Ogre Enchanted Read online

  Dedication

  To my friend Joan, who proves that some transformations leave the essence unchanged

  Map

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Gail Carson Levine

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  WORMY WAS DISTRACTED. I counted three symptoms:

  He kept forgetting to mash my inglebot fungus.

  He twice asked me to repeat why Master Kian’s cough had seemed odd.

  Whenever I looked at him, he was wetting his lips, although—exasperatingly—nothing emanated from them.

  Soon he’d need a remedy for chapping.

  He was spoiling our daily companionable time, when we worked together in my apothecary (in a corner of Mother’s kitchen) and chatted; we were old friends, though we were both just fifteen.

  “Wormy, what did you notice on your way here?”

  “Drag leg. Ferocious sneeze. Palsy. A gentleman who tripped over nothing.” He named streets: “Moorcroft, sorry—don’t know where the sneeze lives—Ashton, Westover.”

  “You’re a miracle.” He never missed anything.

  Wormy was a healer’s best friend. He knew almost everyone and where almost everyone lived, and he had a fine eye for symptoms, as well as for beauty, which—shame on me—interested me less. He arrived midmorning every day, after working on the books for his parents’ various enterprises. Not a coin remained unaccounted for when he was in charge.

  Half my patients came from his observations. He told me about sufferers, and I tracked them down. Healing was my calling and my joy.

  “Thank you.” I patted his hand.

  He blushed. He’d been blushing often. This blush seemed too brilliant. “Do you have one of your headaches?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.” The blush faded.

  I teased, “Maybe I’ll treat you.”

  The blush flared again.

  “Are you feverish?”

  “No!”

  Grimwood, my fever remedy, tasted bitter.

  He smiled. “Grimwood cures as many patients by being threatened as swallowed.”

  I smiled back. “A good healer knows when to just mention a remedy and when to pry open a jaw.”

  A moment later we spoke at exactly the same moment. He said, “Evie?” and I said, “Wormy?”

  Ah. He was finally going to reveal what had been occupying him.

  But he insisted I go first, and I didn’t mind. Unless an emergency case came in, we’d be together the rest of the day.

  I reached into my cupboard for my darkroot salve. “Sit.”

  He sat on my stool and gazed up at me. I felt the satisfaction of an artisan surveying her good work. His chestnut skin glowed with health—and with his blush. His brown eyes were bright. “If you saw yourself on the street, Wormy, you’d have nothing to report to me. A headache is invisible.”

  “People are patients or nothing to you.”

  A mere dab of the ointment was all I needed. I began to rub it into his temples, my fingertips describing tiny circles, always going counterclockwise. “You are my friend. How lucky I am that you’re also delicate, and you like my ministrations.”

  When we were eleven, I’d set his broken ankle. Before then, I’d treated only birds, rabbits, and mice. Afterward, I’d made his stomachaches vanish, his headaches recede, and his fevers fade, and I’d spooned unpleasant concoctions into him to convince him he was well when he merely thought himself sick.

  Gradually, I’d garnered more human patients, but I’d always be grateful to him for being first.

  He breathed deeply. Either that was the headache receding, or it was a sigh. If a sigh, why?

  “What were you going to say, Evie?”

  Oh, yes. “Wormy, am I peculiar?”

  “No!”

  “Who else my age wants nothing more than to take care of sick people?” I continued rubbing. “Who else reeks of camphor at least once a week?”

  “Or worse,” he said solemnly.

  I nodded. “Pig bladder!” Stinky, but excellent when wrapped around a sprain. “I’ll be an outcast! People will want peculiar me when they’re sick and never otherwise.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Some folk are friendlier at a gathering, a dance, even”—he stage-whispered—“a ball.”

  I kept to myself at such affairs. “I’d rather observe for symptoms than talk or dance.” Although I liked dancing. I lifted my fingers. “How is the headache?”

  “Better, but it’s still there.”

  I returned to rubbing.

  “You’re not peculiar. You’re remarkable.” Wormy slid off the stool. “Evie?”

  Finally.

  Someone banged on the front door. Rupert, our manservant, would answer, but pounding meant an emergency.

  “Wormy—”

  “Go.”

  I put the salve on my worktable.

  It was as well I went, because Oobeeg, a ten-year-old giant, couldn’t fit through our door. Weeping, he gasped out his story. His mother, Farmer Aeediou, had had a brush with an ogre. She was alive because her hound, Exee, had sunk his teeth in the ogre’s throat before it could say a word. Still, by the time the ogre died, it had lured her close enough to deliver a gash to her leg. With their honeyed words and irresistible voices, ogres could persuade people to do anything.

  Calling behind me, I rushed back to the apothecary. “I’ll get supplies. Don’t leave. I’ll be quick.”

  Untreated, the cut would kill Aeediou. Whatever Wormy had been about to say would have to wait.

  Back in the apothecary, while I nested a pot of honey in my healer’s basket, I told him what had happened. Where was my packet of turmeric?

