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.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I WOKE UP. The carriage wasn’t moving. My throat stung.

  Trunk leaned over me. “Mistress Ogre?”

  “Yes?” I opened my eyes. Beyond Trunk’s shoulder, I saw Squire Jerrold’s worried face. I sensed fear from them both, fear for me, I thought, not of me. “Did you dose me with purpline?”

  Trunk’s expression cleared. Satisfaction replaced fright. “We don’t have tea, but I dripped four drops right down your throat.”

  Brave! He’d inserted his fingers beyond my fangs.

  He added, “Four because you’re so big.”

  “Thank you.” I hoisted myself back on the bench and then breathed hard, but, once established, I ate a meat stick—my appetite proof of returning health. “How did you know something was amiss?”

  They hadn’t. Trunk’s jug of sheep’s milk had run out.

  “Mistress Ogre, when the squire saw your poor fingernails, we knew.”

  I checked my hands. The bumps were still prominent. “You could be a healer, Trunk.”

  “I believe I could be.” His pleasure threatened to burst the carriage apart at the seams. “It’s like cooking. You have to know your ingredients.”

  I smiled. That was part of it.

  Squire Jerrold said, “We’re about an hour from Frell.”

  My hands chilled from fright, not illness. My throat tightened. Even another meat stick didn’t quiet my stomach.

  I must have looked bad again, because the two watched me anxiously.

  Only hatred would greet me in town. How many arrows would it take to finish me off? Or would I be killed by a sword or a knife?

  “If people attack me, take my satchel with the purpline. Don’t defend me. If we’re all dead, no one will be cured.”

  Admiration for me engulfed Squire Jerrold.

  ZEEn him into proposing now, I thought.

  I said, “If the outbreak is bad, you’ll run out of purpline.” Hurriedly, I described my other remedies.

  They nodded and left me. The carriage started again. I looked out the window. Clouds scudded across other clouds in a brisk wind.

  After a while, I checked my fingers again and discovered that the bumps had almost flattened. I felt fine.

  Ogres are excellent at recovery.

  The road became lined with a decorative wrought-iron fence in a pattern of flowers, frogs, and large leaves. Along the top were spikes. We were approaching Frell, but the way was empty of traffic.

  Soon we crossed a bridge. On the other side, on a wooden stake planted in the ground, was the BB sign—barley blight—lettered in green paint.

  Perhaps ten minutes later, the carriage stopped, though we hadn’t reached the castle.

  Oh! Faces I knew topped the fence spikes, three heads on each side of the road. I swallowed convulsively as I jumped out of the carriage.

  SSahlOO, whose last sight was me, wore an eager expression.

  AAng had died snarling.

  “I pulled that one,” I told Squire Jerrold and Trunk, pointing at the gap in the line of fangs.

  “You knew them?” Trunk said.

  “I killed these two.” I pointed. “This one had a toothache. Her name was AAng.”

  “They have names?” Squire Jerrold said.

  “I have a name!” I named the others.

  Squire Jerrold said, “Sir Peter lied about killing them. We have to tell King Imbert.”

  If he lived. “The king won’t believe us,” I said flatly. “No one will.”

  I lifted the heads off the pikes and set them on the ground. We had no time to bury them, though that didn’t matter. Ogres didn’t have rites. I climbed back in the carriage. Squire Jerrold followed me in and opened the window. Unwillingly, I tingled.

  And thought about Sir Peter. Lying to the king was serious, especially since King Imbert had knighted him for valor. But lying itself wasn’t much of a crime. Sir Peter hadn’t killed anyone, and the heads had once been attached to ogres. This was the act of a rogue more than a complete villain—though he might be that, too.

  If he still lived, he could be a threat to me for knowing the truth and to Squire Jerrold and Trunk simply for being my companions.

  We galloped through the city gates. Squire Jerrold kindly named the streets as we careered along them: Progress to Merit to Larkspur to Eastview. The only other vehicle on the road, a two-horse carriage, trotted toward us and passed by. Few people were out. The attack on me that I’d expected wouldn’t occur. The barley blight had progressed too far.

  A figure slumped in a doorway. Dead? We zipped by.

  A woman, seemingly healthy, leaned into the wind, bent on some purpose. A man pushed a wheelbarrow piled with corpses. My wicked stomach growled.

  The carriage entered a roundabout and took the first right-hand street.

  “Peaceable Road,” Squire Jerrold announced. “The highway to the castle.”

  I fought my fright. “Where will we find the king?”

  “Sir Stephan—my patron—says he’s usually in the great hall unless he’s dining. Or he could be in the library or in one of his drawing rooms. At night, he’s in his apartment.” He burst out, “Let him still be somewhere, alive!”

  Yes.

  The drawbridge was down. We clattered across. Trunk reined in the horses before the castle entry arch, which was unguarded. No grooms came running.

