She had a stark vision of hands reaching up from underneath the bed, attached to a terrible creature whispering her name.
“Bryony…Bryony…”
“No!” shrieked Bryony, sitting up in bed. “Stop!”
She flung her arm sideways, sweeping aside the curtains, and there, on the nightstand, stood a clock.
Golden nightingales perched atop it. As she watched, they opened their beaks and sang “Bryony…Bryony…”
She sagged back on the pillow, feeling damp with relief.
“It’s a cuckoo clock. A stupid…horrible…personalized cuckoo clock.”
She rubbed her hands over her face, feeling like ten kinds of idiot.
The birds said her name a few more times, then closed their beaks. Bryony sighed.
It was odd, though. She was awake much earlier than she had been the night before. Had she slept through the clock, or was it going off at different times?
“House,” she said wearily, “please don’t…err…please make them stop doing that, all right?”
When she opened her eyes, the clock was still there. The mechanical nightingales looked vaguely reproachful.
Hopefully they would stop singing now. Bryony went to eat breakfast, and then to turn sod.
“The house would probably do that if you asked,” said the Beast, coming up behind her in the garden.
“No,” said Bryony, sliding one edge of the shovel under a square of sod and ripping it out with a heave. She flipped the sod into the wheelbarrow. Earthworms fled, wiggling, into the dirt.
“Certainly it would,” said the Beast.
“I’m sure it would,” said Bryony, setting her shovel down. “I don’t want it to.” She walked to a tray of lemonade being held aloft by a stone dryad statue. (She found most garden statuary insipid, but the lemonade was too good to complain.)
“Why not?”
Bryony drained a glass of lemonade and set it back down. “Because this is my garden. If I let House build it for me—and then what, weed it and mulch it and prune it as well?—it won’t be mine. It’ll be a thing that the house made for my amusement.”
“Hmm,” said the Beast. “I understand that, I think.”
“Besides,” said Bryony, wiping sweat from her forehead, “it’s not like I don’t have plenty of time.”
“There is that,” agreed the Beast. He sounded so humble that it irritated Bryony, who preferred him when he was feeling snappish and sardonic.
“If seeing me out here working bothers you, feel free to grab a shovel and help me strip some of this sod,” she said.
He stared at her.
“It’s easy,” she said. “Here. Here’s the shovel. I’ve already cut it into squares. Shove the blade under just under the grass roots and flip it out. Like peeling a really big orange. With a really big butter knife.”
“Your gift for metaphor leaves much to be desired,” said the Beast, but he took the shovel. It looked like a toy in his hands. One paw engulfed the end of it. He followed her directions and awkwardly tore up a strip of the lawn.
“We’re going to need to get you a bigger shovel,” she said. “You’ll hurt your back.”
“I doubt that,” said the Beast, moving on to the next square.
“Hunched over like that? Yes, you will.”
“I am functionally immortal, you know.”
“Good for you. Do you want to be functionally immortal with a bad back?”
He wrinkled his lips back from his teeth. Bryony gazed back, unimpressed. The Beast surrendered the shovel.
“House,” said Bryony, tapping the stone dryad on top of the head. “Can you find me a Beast-sized shovel, please?”
The Beast ran a hand over his face and said “This is not what I expected to be doing this morning.”
“Did you have other plans? Don’t let me keep you.” Bryony turned and found the new shovel against the boxwood hedge. It was nearly as tall as she was, and had a blade like a plow. “Good lord!”
The Beast pulled off his tunic and unbuttoned his cuffs. Rolling up his sleeves took awhile, and revealed enormous biceps as thick as Bryony’s waist. His fur was dark and sleek, with brown highlights against the black cloth.
Bryony handed over the shovel.
“Are you sure this won’t make it less your garden?” he asked, draping his tunic over the boxwood hedge.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take. Be nice, and I might even teach you to mulch.”
“Oh. Joy.” The Beast attacked the sod, taking out three squares for Bryony’s one.
With the Beast’s help, the ground was clear by noon. Normally Bryony would have tilled down a bit, but the soil revealed was loose and moist and so much the platonic ideal of good soil that she distrusted it immediately.
“Is there something wrong?” asked the Beast. “You are glaring at that dirt most severely.”
“Magic dirt,” said Bryony grimly. “No dirt is this nice. I don’t trust it.”
“You could ask the house to make it worse, I suppose,” said the Beast. “I am not sure what to tell you. I think it is genuine dirt, not anything created, but I am sure the house has—err—fixed it a bit.”
“Hmmm.” An earthworm poked its nose out of her handful. Surely nothing with earthworms involved could be too evil, could it?
And it’s not like you have much choice in the matter…
“All right,” she said, returning the worm to the ground. “Get the house to make you a trowel, and we’ll get these plants in the ground at last.”
“Have you any plans after that?” asked the Beast, acquiring a trowel the size of a short sword.
“Lunch, I suppose…”
“For gardening.” He gestured with the trowel, flinging bits of dirt over his clothes. “There are other plants here, after all. They could use…err…pruning?”
