Free A Well-Timed Enchantment by Vivian Vande Velde

thought of how scared he had looked, refusing to come into the room, and how despite that he
had
come in when she had been in danger. She gave him a little hug, then stood, brushing herself off. "Never mind. We won't go back in there again in a hurry."
    "Good," he said.

    When they returned to the corridor where their rooms were, they almost stepped into a linen-covered tray which someone had left outside Oliver's door. Farther down the hall, Deanna spotted a similar offering by her door.
    So, someone had brought them dinner. No telling who it had been. No telling, either, whether that someone had knocked on their doors and realized that they weren't in.
    "Hungry?" she asked Oliver.
    He shook his head. His face still had no color in it. She brought his tray into his room anyway, then fetched hers. She plunked herself down on his bed, her legs crossed under her long full skirt, with her tray on her lap.
    "Let's see. Pigeon..." Her Aunt Emilienne had prepared that when Deanna and her mother had first arrived, so she recognized it. "...stuffed with ... pork, I think ... mushrooms ... fresh bread ... some sort of apple compote..." She patted the bed next to her. "You've got to eat, Oliver."
    He looked like someone who's remembering the taste of vomiting.
    "Oliver, apparently this new body of yours can't handle—" She fought off a wave of nausea of her own. "—what you're used to eating. But you can't just stop eating all the while we're here." She peered into the pitcher. "Milk!" She sniffed. "Or cream." Definitely not two percent.
    At least that got his attention.
    She motioned again for him to sit and this time he warily lowered himself next to her. She poured the milk into each of their goblets.
    "Cheers," she said, which sophisticated people on TV said, and tapped his goblet with hers.
    He watched her drink, then raised his cup, two-handed, to his mouth. For a moment he came close to choking, but then he managed nicely.
    She patted his leg encouragingly. "How about some meat?" She cut a piece and held it out on the end of the knife. One thing she had seen at lunch in the Great Hall was that she didn't have
to worry about teaching Oliver fastidious table manners—these medieval people used knives, but no forks. The only spoons she had seen had been the ones on Lady Marguerite's nightstand.
    Oliver nibbled on the pigeon.
    "How is it?"
    He nodded and took another bite.
    And so it went. He hated carrots, but ate two or three mushrooms. Once she dunked the bread in milk, and he liked that. The apple he admitted was interesting, but he only took one bite. He spat out the wine, which she asked him not to do again, no matter what, and by then he was leaning against her shoulder, his eyes drooping heavily.
    "I'll put the tray here, and if you get hungry later on, the stuff should be just as good cold." But by the time she set the tray by the window and turned back to him, he was curled up, asleep already.
    She was used to people taking care of her. How had she ended up being responsible for somebody else? There was some sort of fur skin folded at the foot of the bed—wolf? she wondered—which she took to be the medieval equivalent of a comforter. She tucked it up around Oliver, then carried her tray back to her room.

TEN
Octavia
    Deanna took one step into her room, then stopped with a sigh.
    She looked down. She sighed yet again.
    She had put her right foot down into a huge bowl of blueberries someone—someone? Leonard, who else?—had left for her. Crushed blueberries oozed over the top of her castle slipper. Thick purple juice soaked through the fabric along the length of her foot, sticking her toes together.
    Deanna lifted her leg. The foot came clear of the bowl with a rude, sucking noise. She watched as pieces of fruit slid off the slipper and plopped back into the bowl. "Thank you, Leonard," she muttered to herself. "You shouldn't have." She took off the slipper and hopped across the room to the table with the water