Thorny

by Lelia Eye

  “My father doesn’t like to talk about my mother either.” That was a definite understatement.

  “What happened to her?”

  I looked down at my lap. “To tell the truth, I don’t like talking about her either. And I’d rather avoid talking about my father, too, for that matter. He’s a real pain in the Highness, if you know what I mean.”

  She chuckled. “I guess most children our age don’t like talking about their parents.”

  “Children? Pssh. I’m a young adult, thank you.”

  “How old are you?”

  “It’s not polite to ask someone their age.”

  She shook her head. The grin on her face made me smile, too. “I thought that was just women.”

  “Well, you thought wrong.” Hawthorn’s heart, she was beautiful. We would make a good-looking couple. “Anyone ever tell you how pretty you are?”

  Her face got a little cloudy, but she worked to smooth it over. “There are things that are more important than beauty.”

  “Yeah,” I said, swirling my fingers in the grass. Whatever. “If you listen to some of the townspeople here, there’s nothing in the kingdom that’s more important than these sheep.”

  She was smiling again now, and I thought she would have been the perfect subject for a painter. “As a shepherd,” she said, “surely you don’t disagree.”

  Her words didn’t really register. I was too busy looking at her face, and then I was blurting: “Labelle, will you marry me?”

  She seemed surprised, though I doubted that was the first proposal she had received. Shaking her head, she said, “I . . . I can’t say ‘yes’ to that.”

  Now I was surprised. “Why not?” If she did know my identity, then how could she turn me down? She wasn’t of noble blood. Rejecting me was unheard of.

  “We just met,” she said, one eyebrow raised. “I hardly know you.”

  “We can change that,” I said, biting my lip as I searched my brain for ideas. “I can tell you what happened to my mother.”

  “It’s not that simple. It’s something that will take time.”

  That was certainly easy to fix. Time was something a shepherd had a lot of. “Then come back tomorrow to see me. If the wolves haven’t gotten me, I’ll be here.” I gave her a winning smile.

  “Miss,” her hair-bearer called, “we should probably be getting back.”

  Labelle looked at her and nodded, and then she turned to me. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to return to learn it.”

  She shook her head, but I could tell I had piqued her interest. “Fine. I’ll see you again.”

  She walked off with flowers in hand and her attendant performing that most necessary task of hair-corralling, and I grinned to myself. She would be back.

  My grin quickly faded, however, as I realized that it was back to watching grass grow. Oh, hurrah.

  I shoved a couple of sheep aside, dodged a few playing lambs, and then sat in the middle of the flock, twirling my shepherd staff. I took one hand off the staff and stood it up, end against the ground, so I could pick a few verdant blades and throw them in the air like confetti. But as I looked up from the grass, a woolly sea of sheep parted in front of me.

  I dropped my staff in surprise. A green-eyed mass of red fur was heading toward me.

  I shot to my feet.

  “Wolf!” I cried without thought, bellowing the word so loudly I thought my lungs might burst. But even as my eyes flicked down toward the village, I knew no one would come. I couldn’t save any of the sheep. And the beast was so huge I wouldn’t be able to save myself.

  The sheep were a whirlwind of confusion. They bleated and scattered to escape their natural enemy. I started to sprint away, wanting to put a few sheep between me and the wolf. But then it leaped at me and knocked me to the ground. I rolled away. Then I jumped to my feet. Then I ran.

  Like a fool, I didn’t pay attention to where I was going. And so, my feet took me not to the safety of the village, but to the unpredictability of the forest.

  As I fled the flock and went deeper into the woods, I heard the crunch of footsteps and the light panting of the red wolf. I didn’t know why it was pursuing me. It didn’t matter. I was growing winded, and the vegetation was slowing me down. If I didn’t do something fast, I would become wolf fodder.

  Ahead of me was a thick low-hanging branch. I sprinted forward and grabbed it, hauling myself upward. I scuttled up the tree like a drunken squirrel, trying to get high enough to keep the wolf’s jaws from latching on to my leg. Then I clung to the trunk and prayed for wings.

