Bryony and Roses

by T. Kingfisher

  “Can they not learn?” rumbled the Beast.

  “Oh no. Well, Holly could. Iris is useless for anything but embroidery, she is afraid of worms…Oh, I only hope they can learn quickly enough! We have worked so hard, we came from so little—” She raked her hands through her hair. “We have earned a little breathing room, but a bad harvest or a missing gardener—”

  She stopped, aware that she was talking too much, keenly aware of how pointless it all was. The Beast, in his vast manor, could not possibly know or care what it was like to be so poor that a well-stocked root cellar was the only hedge against starvation. She knotted her fingers together and stared down at them.

  She would not beg.

  In the bright shadows of the fire, the Beast shifted restlessly and said, in a low earthen rumble, “Perhaps I can make it easier.”

  “You can let me go!”

  He shook his great head. “I will give you a week to return to your sisters. Then you must come back to me, or I will come to fetch you.”

  Bryony’s heart, which had risen a little, sank down to her toes. “Come and fetch me,” she repeated tonelessly.

  “The house will,” said the Beast. “I cannot leave the grounds. The house, however…” He spread his clawed hands. “Even I do not know all that the house is capable of.”

  Strangely, she did not doubt him. She wondered vaguely how it would happen. Would she step outside the cottage and find her feet on the road leading to the iron gate? Would Fumblefoot lead her here when her hands faltered on the reins?

  Would the house tear itself up from its foundations and go striding across the landscape on legs of masonry and mortar?

  She put her face in her hands.

  “I suppose that I can hardly stay inside the cottage for the rest of my life,” she said dully. “And if the house comes for me, my sisters—”

  She stopped. The notion of the house reaching out for her and catching Iris or Holly instead was too much to bear. Holly would try to fight and be killed, and Iris would cower in a corner and weep.

  Iris had only barely recovered from the death of their father. Something like the Beast she might never recover from again.

  “It is a large house,” said the Beast. “You will have all that you desire. Books, fine clothes…”

  “Swear that you will not hurt my sisters,” she said fiercely, turning on him, not caring about the state of her clothes any longer, or that she was like a mouse making demands of a wolf. “Swear that if I stay with you, you’ll leave my sisters out of this.”

  “I want nothing of them,” said the Beast. “If you come back within a week, they shall never see me.”

  Bryony’s breath hissed between her teeth.

  “Then I shall stay,” she said, and the realization that her garden was lost to her was a cut so deep that she wrapped her arms around her belly and her breath caught with it. Only the knowledge that the Beast was watching her, and that she did not want to show any weakness before her captor kept her from gasping.

  Perhaps I will not have to stay. Perhaps when he has had what he wants—whatever it is—perhaps he will let me go. Perhaps I will find a way to escape.

  I have brought this on myself. I knew that this was enchantment, and I went inside anyway. If this is the price I pay to keep it from touching my sisters, then so be it.

  “Please,” she said wearily, no longer able to focus on the big things, and so seeking refuge in the small ones, “are there any clean clothes to be had?”

  “You will have to ask the house,” said the Beast.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Beast left her alone for a few minutes with a basin of water and some soap. When she turned around, there were dresses laid across the sofa, great frothy concoctions of silk and lace and seed pearls, and Bryony began laughing, with a great deal of bitterness to be sure, but still, laughter. That had always been her great gift and her besetting sin, that even in the darkest and most somber times, she had the urge to laugh.

  She had very nearly disgraced herself at her father’s funeral by laughing, but since laughter looks much like tears if you keep your face covered, she had managed to pull it off.

  The dresses, though…

  “Good lord, no,” she said. “Oh dear. I’m sorry. There is nothing there that I can wear. I would need ten maids to do up the buttons on that one, and I plan to ride a horse home. Find me a robe that I can wear until my pants dry, and that will do very well for me.”

  She was talking out loud to a house. It was a measure of how wearing the day had been that this no longer seemed unusual.

