Beauty & Cruelty

by Meredith Katz

  And then, as fast as it had begun, it quieted again.

  She opened her eyes to the dim light, the darkness of the starless night of this world, and felt a horrifying disjoint.

  The sun had gone out.

  Cruelty cast a stunned glance at Odette. The swan had tucked her neck under her wings to protect herself, but as she too reacted to the world's change, she lifted her head to look up at the sky. There was a sadness in her pose, but no shock.

  But Cruelty realized, of course there wouldn't be. Cruelty had been gone for the worst of the slow, ongoing, constant eating away of this world. Odette had been here through all the changes, from her moon being taken away to Talia trying to patch up the spaces that had been left by rearranging the geography.

  "Nice talk," Cruelty said, shaken. "I have to go."

  She yanked herself through space to Talia's room.

  Talia's image was already visible when she appeared there, hands pressed to her window, staring outside in horror. It was too dark in her room, and Cruelty lit the lamp by her bed. Talia didn't turn.

  "Now what?" Cruelty asked after a few moments.

  "It's too slow," Talia said. She ducked her head, so it looked like her head was leaning on the glass. In any other circumstance, it would pass right through, but unless bound to another vessel, the limits of the room were as far as she could go from her body. "The few who could go back and forth, I had them making gates, but we've only had a few humans come through. We need more if we're going to get any belief. Maybe—maybe what you showed me was true and it's impossible, but… if we don't get more people it won't matter anyway."

  "How many gates do you have?"

  "Three…"

  "For the whole world? No wonder, then," Cruelty said. She closed her eyes. She already felt tired, overwhelmed, at the thought. "And I bet you didn't usually have curse casters on it, did you? You just made it an open door, nothing more."

  Talia's shoulders seemed to stiffen. "I don't—we don't have a lot of options!"

  "I'll go," Cruelty said.

  "But... just you? Can—"

  "You don't have a lot of options, do you?" Cruelty asked, sarcastic to cover her feeling of dread, and teleported herself to the briars before Talia could protest any further, stepped into the place between here and there.

  She'd had a lot of time in the real world, and visited many places. There was a lot of risk in staying in one place for a long time; her lack of physical change becoming suspicious, her personal habits becoming more so. But at least it gave her options. She could always teleport to wherever she'd been, and as long as it was in some way tied to growing things and the natural world, she could set up gates, curse them to draw people in.

  In that in-between place, she steadied herself, breathing deeply, trying to work up the courage to get started, trying to work up the energy to succeed. She undid almost every spell she'd ever made. Back where she'd been before, the briars around Talia's castle unwound. After a moment's hesitation, she undid her own castle's briar as well. The briar gave her a good burst of energy; it was biggest protection, a spell she constantly refreshed. But she knew it wouldn't be enough. She reached deeper; undid the wards on her castle keeping people out. Undid the glamours keeping it beautiful and terrifying. She felt raw, like she'd just flung all her doors wide open to the world, but if there was no world left, there'd be no castle to protect regardless.

  There were more spells she had up—but she hesitated on going further just yet, and stepped out of the briar into the world to begin to flick between locations. Yuncheng City: Guandi temple. Jinhae: Kyeong-Wha Station. Enoshima: Samuel Cocking Garden. Melbourne: Royal Botanical Gardens. New Zealand: Abel Tasman National Park. Paoay: Paoay church. On and on, each location reminding her of another place she'd been, touching down only long enough to curse the land to draw people to it, wrenching open a gate, and moving on to the next place that came to mind. Sometimes she moved nearby, other times much further, jumping from the Philippines to Kizhi in Russia to Butchart Gardens in BC, Canada, to Iguazu Falls in Brazil. Space was more of a suggestion when she was in between, and while she could have probably optimized her travel path, giving herself the time to stop would make exhaustion catch up and so she just kept running through the bindings of reality, just kept stepping from here to there as places popped into her mind. She didn't let herself stop and think any deeper than that. It became an exhausting repetitive gesture, here and then there and pouring herself into the world and ripping open and here and then there and pouring herself into the world and ripping open and here and then there—

  She ran out of energy before she ran out of possible places. Other locations popped into her head with the usual flow of memory, but reaching for them felt like dragging herself over rocky earth, slow and agonizing. She felt sick, dizzy; could taste bile and blood in her mouth as she crumpled in the border of reality. She couldn't remain there for long; she wouldn't get any energy back there and could easily be trapped forever, but the idea of moving on and on and on to half-remembered places just to pour out more of herself was exhausting. She realized, with a wrenching feeling she couldn't identify, that she could feel hot tears trickling down her cheeks.

  She had to go a little further. She knew that. But the only place in her mind was home and, once she'd thought that, images flooded her mind almost helplessly. The dusty book smell of her house, the garden, the peeling paint, the sound of traffic outside, the lights through the windows, books everywhere, her comfortable chair, the bathtub she'd recline in with a book and soak while drinking up words. It wasn't a hot tourist spot, wasn't a place she knew would get constant travelers. But (she passed a hand over the back of her nose, smeared blood there, stared down at it numbly) it was at least in a city. She'd multiplied Beauty's gates a hundred fold. That would have to be enough, right? One smaller gate wasn't a big deal, right?

