The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  “Now Mary,” Mother said, “you must listen to me. You’re sick, and I can help you, but you have to do as I say. You’re going to feed your boy good and full, and then Alys here is going to take him. You and I have work to do.”

  After the baby was sated and asleep, Alys sat with him on a stool in the corner and watched Mother. She stripped Mary out of her sweat-damp nightshift and passed careful hands over her belly, still large from pregnancy. Alys stopped trying not to stare. Mother didn’t need her here to help, Alys realized. She’d done all these things alone many times before. Mother had brought Alys along because she wanted her to learn. Alys obliged by remaining quiet and watchful.

  Mother took something from her basket, something small, wrapped in linen and tied with string. She patted Mary’s shoulder. “I’m going to make you some tea, and you’re going to drink it down.” Then she left the room.

  Mary looked over at Alys then, and Alys smiled at her. Mary had a sweet, round face. She looked barely older than her sister.

  Alys stood up. “Would you like to see your boy?” Mary nodded and Alys brought the baby over to his mother, nestled him in her arms. As Alys rested him there, she felt heat rising off Mary. Not a raging heat, a small flame. Alys touched her hand to Mary’s belly, just as Mother had done. Alys felt the flame inside of Mary, she felt the blood in Mary’s veins and the air in her lungs. And something else. Something that didn’t belong. It was a spot of sick, right under Alys’s fingers, and Alys had the strangest feeling that she could reach right in and pull it out and then Mary would be well.

  “Alys?” Mother was looking at her, and Alys didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, her palm flat against Mary’s belly.

  “It’s all right, Mistress Argyll. The child has a gentle touch.” Mary patted Alys’s hand.

  “Ay,” Mother said. “She does. Alys, take the babe.”

  Alys did as she was told. Mother held a cup of tea to Mary’s lips and told her to drink it down. The tea smelled like leaves gone to slime and it turned Alys’s stomach. Mary made faces but took it all.

  “Now, Mary,” Mother said, “let’s get you up.”

  “But Mistress, I can’t,” Mary said. “I can barely sit.”

  “Ay, you can and you will. And when those contractions start, you’re going to want to be up. We’re going to walk around this room until you pass what you didn’t pass before.” Mother looked at Alys. “The afterbirth, child. It all needs to come out, or it rots inside. And that’s what brings the fever. You don’t want that, Mary. So let’s get you up and make sure you’re here to feed that baby boy when he wakes up crying for you.”

  It was over within an hour. Mary bit her lips and bore down and walked, and sometimes she crouched down. Soon her legs were streaked with blood, and Mother was gathering a mess of something in linens. Mary wept in Mother’s arms. “It’s all right now, child. It’ll be all right now.” Mother beckoned Alys with her eyes, and Alys went to her. Mother lifted the baby from Alys’s arms and gave him to his mam. Then Mother wrapped her arms around mam and child as if to make sure Mary wouldn’t drop the babe.

  Alys rested her hand on Mary’s belly, so lightly she barely touched the muslin of her nightshift. She felt the warmth of blood and breath inside of Mary. Nothing out of place. Everything put to right. She looked up at Mother and saw that Mother’s eyes were already on her. Then Mother placed her own hand over Alys’s.

  “Now,” Mother said, “if anyone asks either of you what that tea was, you say it was chamomile. Nought else but that. Just a soothing cup of chamomile tea.”

  Alys slept fitfully that night and when she awoke to help Mother with breakfast she couldn’t remember exactly what she’d dreamed. But she knew she had. Images came to her in flashes. Crying babies, blood-streaked legs, and the gnashing of The Beast’s fangs. But also wind and rain and leaves in her hair. The sensation of climbing a tree—so strong and vivid that she thought it must be a memory even as she realized it couldn’t be. When in her life had she ever climbed anything? Never. Girls didn’t climb. Least of all trees.

  After their breakfast of oatmeal, cream, and honey, Father went off to his carpentry shop as usual. Mother set Alys to mending one of Father’s shirts. “After you finish that, Alys, we’re going for a walk in the fforest. Bring your sharp knife.” Alys held her needle over the rough linen of Father’s shirt, frozen.

  “I don’t have it,” Alys said. Her knife. She’d loved it. More than she’d loved the doll she’d left behind in Gwenith, if she were honest about it. She loved the way the knife felt in her hand. The perfect weight and size. Father had carved the handle himself.

  Mother looked at her with her dark and searching eyes. “What do you mean, you don’t have it?”

  “I must have left it behind yesterday.” It was a lie that wasn’t a lie. Alys was getting good at those.

  “Well, we’ll just go find it then,” Mother said.

  Alys looked up at Mother, about to say that she’d go look for it herself, anything to avoid Mother’s close observation, but the door opened and Father appeared. His black, sawdusted outline was sharp against the midmorning sun. “We’ve been summoned to the meetinghouse,” he said. “Everyone.” As they walked there, Father told Mother and Alys that the Elders had come to a decision about the village’s future and how they could save themselves from what had happened to Gwenith.