  When she went to the hearth to spread her wet pants and undergarments before the fire, there was a robe hanging from the coatrack, next to her cloak. She took it down. It was dark pink and made of some plush fabric that would undoubtedly pick up every speck of lint and stray hair in the world. At the moment, however, it was gloriously soft and she rubbed her cheek on a sleeve unselfconsciously.

  “Thank you, House,” she said. “Err…if you could see that my clothes dry quickly…I’m not sure if you do that sort of thing…”

  There was no reply. Possibly that was for the best. If the house had started talking back, she might have started screaming, and she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to stop.

  The door swung open, and the Beast came through again. He looked at her robe thoughtfully, but did not comment.

  He was carrying a small chest in his arms—or perhaps it was a large chest, but he made it look small. He set it down on the table (which was now devoid of either dishes or bacon) and motioned to her to open it.

  “This is for your sisters,” he said, as she flipped the latch open. “So that you need not worry that they will starve.”

  She opened the lid. Gold caught the firelight and woke highlights on the underside of the lid.

  It was full of gold royals, the most valuable coin in the kingdom, stamped with the king’s head and the royal coat of arms. The cottage Bryony shared with her sisters might be worth a half-royal, if the buyer was generous. The contents of the chest could buy all of Lostfarthing and half of Skypepper, and put a new coat of paint on the other half, at that.

  “No!” said Bryony, stumbling back from the chest. “No—no, you can’t!”

  She clamped her arms around her midsection and thought that she might be ill.

  The Beast stared at her with honest bewilderment, and she realized that she sounded like a madwoman, that for once the Beast might be the one acting rationally.

  “It’s too much,” she said, forcing the words out. “When you have money like this, people take it from you. Things happen. It’s not—I can’t—” She took a deep breath and looked down at the carpet. “If my sisters have this, someone will steal it. The townsfolk will look after them as they are, but if they have this—people aren’t good with money like this. It—it does things to people’s heads.”

  She knew all too well what things money did. She fanned her fingers out, rejecting the chest, trying not to sound completely mad. “So, thank you, I’m sure you meant well, but no.”

  “Hmmm,” said the Beast, in a meditative rumble. “I see.”

  “Besides,” said Bryony, daring to look up, “you cannot spend royals in Lostfarthing. They would have to travel halfway to the capital to find anyone rich enough to make change.”

  The Beast shut the lid. “I have never before met anyone with an aversion to wealth. Someday you will have to explain it to me.”

  Bryony snorted and let her arms fall to her sides. “I suppose we will have plenty of time, unless you plan to sacrifice me to the moon gods on the next equinox, or something equally nefarious.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Beast. “The moon gods require virgin sacrifices on the solstice, not the equinox.”

  “They’re twice out of luck there, then,” said Bryony.

  The Beast’s face writhed into a mass of teeth and tusks, and Bryony had a bad moment when she thought that her virginity might actually be
what he was after, for some unknown magical reason—But damnit, he should have asked, not just assumed, and I’m not ashamed, it’s not like I ever planned to get married anyway, and even if by some chance I did it wouldn’t be to someone who cared about a thing like that—and then she realized that he wasn’t angry.

  The Beast was smiling.

  “I think we shall get along very well, Miss…what shall I call you?”

  “Bryony,” said Bryony. “And what shall I call you?”

  “Beast,” said the Beast. He stretched out a hand, not to touch her, but holding it palm up in a way that was oddly reassuring, despite the claws. “And have I not already said that no harm will come to you? There will be no sacrifices, virgin or otherwise. On this you have my word.”

  “Mmm,” said Bryony noncommittally. She wiggled her bare toes in the pile carpet. What is the word of a Beast worth? Well, he is a sorcerer, and they are said to keep their word…though what they actually promise you may be different than what you think they are promising…

  “As for your sisters, Miss Bryony, I am determined that you not fear that they will starve. Will this do, in lieu of gold?”

  He opened the chest again. The coins still glittered, but more softly now, on copper pennies and a few silver talers. There was no gold inside the chest.