  Cruelty went home.

  She popped into existence in her own living room, swaying on her knees and then hitting the wood floor hard. Her knees hit a stack of books next to her and they fell across her; she hardly felt the hard impact of their covers into her limbs, clutching the floor like a lifeline and trying to breathe.

  She had enchantments up here too, and undid them. Undid the spells that turned people's eyes away from the brambles overgrowing her back yard. Undid the enchantments that turned strangers away from her front doors, that disguised the windows. She was almost out of all possible magics beyond waking up Talia, but she couldn't undo that one. It was the core of their story, and undoing that herself... Rather than strengthening her, she feared it would change things in a way she had no way of understanding.

  But this was enough. With her house's spells undone around her she could breathe again, felt less like she was dying.

  Still, she didn't move.

  She held the energy inside her, weighing it, then closed her eyes and spilled it back out into the house. Not protections this time, not enchantment to turn people away, but the opposite. Come here, she called. To this cursed fairy house. Enter. See what's on the other side. These gardens in the back, these impossible gardens? Come to see them. Touch. Come through. Come through.

  Cruelty poured the energy inside her out, draining it until almost nothing remained in her. The taste of blood flooded her mouth again, and she lay her head down on the cool floor. It was so much cooler than she was, burning hot and exhausted, and she thought she could close her eyes for just a few moments. She needed to rest, slowly restore her own energy. The world was swimming and growing dark regardless. But of course it was dark, she thought dazedly; there was no sun any more. But was this here or there? Where was it, where was she—?

  She closed her eyes.

  Distantly, she heard meowing, a worried voice. People coming already? They'd find her like this, she thought, and felt that wrenching feeling again. It reminded her of when she had taken Talia to see her workplace, had been confronted by Rick.

  Humiliation, she thought. That was th
e feeling. She felt humiliated at the thought of some stranger seeing her like this, someone coming across her body exhausted and bloodied with tears seeping through her lids, utterly helpless.

  But humiliation wasn't enough to help her open her eyes again.

  The voice came again, low. She could make out the worry in it (Pity?, she wondered distantly) but not the words. Feathers brushed her arm, and she let the blackness take her.

  Chapter Nine

  She woke, confused to find herself not on the floor of her house in the real world, but in her bed in her own castle. Realization dawned as she both felt and remembered the lack of protections on the place. Anyone could and would come in and out now; if she was found by someone who knew where she belonged, she could actually be taken there.

  Cruelty turned her head; Sixth was dozing in a chair next to the bed, a candle lit at his side, and the Cat was on his lap, drooling and snoring, one of Sixth's feathers in his mouth. She sat up slowly, every inch of her body still aching, but she was better than she had been, at least. Not that it was possible to be worse and still exist. Here, where she belonged, a slow trickle of energy flowed back into her, though admittedly much, much slower than she expected. She had enough left to survive on, but that was it. If she'd been left out there, she doubted she'd have enough energy to wake up again at all.

  Slowly, she pushed her hair back and tried to slide her legs out of bed. They weren't strong enough to hold her; she stumbled, catching herself on the bed and letting out an inelegant noise.

  Sixth snapped awake, eyes fluttering open, and reached to catch her groggily, spilling the Cat out of his lap. The Cat hit the ground with a discontent yowl.

  That makes two of us, Cruelty thought.

  "Lady Cruelty," Sixth said. "Please, you shouldn't be up and about so soon—"

  "I'm fine," she protested, even if she wasn't sure that she was. She let Sixth help her back into the bed. "I'll be better once I can get out and about among the plants."

  "Let yourself rest a little longer first," he said. "There's no point in walking in nature, Lady, if you can't keep yourself walking."

  She didn't want him to have a point, so she sighed, tried to give off the air that she was doing it for him, and settled herself back on her cushions. She had to admit, at least to herself, that lying in one place certainly seemed less painful than moving around. "How long was I out?"

  "A week, my Lady," Sixth said. The Cat, apparently no longer viewing Sixth as a sensible place to sleep, hopped up on the bed. He curled up uncomfortably on Cruelty's knees. "A worrying week, to be honest. I hope you don't mind that I've made myself at home here, but I wished to keep an eye on you."

  "Why?" she asked.

  He seemed at a loss for words in the face of the blunt question. "Why? Um. Well," he stammered, and glanced at the Cat. "Tim guided me to you," he said. "And well, since I'd been the one to find you, I suppose I sort of took responsibility...? Someone needed to keep an eye on you, and my cabin has been taken over by humans needing a place to stay... so far I've managed to keep people from your castle, or, perhaps, your castle's own intimidating nature has done so, but it will probably be filled soon enough."

  "So the gates worked?"

  "The gates," Sixth said, in a slow tone, like he was trying to figure out how to put it, "have been very effective. In a good way, for sure, in that this was the goal. But I wonder if we had been properly prepared for it."

  "Of course we weren't," Cruelty sighed. "We left our preparations in the hands of a teenage girl who can't leave her bedroom and spent 'our' time having petty romantic arguments instead of expecting the plan to actually work. Among other things. Certainly most of us like to keep to ourselves. It's a wonder we're even organized to share the idea of the plan, let alone see it through..."

