Page 6 of Loved By the Orc

She shook her head.

“Almost certainly not, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you leave the Magical Realm right away after having your very first sip of a magical potion.”

“I can watch over her—she can come home with me,” Tark offered quickly. “I’m close to your office so if anything happens, I can bring her right back over.”

“Very well.” She nodded. “Just keep her for an hour or so, will you?If she feels fine at the end of that time, she can go back to the Mortal Realm.”

“An hour?” I exclaimed as the implications of what they were saying hit me. “But I’ve probably already been here at least forty-five minutes—if not longer. If I stay another hour, my boss is going to be so mad at me! I mean, he alreadyhatesme. I need to go back right now!”

“Hates you? How could anyonehateyou?” Tark rumbled, looking down at me with a frown.

“Don’t worry my dear—I’ll give you my spare time charm,” Madam Healer remarked. She went to the shelves again and this time she came back with a slim golden band that looked a little like a watch. It had a face with all the numbers of the clock marked on it and two black hands. The time it was telling seemed correct, but there was no glass over the face to keep the hands protected.

“How does it work?” I asked, as she wound it around my wrist.

“Just push back the hour hand to reset the time to when you wish it to be,” she explained. “Then you’ll go back to that time. But I’m afraid it can’t go further back than three hours,” she added. “I use it when I have a lot of patients and I’m running late. That way I can see everyone at their appointed time and no one is inconvenienced.”

I couldn’t help wishing that doctors in the “Human Realm” as they called it had access to that kind of equipment.

“But if I turn back time, does that mean I’ll forget everything that happened here in, er, Hidden Hollow?” I asked uncertainly.

As bizarre as this experience was, I wanted to remember it, I realized. Literally running into Tark and meeting Madam Healer and the strange but fascinating magical chemistry lesson—all of it was something I never wanted to forget. It was weird but amazing—I wanted to think it over later when I finally got home and slipped into bed.

“That’s anexcellentquestion, my dear,” Madam Healer said approvingly. “But since you apparently have magic in your blood, no, I do not believe you will forget our encounter.”

“Magic in my blood?” I frowned. “No, you must be mistaken. I don’t have any magic at all.” If I had, I was thinking, my life would probably have been a whole lot happier and a hell of a lot easier.

“Ah, but youmust,”Madam Healer said earnestly. “Otherwise Hidden Hollow would never have called to you and the magical bubble that surrounds the town would not have parted to allow you entrance.”

“Magical bubble?” I asked, frowning. But just as Madam Healer was opening her mouth to answer, there was a tinkling sound from the front room.

“Ah—I’m afraid I have another patient,” she said. “But I would greatly like to talk to you again, my dear…er, what is your name?”

“Oh—Harmony. I’m Harmony,” I said.

“Harmony. I believe your magic may lie in the same vein as my own,” she said. “Come talk to me later and we can discuss it.” She looked up at Tark. “You will watch over her for at least an hour?”

“Of course.” He nodded. “I’ll bring her right back if there’s a problem.”

“Do that.” She nodded at me again and then slithered out of the room, leaving me still cradled in the massive Orc’s arms.

3

HARMONY

Tark took me to his house—which was only two houses over from Madam Healer’s office, just off Main Street—and put me down at last, carefully on his enormous couch.

“How do you feel?” he asked anxiously, sitting down beside me.

“Um…okay, I guess.” I touched my forehead again. The lump was completely gone by now and I doubted I was going to have any kind of reaction. I knew, at least with human medications, that if there’s going to be a bad reaction, it will normally happen right away. So it was probably safe for me to go home now.

But I didn’t want to.

There was something about the big Orc sitting beside me—something I liked and trusted. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him just yet.

Meanwhile, Tark was making himself more comfortable.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to take this fucking thing off,” he rumbled and rose to remove the elaborately carved silver plate that covered his broad chest.

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