  Several seconds passed. I didn’t sprout wings. But I did hear an elderly female voice command none-too-nicely: “Come down from there.”

  I looked below in suspicion, but I didn’t see any snarling beasts or slaughtered sheep. I was going to be alone with another human being.

  I couldn’t exactly stay in the tree forever; my arms were already starting to hurt. I should have been practicing climbing trees instead of watching sheep.

  Muttering to myself, I inched down the trunk, a single agonizing branch at a time. It was one thing to climb up a tree when you felt you were fleeing for your life; it was quite another to go down it when you didn’t know what waited for you below.

  Finally, I made it, and after brushing sticky sap and crumbly tree bark on my pants in disgust, I turned around to face the stranger. And recoiled in surprise.

  The woman’s face—if it could be called that—looked like it had hit the broadside of a barn. I wasn’t sure “grotesque” could begin to describe it. Great Gawain, I wasn’t even sure “witch” could come close to an accurate description. It was as if someone had shoved their fist into a pile of mud and then added eyes to it. Misshapen, wrinkled, deformed—these terms and more could all apply, yet they seemed to fall short of the mark.

  “Why did you leave your flock?” she asked me. Her voice was grating yet shaky, and she spoke to me as though I were some worthless shepherd boy who had suddenly decided to abandon his flock to join the traveling circus. She sneered at me, and I cringed. Her mouth was even worse than her face—it looked like someone had melted her gums and then thrown her teeth in . . . or at least some rotting, festering lumps that passed for teeth, anyway. I didn’t even know teeth could be that shade of black.

  “I’m above such things,” I told her haughtily. She knew about the wolf; I was certain of it. “I’m not meant to watch sheep. I’m meant for nobler things than that.”

  “You think shepherds do not have a noble calling? A shepherd must be willing to give up his life for his sheep—to give his all to them. And what have you illustrated about your own heart? You have shown that you lack even a hint of such nobility. Your upbringing was not what it should have been. Your mother filled your head with fantasy, and your father filled your heart with scorn—”

  I cut in: “Oh, what do you know, old lady?”

  She continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted: “As a result of this and your personal pride, you refuse to recognize the importance of the common people. Sheep give meat for food, wool for clothing, and fat for soap. Do you think the food on your plate and the clothes on your back simply appear at your command? What do you think your flowery soap is made of?”

  “I repeat: what do you know?” I returned, not realizing how important my next words were going to be. “You’re nothing but an ugly old witch. I wish I could leave this flock and go back to hunting and being surrounded by pretty things and attended upon, as is my right. I hate the life of a shepherd.”

  “You would prefer, then, to be the wolf?” she asked, waving her hand about in the air. “Very well. You can have what you want . . . and your outward appearance shall reflect your inner heart. As you wished it to be, so it shall be.”

  The last thing I saw before the darkness overtook me was an image of her lip curling upward in disgust.

  Chapter 2: A Howl of a Good Time

  I woke up on t
he floor in the foyer of a castle. The ceiling was high, with a crystal chandelier dangling overhead and sparkling like an excited pixie, and beneath me was an expensive red carpet. But my head was so fuzzy that I hardly noticed the floor felt strange as I tried to get to my feet. Something isn’t right, I thought to myself, but I didn’t know what exactly it was.

  Gazing around, I jumped at the sight of two gargoyles. They were on pedestals by the door, and they had real flames hovering in their mouths. One had monstrous horns spiraling upward, and the other had massive wings sprouting out of its back. I thought it was odd—gargoyles belonged on the outside, after all, to keep evil away—but I dismissed it and stumbled forward. Some glass hanging from the chandelier clanged together for no discernible reason, and I looked in slight puzzlement at the walls, where moving water zigzagged downward on set paths beside some polished suits of armor.

  Something isn’t right, I thought again, and I made my way to a mirror on the wall, wanting to see if I had hit my head. But what I saw there wasn’t me.

  It was a monster.