  Sixth began to look a little irritated, though Cruelty didn't think she was exactly off the mark. "You're not wrong," he admitted. "We should have prepared for the plan to succeed, rather than prepared for it to under-perform, even if it started slow. I suppose we were imagining that this number of people, should they even arrive, would be a slower trickle."

  "We can't afford a slow trickle."

  "I suppose we can't," Sixth agreed. "Well, on some level, it doesn't matter. Surviving here is, in itself, an eye-opening experience. Sharing that with others... It's a good thing, I know. I don't know our world had much longer before it was just a collection of ideas, rather than a shared place of being."

  "I don't think it did," Cruelty said. "Why do you think I did this?"

  "I honestly don't know," Sixth said. "You were the last person I thought would commit."

  Cruelty huffed. "Someone with an actual ability needed to. Heroes and princelings aren't enchanters. It's not your role."

  Sixth said, "Whether or not we needed it, you were still not someone I thought would commit."

  Something was prickling inside her. "Did you really wait at my bedside to criticize the actions I didn't take? For shame, Sixth Son. For a man who's always prided himself on his endurance of things, that's not a lot of patience."

  Irritation crossed Sixth's face, and then he sighed. "I suppose I am tired of endurance," he said.

  "Ah. Is finding yourself at the forefront of a woman's mind, instead of coming last in her affections, giving you..." She trailed off. Was it really the time? She was tired and engaging in exactly the same behaviors that she'd only just mocked him for. Petty arguments, that kind of distraction. It was too easy to engage in cruelty for the sake of cruelty. "Never mind it."

  He blinked, slowly relaxing from his more guarded position. "My Lady?"

  "Never mind it, I said," she said, hearing the crankiness in her own voice and not liking the sound very much. She bit the inside of her cheek. "I'm tired. I'll rest some more. You two, take over any room you want. If you don't have a place to go, you can stay here for now. I pay my debts."

  The Cat let out a rude noise, muttering under his breath, "I go where I want," but Sixth was silent for a moment, watching her with his brows raised and his expression hard to read.

  Then: "I'm grateful for my Lady's kindness," he said. She wasn't sure if it was a jab or not, but he turned and left the room then, and she settled back in her bed and closed her eyes.

  *~*~*

  She spent another day in bed before she was too restless to stay there any longer. Her energy was still low and her body still ached, but this time when she got out of bed, she was capable of holding her own weight. That was good enough for her.

  A long walk would do her good, she thought; there was some risk of going out into the middle of nowhere and collapsing, but spreading her bare feet on the remaining soil of this land would help ground her, help root her into what flow of energy of this world there still was. Caution taking priority over pride, she did tell Sixth where she was going before she went.

  "If you're well enough to go out, shouldn't you go see Lady Talia instead?" Sixth asked, brows rising again. "She's been asking after you."

  "She can ask a little longer, then," Cruelty said, feeling that irritation sink back in. "I've got responsibilities to take care of first."

  Calling Martin her responsibility was putting it a little more concretely than she actually should. She'd more or less taken him in for a lack of other options, had delivered him to the Beast as part of Talia's plan, and had basically washed her hands of the situation. But being involved at all made her want to at least see how it was going; if others would call that meddling, so be it. She could call it a responsibility if she wished.

  Besides, a drink from the Beast's refreshing fountain would do her good right about now.

  She set off with a bit more determination than she actually felt, carrying a lantern in the now always-dark world, legs aching with each step—though she wasn't sure how much of that was having been bed-bound for a week and how much of it was strain from running through the borders

  It was a somewhat long walk for her state, but she began to feel refr
eshed as she went, the growing things of the world brushing the bare skin of her feet and finding kin in her.

  She also, as she went, began to see why Sixth had hesitated to tell her how well the gates had worked.

  She encountered more human people here than should be possible; normally, she wouldn't even run into this many Archetypes. Men and women, even some children, using their cell phones for light and stumbling around; or others who had already found their way and were looking for new arrivals to join up with and help. Several, mistaking her for human, tried to convince her to join their groups—"There's a strength in numbers, darlin'," a friendly and large man said in a heavy Scottish accent.

  She smiled and said, "There are, but I'm already spoken for and on my way somewhere," and moved on.

  Passing for human had the advantage of the others treating her in a friendly manner—like calling to like, perhaps. At once, she had a sense that they felt like they needed to stick together in a strange new place, teach each other the ways they were learning to get by here. It had the disadvantage of them not leaving her alone easily. She dimmed her light soon enough, navigating by the feel of the ground and her memory of the place, passing later groups more easily.

  When she reached the Beast's castle, she found some groups camped outside—and the gate surprisingly shut. When she thought it through, it made sense. The Beast was meant to offer hospitality only when he was not already entertaining; when he had someone with him, he kept them captive, so of course the door was shut. He wasn't an unsympathetic soul, and surely felt for the new arrivals, lost and alone, but showing his face to them would be horrifying. Perhaps, if he had felt rejected by Martin's reaction to him, more of the same would be unendurable.