  I took my satchel and jumped out. We hastened under the arch. Trunk opened carved double doors into a vast receiving room. The doors swung closed behind us. The castle clock chimed three times. Three in the afternoon.

  Squire Jerrold and Trunk stopped. Except for a faint glow from a window at the top of a long and grand stairway, we were in darkness. No one had lit the candles in the many-armed chandelier. The fireplaces had all burned down to ashes.

  “Ogres see perfectly in the dark. Follow me.” They’d be able to make out my shape in the gloom, but castle folk, unless they had a torch, wouldn’t see clearly enough to tell what I was. I started up the stairs.

  A woman lay on the first landing. I bent over her.

  “No time! The king!” Squire Jerrold tugged me away.

  I felt his touch in the pit of my belly and all the way down to my toes.

  We continued up the stairs. A carved and gilded door opened into the great hall, where light flooded in from a wall of windows.

  Perhaps a dozen people sprawled unmoving on sofas and chairs, islands on a sea of carpeting. I didn’t smell decay. If some were dead, they’d died recently.

  I rushed to the closest person, a man in a high-backed chair, his head flopped back, mouth agape. Not the king, whose face I knew from our coins. This man’s chest hardly rose.

  Somewhere in here a woman was sobbing.

  All healer, the Evie I’d always been, my hands were steady. I pulled out my jug and let three careful drops fall into the back of the man’s throat. His next breath was deeper.

  I straightened. Squire Jerrold was dashing from figure to figure. The next person I reached, collapsed across a couch, was past saving.

  Equidistant from me, an old woman sat stiffly on a straight-backed chair and a woman sobbed into the knees of a man on a yellow sofa. I chose to go to them.

  When she looked up, the woman—not much older than I and more beautiful than I’d ever been—reminded me by her terrified face of what I was.

  Oh! My knees weakened. The man, in a green silk waistcoat, was Sir Peter, barely alive but still handsome and still able to squeeze my heart.

  The young woman draped herself across him. “You can’t eat him!” Her voice trembled. “Or me.”

  He’d made another conquest.

  He hadn’t been grieving me.

  “Please move aside.”

  “I won’t!” Then, “‘Please’? Is that your persuasion?” She stood away.

  Had he duped her as he had me? I dripped in the purpline. “He may sleep awhile, but he’ll get well, Mistress.” I hurried on to the old dame, who died as I reached her.

  Squire Jerrold cried, “The king isn’t here! Come, Mistress Evie!”

  How could I leave everyone?

  Plates and teacups rested on several tables. I called to Trunk, who stood in the middle of the floor, gaping around the hall.

  Squire Jerrold shouted, “Mistress Evie!”

  When Trunk reached me, I dumped the contents of a teacup on the carpet.

  He gasped. “You stained the rug!”

  I poured half an inch of purpline into the cup. “Three drops each. Don’t waste any. Save what’s left.”

  “Mistress Evie!”

  Squire Jerrold and I left the light for a murky corridor.

  “Third door on the left.”

  The chamber was the library, also window-lit. I ran through the stacks on the left, Squire Jerrold through those on the right. No one rummaged for books or sat in the armchairs under the windows.

  When Squire Jerrold and I left, we discovered the young woman who’d been with Sir Peter waiting for us.

  “Lady Eleanor!” Squire Jerrold said. “Is the king alive?”

  A lady? Could she be Sir Peter’s wife?

  In the Fens, had he been married?

  She didn’t know about King Imbert’s health, but she thought he was either in the red drawing room or the dining room. We pelted through endless corridors to get to the closer room, the red drawing room.

  As we ran, Lady Eleanor said in a puffing undertone, “You’re . . . you’re . . .”

  I looked at her to see if she was all right.

  Her face was strained. “A fairy—” She tried again. “My uncle—” She gave up and fell silent.

  Something had been done to her uncle, probably by Lucinda. She knew what had happened to me.

  We reached the red drawing room. While Squire Jerrold and Lady Eleanor went from one figure to another, I dripped purpline into the mouths of two and passed by one who had succumbed.

  King Imbert wasn’t in either this chamber or the dining room. We entered chamber after chamber. I dosed as many as I could while the two of them searched.

  Moments stood out.

  A man shouted at a corpse to sit up.

  Two people had died folded into each other in an embrace.

  A woman sang to a child in her lap, whom I was able to save.

  A cat had died with a mouse in its mouth. In death, the cat’s jaw still clasped its prey. The mouse’s feet scrambled in the air. I pulled out the mouse and swallowed it whole.

  In a small parlor, a young man bent over a middle-aged woman, trying to force her to drink broth.

  “Sir Stephan!” Squire Jerrold ran to the man.

  I remembered the name. This was Squire Jerrold’s knight.