  There it was. Now I needed my flask of vinegar.

  I smelled lilacs.

  I turned to see and forgot everything in staring. A woman stood behind Wormy. How had she arrived without a sound?

  She was a vision of health and beauty: yellow hair cascading to wide shoulders, garnet lips, blue eyes, and petal-smooth skin.

  Wormy said, “Oh!”

  She must have been dosed to create such perfection. What herbs? Periwinkle, for those eyes? Strawberry juice, for that skin? What else?

  And what a smile. What teeth. I blinked.

  “Young Master”—her voice rang out, as
if her chest were as big as a castle—“speak your mind! Brook no delay!”

  “Welcome!” I curtsied and wished my apron weren’t shapeless and grease-stained.

  “Thank you.” She nodded graciously. “Continue, Young Master.”

  I remembered Aeediou. “Mistress, this must wait. Beg pardon. I have an injured—”

  “I repeat: Continue, Young Master.”

  How dare she?

  Wormy said, “Mistress, there’s no hurry for what—”

  Her voice gained volume. “Continue!”

  Who was she? I gripped tight my manners and my temper. “I am Mistress Evora, called Evie by my friends, and this is Master Warwick.” Wormy. “May we have the honor of your acquaintance?”

  She drew herself up even taller. “I am the fairy Lucinda.”

  Really?

  Wormy bowed.

  I curtsied again. “Can you replenish my purpline? And give me a unicorn hair? Or sell both to me?” Purpline—dragon urine—cured almost everything, even barley blight, and lately there had been none in the market. Unicorn hair in a soup was nonpareil for fever. “I’d also welcome anything else for an ogre scratch, enough for a giant.”

  She seemed not to hear. “The young man will say his piece.”

  Wormy dropped to his knees, as a puppet might. “Evie, will you”—his Adam’s apple popped in and out—“marry me?”

  The woman clapped her hands. “So sweet!”

  That was his secret? That he wanted to ruin our friendship?

  “I relish proposals”—Lucinda jigged a quick hop-step—“and weddings and births. If I can, I come.” Her hands embraced each other. “Proposals are the start—”

  “No, Wormy, dear. Thank you for asking me, though.” I put the vinegar in my basket with my next-to-last vial of purpline. “I must leave.” But curiosity held me. “Why do you want to marry me?”

  He stood up. “Because . . .” He shrugged. “You’re you.”

  Did he think—being me—I’d say yes? He knew my ideas about marriage.

  And I didn’t believe he could truly be in love with me. As his healer, I made him feel better. He’d confused loving health with loving me. That was my diagnosis: imaginary infatuation, which would clear up as soon as we got a little older.

  “And you can stop working so hard.” His family was rich. “But”—his blush returned—“pretend I didn’t ask.”

  “Why won’t you marry him?”

  I picked up my basket. “He’s Wormy.” Yes, I loved him—the way I loved my pet rabbit. I didn’t even know how romantic love felt. We were too young. If Wormy didn’t think he was, I thought we both were. I didn’t know if I’d ever want to marry anyone. But I didn’t have time to explain. “Good day.” I’d be two hours riding to Aeediou’s farm. A few farms owned by giants covered the rolling hills near Jenn, though most lay in the west near the elves’ Forest.

  “I urge you to reconsider. If you persist in breaking this young man’s heart, you will suffer the consequences.”

  Wormy’s jaw hung open.

  I picked up my herb basket. “If I accept him, we’ll both suffer the consequences.” No one should marry before they were ready—and certain.

  For a moment she looked puzzled; then her face cleared.

  My mind emptied. The kitchen tiles no longer seemed to be beneath me. Somewhere, fabric ripped.

  My mind filled again. I held my arms out for balance and felt the floor under my feet. My mouth tasted gamy and spoiled, as if I’d swallowed a three-day-dead squirrel.

  Wormy’s jaw was still unhinged. He extended my name. “Evie-ee . . . there’s hair on your face.”

  Not what I expected to hear. I started to lift a hand to my cheek but stopped and held the hand out. Hair sprouted there. My fingernails were long and filthy.

  My stomach rose into my throat.

  “Evie . . . you’re an ogre.”

  Chapter Two

  I LOOKED DOWN at further horrors. My bodice had ripped, but my apron strings held and were squeezing my stomach. Hastily, I untied them. The seams of both sleeves of my bodice had split. The hem of my skirt, which had hovered just above the floor, now fell a little below my knees. I had shot up a whole foot! My boots, which were visible now without raising my skirts, had come apart. When I lifted one foot, the sole flapped.

  My stomach settled, though I didn’t know how it could. And it rumbled. But I’d had a big breakfast.

  How delicious Wormy looked: a little lopsided because he always hiked up his left shoulder, which just added to his appeal, and those rounded cheeks, those plump earlobes (the sweetest part), that flawless neck, that skin the hue of a goose roasted to a turn. How healthy I’d kept him, like a farmer safeguarding her livestock. How dear he was to me.

