Bryony and Roses

by T. Kingfisher

  Irving. Thank you. For everything.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Do you think we’ll be safe here?” she asked, turning to the Beast.

  “From the rose, possibly,” said the Beast. “From your sister, I’m not so sure.”

  He bowed very deeply, and Holly, who had come around the side of the herb wheel with her butcher knife raised, stopped and pretended that she hadn’t been about to stab anyone.

  “You must be Holly,” he said.

  “And you must be the Beast,” she said.

  “She’s a very good guesser,” said Bryony, putting a hand on the Beast’s arm.

  “So I see.”

  “Three of us in one family may be entirely too much for comfort,” said Holly. She scowled at the Beast. “I’m still angry at you, but we’ll get to that later. Bryony, what the hell happened? One minute I had hold of you, and the next I feel like I’ve been turned inside out and I land in the middle of this.” She waved the knife at the garden. “I stuck my head out, but there were some really angry plants out there, so I thought I’d stay here and see if you turned up or if I needed to stage a rescue.”

  “It is the rose spirit,” said the Beast, sitting down on the grass. “It is very angry.”

  “You’re going to have to explain everything,” said Bryony.

  He sighed. “What I can, I will. A long time ago, when I was young and human, I went hunting. A boar killed my horse, and I was wounded, and went staggering through the woods like a fool, until I wandered into a grove of sacred trees.”

  Possibly because she was a gardener, Bryony had no trouble imagining sacred trees. Holly raised an eyebrow, but that was all.

  “The spirit there took pity on me,” said the Beast. “Pity of a sort, anyway. She took human form and nursed me until I was well again. But she fell in love with me, and I—well, I was a fool. I did not think that I could love a birch tree, so I spurned her.”

  “A full-on spurning?” said Holly. “Goodness. No wonder she was upset.” Bryony elbowed her in the ribs.

  The Beast rubbed his arms, as if chilled under his fur. “In the wilds, there are many spirits, and some of them are very powerful. She went to a wild rose spirit, an old and dangerous one, and offered him all of her power to punish me. To possess me. I don’t think she was quite sure which herself. The rose accepted.”

  Outside the protective ring of plants, there was a loud crash, as if a wing of the manor had collapsed entirely.

  “As for me, I went to bed inside my hunting lodge, and woke up in the manor house. I believe it was a place that had existed before, that the rose found abandoned, but I am not sure. My servants were gone.” He sighed. “I wish that I could believe they escaped, but there were things—the house would cook some dishes like my cook had, and those dresses you wore—I cannot believe that there was nothing human behind them. I believe the rose and the tree absorbed them in some fashion. It is why the house could read a little, and why it understood some things and not others…” He ran a clawed hand over his face, and Bryony thought of the shapes in servant’s livery that she had seen through the windows, violated by the rose.

  A moment passed, and then the Beast picked up the thread again. “I was as you see me. The birch spirit came to me and said that as I did not believe I could love one who was not human, so I would be unhuman myself, until I found love in return.” He laughed softly. “I believe that she intended to force me into accepting her affections but—well—”

  “Well?” asked Holly.

  He shrugged. “I went a little mad, honestly. By the time it subsided, the poor birch had come to realize what had happened. She and I were trapped here, and the rose with us. The rose fed on her strength and forced her spirit into the walls of the house, where she could not fight back. And I fear that houses are very different than humans, and so by the time I had learned to talk and walk upright again, the birch had fallen quite decisively out of love with me.”

  Holly snorted. Bryony put a hand over her eyes. “Poor Beast!”

  “It would have been a dreadful blow to my ego, but…well.” He sighed. “The truth is, I forgave her long ago, and she me. We are both of us prisoners. I was young and arrogant, and she was young and hurt, and we have both paid the price a thousand times over.”

  “And the girl who killed herself…” said Bryony.

  “Her name was Beauty.” He sighed. “I was still arrogant. I thought that if I could have someone here, in time they would understand what had happened. In time they might love me. I learned my mistake very quickly, but I did not correct it in time.”

  “I wonder if she dreamed about a green-eyed man,” said Bryony.

  The Beast looked up. “A what?”

  “The rose. I dreamed about a man with green eyes. He kept asking me to help him. He was very…persuasive.”

  He looked at her intently, with those endless gold eyes. Bryony sighed.

  “I thought maybe he was you,” she said. “That you were under some enchantment and you were trying to talk to me in dreams. By the time I’d realized that it wasn’t you…”

  She slumped down next to him on the grass.

  “Ah,” he said. “No.” He reached out and covered her hand with his own. “Do not blame yourself. I did not realize until too late that the footsteps in your room were the rose, and that it was doing it deliberately to frighten you. I should have realized it long before, but it was a spirit, and I did not think that it would take the shape of a man. I should have guessed.”

  “Well,” said Holly, “not to interrupt all the recriminations, but now what?”

  “Can you leave now, Beast?” asked Bryony. “I don’t know how long the garden will hold. If we can get over the wall, maybe we can come back with a whole lot of fire and vinegar.” She considered. “And salt. And hedge clippers. And maybe a couple of teams of oxen to hook to the roots of the rose and tear it out. And probably priests.”

