I SMELLED ITS BREATH. Oh, the stink! My eyes popped open. I gasped out, “You have a toothache!”
The mouth came closer, then stopped. The ogre sat back, straddling my torso. “How do you know?” it asked in Kyrrian.
“All your meals know.”
It grinned.
Its cheek looked puffy. “The last odor they smell comes from your . . . er . . . teeth.” It might be rude to call them fangs. “I can make you feel better.” Maybe.
The leader said something in Ogrese. My captor answered. Other ogres spoke.
I noticed repeated sounds in their speech. The syrup separated into distinct words, though I still didn’t understand.
Finally, the leader gestured. “ROOng hyNN. HyNN haZZ vAAnur.”
I noticed the repeated word, hyNN. Double n, I thought, because it said the end of the word through its nose. What did hyNN mean?
My captor stood up. The leader must have said to let me go. Which words meant that?
Out of the blue, SSahlOO said in Kyrrian, “You’re a beautiful mare.”
Mare? Was that what they called a female? A horse?
Lucinda made me a beautiful ogre?
Maybe hyNN meant girl or she or her. Or mare. Yes, I thought. One of those. I could have a knack for Ogrese.
An ogre who hadn’t spoken yet said, “UNN eMMong jOOl.”
I didn’t understand then, but this was the sentence I would hear and say myself and think most often: I am hungry.
The one with the swollen cheek returned to the subject of teeth. “You can make it stop hurting?”
“Yes.” Because of the swelling, I expected I’d have to pull it. I stood. “Let me see.”
It crouched, pointed to its left cheek, and opened its mouth.
I swallowed to keep from throwing up. There. A bright red lump on the gum and a black fang. “Your tooth has to come out.”
“HaZZ!”
I’d heard the word before. HaZZ had to mean no.
It jumped up. Backing away, it said a few sentences in Ogrese that I thought myself fortunate not to understand. The others laughed.
“If I don’t pull it, your mouth will hurt more.”
“I don’t mind. Ogres keep our teeth.” It scratched its scalp. “I’d have used mine on the elf.”
Were they going to return to attacking me?
SSahlOO said something menacing in Ogrese. No one advanced on me.
“Eventually the tooth will kill you.” Eventually could take a year.
The ogre shrugged.
Why did I care? A few humans might live if it died.
But a thorn of irritation grew. This ogre had become my patient, and I made my patients better.
Might the others help? Friends and families often persuaded my human patients to be sensible. Did ogres have friends? They had to have family. Did they feel for each other? I addressed them all. “If you care about . . . er . . .” I turned back to it. “Excuse me, what’s your name?”
It didn’t answer, but SSahlOO did.
“HyNN riLL eMMong AAng. Her name is AAng.” It pointed at each ogre and announced its name. In addition to the two I’d already learned, there were ShuMM, FFanOOn, and IZZ. The leader was ShuMM.
AAng was a she. And hyNN did mean her or she. SSahlOO was teaching me Ogrese.
I scrutinized AAng. What made her female? I supposed she had fewer hairs on her face than some of the others had. She was shorter than SSahlOO, as I was, too. Was SSahlOO a he? Probably.
“She won’t know what killed her.” I looked at each of them in turn. “Her chest or her head will hurt terribly. Then she’ll collapse and die.” I’d seen that happen to people, and the corpses had a black tooth. “Please tell her to let me pull the tooth.”
ShuMM, the leader, yawned.
Two ogres said at the same time, “UNN eMMong jOOl.” Just as people do when they speak in unison, both grinned.
No one spoke to AAng to encourage her or make her feel better.
I said, “Dead ogres can’t eat, AAng.”
She said, “Fangless ogres can’t chew.”
“One fang!”
She thought about it. I wondered if others in their group had died in the way I’d described.
SSahlOO asked, “EMMong szEE riLL?”
I understood. “My riLL or my eMMong?”
SSahlOO said, “RiLL.”
“Evie.”
“EEvEE?”
I nodded, though it had stretched out the sound of the e’s.
“Pretty—”
“Pull it.” AAng crouched again and opened her mouth.
What an opportunity! Who else had ever operated on an ogre? I lifted my carpetbag strap over my head and set it on the ground.
Silence fell. I think they all were holding their breath. So was I.
I undid the laces on my surgeon’s kit and opened the flaps. My tools glinted up at me, among them my tooth key with its wooden handle and iron shaft ending in a hooked claw. “It will hurt when I pull it and go on hurting for a few days, but then it will feel better.” If ogre mouths reacted as human mouths did.
“If it doesn’t—”
“You’ll eat me with your remaining teeth.”
She smiled. “Fangs.”
I picked up the tooth key. AAng’s eyes locked on it.
“Open wide.”
She did.
I appealed to everyone. “When I say so, please make noise to distract her.”
Steady . . . I held the handle in my right hand and used my left to bring the hook toward the rotted tooth. AAng’s eyes crossed, watching the key wend its wobbling way to her mouth.
“Don’t bite.”
The others chuckled.
There. The key was ready. I ground my own fangs together and rocked the tooth back and forth to loosen it. “Now,” I said, “noise.”
Only SSahlOO and EEnth complied, but their shouts were deafening. AAng’s eyes went to them. I yanked so hard I tumbled backward. The fang and its enormous root came out in my hand. Howling, AAng clamped her hand to her cheek. She glared at me.
SSahlOO and EEnth continued to yell until ShuMM gestured.
I scrambled up. “AAng, I can give you something for the pain.”
She walked away.
“Don’t chew on that side until it stops hurting.” My stomach grumbled.
ShuMM squatted, slid my satchel along the ground, and took out my precious medicines, the little sculpture of human me, and my beloved loose meat sticks.
I cried, “Don’t spill anything!”
ShuMM sniffed my herbs. “LahlFFOOn!” It spat. “Vegetables!”
“Herbs,” I corrected, putting them back in the satchel. The dried meat from Wormy was still wrapped, but the strips I’d borrowed were loose.
It held one to its nose. “HaZZ lahlFFOOn.” Not vegetables.
“Beef or mutton or pork.” I barely kept myself from ripping the meat out of ShuMM’s hand.
The laughter stopped. ShuMM nibbled, looked astonished, stuffed the strip in its mouth, chewed energetically, grabbed the rest, and ran—
—to be tripped up after a few steps. Fighting, fiercer than before, broke out. I kept my eyes on my satchel with Wormy’s bundle inside. Could I hide it?
They had no right to Wormy’s meat. He was my human!