I lay on my bed, feeling my whole body buzzing and arguing with itself like a hive full of bees. The carriage had gone. I had heard it clattering and rattling off, and it felt like some part of me had been attached to it by a rope and was getting yanked out to follow.
Was this how the men felt when the sorceresses visited? Perhaps I had been too quick to dismiss it as a bulge in the trousers and the memory of a pretty face to summon up when they were having a wrestle under the covers.
I couldn’t have been the only one to feel like this, I told myself; he must have done the same to others in the crowd. That was how it worked. I was just the one that fell on her arse in front of everybody. But still, this itching, growling life in all my limbs! I was lying still, but my heart raced as if I had been running.
I slept all through the rest of the day, and all the night, dreaming dreams that wrapped around me like vines and squeezed all the fight out of me, so that I woke feeling hot and tangled and defeated. When I rolled myself down the stairs, Da whistled through his teeth.
“You look like something’s been gnawing on you all night.”
“Thanks, Da.”
“Didn’t you get any sleep?”
“I did.”
“You sick?” He toddled over to feel my forehead. “Someone been cooking you? You’re about ready to serve.”
Sick. Maybe I was sick. That would be a relief.
“I might have caught something.”
“Can’t have you around the meats, then,” said Da. “Go back to bed.”
Bed didn’t sound inviting. I had left it a sodden, roiling mess, sheets half-off and trailing on the floor, and my pillows soaked through.
“I think I’ll go for a walk. Blow the cobwebs.”
“All right. But then back to bed, understand? I can’t afford for you to have a holiday.” He sounded stern, but I knew he was joking. He loved me, did Da. More than I deserved. Mam’s death in childbirth haunted me, and I knew he grieved for her, but he didn’t hold it against me. I was lucky, I knew it.
“I’ll see you in a bit, Da.”
The square was back to normal. No crowds goggling. Just the usual mess of peddlers and people, arguing and gossiping and wasting time. I went to the spot where I had fallen down the day before and stared at it.
“You all right, Foss?” someone said. It was Hallie, one of the girls around my age. One of the comeliest, as well, and the sweetest. She was always taking in birds with broken wings, or blind kittens, and nursing them, and she was always eager to be kind to me for much the same reason. If she could, I think she would have folded me up in a box and taken me home to be given milk-soaked rags to suck on.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“We were just talking about the sorcerer,” she said. She was standing with a gaggle of others, all pretty enough, as most young women are pretty.
“Oh yes,” I said, trying to sound uninterested.
“None of us got a wink of sleep,” said one of the other young women, at which I perked up.
“Bad dreams?” I asked. “Feeling sick?”
Maybe I wasn’t alone.
“No, just thinking about him,” another sighed.
“So handsome,” added another, and then they all started chirping.
“Well, he has to be handsome. If he’s like the ladies.”
“Do you think they do it to themselves? Change their faces?”
“D’you think they’re even human?”
“I think they’re people like us,” said Hallie. Of course she did.