He looked at her very intently. Bryony paused with her hands full of oregano.
“The boxwoods don’t need it. I think they prune themselves.”
The Beast’s shoulders sagged, and he returned silently to digging.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning, she woke up an hour before dawn, because the damnable mechanical nightingales had gone off again.
She flung a pillow at the birds. They continued to sing her name.
She got up, fury overriding her fear of the shadows under the bed, and snatched up the clock. It was surprisingly heavy. She could probably have brained an intruder to death with it.
Bryony stalked to the closet, snatched a dress off the hook, and wrapped it tightly around the clock.
“Mrrrongghhnyyeee…” it called plaintively, through the fabric.
She flung the wadded up dress and clock into the far corner of the closet, slammed the door, and went back to bed.
At about half past eight, they went off again.
Next to her ear.
She yanked the curtains aside, and there was the clock, or one exactly like it, with the mechanical birds singing “Bryony…Bryony…” with dreadful clockwork smugness.
“Oh, for the love of…” Bryony stomped to the door, pulling her robe tightly around herself. She pushed the door open and yelled “BEAST!” into the hallway.
It was probably her imagination that the clock was sulking on the nightstand.
“Beast! Beast! Are you out there?”
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Bryony was pleased to see that he finally made a sound on the floor, but when he rounded a corner and she realized that he was running on all fours, she took a step back.
“What is it?” cried the Beast. “Are you hurt? What is wrong?”
“Err—nothing really wrong—” she stammered. He stood up in front of her. His clothes were disheveled and there was a wild gleam in his eyes. She took a step back. “I didn’t mean to alarm you, I just—”
“I heard you calling,” said the Beast. He took a step forward. His nostrils flared, as if scenting for something. “I smell no blood on you.”
“The house won’t stop this awful clock from saying my name,” said Bryony meekly.
The Beast blinked at her several times, then huffed loudly. She thought it was a laugh. “Oh. Is that all?”
He put a clawed hand on the doorframe, and appeared to give the wallpaper a very stern look.
When Bryony looked at the nightstand, it was completely bare. There was not so much as the shadow of a metal bird on it.
“Thank you,” she said faintly. “Um. I really am sorry. I didn’t realize you’d come running.”
“If you have need of me at any time,” said the Beast, “you have only to call my name. If it is within my power to come to you, I will.”
He turned away. Bryony shut the door and locked it.
“Sorry, House,” she mumbled, feeling as if she’d been fighting with one of her sisters and a grown-up had just appeared to yell at them both.
The house gave her a cold breakfast. Bryony rather felt that she’d deserved that.
She went down to dinner that night warily. She had not seen the Beast all day, and hoped that he was not angry with her about this morning.
“You seem very quiet,” she said, as the doors opened before them.
“I should apologize,” he said. “This morning—”
“I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have started yelling for you over a silly little thing like that.”
“No, no.” He made an impatient gesture with his free hand. “I should not have run. Not on all fours like that. Not where you could see me. I am ashamed.”
“It was a little unsettling,” she admitted. “But you’re certainly very fast.”
“I am faster running as a Beast than walking as a man,” he said bitterly. “I should have remembered myself, but I was afraid that some harm had befallen you.”
“I appreciate the thought.” She patted his arm. “Please don’t worry about it.”
I am reassuring a very large monster that has kidnapped me. I just patted his arm without really thinking about it. You can get used to anything. How nice.
“Besides,” she said, as he pulled out her chair, “if something bad had happened, I would want you to come with all speed, no matter how it looked.”
The Beast bowed his head, as if she had laid some kind of geas upon him, and sat down silently across from her. Bryony sighed from the bottom of her toes.
“Bryony,” he said, pulling out her chair at the end of the meal. “Will you marry me?”
“No, Beast,” she said.
He nodded and they went to the library side by side.
The next few days settled into a routine that was actually rather pleasant, insomuch as being held captive against one’s will in a giant enchanted manor house with a somewhat sarcastic Beast could be.
Bryony got up in the morning, ate, and went down to the garden. The Beast was usually either waiting for her or joined her later.
She worked for much of the morning. It went slower than it might have because she was teaching the Beast, who was polite (if not, she suspected, actually that interested in gardening) but tended to make holes three or four times as deep as were actually needed.
“Good lord,” she said, when she saw what he had done in the herb wheel, “it’s oregano, not an oak tree.”
“My apologies.” He scuffled dirt back into place, trying to make the oregano look less forlorn.
“It’s all right. I wish I’d had you around when I was trying to put in the currant bushes back home. It took Holly and me three days to dig all the holes.” Her breath went out in a sigh at the thought.
She missed her sisters a great deal. Some days she worried at their memory like a sore tooth. If one of them were hurt or killed, would she know? Would she ever find out?
I’d know.
I’ll get out of here eventually. I will. I’m learning more all the time. The Beast admitted he was functionally immortal. That’s got to be important somehow.
Meanwhile, the plants have to go in the ground.