  Aaa! What was I thinking?

  The fairy Lucinda frowned. I sensed outrage, though I couldn’t hear her thoughts. Her feelings buzzed, as if a quarreling crowd were packed inside her.

  How could I tell? I’d never perceived feelings before.

  She needed a dose of my bonny-jump-up syrup to calm her. Maybe she’d turn me back then. “May I treat—”

  “Fairy Lucinda,” Wormy said, “pardon me. Proposing was just a prank. We play tricks on each other, as friends do.” I sensed his emotions too. He was frightened. Oddly, he wasn’t in any pain, though he’d told me that his headache hadn’t entirely gone away.

  The fairy’s outrage mounted. She glared at Wormy. What would she turn him into?

  Had he really been jesting about the proposal?

  “Yes,” I said. “We have a merry time with our capers.” My voice sounded husky, as if I’d been shouting. “We’re never serious.” Turn me back! And don’t harm Wormy!

  She surveyed us, her emotions still in turmoil. Finally, she decided. “No. I think he meant it. And you”—she poked a perfect finger into my large chest—“will remain an ogre until someone proposes marriage and you accept.”

  I gripped my worktable to steady myself.

  Wormy went down on one knee this time. “Mistress Evie, please accept my sincere offer. I think—I believe—I’m certain—we’ll be happy.”

  I sensed his fear and desperation. Kind Wormy. Perhaps the first proposal had been a prank, and now he wanted to save me from its consequences.

  He added, “You can work as hard as ever. As hard as you like.”

  I did feel love coming from him. But we weren’t in love. I definitely wasn’t, and I didn’t think he could be, either.

  Maybe I should accept him, become me again, and figure the rest out later.

  It would be wrong to accept him just to be human and stop wanting to eat him. I couldn’t do that to Wormy. Not to my dearest friend. Not to anyone.

  Lucinda clapped her hands. “See how true his love is.”

  She didn’t mind destroying a person’s life? “Do you do this often?”

  “Help people?” Her smile blazed again. “Yes, oft—”

  “Turn them into ogres?”

  “It’s my latest inspiration.”

  She was insane. I turned back to Wormy. “No thank you.” I was young. Eventually I’d find love with someone who loved me, too, someone who saw beyond the ogre.

  “Oh.” Now Wormy was sad as well as scared.

  “But if you’re ill, of course, I’ll help you.”

  Lucinda’s rage surged. I put my hands over my ears, which accomplished nothing.

  I felt furious, too—at her and at Wormy for bringing this down on me, though he hadn’t meant to. I doubted I’d ever been so angry.

  “Then, foolish girl,” Lucinda said, “if you don’t receive a marriage offer and accept it, you’ll remain an ogre forever. You have”—she tilted her head from side to side, deciding—“sixty-two days.”

  Barely more than two months!

  “Counting today?” asked Wormy.

  “Certainly, counting today.”

  “Might she have a little longer? A year?”

  Thank you, Worm
y!

  “Certainly not! Sixty-two is twice twenty-eight.”

  “Er . . .”

  “What, young man?”

  Wormy, the mathematician, saw my face—and my fangs.

  “Er . . . er . . .” He collected himself and thought better of pointing out her error, which, if she corrected it, would cost me days. “Then the last day will be November twenty-second.”

  “I suppose.”

  “At midnight?” I asked.

  “At four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Why then?

  She went on. “Who else will want her anyway, even if she were human, defiant and contrary as she is?” She smiled. “You, young man, are exemplary. When you find someone who deserves you, I’ll devise a marvelous gift.”

  “If I have to stay an ogre, will my human side disappear?”

  “No. You’ll always know what you lost.” She disappeared.

  And reappeared. “Do not think another fairy will come to your rescue, either, no matter how much you plead. The fools disapprove of me, but they fear their own magic too much to intervene.” She vanished and this time stayed away.

  A fly buzzed over my basket. I needed to eat. I wished the fly were a lot bigger, but I caught it and licked it off my palm. Tasted like venison.

  “Wormy, why did you?”

  He blushed yet again. “I thought we could spend the next few years discussing it.”

  A reasonable answer.

  A fist pounded on our door, a large fist by the sound of it. Oobeeg! What would he do when he saw me?

  “Wormy . . . Tell Oobeeg what happened. Tell him I’m me.”

  He left the apothecary. A bowl of late peaches rested on the kitchen table.

  Ugh.

  But I loved peaches.

  No longer. I was angry they were even in my presence.

  The stew for dinner bubbled over our low fire. I wondered if I could fish out the meat and ignore the flavor of carrots and onions.

  Wormy returned and blushed. “Somehow I thought you would be you again.”

  “I am me.” I forced my eyes away from his meaty thighs. “What did Oobeeg say?” The stew would have to wait. Aeediou couldn’t.

  “I couldn’t tell him. The words wouldn’t come out. I think the fairy won’t let me.”

  Would I be able to say them? I grabbed my basket and left.