His Lordship added dry brush to the fire. Nesspa would be missing his master almost as much as his master missed him.
Count Jonty Um’s shoulder wound smarted and was warm when he touched it.
The ground, which was bare of snow around the fire, felt calm and steady, but below, what agitation might there be? When would it rage so loud that humans and ogres could sense it?
Goodman Otto returned an hour later with a heap of animal skins, blankets, and long leather straps—and Widow Fridda on a donkey.
His Lordship ran behind the boulders but peeked out so he could see.
The goodman unloaded the supplies and left. The widow, a tall, solid-looking woman, clung to the neck of her donkey.
Another frightened person.
After a few silent minutes, the widow approached the boulder and threw a blanket on the ground then turned away. His Lordship wound the cloth around his waist and stepped out.
He could help no one barefoot. He picked up a skin and a strap, stepped on the skin with his left foot, and pulled it up to make a lumpy boot, which he attempted unsuccessfully to hold together by tying the strap around his ankle.
The widow recovered from her fear quicker than most. “No one can walk in that.” She gestured for him to sit on a large rock.
He did and extended a foot.
She took an awl—for piercing holes in skins—out of the purse at her waist and scrutinized his foot. “Trim toenails. Maybe you really are a count.”
His Lordship thought, She’s speaking to me as I might to Nesspa. “Thank you.”
“Oh!” She dropped the awl into her lap. “Beg pardon. I’m sure you must be a count, Your Countship. I thought you spoke only the ogre language.”
There was no ogre language. Ogres spoke the tongue of wherever they lived.
In less time than he expected, crude boots were on his feet, fur side in, bulky but warm and possible to walk in. Next, Widow Fridda contrived a tunic and hooded cloak. For the tunic she merely cut a slit in a blanket for his head. For the cloak, she made a few tucks for the hood in another blanket and sewed in fabric strips for ties. While she labored, His Lordship fed the fire in his usual silence.
“There,” the widow said. “Hard times make a pauper of a king.”
He donned his new apparel—scratchy and smelling of smoke and tallow. “Thank you.”
She folded the leftover skins. “I’ll be going home now.”
“Brunka Arnulf told me to help you.”
“Your Countship is a bee?” She tilted her head. “There’s plenty to do. Fences to be mended. Grain to be put out for the sheep. I have a salve for your shoulder.”
Goodman Otto hadn’t warned her about the mountain? Ah. If he had, she wouldn’t have come. His Lordship explained in a few words.
She rushed to the donkey. “My babes! Come!”
He didn’t move. “Do you have cats?”
She was already several yards away. “One cat. Hurry.”
That was all right then. A single cat couldn’t wish hard enough to make him turn into a mouse. In two strides he caught up with her and put his hand on the donkey’s rump for guidance in the deepening dusk. They traveled north and upward, their breath puffing white in a quiet, windless cold. As they went, he realized that going to Svye would have to wait for morning. He didn’t know how they’d do it even then, since the widow’s farm cart would instantly be mired in snow.
He wondered when he might eat again.
After a half hour, when night had fallen, they reached her home, where firelight shone through the single window. She tethered the donkey and bustled inside.
Although the hut’s walls came up to his chest, the steep thatched roof made the whole structure about a foot taller than he was. The wall gave off a little heat from the fire within. He stood close enough to benefit, but his head and shoulders were in the cold, and the exertion of walking no longer warmed him.
The donkey and the widow’s cart occupied a lean-to that abutted the cottage. He could haul the cart out and curl up in the shed, where the ground was free of snow. The beast wouldn’t mind. They’d be company for each other.
However, he wanted the Widow Fridda’s approval of this arrangement.
She emerged from the cottage with a baby in her arms and a clay crock in her free hand. “This will ease your shoulder, Your Countship.”
He crouched and bared his shoulder. She spread the ointment, which smarted and smelled like a frightened ferret.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She returned without the baby, carrying her entire pottage pot and a ladle. “Better you eat it than the volcano.”
She gave him permission to sleep in the lean-to, then went back inside. He started on the pottage: no meat, many onions, thick with oatmeal, and flavored with a spice he didn’t recognize and didn’t like. But he finished to the last speck.
Soon he was on his side in the shed, a mound of hay for a pillow, the donkey’s even breathing reminding him of Nesspa.
At least the dog was safe, and Elodie and Meenore would see that he lived well if his master never returned.
He slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Stars, a quarter moon, and the gleaming snow showed Elodie and Master Robbie the path back to the Oase.
“I’m not reckless!” Elodie clutched her cloak tight around her.
“Did you really call Greedy Grenny cruel?”
“It popped out. I think ahead—usually.”
“Did you, when you searched our room?” He didn’t add, And saw my knife, but the accusation was there.
She defended herself. “I did it to find the thief.”
“It had been searched by bees.”
“Everybody sees something different.” Hoping to win him over, she added, “If you’d been there, you might have noticed a detail I missed.”
He said nothing.
She pulled an apology out of somewhere near her toes. “I’m sorry.” Then, “But I won’t apologize to anyone else.”
He laughed.