  Bryony exhaled slowly. It was wealth enough to keep her sisters for several years, to buy the second goat that Holly had been wishing for, to build the loom that Iris had been wanting, but had not even suggested that they could afford. Somehow you could not quite imagine buying a goat with a gold royal. The gold and the goat did not belong together in the same image.

  It was more than she would have earned, carrying her vegetables to market for many years.

  Perhaps her sisters would be able to find their own ways to survive. Holly would likely marry—she was pretty and blond and vigorous and did not mind hard work—and Iris needed to marry someone, if only so that there would be someone to kill spiders and save her from dangerous earthworms. The coins would serve as a generous dowry, if nothing else.

  She took a silver taler from the chest and turned it over. The stamped wheat sheaves gleamed at her.

  “I think it will do very well,” she said to the Beast. “Thank you.”

  “It is the least that I can do,” said the Beast.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You’re alive!” cried Holly, hardly waiting for Bryony to dismount from Fumblefoot, and not bothering to open the gate before she scrambled over it. “You’re alive, Iris thought you were dead, nobody’s seen anything like that blizzard, not even Old Bran, but I knew you had to be alive, I said you probably stayed with Elspeth—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m alive,” said Bryony, getting down from Fumblefoot. The pony had been a bit edgy during their ride home, although that may have been from an overabundance of magic carrots, the house apparently having no idea that you were eventually supposed to stop producing them. “Let me put Fumblefoot in the barn, and then…well, I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  And may God have mercy on me while I tell it…

  She wasn’t worried about Holly. Holly would overcome this the way she overcame everything. When they had lost everything and fled the city in disgrace, when their father had died during the long winter that followed, Holly had gotten up every morning and thrown herself into the next task at hand, sometimes not saying more than ten words a day, but still plowing grimly forward.

  It was Iris who Bryony was worried about. She sighed.

  Holly matched her step for step as they went back to the barn, where Fumblefoot lived with Blackie the goat.

  “Something’s up,” Holly said, before they’d gotten halfway there. “You’re not yourself. What happened?”

  “I’ve been home two minutes,” said Bryony, annoyed. “Couldn’t I just be tired?”

  “No. You’re walking wrong. Like you’re expecting somebody to jump out at you.”

  Holly had a cheerful pink face and big, twinkling blue eyes, and Bryony occasionally had to remind herself that her sister also had a mind like a handful of razors.

  “I’d rather only tell it once,” said Bryony tiredly. “You’re not going to believe me anyway, either of you, and it’ll be easier this way.”

  “I’ll believe you,” said Holly. “You’re my sister. I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me about anything important.”

  “I lied to you about who got punch on your favorite dress when you were twelve.”

  Holly waved this off as unimportant. “Yes, well, I dropped your doll down the well, so it all evened out.”

  “Mmm.” Bryony unsaddled Fumblefoot and gave him a desultory rub down. They had come out of the woods less than a mile from Lostfarthing, despite the complete impossibility of doing so.

  Holly hefted the saddlebags over her shoulder as they walked towards the house. Chickens clucked and wobbled out of their path. “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said.

  “It’s something,” said Bryony.

  “In that case,” said Holly, switching shoulders, “just let me know who you want dropped down a well, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Telling her sisters did not go as well as Bryony had hoped.

  She told the whole story through, sitting on a stool in front of the fire, with her fingers wrapped around a mug of peppermint tea.

  At the end of it, Holly said “Huh!” explosively, and then there was a brief silence, and Iris burst into tears.

  Holly rolled her eyes and dropped a shawl over Iris’s shoulders. (It didn’t stop the crying, but it did rather muffle it, and it usually calmed Iris a bit, like covering a birdcage.) Holly drew closer to Bryony. “Now,” she said, “if you say this is what happened, I will believe you. But I have one question first.”

  “Ask,” said Bryony wearily, staring into her tea.

