gradually, during the fourth night of my journey, the ground became sandy, and the woods thinned to copses of low junipers. Fifty-six days left.
Six gone.
The next morning, barely past dawn, I trotted on the road itself, reasoning that few would be traveling this early and my progress would be faster. The air stank of Kyrrian clematis. How I used to love the scent.
What was that shape in the distance? I loped along on tiptoe.
The shape clarified into a donkey with a lump on the ground next to it. The donkey, loaded with saddlebags, was scrawny enough to alarm my healer side and thinner than my ogre side would wish for—if I ate donkeys.
A young man, probably a year or two older than I, lay with his cloak pulled up to his chin. When I saw his face, my breath caught in my throat. The ogre stopped appraising him as food, and the girl took over.
Handsome, even with his lower jaw hanging in sleep. Long eyelashes, tight curls below a blue cap, clear skin, flaring nostrils; cheekbones high enough to speed my heart. Tall, by the length of him under his cloak.
Might his character be admirable, too?
If only I were already persuasive. Then I could travel with him. We could become acquainted—
—and fall in love?
Even now, I could take him with me. I believed I could overpower him.
Take him to ogres? No.
Might Lucinda have arranged for him to be here to give me a second chance? Could a fairy do that? Would she?
He must have felt my scrutiny, because his eyes opened, brown eyes. I watched them change from confusion to terror. And I sensed the terror, too. In an instant, he was on his feet.
“Don’t be afraid! I only look—”
“Eat my donkey.” He ran down the road.
I could have caught him, though he was both fleet and agile, signs of excellent health.
The donkey nickered and nuzzled my arm. How did beasts know I wouldn’t eat them, even though my belly shouted that I should?
I wondered if there was anything in the saddlebags to tell me where the gentleman hailed from or where he was going.
It was wrong to pry!
And wrong to even borrow meat sticks without permission.
The donkey stood still while I unbuckled a satchel that bulged oddly. Under a rapier in an embossed sheath, a copper saucepan gleamed up at me, rubbed to a high shine. Next to it nested three bronze straight-sided bowls with bumps hammered into the metal. Several linen caps protected the saucepan and the bowls from scratching each other.
He was a peddler. A toiling person, as Mother and I were. I closed the saddlebag, not wanting to dirty his wares.
A saddlebag closer to the donkey’s neck seemed stuffed but not lumpy. Papers? Or dried meat?
Papers. It would be another misdeed to read them. I pulled out the stack. The sheet on top was a promissory note from a Master Peter of Frell (the Kyrrian capital) to jagH, a gnome. The prodigious size of the debt surprised me.
“Ogres can read?”
Master Peter, even more handsome vertical than horizontal, stood a few yards from the donkey. My heart galloped. He must have decided he could approach, since I had neither chased him nor eaten his mount. I still sensed fear, but it was manageable now.
Lucinda! I might marry this man. Turn me back and give us both the choice.
She didn’t. Heartless fairy.
I swallowed. “This ogre can read, Master Peter, peddler by trade.”
He swept an elegant bow. “Master Peter, merchant by trade. I have excellent . . .” He paused, doubtless wondering what he might sell to an ogre. Eagerness mixed with his fear. I sensed them both.
Despite my shirt and breeches, I curtsied with what grace I could muster.
He blinked. “Excellent . . . and large, er, gowns.”
I might be less terrifying in female dress, but I had no coin. “I’m Mistress Evora, healer.” I batted my eyelashes. “Friends call me Evie.”
“Ah, Mistress Evie. You cure, so naturally you don’t kill.”
I smiled, forgetting my fangs. “Exactly.”
His fear ballooned. “May I take my leave?”
I backed away. Of course he didn’t want to linger with me.
He went to his beast, who switched its tail. The donkey seemed ill at ease with its owner. Master Peter climbed on and flapped the reins. The donkey proceeded at a walk, heading the same way I had been.
I left the road again. How much more alone I felt, though nothing had changed.
As I continued my journey, I thought about love. The two people I loved were Mother and Wormy. To be sure, I loved Mother because she was my mother, but also because she was good and kind and loved me, too.
Father had died of the gripes when I was four. He was probably the reason I’d become a healer—to keep Mother from dying of the gripes or of anything else. By now I’d cured dozens of cases of gripes with a mash of cabbage, coriander, and rosemary. I barely remembered Father.
I loved Wormy because he was good and kind, too, and because we were such old friends, and because he often was ill or thought himself so. Early in her profession, a healer needs someone like him. Who but Wormy would consult an eleven-year-old?
And I enjoyed his company. He liked novels, and I liked them, too, as well as medical books. My cases fascinated him. He helped in the apothecary by pounding herbs, rolling bandages, and watching my decoctions so they didn’t boil away.
But such love seemed dull.
About a year ago, Mother and I were in our parlor after Wormy had gone home. I was combing our bookshelves for a treatise I’d misplaced.
“You’re like me,” Mother said. “Your father never lost anything.”
Impulsively, I asked, “Did you love him very much?” I thought she had, but she’d never said so.
She put down the quill she’d been sharpening into a new pen. “Evie, just the sight of him lifted my spirits. He had only to touch my hand to make my heart and my head giddy.”
I had herbs that would do those things. “But did you love him?”
“Look at me.”
I turned away from the bookcase.
“Evie, sweet, I loved him. I honored him. We were best friends. Our friendship glowed brighter than the gold in his smithy. He made me tingle.”
Wormy had never had that effect on me.
In our brief encounter, Master Peter had.