She was aware, on the days when the Beast was not waiting for her, that she missed his company a little. She did not tell him that. It seemed extremely bad form to tell your captor that you were lonely and that he was the closest thing you had to company.
When all her plants were transplanted, she planted seeds. House provided her with cut poles and twine to make trellises for the peas, and by the time those were built, the first little green radish leaves had come up and it was time to thin the seedlings out.
The Beast had apparently learned his lesson, and did not ask why she was planting vegetables, in a house that gave her all the food she needed.
After the morning’s gardening, the days went slower. The air seemed clearer in the garden. Once she went into the building, she felt a weight settle on her shoulders.
Nevertheless, she went inside and washed up and ate lunch. She read for a few hours, and took long afternoon naps. Sometimes she took the books out to the garden, and that helped, too.
Every evening, a new gown was laid out for her, and every evening she put it on, because House really didn’t ask for much, and went down to dinner.
She never saw the Beast eating, and every night he asked her to marry him.
Bryony wondered sometimes what would happen if she said yes, but she had a bad feeling about it. Leaving aside the fact that she didn’t particularly want to get married, what if this was the final aspect of the trap? What if saying yes meant that she put herself into the Beast’s power completely?
She preferred his company to solitude, but there was no sense being foolish about it.
Besides, she thought, picking at her lunch, he’s…um. A Beast. Even the blacksmith isn’t that big. Marrying him might have some…practical difficulties.
Iris would have turned purple. Holly would have laughed and embarked on a very dirty-minded discussion of what those practical difficulties were likely to entail. Bryony sighed and picked up another novel.
It was in the library, after dinner, that she was most grateful for the Beast’s presence.
As long as she had been able to read, she had been prone to read passages aloud to anyone who happened to be in the room. Mostly it had been nurses, maids, and her sisters. Now, it was the Beast.
Bryony would kick off her shoes and flop into one of the chairs, with her legs over one arm and her head on the other, and whenever she encountered a line that made her laugh, she read it out loud to the Beast.
“Ha! Listen to this one—‘I have no particular predilection for tortoises,’ said the prince, ‘it is only this particular tortoise that I wish to marry.’ Isn’t that marvelous?”
The Beast smiled. Bryony knew that he had to have read the book himself, probably several times, but that did not particularly diminish her enjoyment. She would have read it to House if no one else had been available.
“It occurs to me,” rumbled the Beast, looking up from his own book, “that that particular volume may be a trifle scandalous for a young lady of good sensibilities.”
“It’s a good thing I haven’t got any then,” said Bryony cheerfully. (Indeed, some of the stories were what Iris would have called “a trifle warm” and which would have made Holly grab the volume and pore over them herself.)
“You have plenty,” said the Beast, turning the page. “They all simply seem to be pointed in the wrong direction.”
Bryony grinned.
Occasionally, she drank a second glass of wine in the evenings, which made her feel rather giddy and amused, and which one night led to her poking the Beast with one bare toe when she thought he wasn’t looking up from his book fast enough.
(A week ago, the notion of touching the Beast voluntarily would have made her tremble, but there was something deeply unthreatening about him when he was reading. He had to fold himself into the chair for one thing. For another, he was desperately near-sighted and had to hold the book a few inches past the end of his muzzle when reading. Apparently House could not provide adequate readin
g glasses.)
He looked at her toe. She waved it threateningly. “You’re not listening. This is a great line.”
“You’re poking me,” he said mildly.
“You’re lucky I don’t come over and hit you with a footstool. What can you possibly be reading that has you so engrossed?”
“A treatise on the subject of aetherometrics.”
She scowled. “You made that up.” She threatened him with the toe.
“No, but I admit it’s rather dry compared to yours.” He eyed the toe warily. “Are you going to poke me again? Should I read some of mine to you?”
“Is it as funny as mine?”
“Not even remotely, I fear.”
Bryony drew her bare foot back to her own chair. “You don’t have any treatises on horticulture, do you?”
He considered. “I’ve got a few on crop rotation. I shall have to fetch them down for you.”
“Are they are dry as aeth—either—your book?”
“You might not think so. I would be happy to get them out, if it saves me another savage poking.”
Bryony made a rude noise, then giggled. The Beast smiled down into his book.
No, it was not an unpleasant way to spend an evening.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There was someone in the room with her when she woke up.
She wasn’t sure how she knew, or why it woke her at all, but she came straight up out of sleep without any confusion.
Someone was there.
She lay frozen under the sheets, her fingers fisted in the pillowcase, listening furiously.
There!
A stealthy footstep, then another. Someone was walking across the room.
What shall I do if he opens the bed-curtains?
Her knife lay on the nightstand. She had been wearing it faithfully, although she had no hope of actually drawing it from under one of those ridiculous dinner dresses, and House was apparently treating it like some essential undergarment, because it never vanished the knife away.
Unfortunately the nightstand was at least two armlengths away, owing to the improbable size of the bed, and she’d have to lunge across the pillows, hope that she didn’t get tangled in bedding, grab the knife, and then…something. Wave it in a war-like manner and hope for the best.
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