“Hurry up,” said Torville, “before I change my mind.”
The creature in the water splashed again. It was close to the drawbridge now — too close, Marigold thought as she made her way hastily across. “What is that?” she asked Torville.
“It’s a Thing,” he said. “It’s mostly tentacles, except for the part that’s teeth. And it’s usually hungry. Do you know how to make porridge?”
“I don’t,” Marigold admitted. Even the mention of food set her stomach rumbling. “Is that what it eats?”
“Oh, no,” said Torville as he cranked the drawbridge back up. “The Thing eats princesses.” He gave Marigold an awful grin. “But I eat porridge, and I’m going to need some before I decide what to do with you. I think you might make a very nice marmorated beetle.” With a swirl of his robes, he swept into the fortress, leaving Marigold to scramble uphill after him. She didn’t like Torville, and she didn’t know what marmorated meant, but she knew she didn’t want to be left all alone with the Thing.
On the inside, Torville’s fortress wasn’t nearly as dismal as Marigold had expected. The walls were stone and the floors were cold, but someone had laid woven rugs down in the entryway, and there was even a little round mirror where Marigold supposed the wizard tweaked his mustache before he swooped outside to perform his wicked deeds. A grand stone archway opened up to the room beyond, which looked like a sort of banquet hall, and an even grander staircase spiraled away to Marigold’s right. She craned her neck, trying to see where it led.
“Stop gawking,” said Torville, “and take off those filthy boots. I don’t like a mess. When you deal with magic, you can’t afford to be untidy.” He brushed off his own boots and disappeared not through the grand archway but through a much smaller and plainer door that Marigold had barely noticed in the left-hand wall. This door, she discovered as she padded after Torville in her socks, opened into the kitchen. Marigold was surprised to see how ordinary the space looked, with a cast-iron stove like the one Cook used back in Imbervale, a set of mismatched chairs clustered around an old wooden table, and a wide window that gave a view of the brown wasteland beyond. While Torville heaved a cooking pot onto the stove top and complained loudly about princesses who didn’t know how to make porridge, Marigold sneaked a look into his pantry. This, too, was surprisingly ordinary. She’d expected to find vats of ooze and sludge, a jug full of eyeballs and another full of bats’ ears, but the shelves closest to the door were filled only with bread, eggs, and jars of dried beans. Maybe Torville kept his bats’ ears farther back.
“You’re a nosy one, aren’t you?” said a voice behind her.
Marigold yelped and backed out of the pantry. She couldn’t see the owner of the voice anywhere. “I was only wondering — oh!” Her foot had trodden on something small but firm.
“Now you’ve stepped on my hoof,” the voice complained. “Torville! I don’t like this child. Where did you get her?”
Marigold looked down toward her ankles. There stood the most unusual person she’d ever seen. He only came up to her knees. He had tufts of white hair around his ears and wore a neat woolen suit, but two polished hooves stuck out below the hem of his pant legs, and two glossy horns poked out of his head. Tidy holes had been made in the back of his suit to accommodate his wings and tail. And he looked extremely peeved with Marigold.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to step on you. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Well, I didn’t know you were here,” the creature said, “and I still don’t know why you are. Torville!” He trotted toward the stove, where the wizard was still doing battle with the porridge pot. “I thought you said no more princesses.”
“I did say that,” Torville grumbled, “and I meant it. But I didn’t capture this one; she staggered out of the wildwood and asked to come in.” He took two mismatched bowls off a shelf, then looked at Marigold, rolled his eyes, and reached for a third. “Marigold, meet Pettifog. He’s my imp. Pettifog, meet Marigold. She claims to be wicked.”
“I am wicked!” Marigold protested.
Torville banged porridge into the bowls and carried them to the kitchen table. “She’s also Rosalind’s sister.”
Pettifog’s eyebrows went all the way up. He looked hard at Marigold, as if he were searching for something in the curl of her ear or behind the bend of her knee. Then he shook his head. “I don’t see the resemblance,” he said at last. “Rosalind wasn’t nosy. And she had a smile that could —”
Marigold cut him off. “Mend your broken heart?”
“Something like that,” Pettifog agreed. “You don’t.”
Marigold sighed and sat down in one of the mismatched chairs. The porridge was lumpy, and both too hot and too cold at once, but a night spent storming through the wildwood had made her ravenous. She put her head down, tucked into her breakfast, and scraped the bowl clean. When she finally surfaced, she realized that both Torville and Pettifog were murmuring about her on the other side of the table.
“She’s hungrier than the Thing,” Pettifog said.
“But not as delightfully slimy.” Torville took a bite of his own food, keeping his eyes on Marigold. “I wonder. Do you trust her?”
“Not an inch,” said the imp. “You certainly can’t keep her.”
Torville shrugged. “We need a hand around the fortress.”
“But she’s a snoop,” said Pettifog, “and a sneak. Can’t you just turn her into a mayfly?”
“I’m bored with mayflies,” Torville said. “I’m thinking of moving on to beetles.”
This was too much for Marigold to take in silently. “I don’t want to be a beetle!” she said. “And I didn’t mean to snoop in the pantry. I was only looking for bats’ ears.”
Torville’s mustache twitched, as if Marigold had amused him. “If you’re determined to speak for yourself,” he said, “you might as well explain why you think you’re wicked enough for us to take you in.”
In one long rush, Marigold told him as much as she could think of, starting with the tantrum she’d thrown on her third birthday and ending with the birds she’d thrown out the window. “And the worst part of all,” she said, “is that I’m glad. I’m not sorry I ruined Rosalind’s party, and I’d do it again if I could!” It felt good, she realized, to say that aloud. Her parents would have gasped if they’d heard it, but Torville simply nodded.
“I still don’t think she’s wicked,” Pettifog muttered. “Anyone can ruin a party.”
“But she has potential,” Torville said. “She’s no less awful than I was when I ran away from home. Of course, my sister was nothing like Rosalind, and I had a brother to escape from as well.” He twirled the end of his mustache, considering Marigold. “What would you say to a test?”
Marigold frowned. “What kind of a test?”
“It’s simple enough.” Torville folded his hands on the table. “Pettifog doesn’t trust you, and I don’t like displeasing Pettifog, so if you want to stay with us, you’ll have to prove your wickedness to his satisfaction. I’ll give you seven days to do something so vile that even an imp can’t deny your wicked nature. If you succeed, you may stay here as long as you wish. If you fail, you may go wherever your legs will carry you — but I warn you: you’ll have six of them.”
Marigold glanced over at the imp, who was grinning at her with all his teeth. They were sharp and blindingly white. “Pettifog hates me,” she said, “and seven days isn’t much time.”
“If you don’t like the terms,” said Torville mildly, “I can just curse you now.” He reached into the folds of his robes.
“No!” Marigold held up her hands. “The terms are fine.”
“I thought you’d agree.” Torville pushed back his chair. “Now, help Pettifog with the washing up.” He gestured to a heap of dirty dishes that looked as if they had been lingering by the sink since the day Rosalind had left. “Your week’s already begun.”
Washing up, Marigold learned, wasn’t anywhere near as easy as the servants in Imbervale Palace made it look. The hot water made her hands feel raw, and Pettifog, wielding a fluffy towel, kept passing back anything that hadn’t been scrubbed until it sparkled. “When Rosalind was here,” he said, scowling into a ladle and returning it to Marigold, “the dishwater always smelled of lemons. Can’t you make dishwater smell of lemons?”
“If I could,” Marigold pointed out, “you wouldn’t think I was wicked.”
“And she never complained,” the imp continued. “She just enjoyed being helpful.”
