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I took the knife. She hopped up on the stool, and that put her chin about level with my chest, which was no place to hold a conversation.

After laying the knife back on the board, I spanned her waist and lifted her onto a clear section of the counter.

Now she was almost level with me.

Two years across a market. More than a week under my roof. Every time she’d scolded me, she’d had to tip her head all the way back to do it. Every time I’d handed her down off the wagon I’d looked at the top of her head. I’d never once had her eyes straight across from mine.

They go to the color of strong tea when she’s getting ready to scold me. I’ve known that for years. At a hand’s distance, it was a different fact altogether.

She put her hands down on the counter on either side, and she didn’t ask me to set her back on the floor.

“The onions are burning,” she said.

The smell hit my sinuses and I turned away.

I cooked supper with a witch sitting on my counter at eye level, swinging her boots, telling me what Mrs. Piddock had said about the booth. She talked at my face while I did it instead of at my chest.

Her hair had remained down. The sprite still had her ribbon. Every third sentence she shoved it back but lost it again. I’d give the east field for the right to do it for her.

We ate, and I retreated to my loft, where I lay on the blanket I’d strewn across the straw and contemplated the beamed ceiling. Turnip stomped his feet in the stall below me and a rook-a-do called out off-schedule.

“Morning,” I grumbled. “You’re supposed to do that in the morning, not after dark.”

I drifted to sleep.

They came for me the next day at my stall, in daylight, in front of my squash.

I saw them cross the square and knew. I’d watched wolves work a field. I knew a setup when one walked up smiling.

Asha came at me from the front with a basket hanging from her arm.

Aris drifted along the fountain side, no basket and no reason to be here, her hands stuffed into her coat pockets, cutting off the road east.

“Goran,” Asha said, halting, beaming up at me. “Lovely morning. How’s trade?”

“No,” I said.

“I haven’t asked anything.”

“You will. It’s no.”

“He heard,” Aris said from my flank. “Yesterday. Ogre ears. He’s had all night to build his no.”

“Then we’ll take the no apart and see how it’s made.” Asha set her basket on my boards, between the squash, like she was setting up her shop. She took out bread still warm enough to fog the air. Then a crock of butter. Then a wedge of the cheese Rufus swears by, and a jar of pickled walnuts. She built me a plate on my stall while everyone pretended not to listen or watch. “Eat something. This may take a while, and I don’t argue with hungry males. It’s cruel.”

“The answer stays no.”

“The booth will earn enough to replace the Healing House roof,” she said. “One day. One afternoon, really.”

“I will not kiss the village’s mouth.”

She sighed. “I thought you might say that. A copper a kiss, and forehead kisses can be legal tender. I went to Melissant and she agreed.” She buttered the bread. “You’ll stand in a decorated shed, being respectful, for charity, while the county empties its purses at you.”

“Nobody’s paying to kiss an ogre.”

“He doesn’t know,” Aris said with shock in her voice.

Asha’s eyes widened.