  The villagers packed themselves into the meetinghouse, men and boys on one side, and women, girls, and babies on the other. They sat crammed on long, backless wooden benches. The High Elder sat in a wide seat at the front, with the other Elders lined up to his left and right. The High Elder was the tallest and most broad-shouldered of all of them, and Alys wondered if you became High Elder by being the biggest.

  When the villagers had all settled in, two brawny boys who looked the spitting image of the High Elder closed the doors of the meetinghouse. Then the High Elder rose. “We Elders have asked ourselves,” he said, “what did the people of Gwenith do to lose the protection of the Good Shepherd above? Why did He forsake them, and allow The Beast to send Its wolf children and the soul eaters among His flock? Who brought this evil upon them?”

  There was a murmuring among the villagers, and Alys heard witch muttered and hissed over and over around the room. And soul eaters as well. She felt narrowed eyes staring at her and the other Gwenith children. She thought of Pawl and his warning never to speak of the soul eaters. What would he say to her now, if she told him about The Beast? He’d probably run from her. Even Pawl would be frightened of her then. Alys felt despair. She’d learned to lie without lying, but she’d never be able to pretend so well as she needed to, she’d never be able to hide from what she’d done. What she’d seen and allowed to happen. It would rise up from her like a stink. It would burst and seep out of her like fruit gone bad from the inside out.

  The High Elder raised one hand, palm facing out, and the villagers quieted. “The answer, my friends, is that we cannot know. We cannot know what happened to the village of Gwenith. But we can remain vigilant within ourselves. Vigilant to the temptations of vanity, adultery, sloth, and gluttony.”

  Alys’s mind began to wander when the words grew long and meaningless to her ears. She knew that gluttony had something to do with eating too much. She’d heard Dad refer to the Gwenith High Elder as a glutton more than once, and he had been a big, round man who always seemed to show up at the door after Mam had baked one of her pies.

  Mam’s pies . . . there wouldn’t be any more blackberry pies this year. But there’d be apple. Or, there would have been. Alys came back to the present with a thud. She had no idea if Mother baked pies. No idea at all.

  The High Elder was still talking. “We can give thanks that the evil that took the poor folk of Gwenith has passed us over. The Shepherd found us worthy of His care. He judged the wicked and spared the rest of us.”

  Alys felt a sharp, familiar curl of anger in her belly. These folk thought that her Mam and Dad
were dead because they were bad. But she knew Mam and Dad weren’t bad. Alys was the bad one. She was the girl who wandered and let soul eaters brush past her in the night, who thought they were beautiful. And who handed her knife to The Beast, handle first—instead of burying it in The Beast up to the hilt, the way any of these good people of Defaid would surely have done. Instead of being confused by Its scent of rain, she was lulled by it, and soothed by the tickle of Its tongue on her forearms.

  “But we cannot only trust in the Shepherd’s protection,” The High Elder said. “We must show Him that we are worthy of His care. And we shall keep The Beast’s vile creatures from us by building a great wooden Gate around our village.”

  There was a hubbub of talk and whisper in response.

  The High Elder held up his hand again. “I know, brothers and sisters, I know. You wonder how this can be done. We have already begun the designs, and every man and boy in this village will lend his back to the task. Elder Miles has drawn a map of the new Gated village of Defaid. All you folk who live outside of the perimeter of the Gate will be moved inside. Yes, you will have to leave your homes and build new ones within the village Gate. But in exchange for this minor sacrifice, you will be safe in the loving bosom of the Shepherd. You must consider the grief that befell Gwenith as a warning to us all. They harbored The Beast among them, in some form that we cannot know. They lost their way. We must not lose ours.”

  The High Elder’s sermon now over, the villagers all stood and the adults gathered in groups asking each other questions none of them could answer. Alys looked up at Mother and Father. “We’ll have to move, won’t we?”

  “Ay,” Father said. “We shall.”

  “Can they make us?” Mother said. “Can’t we just tell the High Elder that our faith is strong enough as it is, that we don’t have to leave our home and run and hide behind some Gate?”

  “Heledd,” Father said. This was Mother’s given name. “You know the answer to that question as well as I. The High Elder has told us what to do, now there’s nought else but to do it.”

  Alys felt sorry for Mother. She did so love her house, and Alys had even grown fond of some parts of it. That huge tree in the back, especially, the one that grew taller and wider than any tree Alys had ever seen.

  But she couldn’t quite make it all the way to truly pitying Father. Because there was the problem of the stripes on her forearms. The Beast had healed them, but Alys could still recall their sting. And though Father would say that he had no choice in the matter, and it had occurred to Alys that he hadn’t hit her nearly so hard as he no doubt could have . . . still, he did it just because he’d been told to do so by the High Elder. So no, Alys couldn’t feel too sorry for him. And she also swore that when she was a grown-up, she’d never do anything that she didn’t want to do. Certainly not just because some man in black and white told her to.