  Recoiling from the image, I backed up, and then I began to run. Though a part of me wanted to go outside, I didn’t go to the exit. Instead, I began to dash through the hallways, hunting for something, though I didn’t know quite what. I ran past vibrant paintings and tapestries, past blazing torches and streaming water-art. My paws felt strange as they hit the floor. They didn’t make loud thuds like I would have expected; instead, they were muffled by the special padding and curvature of a beast’s toes. Such thoughts flew through my head as I ran.

  Finally, I stopped at a closed door. It felt as if it were calling me.

  “Is anyone t-there?” I asked shakily.

  The door opened, and I stepped inside, looking around with a sense of dread balled up in my stomach. But there was no one there. It was just an empty brown sitting room filled with couches and clocks.

  “Is anyone there?” I asked again.

  The fire in the fireplace flared, as if in answer, and I took a few steps back. My mind returned to the ugly woman I had seen and to what she had told me about my outward appearance reflecting my inner heart, and I knew she had cursed me. I had been given what I had thought I wanted. But never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would be turned into a wolf.

  I stumbled around the castle in a sort of daze, moving from room to room, hoping to find someone to answer my calls. It felt like I was in a dream. The castle was massive, filled with giant rooms and colorful tapestries. Everything in it was beautiful, except for me, an ugly wolf moving among silk and gold like a wriggling maggot among sleeping butterflies.

  I didn’t find anyone, but I soon came to understand that I was not completely alone. Every time I asked for a door to open, it did. There was some sort of presence in the castle, though it was hard for me to wrap my head around just what it was. But I began to pinpoint it further when I realized there was something every room had in common. Every room had water, fire, and wind chimes. And the presence—or rather, presences—in the castle could express pleasure and displeasure through those elements.

  Under other circumstances, I might have been intrigued by the sheer uniqueness of it all. I realized quickly that the three elements were not manifested in the same way in each room as they were in the foyer. Sometimes, the water was in a pool or fountain, but other times, it was displayed more creatively, like with a waterfall trickling over a piece of art. Fire could be seen on sconces, to be certain, but there were also walls with holes in them that were designed to be shapes or images, with the fire flaring behind grates and stones. The wind chimes were usually less eye-catching, but they were in many different colors or shapes or even places, like hanging in a doorframe in place of a door or even dangling beneath a bed.

  The décor of the castle was a mix of the ordinary with the quirky and bizarre. In the room I eventually chose as my own, for instance, there was a bizarre trunk that had to be pushed on in a ridiculously complicated way in order to get it to open. There were a lot of strange things like that in the castle—doors that led to nowhere, pianos that played by themselves, rooms that looked like jungles . . . . It was a veritable House of the Bizarre and Odd.

  In addition to holding a hard-to-open trunk, the room I chose to be my personal chambers had a cozy fireplace, a quaint wind chime with miniature glass lily pads, and a small pond with actual lily pads floating in it. The room was not the most breathtaking or the biggest, but that was fine, as I hadn’t chosen it for its appearance. I chose it because of sound.

  The thing about living in a castle virtually alone is that a castle without other inhabitants is often too quiet. The first room I went into was like that; if it had been any quieter, I probably would have started howling just to break the silence. The second room I tried wasn’t an improvement, as it was actually too loud. There was an enormous fireplace, and the crackling noise of the flames eating steadily away at shifting logs—coupled with the sound of a most vociferous gurgling fountain in the room—nearly drove me out of my mind.

  The third bedroom I tried had frogs in the pond. For some reason, I found the croaking of the frogs to be comforting. And though it was hard to admit it, even to myself, I felt slimy companionship was better than none at all. As long as they stayed out of my bed, the frogs made good enough roommates for me. Besides, they reminded me that there were worse things to be transformed into.

  Another perk of the room that I chose was that it was near the library. My mother had passed on her love of reading to me, and I found the castle’s library to be nothing short of amazing. Unfortunately, however, I was unable to turn the pages of any books. I did try—several times—but teeth and claws were not up to the task, and after I surrounded myself in tattered pieces of paper a few times, I gave up. There was no point in destroying books when I might actually be able to read them one day.

