the saddlebag was gone now, and the bag itself left behind because even that small weight would slow them.
“We need food,” Jane said, as if she’d read his mind.
But in order to get food, they would have to forage (none of them had experience), or they would have to hunt (none of them had ever killed an animal), or they would have to head closer to civilization (where there might be soldiers who wanted to kill them). And he couldn’t do any of these things in his current state. All he could do as a horse was try to walk evenly.
“I’ll find something,” she announced. G stopped, and she slid from his back. He waited as she wandered off, returning a few minutes later with a small handful of dark purple berries. “I gathered all I could find. They’re Dorset berries. They’re safe. I read about them in Poisonous and Nonpoisonous Berries of the Wild: the Joys of Surviving England on a Budget. At least, I think they’re the safe ones. The pictures in the book weren’t very clear.”
With that shining endorsement, she laid the berries out on a piece of cloth, divided them up into three even groups, placed one pile in front of Pet and another in the palm of her hand. She lifted it to G’s mouth, and he ate them, trying desperately not to chomp off one of her fingers in his excitement over food.
Jane looked at her hands, now covered with horse slobber. “Gross.” She wiped her palms down G’s flank. “You can have that back.”
Then she ate the other pile.
“We’ll need to go to a village,” she said, her lips stained purple.
Again, exactly what G had been thinking.
Soon enough they hit a road, and it was only a little while after that they came upon a small town, centered around a giant tavern with a wooden sign above its door that bore the silhouette of a mangy-looking dog. It was nearly dusk and the three weary travelers had no money and nothing to trade with, so they stayed at the edge of the forest to come up with a plan.
Jane loved coming up with plans.
She climbed down from G and put the cloak over his back, anticipating the change. Then, she crept up behind a tree and peeked around the edge of the trunk to survey the village.
The sun touched the horizon. In a flash, G was a man. He held the cloak around him and jogged over to Jane.
There was a brightness in her eyes and a smile on her face that made his heart lift.
“There’s a storehouse in the back of the tavern,” she said excitedly. “I saw a man loading dead rabbits and cured beef inside.”
“Oh. I’m sure they lock it up. We’d have better luck if I broke into a house.”
“We’re not going to steal it!” She shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe he would suggest such a thing. “I just meant they have food. And we can get some. By we, I mean you. You’ll have to go in there and do something in trade.”
G imagined standing in the corner, reading poetry for a different group of strangers, a ferret riding on his shoulder. He imagined the ferret biting him if she didn’t like the poem. Not that he’d had a chance to prepare anything. Or bring a page with anything. The first time he’d read for a crowd, he’d meant to recite the poem from memory—he’d gotten to “all the world’s a blah” before his mind went blank—and he’d mumbled a few words that vaguely rhymed and then fled.
“I’m not sure that’s the best course,” he said. “My skills are somewhat limited, thanks to my daily horse diversion, and I haven’t— In a while— I mean—”
Jane blushed bright red. “Anyway, we’re married. And do you think anyone would really pay you for that?”
G blinked a few times before it hit him. She meant—ah—consummation. And that no one would pay him for it sounded something like an insult, but there was no time for offended feelings now. “Oh, ah, I don’t— Rather, I haven’t—”
“Never mind that.” Jane waved the topic away. “Don’t do whatever you were thinking about doing. Just clean some tables or scrub the floor. Taverns always have dirty floors, don’t they? What with the sloshing ale and the vomiting.”
Jane seemed rather overcritical of taverns in general.
“I see. I can do that.” He started down the hill, but she stopped him. Probably good. He was