  “Did you meet someone and fall madly in love and now you’re running away with him to a better life and this was seriously the best story you could think of? Because if it is—”

  “Oh God, if only!” said Bryony, and started laughing painfully, which only made Iris cry harder.

  “All right, then,” said Holly. Her eyes strayed to the little chest on the mantelpiece. “I will admit, the coins make compelling evidence…although he values you far too cheaply, if that’s all he thinks you’re worth…”

  Bryony hadn’t mentioned that the Beast had offered her gold. She made a noncommittal sound and took a sip of tea.

  “So now that that’s settled,” said Holly, sitting back on her heels, “you obviously can’t go back.”

  Bryony hadn’t really expected them to cheerfully agree that she should march back into the hands of the Beast, but she was hoping to get Holly on her side, at least.

  “But—”

  “A strange man-monster lures you into the woods and informs you that he means to hold you prisoner? Are you mad? I shouldn’t have to tell you this.” Holly’s eyes narrowed. “Did you hit your head? Is there something you’re not telling us?”

  “No, no—”

  “Did he feed you poisoned food and if you don’t come back in seven days, you don’t get the antidote?”

  “I—wait, what?”

  “Are you enchanted?” Holly leaned forward and peered at her pupils.

  “How would we tell?” asked Bryony, exasperated. “And the Beast did save my life—”

  “Yes, yes, he’s a great humanitarian.” Holly waved this off, then paused. Her finger drifted to her lower lip. “Unless he is a humanitarian…and he’s looking for a next meal…”

  “I don’t think he’s a cannibal,” said Bryony, wondering how they had gotten so far afield, “and anyway, if he wanted to eat me, he would have. He didn’t have to let me come back and say good bye.”

  “But what if he means to kill you?” cried Iris, taking her hands away from her face long enough to hurl the words out, then immediately covering her face again.

  “I don’t think h
e does,” said Bryony slowly. “I’m nearly sure of it. There’s something else going on there. Something…something I can’t figure out…”

  “So what?” asked Holly fiercely. “Why do you have to be the one to figure it out? His house can grab people, he says—well, let him grab someone else!”

  Bryony shook her head slowly. “I can’t explain it. But I think the Beast is in trouble.”

  Holly snorted, and Iris looked out between her fingers long enough to give her sister a disbelieving look.

  She couldn’t explain it. If she tried, it would sound flimsy, and her sisters would drag it out and dissect it and make her see how ridiculous it was, and Bryony didn’t want to hear it.

  Because something strange was going on, even beyond the enchanted house and a Beast defensive of his roses.

  When she had led Fumblefoot through the wrought iron gate, and prepared to ride away, the Beast had come out to meet her. Fumblefoot didn’t like him and tried to dance nervously, but because it was Fumblefoot, he had to settle for a few sidesteps and a disgruntled whuffle.

  “Give me your hand, Miss Bryony,” said the Beast.

  Bryony tried to read something in his eyes—the eyes, that was the trick, look at the eyes and not at the great tusked muzzle beneath them—but there was nothing.

  He could have twisted my head off like a pigeon’s at any point. It seems unlikely he’d put me on a horse and then yank my hand off.

  She stuck her hand out, feeling foolish.

  The Beast reached through the bars of the gate and took her hand in his own very large one. For a moment it looked as if he was the prisoner, not she.

  He held her hand very lightly, with his thumb lying in a bar across her fingers, and said “Miss Bryony, please listen to me.”

  Bryony, who had been staring at the dark clawed hand wrapped around her own, looked up sharply, because on the word listen he had given her fingers a quick hard squeeze, like one who seeks to convey a secret message.

  “You must come back in a week’s time,” he said, gazing intently into her face. “The house will come for you, otherwise. It has great power.” He squeezed her fingers twice more, on house and power. “But I have no wish for you to be unhappy. Bring with you anything you need in your new life—mementos, hobbies, beloved objects. And as you are a gardener, please bring anything that you require—seeds for planting, tending, staking, pruning…whatever it is that gardeners do.”