pulled a chair over to the table and sank into it, gazing down at the tiny creature. It was a mink, Edward thought, similar to a pelt his sister Mary wore as a scarf around her neck in the winter months. Beautiful, soft fur. But why all this fuss over a mink?
The man reached out a hand to stroke the small head, with such tenderness that Edward’s breath caught. But the creature didn’t stir.
The man’s lips moved, a word that resembled please.
“Edward. The linens,” Gran snapped.
The man looked up at Edward and met his eyes.
It was Gifford Dudley.
Jane’s husband. Here. The look on his face like his heart was being rent in two. Like the little mink on the table meant more to him than anything else in the world. Like it was him dying.
Edward’s breath left his lungs.
“Is that Jane?” he gasped. “Jane! Is that Jane?”
Gran grabbed him by the collar and dragged him away from the table. “Yes, it’s Jane, and she’s hurt, and I’m really going to need those linens, boy.”
Immediately Edward set to tearing up the linens, all the while watching Gifford, who kept his eyes on the table—Jane! Jane!—his expression so miserable and so lost that it was no wonder Edward hadn’t recognized him at first.
What had happened to them?
The water in the cauldron was hot. Edward finished tearing up Gran’s underskirt, and Bess and Gracie returned with the herbs. Gran brought a candlestick over to the table and peeled the bandages back to reveal the mink’s long, blood-streaked body. Edward’s heart was in his throat as Gran peered at the small form.
“She was wounded in this form, not as a human?” she asked Gifford gruffly.
Gifford nodded. “We were trying to . . . I don’t know what happened, really.” His voice faded. “It was so fast.”
Bess handed Gran a bowl of the paste she’d made from the herbs, and a basin of hot water. Gran began to clean Jane’s wounds. Within moments, the water was pink.
Edward felt light-headed. And also like he might lose his rabbit-stew dinner.
“Edward,” Gran said quietly, her eyes never leaving her work. “You sit down, too.”
He sat and took some deep breaths until he felt marginally less queasy. “Jane’s an E∂ian,” he whispered as he watched Gran tend to the little creature.
“So it would seem,” Gran said.
“All this time, it’s all she ever wanted, to be an E∂ian. What . . . what is she, exactly?” Edward asked.
“A ferret,” Gifford answered tonelessly. “She’s a ferret.”
“She’d be better off a girl, right now,” Gran said. “If you’re hurt as a human, the wound will be less in your E∂ian form—not gone, mind you, but less. If you’re in the animal form when you come to harm . . .” Her lips tightened as she stared down at ferret-Jane. “It would be better if she were human. I could see her wounds more clearly without the fur, for one thing.”
“Can’t we get her to change somehow?” Edward asked, his voice cracking.
Gran shook her head. “The body will stay in whatever shape it feels safest, which is typically the animal. There has to be a conscious decision to overcome the fear, and prompt the change. No. We must wait for her to wake up.” She drew the cloak up over the ferret’s body like she was tucking a child into bed. “We must wait,” she said again.
But what if she doesn’t wake up? thought Edward, but he didn’t say it. He couldn’t.
Gran put one hand on Edward’s shoulder and the other on Gifford’s. “It’s late. I don’t suppose I’m going to convince either of you to get some rest?”
They both shook their heads.
She sighed. “All right. You watch over her, then. Come wake me if anything happens.”
It was morning, the sun not yet visible but lighting the eastern sky, when Jane changed. Edward would not have believed it if he hadn’t seen it—the ferret one moment, his cousin the next, lying curled under the cloak. He jumped to his feet and ran to fetch Gran, but he’d only gone a few steps when he heard Jane moan a name.
“G,” she said.
Gifford. Her husband, he remembered with a pang. Gifford was her husband because Edward had asked her to marry the young lord, even though she’d begged him not to make her go through with it. She’d listened to Edward. Which was why she was lying there now in bandages.
It was all his fault. He was a terrible best friend.