“C’mon . . .”
The ape turned away.
“No!” screamed Chance Ransden from where he stood behind the monster. “Ye dassn’t leave—”
The ape shambled on in its new direction. Chance leaped away.
Old Nathan transferred the knife to his teeth again. He needed his right hand to drag himself forward. White light pulsed at the center of his field of view.
Chance Ransden turned to run, then screamed as the ape caught him in the crook of one hairy arm. The creature stumbled over its trailing intestines. It took two further steps, then looked over its shoulder toward the cunning man.
The ape and Chance Ransden, howling like a stuck pig, plunged into the heart of a pothole crater. Mud so hot that it glowed plopped up, then sank again beneath a curtain of its own steam.
“C’mon . . .” a voice whispered in Old Nathan’s mind as he lost consciousness.
* * *
Old Nathan woke up. He could hear the straw filling of a mattress rustle beneath him when he turned his head.
There was a quilt over him as well. Ellie Ransden sat in a chair beside the bed made up on the floor in lieu of a proper frame. It was morning. . . .
But not the same morning. Beside the bed was a pot with a scrap of tow burnt at the bottom of it. Ellie had melted lard into the container, then floated a wick in it as a makeshift candle by which to watch the cunning man’s face while he slept.
Old Nathan tried to sit up. Ellie knelt beside the bed with a little cry and helped to support his shoulders.
His hands were bigger than they should have been, and the hairs along his arms were blond. He had awakened in Bully Ransden’s body, as he knew he would do—if he awakened.
“Sarah took the—old man back t’ the homeplace,” Ellie said. “He’ll be right ez rain, she says.”
“Gal, gal . . .” Old Nathan said. “I—”
He stood up in a rush. Ellie scrambled, flicking the bedding out of the way so that it would not tangle the cunning man’s feet.
Sparrows quarreled on the window’s outer ledge. Their chirping was only noise, as devoid of meaning to him as it was empty of music. Nathan Ridgeway was no longer a wizard—
And no longer an old man.
Ellie Ransden put her arms around him. Her touch helped to support Old Nathan while he got his legs under him again, but it was offered with unexpected warmth. “Child, listen,” Old Nathan said. “I ain’t yer Cull. He changed place with me.”
“Hush, now,” Ellie murmured. “You jest hold stiddy till ye’ve got yer strength agin.”
Old Nathan looked down at the supple, muscular arm that was part of his body. “Warn’t right what I did,” he whispered. “But Bully begged fer it . . . en’ I warn’t goin’ t’ leave Chance Ransden loose in the world no longer.”
Chance Ransden loose, or Chance Ransden’s master.
Old Nathan wore the dungarees and homespun shirt with which Bully Ransden had fled the cabin the morning before, and a pair of Ransden’s boots stood upright at the foot of the bed. He detached himself from the girl and began to draw on one of the boots.
“Sarah said she’d keep yer animals, ye needn’t worry,” Ellie said. “She said she knew how ye fussed yerse’f about thim all.”
Old Nathan looked at the young woman. Ellie had plaited her hair into a loose braid. Now she coiled it onto the top of her head, out of the way. Sarah Ransden knew more thin he’d thought airy soul did uv his bus’ness.
He hunched himself into the other boot. His head hurt as though someone were splitting it with the back side of an axe, but the easy, fluid way in which his young joints moved was a wonder and delight to him.
“What is hit thet ye intend, sir?” Ellie asked from where she stood between the cunning man and the door.
Old Nathan snorted. “With the repetation thet Bully, pardon me, thet Cullen hed aforetimes, en’ the word thet’s going on about him these last months whin his pappy rid him—I figger I’d hev to be plumb loco t’ stay hereabouts, wearing the shape thet I do now.”