Page 28 of Wondrous

“You’re wearing a human body,” I snapped. “How are clothes any worse?”

“Thank you for the reminder—you’re ever so considerate of other people’s feelings,” he said, glaring at me. His face had reddened again but not with anger, I realized. My comment had hit a target I hadn’t even known was there.

He pressed his face into his knees and began to cry.

“Oh, no,” I murmured. “You—you really aren’t very old, are you?”

“I’m eighteen,” he snapped. “But if I were eighty, I’d still not appreciate being turned into a monster.”

“You’re not—” I stopped myself, transfixed by my pity for him. And, if I’m honest, I was still having trouble looking away from his impossibly soft hair and perfect chin. “I’m sorry. If this weren’t so important, I—well, what’s done is done. I wish there were something I could do.”

“Oh, there is.” He peered at me from behind his tears, and I caught a glimpse of that now-familiar slyness. He hadn’t been pretending to cry, I didn’t think, but clearly he wasn’t above taking advantage of my guilt. “Turn me back.”

“No,” I said firmly. “You’ve made a promise. Don’t think you can trick me into letting you out of it. Besides, I don’t have the antidote with me.”

“How do I know there is an antidote?”

I shrugged. “You don’t. But it’s your only hope, isn’t it?”

Only after I said it did I realize how cold I sounded. The jabberwock’s slyness collapsed, and he just looked like a lost boy. He put his face against his knees again and resumed blubbering.

He really hates being human. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, if someone had trapped me in a pit and turned me into a jabberwock, I wouldn’t have taken it well. Probably even less well than he was taking it.

I cautiously went to sit beside him. And even more cautiously, I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt like a perfectly ordinary shoulder—the jabberwock’s new form was wiry and angular, like many of the teenage boys I knew.

“There is an antidote,” I told him. “As hard as it may be for you to believe, I don’t actually want to torment you. Here, I’ll make you tea to prove it.”

He lifted his tear-stained face and watched me bustle around, building the fire up again. “Do you have more of those cinnamon things?” he said.

“The cinnamon swirls? Yes, though they’re a bit stale by now—but I have a nice cranberry jam to hide the dryness. You wouldn’t think cranberry would go with cinnamon swirls, but actually, the bitterness pairs well with spice. Would you like cream, too?”

“I suppose so,” he said, sniffling noisily. I suspected he’d finished crying and was hamming it up for my benefit, perhaps to encourage generosity where cinnamon swirls were concerned, but I saw no reason to call him on it. I felt genuinely sorry for him.

“Is your back feeling any better?” I said.

“A bit.” He stood carefully and then limped over to the fireside. If you looked past the limp, he had a graceful way of carrying himself that reminded me of a dancer—or a predator. Another tiny remnant of his former self. “The cinnamon swirl helped. Like I said, we heal fast if we can get some food into us.”

I handed him a teacup, trying not to betray my anxiety at his nearness. I kept expecting his human form to vanish, or perhaps for him to shed it like snakeskin. Fortunately, he seemed similarly uncomfortable around me, and after accepting the cup and another cinnamon swirl, he went to sit on the other side of the fire, facing me warily.

“What does this do?” he said, gazing suspiciously into the cup.

“What—oh. That’s the happy-memory cup,” I said. “I gave you my favorite one. Please don’t break it.”

“Will it turn me into a slug?” He glared down at his beautiful human body. “No, that would be too much of a kindness coming from you.”

I gritted my teeth. I still pitied him, but it was going to dissipate if he kept this up.

“It will make you remember something good,” I said. “Perhaps you’ll be skulking around in some slimy wallow, hunting for snails, or attacking a lost traveler.”

“Let’s hope for the latter,” he said, and drained half the teacup in one draught. He fell silent afterward and gazed into the distance.

“What did you see?” I said, hoping that a little friendliness would break the pattern of mutual snark we seemed trapped in.

He started out of his trance, then scowled at me. “The last hero I met. He was dangling from a tree in one of our traps, screaming his head off.”

Well, so much for that. I valiantly considered a second attempt at small talk—I actually had loads of questions I wanted to ask him. He was a jabberwock, after all.

To my surprise, though, he spoke first.