Sir Misyur nodded.
A Lepai finch flew in the window and landed between Sir Misyur and me. It fluttered its yellow feathers, then began to vibrate—and grow.
I saw Sir Misyur’s smiling face and his tears. I wept and smiled, too.
What brought him back now? Where had he been? What had he been?
Sir Misyur removed his cloak and draped it around the ogre as he became himself again. “Welcome home, Your Lordship.”
I heard distant barking. Nesspa had sensed his master’s return.
“Thank you. Elodie, your masteress wants you.”
“Is IT injured?”
“The animal physician is with IT.”
I ran out of the room and pelted down the tower steps. The day was ending, and the rain had resumed. With my feet squelching in mud, I raced across the inner ward, between the inner gatehouses and the outer, across the drawbridge, along the moat, around the outer northeast tower. And there IT lay sprawled, ITs belly and legs on a mound of hay, ITs head and neck extending across the ryegrass.
Master Dess sat on the hay mound, dabbing ITs belly with linen.
“Elodie!” IT lifted ITs head. White smoke rose in spirals. “You escaped! I congratulate you.”
“Master Dess, is my masteress badly hurt?”
IT began to rise, stopped, and asked Master Dess if IT might.
“Yes, honey, honey. Elodie, I wish all my patients would pull their arrows out with their teeth and then eat them. I stopped the bleeding. Took just a moment.”
IT sat up, looking pleased with ITself. “Pine arrows and quartz arrowheads. Quite tasty.”
I marched straight to IT and hugged ITs front thigh. Leaning my face into ITs belly, I inhaled sulfur. Lambs and calves, IT stank! Heavenly.
“Mmm,” IT said. “Mmm, Lodie. If you must. Mmm.”
Finally I stood back. “Her Highness signaled the cats and poisoned the king and mauled the ox and tried to poison me.”
“Honey!”
“The whited sepulcher,” IT said. “The poison was secreted on her person?”
“In her shoe.”
Of course I bathed before entering the lair. IT toasted skewers for me and then insisted I sleep, despite my protests that I wasn’t tired and had much to tell and much to ask.
In the morning IT declared a holiday. After breakfast I sat on a pillow on the floor, and IT reclined on ITs side before me, ITs right arm bent at the elbow, ITs big head resting on ITs right claw—a feminine pose, I thought.
“Did you put out your cap to call me? I hoped to approach close enough to see and then fly off again if all was well.”
I nodded. “I was watching when you were struck. I thought . . . I couldn’t tell. . . .” If IT had been slain.
“Elodie, I told you to stay out of the window.” IT touched my shoulder gently with the flat of ITs left claw. “Princess Renn must have suspected I would come to you. Hence the archers.”
In a shaky voice I said, “They would have been considerate if they’d shot straight into your mouth.”
Enh enh enh.
“I wonder why His Lordship arrived at the castle when he did.”
“There is nothing to wonder at. I found him.” ITs smoke curled in a lazy spiral. “Logic took you to the menagerie, Elodie. Logic took me there as well. My first two visits bore no fruit, but two failures did not rule out future success, and indeed His Lordship arrived there last night. I discovered him as an additional monkey and brought him here, where he became himself again. Do you know that he had been poisoned, too?”
“I thought he might have been.”
“I didn’t know. May I enter?” His Lordship stood in the doorway, carrying a large basket, Nesspa at his side.
My masteress heaved ITself up and invited him in.
The count let Nesspa’s chain go, and he ran to me, tail wagging. I patted the top of his big head.
With the help of His Lordship, IT moved the table—His Lordship’s bench—back to the hearth. I put pillows on top while he placed the basket on the fireplace bench, now our low table. Then he seated himself carefully and removed delicacies from the basket. I toasted skewers. When all was ready, I perched on my stool at one end of the table. My masteress sat at the other. Nesspa stationed himself at the count’s leg.
IT and I had just eaten, but we feasted anyway and shared according to custom, with no danger of poison. Nesspa was too polite to beg, but hospitality was extended to him, too, from my hand and His Lordship’s, but not from my masteress’s claw.
I had almost the appetite of an ogre, and this ogre had brought marchpane. Still, I finished before him.
When even he finally put down his knife, I said, “You didn’t know you were poisoned?”
“No.” His ordeal had not made him more talkative.
“But you were ill?” I asked.
He nodded.
“His Lordship has told me some of this, Lodie. Until last night he was in a mouse hole in his bedchamber wall, at first ill almost to death, then improving slowly.”