Feeling immensely better, she said, “Maybe to Albin.”
The Oase door was just ahead.
“IT said the thief or thieves may be deadly.” She thought of what had happened in Two Castles. “Desperation could make them reckless.” She leaned her back against the door, her face inches from his. “Let’s look for desperate acts.”
His face, red from the cold, reddened more. “We will!”
Together, they pushed open the door. The bee who was guarding it looked at them and said nothing.
High Brunka Marya occupied her stool in the middle of the great hall. Bees were moving sleeping pallets close to the fireplaces, where the fires burned brightly. The guests clustered at the hearth across from the entrance.
Master Uwald and Albin, both smiling, hurried to Elodie and Master Robbie.
“You must be frozen!” Master Uwald untied his cloak and wrapped it around Master Robbie, who almost disappeared in it. “Come to the fire.” Master Uwald led him away.
Master Robbie turned his head to look at Elodie as they went.
“My cloak is at your service, Lady El.”
She shook her head. Albin could be no warmer than she was. She blurted, “I was in your room. I saw the silver. Where did you get it? How long have you had it?” Then, “I thought it was someone else’s chamber.” Which explained and excused nothing.
“You’re welcome in my room. I have no secrets from a fellow mansioner. I won the coin from Master Uwald yesterday afternoon.”
Probably after the theft. “What did you have to bet against him?” What, she thought, that would be worth a silver?
“He wanted my book of mansioners’ plays.”
“I love that book!”
“Lady El, I would have given him my right arm in exchange for coin to get you. We imagined you starving in Two Castles”—he patted her cheek—“not thriving as you were.”
She blinke
d back tears. “You didn’t get my letter?”
“No letter came. Maybe it will arrive next year and we’ll laugh over it.”
“What game did you play with Master Uwald?”
“Dice. I think he let me win because he wanted to help us. He could have just given me the money, but that would have meant going against the wishes of the high brunka. And he loves to play. After I won, he wanted me to wager my silver against him. Come, it’s too cold by the door.” He took her hand and led her toward the fireplace. “High Brunka Marya is making us all sleep in the great hall. When the Replica is found, we should mansion this scene and all the events of the Second Theft, and you can portray her.”
“Shh! She’s listening!”
“No matter. Who doesn’t like to be a heroine?”
The heroine needed information. Elodie went to Master Robbie, who was sitting on a pallet next to Master Uwald.
“Master Robbie . . .” Elodie walked away and hoped he would follow.
She heard Master Uwald say, “Go, but not for long. You need your sleep.”
When they reached High Brunka Marya, she said, “Tell me about your conversation with Masteress Meenore.”
Elodie whispered, “IT isn’t sure who the thief is. If not for Master Tuomo’s sons, IT would suspect him above all, because Master Robbie will inherit Nockess Farm.” She nodded at him. “IT says Master Tuomo could have bought the location of the Replica.”
“From a bee, lamb?”
Master Robbie didn’t hesitate. “Or from a brunka.”
The high brunka puffed up her cheeks and let out a long sigh. “Will IT question us again tomorrow?”
Elodie explained that IT had gone to Zertrum.
“Something has befallen His Lordship? He may not have warned Arnulf?” She gripped her stool as if she might fall off. Tiny rainbows flared from her hands.
“The trouble may not have happened until after that.” Let His Lordship be safe, Elodie thought.
The rainbows stopped, but the colors still stained the high brunka’s knuckles.
Master Robbie said, “Masteress Meenore asked us to tell you what IT learned.” He explained ITs theory that a thief had been in the storage room while Ursa-bee and Johan-bee made sure the Replica was still safe.
Elodie added, “IT thinks two thieves were probably in league with each other.”
“Two could be so evil?”
Elodie described the way IT supposed they did it. “Someone has the handkerchief that weeps, or has hidden it.”
“Masteress Meenore said to warn you,” Master Robbie said, and Elodie thought he was enjoying the importance of his information, “that the thief—or thieves—is alarmed. IT said most alarmed and that frightened people can be deadly.”
“Deadly here in the Oase,” Elodie added, in case the high brunka didn’t understand.
“Deadly here,” High Brunka Marya repeated in a flat voice.
Don’t lose yourself in sadness, Elodie thought. We need you! “IT wanted us to ask you if anything was discovered among the bees’ things.”
“Nothing, as I expected.” She blew on her fingertips, and the colors faded. “Go to sleep, kidlings. I have bees searching through the night.”
In a few minutes they were all bedded down, Elodie’s pallet next to Albin’s. Master Tuomo sat up amid his bedding, but everyone else lay flat, breathing quietly, as people do when they’re still awake. A snore came from the bees’ hearth.
High Brunka Marya lay on a pallet, too, hers near the Oase entrance, the coldest spot in the great hall.
Though she’d slept little in the last three days, Elodie’s mind busied her with ideas and worries. How had Master Uwald arranged to lose at dice, which was all luck?
Her thoughts wandered back to the stable and her performance as a weeping handkerchief and the ideas that she summoned to bring on the sadness. Above all, she cared most about His Lordship and now IT, who had both flown into the greatest danger.