  When I finally went outside that first day to explore the rest of my surroundings, I walked down the castle steps and stopped in front of a great three-tiered marble fountain. It had water trickling down over its large basins, and it was adorned with the traditional cherubim and flowers, but at the top, in the center of a small bowl of dirt, there was a single bright red rose. Every petal seemed flawless, like a work of art too perfect to be real.

  I stared up at it in wonder. “Mother?” I whispered softly, nonsensically. Somehow, it felt like my mother’s presence was especially imbued in it. Perhaps I had been transformed into a beast, but at least I had one tie to a better life.

  I began walking around the grounds and found them to be as large and magnificent as the rooms inside the castle. There were orchards and gardens and livestock pens and even a life-sized maze. And roses. There were roses everywhere.

  Roses were one of the few non-medicinal flowers I could actually identify, and they almost seemed to taunt me with their beauty, but I loved them anyway. I had always loved them because they reminded me of my mother. Even now, when I felt kindly toward no one, I felt warmed by them.

  It soon occurred to me to think of the invisible presence in the castle as a motley group of servant spirits, and I nicknamed them the Invis. I could command them to do most things to serve me, and they occasionally retaliated against commands they deemed unacceptable through manipulations of fire and water and wind. Still, they never spoke, and I was lonely. It didn’t matter how many amphibian roommates I had. It wasn’t the same.

  The red wolf that had chased me did come by on occasion, though such visits were infrequent, as if she were merely trying to ensure I had not burned the castle down in her absence. The first time she came, I found myself growling at her, thinking her a wild beast meaning to attack me, but she simply dropped the mirror she was carrying in her mouth onto the floor and looked at me with an odd expression. Then she told me gently: “I am not here to hurt you.”

  Surprised at the sound of her voice, I started to say something, but she continued: “Call me ‘Scarlet.’”

  I wanted t
o call her something else entirely, but I returned instead: “Fine. Then call me ‘Bête.’”

  She had stared at me but didn’t argue. I figured she could keep her secrets, and I would keep mine. And then she said with a bit of irony, “You may call the castle ‘Silverthorn.’”

  I let out a curt laugh that sounded more like a cough coming from my wolf’s mouth. “Really?”

  She tilted her head, giving a remarkable impression of a grin. “Really.”

  I snorted. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  She inclined her head, looking at the object she had dropped. “That’s a magic mirror on the floor in front of you. It will show you things you do and do not want to see. You merely have to ask it.”

  I stared down at the mirror. The fact that it was a hand-held one seemed to be adding insult to injury. Since I had massive paws and no opposable thumbs, the only way I could carry it would be in my mouth. At the time, I had no idea what the point of me having it could be. It was only later that I learned that the enchanted looking-glass could show my face as it once was—handsome, chiseled, and breathtaking, with locks of dark brown hair that fell down with perfect disarray into smoldering green eyes—and as it had become . . . a hideous mass of black fur with two yellow lupine orbs embedded within it.

  I hated it. I was not me anymore; there was not even a hint of me to be found. It was all wolf.

  We did not say much else that time—I wasn’t exactly pleased with her—but I eventually got over some of my anger and began to look forward to her rare visits, though it seemed strange to be speaking to her, and I wasn’t always sure what to talk about. It was like there was an enormous chasm between us, and I had no idea how to bridge it.

  I thought time and time again about going to my father, but I could never approach him like this. As a renowned hunter and magic hater, he was certain to believe a talking wolf was a good excuse to pull out his gun. So I stayed. But I hated it.

  In spite of the roses and invisible servants, my days at the castle were dark ones in the beginning. The first night, I felt so incredibly angry that I ran throughout the castle tearing pillows and tapestries in addition to destroying books and mirrors. The Invis cleaned it all up, but I could sense their disapproval the next morning. Or to be more exact, I could tell they weren’t happy due to the loud clang of wind chimes, the unbearable heat of large flames, and the irritating sprays of water that shot into my eyes. Petulant children had nothing on the Invis.