But she also felt a sadness she couldn’t explain. （We’ll get to it.） And in addition, confusion. Suspicion. That was it? Was she truly just going to get what she wanted?
“I will trade him,” the Sorceress said, “for those two cups.”
“What, really?” Tress asked.
“Really,” the Sorceress said. “Simply leave them on the shelf by the door.”
“Is he…ensorcelled in any way?” Tress asked.
“Oh, that. I should play the part, shouldn’t I? Ahem.
“Under shining bulb,
With mighty gulp,
I make it felt
That I break this spell.”
Barbarian. She does that to annoy me.
It was exactly the sort of thing that Tress expected to hear though. Arcane nonsense—comfortingly mystical. Charlie put his hand to his head, then leaned down and gave her a brief kiss.
That made Tress’s emotions twist even further.
“See, rat?” the Sorceress said. “I told you, didn’t I?”
Huck, on the desk, bowed his head.
“Say it,” the Sorceress continued. “Say it, rat.”
“You were right,” he whispered, almost inaudibly. He slunk away from the desk, dropping to the floor. Vanishing.
Tress took hold of her emotions, slapped them sensible, and sent them to stand in an orderly line. There would be time to deal with them later. For the moment, she made a decision.
It was time to leave. She grabbed Charlie by the hand, put her two cups on the shelf by the door, then hurried out and onto the stairs.
Charlie took it all in stride, starting a rather boring story about his days in captivity that I won’t tediously repeat here. Particularly since he soon moved on to other comments. “Oh, Tress,” he said, “won’t it be so nice to get back to our normal lives on the Rock again? Won’t it be so nice to go back to pies, and window washing, and gardening?”
It was here—right at the bottom of the steps, listening to those questions from Charlie—-that Tress’s sadness assaulted her. It fought dirty, you see, as sadness usually does. Going for the kidneys. Or the heart.
Charlie didn’t seem like he’d changed at all. That was good. She’d worried his captivity would have left him mentally scarred. But here he was, perky and excitable as always. He could have given lessons to puppies on how to be properly enthusiastic. Good old Charlie. Same as ever.
Tress was not the same.
She’d changed so much in the course of her time away from the Rock. She found she didn’t care about pies, or window washing, or even cups in the same way. She cared about spores, and what she could do with them. About sailing, and her crew.
All of this…all of this meant she couldn’t go back to being the same person. She, you see, had been scarred.
There it is! Irony. The very journey she’d taken to find what she wanted had transformed her into a person who could no longer enjoy that victory. She looked into Charlie’s eyes, and her emotions parted asunder, bowing before her building sense of melancholy. Crowning it queen.
In that moment, looking into Charlie’s eyes, she thought of someone else. Someone Tress shouldn’t have cared for, on paper. That’s one thing we get wrong far too often in stories. We pretend that love is rational, if we can only see the pieces, the motivations.
Charlie grinned. It was such a familiar grin. Perfectly like him.
She didn’t believe it. That smile was one step too far. Because she knew Charlie.
Tress turned, ran up the steps, and burst into the main room, startling the Sorceress—who was settling down into her seat. Full of electric defiance, Tress shouted, “That is not Charlie.”
The Sorceress hesitated.
“You like to torment people,” Tress said, pointing at the Sorceress and stalking forward. “You curse them with the worst curses you can imagine, tailored to the individual and their pains. You didn’t keep Charlie here.”
“And what,” the Sorceress said, “do you think I did with him?”
“You turned him into a rat,” Tress said.
Ha! Finally.
THE MAN
Tress kept striding forward, step by step, toward the Sorceress. “Each time I tried to get Huck to talk about this place, or you, he stammered. He searched for words. Because a spell was preventing him from speaking things that would let me know he was Charlie, cursed.”
“If that is so,” the Sorceress said, “then how could he have told you about the defenses here? I know he did. I know many things, child.”
Tress stopped, and her eyes widened. “Because when he told me…he was trying to get me to stay away…” She focused on the Sorceress. “Because me coming here is the way to break the curse, isn’t it? Moons! You cursed him, and said the only way to break it was for him to bring me here, to you! That’s why he tried everything to stop me. Because…because he loves me.”