She tried to cheer herself by making up a dragon ditty:
There once was an IT who sang Ta da dum
And searched for an ogre called Jonty Um.
Because of a theft they’d flown far away;
Their friend could hardly bear her dismay.
She wept and never got over them.
No help in poetry. She tugged her mind to Potluck Farm, where her mother and father lay in their bedroom loft, and her father’s pet goat and the family cat, Belliss, curled up below by the still-warm fireplace. Comforted enough to sleep, she fell into dreams of her masteress and His Lordship floundering in a river of molten rock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Masteress Meenore flew above an owl that soared over the Fluce River. Both were hunting, and IT had found ITs prey. IT swooped lower, extending a talon.
The owl twisted and veered away.
IT grinned. Another swoop, another miss, and finally success. IT held the bird out, inches from ITs snout.
“Bird, if you are His Lordship, shape-shift! Now!”
The owl remained an owl. IT roasted the bird in the air and, still flying, devoured it, savoring the crunch of the bones and beak, the tickle of the feathers descending along ITs gullet.
Owl, IT thought, symbol of wisdom, how fitting that you should be conjoined with my brilliance. If only you’d known, your last emotion would have been gratitude. Enh enh enh.
ITs thoughts turned darker. I take my precious self into danger for an ogre I esteem but do not love and for mountain folk I do not know, most of whom I would most certainly disdain. I leave at risk the only human I care deeply for. If a crisis comes to her . . . if she is attacked . . . if she is—I will not think it—I will be leagues away. I am unlikely to return in time to recover this Replica, and I will not be paid my fee. Folly. Folly. Folly.
IT flew on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In the widow’s shed, halfway between midnight and dawn, the donkey brayed. His Lordship raised his head, and then—fee fi!—he felt, from deep in the earth, a menacing rumble.
He touched the donkey’s flank to quiet her and slipped into an uneasy sleep.
When the sky had just begun to lighten, something tickled his ankle. He opened his eyes to see a child of perhaps three years staring at his booted feet, which stuck straight up and were almost as tall as she was.
The ominous rumbling from below had gained strength. He sat up slowly, as if a fast movement might make it worse. “Good morning.”
The girl covered her ears but didn’t budge.
He bared his shoulder to see his wound. The cut was still red, but the swelling had flattened. Whatever was in Widow Fridda’s salve had worked a little miracle. He could fly again as a swift and bring what he’d learned to Meenore and Elodie—and be reunited with Nesspa.
The child touched the boot toe and jumped back.
What would amuse her? He lifted his right foot a few inches and let it fall hard.
She experimented by touching again.
Instantly, he raised the foot and let it drop.
She giggled and walked along his leg and touched his knee under his cloak.
He raised his whole leg and let it drop and grunted.
She laughed and sat at his side.
He smiled, pleased with himself. He touched his nose and, as softly as he could, made a honking sound, which caused the donkey to bray and the child to laugh harder.
Another girlchild, this one seeming only a little younger than Elodie, leaned on a single crutch and watched solemnly from a few feet beyond the lean-to. Her right leg twisted at the ankle, as if it had once been broken and hadn’t been set properly.
When His Lordship’s eyes met hers, she said, “Mother says you’re a nice ogre.”
How ridiculous, he thought, that nice ogre can almost make me weep.
“Mother says you should get ready.”
He stood and would have been ready if he was going with them. Before he shape-shifted, he wanted to thank Widow Fridda for t
he food and the salve.
Twins, more girls, these about five years old, burst out of the house. One held a loaf of bread in both hands, and the other staggered under the weight of half a wheel of yellow cheese.
The one with the bread thrust it out. “For the good ogre.”
The other extended the cheese and echoed, “For the good ogre.”
He looked behind him. “Where is that good ogre?”
The twins laughed. The older girl smiled.
The twin with the bread, who seemed to be the bolder one, said, “It’s you! There isn’t another ogre.”
“Oh. I thought there was.” He took the food but felt he had no right to eat, since he’d be deserting them.
The same twin added, “Mother said the mountain is telling us to go away for a little while. I feel it talking, but I don’t see how she can understand the words.”
They wouldn’t all be able to get down the mountain without him. The donkey wasn’t big enough or strong enough to carry them, and the cart would be useless in this snow. In the growing light he scanned the landscape.
The cottage backed against the mountain. Above was snow and boulders. A half mile below, a forest grew, evergreens mixed with bare branches—no other cottages, no aid in sight.
The baby’s cry blared from the hut, then stopped.
If he flew to the Oase, his knowledge might provide the clue that led to the Replica. Or the mystery would remain a mystery and these people would die.
Widow Fridda emerged from the cottage with the baby in a sling across her chest and satchels in each hand. “You didn’t eat.”
He bit into the bread, devoured it quickly, watched intently by four pairs of eyes, and started on the cheese. The widow hung the sacks across the donkey’s back.
His Lordship swallowed. “Don’t. I’ll shape-shift into a draft horse and carry everyone and the satchels. The donkey can come, too, but she may run off.”