The Healing of Weasel Sootmouth

"You can't come in," said the servants standing guard at Weasel's door.

Orem pushed past them. Weasel lay delirious on the bed, crying out and weeping, calling now on Beauty, now on Palicrovol, and now and then on Orem, too. He thought that meant she loved him as she loved Palicrovol, though in fact she was crying out to save him, not for him to save her.

He questioned the doctors gathered at her bed. "We can find no cause for the pain," they said.

"Treat her," Orem said, "as if she had just given birth to a twelve-month child. Treat her as if the birthing broke her loins apart and tore her flesh."

The doctors looked at him amazed. Only Belfeva, who stood nearby, understood that the Little King might know the problem better than any of them. She strode to the bed, tore the blanket back, and now they saw that Weasel lay in a pool of blood that still flowed from a ghastly rent in her private flesh. And more astounding: there lay the afterbirth that hadn't come with the child named Youth.

"Name of God," said a doctor, and they set to work.

Orem watched when he could bear it, sat by Weasel and held her hand when he could not. She knew nothing of his presence, only cried out with pain and delirium. At last the doctors finished all that they could do.

"She's lost so much blood, what can we do?" said one.

"How could this have come to be?" asked another.

Orem only shook his head. He could not explain to them that it was his doing.

The doctors left, but Orem stayed, holding her hand. Once she called out, "Little King."

"I'm here, Enziquelvinisensee," he answered. Hearing her own name seemed to soothe her. She slept. He said all the prayers he could remember from the House of God. He knew they were meaningless here in Beauty's house, but he said them anyway, because he was afraid of what he had done to her.

He must have dozed off, for he awoke suddenly to find that Craven and Urubugala waited with him beside the bed. Out of habit he extended his web to include them, freeing them to speak unheard by Beauty.

"How is she?" Craven wheezed.

"She bore the pain of the birth," Orem said.

Craven nodded.

"The Queen has been harvested," said Urubugala. "But what was the crop, little farmer?"

"A boy, named Youth."

"She'll live," said Urubugala. "Does that comfort you? Beauty won't let Weasel die."

"Her name isn't Weasel," Orem said. "Did you know? The Queen told me. She's really Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin. The Flower Princess."

Craven and Urubugala looked at each other, and Urubugala laughed. "Did you think to surprise us, Little King? We've been with Weasel from the start."

Only then did Orem realize that they, too, were disguised characters from the same ancient tale.

"Zymas," Orem said.

Craven smiled faintly. "I haven't been myself lately," he apologized.

"And you," Orem said to Urubugala. "Sleeve."

The dwarf only answered with one of his rhymes. "Who is the magical leper who cleans us with his tongue? He puts our names in picture frames and paints them out with dung!"

"You are the King's companions," Orem said. "In all the old stories—"

"The stories are very old," said Craven. "We are the Queen's Companions now." He gestured at Weasel's sleeping body. "Send for us if she awakes."