  “Huh!” Holly shoved her butcher knife into her belt. “Good luck with our priest. You’d be better off with nuns. The convent might be able to do something.”

  “I’m not sure if I can leave,” said the Beast. “Unless—Bryony—”

  He turned to her, and took both her hands. His eyes were beautiful and golden and his face was hideous and Bryony loved him.

  “Bryony, I know what you said before, and I realize, it may not be enough—or you might not mean it quite like that, but—will you marry me?”

  “You didn’t do that already?” cried Holly, throwing her hands in the air. “Dear God!”

  “Holly,” said Bryony severely, “I have had a very long day, possibly the longest day of my entire life and I have been cut to ribbons on magic roses and saw some really unpleasant things in the windows and been attacked by shadows and ruined a really excellent pair of shears and this is furthermore the only marriage proposal I am likely to get because I intend to accept it, so why don’t you go away for a few minutes so that I can enjoy it?”

  Holly gave the Beast a look. “Are you sure you want to deal with this?”

  “Of course I—” Bryony began.

  “Wasn’t talking to you.”

  The Beast grinned. “I have found that it is best, at such times, to simply accept the inevitable.”

  “You’ll do,” said Holly. “Fine! I’m going! I’ll be over here, waiting for the roses to come kill us all.”

  She stalked over to the other side of the herb wheel. Since the plants on it had not grown explosively the way that the others had, even the tallest was only about knee-high.

  “And you can look the other way, too,” said Bryony.

  “Yes, yes…”

  Bryony turned back to the Beast. He smiled down at her.

  “Beast, I would love to marry you.”

  Something exploded.

  At first Bryony thought it was somewhere in the garden, and then she thought perhaps it was inside her head. The world went grey and distant, the way that it had when she was travell
ing between the manor house and her own cottage. Bryony could feel the Beast’s hands holding hers, and she clung to them. The silver ring on her finger blazed with heat, but it was a kind heat, and warmed the space between them.

  Somewhere she could hear the rose screaming.

  Silvery light broke up the greyness. It did not so much illuminate as sharpen, so that when Bryony looked for the source, she saw it clearly, while the world around it was pushed back into shadows.

  It was the silver-haired woman.

  “You!” said Bryony. “I dreamed about you!”

  The woman smiled ruefully. “Yes,” she said. “Although I should not have come to your dreams, for it forged a channel that the rose could use as well. But perhaps all will yet end for the best.”

  The Beast rose to his feet, still holding Bryony’s hand, and bowed to the woman in silver. “It has been a long time,” he said. “It is good to see you again, even under these conditions.”

  The woman smiled. Her eyes were the color of birch leaves, and Bryony could have kicked herself for not realizing the truth sooner. “You were the good bits of House, weren’t you?” she asked. “Thank you. You were very kind.”

  The birch tree smiled, a little ruefully. “It was not all me. Without the minds of the servants that we took so long ago, I would have been a very poor host. Ah, those poor souls. They were innocent, and we did badly by them.” She shook herself, and Bryony seemed to hear the rattle of birch leaves. “But all is not yet done, and we must hurry, for I am dying.”

  The Beast made a sound of pain.

  The birch tree lifted a pale hand. “No, no. I am ready for it. Trees are good at dying, you know, we practice it for many autumns. It is time, and more than time.”

  A rustle ran through the garden, hundreds of leaves moving softly in acknowledgement. Bryony moved closer to the Beast.

  “There is power when a tree-spirit dies,” said the birch tree. “Even an old and broken one like me. And the rose is vulnerable at this moment, with the severing of its enchantments. I shall die, and take the rose with me. It will destroy the house, but it will be gone. Though I do not suggest that you try to live here any more, either of you.”

  “I would prefer never to see this place again,” said Bryony.

  Beast exhaled slowly. “I do not know if I should leave it,” he said. “Will I regain my human form?”

  “You have been here for nearly two hundred years,” said the birch gently. “I could give you your human shape back, yes. And all those years would come due at once, and you would be dead before you passed the gates.”

  “No!” said Bryony, gripping the Beast’s shoulder. Like the brother and sister turned into a swan, she thought. I could not stand it if he turned to dust in front of me. It is not fair that I won him back from the rose to lose him ten minutes later.

  “It need not be,” the birch assured her. “You will no longer be immortal, Beast, but you will wear your age lightly. There is at least a normal human span left to you, if not a little more.”

  “That’s fine,” said Bryony. “With me, anyway. Beast?”

  “I have lived longer than I wished,” said the Beast, “but I find that I am not quite eager to die yet. But are you sure?” He glanced down at Bryony. “It will not be easy, I imagine, living with a monster.”

  “If you don’t mind being a Beast then I certainly don’t mind being with one. Truth be told, if you turned into a human, I’d have a hard time getting used to it.” She grinned. “And if any of the townspeople complain, we’ll set Holly on them.”

  “Then I have no fears at all for the future,” said the Beast, and turned to the birch tree. He nodded.

  The silver-haired woman smiled. “Let it be so,” she said, in her old, creaking voice. “And if the blessing of a tree matters, may you have many, many springs together.”

  She turned away from them, and lifted a hand. The plants in Bryony’s garden parted before her, bowing down as if before their queen.

  Through the gap in the wall of leaves, Bryony saw the green-eyed man. He was no longer beautiful. His skin had gone grey and weathered, and his hair had turned to dry, brittle stalks. He lifted his head and snarled at the birch woman.

  She walked toward him and put her arms around him. He shuddered, and seemed to sink into himself.

  “Come,” said the birch tree to the wild rose, “it’s time to go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  When Bryony regained consciousness, she was lying on the Beast’s chest in the middle of the garden.

  It was warm and rather pleasant, but even the most comfortably padded lover has ribs and elbows and so forth, so she sat up reluctantly. The Beast smiled up at her and climbed to his feet.

  “About time you two got up,” said Holly, poking her head around the corner of the hedge. “I didn’t get much of a look at it before, but this place has really gone to hell in a handbasket.”

  Bryony and the Beast, hand in hand, went to look.

  The manor house had fallen in on itself. Great holes had been torn in the masonry, and fallen beams lay strewn like bones. The roses that had climbed across the front porch were not just skeletal but charred and black.

  “Well,” said Bryony. “I don’t think we’ll be living here any time soon.”

  The Beast frowned. “I would just as soon never see this place again. If we can reach my workshop, there are a few things that I would like to retrieve, but otherwise it may fall into ruins with my blessing.”

  It took them most of the morning to locate the workshop. The Beast had lost none of his strength with the ending of the enchantment, and he pulled stones loose bare-handed that would have taken Bryony a crowbar and a hard day’s labor.

  The workshop was partly intact. The back had fallen down and one wall leaned crazily inward, but there were tools scattered around the floor, still gleaming brightly. The Beast swept as many as he could find into a makeshift sack made of his old robe, and slung it over his shoulder.

  He surveyed the ruins and sighed. “I would like to have buried the servants,” he said. “If there is anything left of them after all this time. But I don’t know where they might be, or how to start looking. I hope that they passed quickly and without pain.”

  Bryony remembered the bodies in the windows and kept her mouth shut.

  “I’m surprised so much survived,” said Holly. “The rest of this place looks as if it’s been abandoned for centuries.”

  “The original house had been,” said the Beast, “and now it is reverting, I expect. But I made most of these tools myself, with my own labor instead of magic, and so they have survived.”

  “If you can carry a bit more,” said Bryony, “if you don’t mind terribly—”

  “I will carry you to the ends of the earth if that’s what you wish, love.”

  Bryony ignored Holly’s rolled eyes. “I can’t bring all the plants home, I know, and I hope that some of them will sink their roots here and make it their home. But I can’t just leave them. Not after they worked so hard to save me.”

  “Completely understandable,” said the Beast, and stood patiently while Bryony loaded him down like a pack mule with a dozen transplants: the sage and the lamb’s-ears and the opportunistic oregano.

  In one last way, the birch had helped her. Those plants that had moved aside under her hand had gone to seed as if it were high summer.

  Well, she had been a tree. Trees understood these things, presumably, as well or better than gardeners.

  So Bryony harvested the seeds of the faithful rutabagas, the basil and verbena, and tucked them away, first into the little pouches that Iris had made for her, so long ago, and then, when those were full, into scraps of paper torn from the books that House had made and printed with gibberish.

  She left the rest of the annuals to their fate. “I hope you re-seed,” she told them. “I hope you re-seed a lot, and if anybody ever finds this place, it’ll be wall-to-wall basil and peas and there won’t be a scrap of lawn
left. I hope they find weeds.”

  And then she scrubbed her cheeks with both hands and turned away, trying not to feel as if she were abandoning her friends.

  “This is how it starts, you know,” Holly told the Beast. “She’ll have you out turning compost heaps and digging up rocks before you know it.”

  “I hope so,” said the Beast. “I eat a great deal, after all.”

  Bryony leaned her cheek against his arm. “I will grow lots of vegetables,” she promised. “And we will build you a workshop so that you can make little clockwork creatures.”

  “I wish I was as certain as you are that your villagers will welcome a Beast,” said the Beast.

  “They will deal with it,” said Holly. “And if they do not deal with it, I will deal with them.”

  “It will work out,” said Bryony firmly. She reached out and took his hand. It was very large and rather furry, but the fingers that curled around hers were warm and alive. She squeezed and he squeezed back.

  She and the Beast walked hand in hand through the ruined gates, and into the world beyond them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every time I write one of these acknowledgment thingies, I am amazed that books ever get written at all.

  I wrote this one as I write most of mine—I started somewhere, fiddled with it off and on for a year or two, and then suddenly finished it off in a mad sprint to the end. For whatever odd reason, that mad sprint took place about four years ago, and Bryony sat in my computer as a nearly finished novel that just needed some poking for quite a long time.

  It is very comforting for an author to have a nearly finished novel around. If your agent comes up to you and says “Have you got anything we can send them?” you can say “Funny you should ask…” If there is a hole in your self-imposed self-publishing schedule and that novella you were going to write went sideways on you, you can pull out your nearly finished novel and suddenly you are golden.