  EIGHT

  Alys lagged behind Mother, hoping—unreasonably—that the slower she walked the more likely it might be that Mother would forget about the knife. But Mother never forgot anything. As occupied as she was by the Gate and her horror at leaving her home—not even that could distract her from the knife.

  “Where were you when you last had it, Alys?” She and Alys stood along the fforest’s edge, and she looked at Alys inquiringly. Alys remembered the first time she’d met Mother she hadn’t looked at Alys straight on. Now Alys thought it might have been a kindness when Mother did that. Mother knew the power of her own eyes. Knew how Alys wiggled when she felt pinned by that gaze. Now, Alys knew, Mother wanted her to wiggle. She wanted Alys to know she wasn’t fooled.

  One twitch of Alys’s eyes was all it took. Just one glance into the moist depth of the fforest. Alys looked straight back at Mother, but it was too late. Mother saw. Mother always saw.

  “You went into the fforest alone, didn’t you?” Mother said, flat and certain.

  “Ay, I did.”

  “Well then, let’s go find it.” Mother turned on her heels and into the fforest she went, without a backward glance. She stepped over rocks and branches with a practiced step, like there was no part of this fforest she didn’t already have memorized. They walked in silence, Mother in the lead, and Alys realized she wasn’t looking for the knife at all. Finally Mother stopped and looked at Alys. “We’re going to have to be careful. Much more careful.”

  Alys felt herself cocking her head like Gaenor’s old dog.

  “The wandering, Alys. I know the urge. I know why you do it. But if you think you’re watched now . . . child, you have no idea. They’re not building a Gate to keep folks out. They’re building a Gate to keep folks in. Especially folks like us.” Mother grabbed Alys’s wrist. “Tell me, Alys. Tell me that you know.”

  With a jolt, Alys felt it. The sense of walls closing in around her. Stifled, as if the breath were being squeezed from her lungs, she felt a desperation to crawl out of her own skin. Mother released her wrist. Alys’s stomach rose to her throat and it was all she could do not to retch at Mother’s feet.

  “I’ve been careful, so careful,” Mother said. “But now no amount of care is going to be enough. They’d burn us for witches if they knew what we can do. Don’t look at me like that, child. I know you know. I know you felt what I did in Mary’s belly. I know you felt what I did when I held your wrist just now. I knew it from the very first time you sat at my kitchen table. Don’t ask me how. But I knew.”

  There were too many questions Alys wanted to ask, and she was afraid at any moment Mother would stop talking. She’d recede again into silence. “Why are we like this? Are we bad?”

  “We’re not bad, child. How can it be bad to be able to lay hands on someone and know what’s wrong inside?”

  “Then why would they burn us for witches?”

  “Because they’re afraid,” Mother said. She shrugged. There was no more to be said about that.

  Alys thought about how Mother had lied about the tea. “The tea you gave to Mary. Was that magic?”

  Mother made a noise in the back of her throat. “Alys, you’re smarter than that. There was nothing magic about it. Nature was doing what nature does. My mother taught me what roots will bring on labor or help a woman pass the afterbirth, just like her mother taught her. But the Elders don’t want us interfering in things that way. They think we should give ourselves over to the Shepherd, and that’s that. If we live, we live. If we die, we die.” Mother made that noise again. “You’re no fool, Alys, and neither am I. So I’m going to leave my root cellar behind when we move inside the Gate, and we’ll not speak of this again. You keep yourself safe, you hear? Because once we go behind that Gate, we’ve cast our lot with the Elders. And they’ll not let us change our minds. Do you understand, child?”

  Alys nodded, although she was not at all certain that she did. There was so little time. Too little time to ask all the questions she had. Mother never talked as much as she did right now, in this dim and dripping fforest. “What about soul eaters?”

  Mother narrowed her eyes at Alys. “What about them?”

  “Aren’t you afraid of them?”

  Mother breathed out. Her face softened. “I suppose I should be. After what they did to your mam and dad and the rest of those poor Gwenithers. But I’m more afraid of a cough that won’t go away, and a fever that gets hotter and hotter no matter what I do. That’s what wakes me up in the middle of the night, child.” Then Mother turned for home. “Come, Alys. Father will be wondering about supper.”

  Alys wasn’t at all sure what came over her, but she said, “What about my knife?”

  Mother looked back at Alys. Rolled her eyes. “Child, you know we’ll never find that.”

  Just as the High Elder had ordered, farms and outlying homes were abandoned, and the village collapsed in on itself. The people shrank together in a tight bunch, and Alys felt the constriction like a noose. The Gate, the High Elder told them all, would be locked up at sunset and opened only at dawn. In this way, they would be safe from T
he Beast and Its followers.

  The construction of the Gate began immediately, and the air was filled with the racket of sawing wood. The balding of the fforest around Defaid was something terrible to behold, tree after tree crackling and falling. In the central part of town, where once there had been airy spaces between sturdy stone houses, now wooden houses filled in every gap. Mother and Father’s new house would be small compared to their old one. Just one floor and a root cellar, and two bedrooms off the main room that contained kitchen, hearth, and table. One afternoon, cutting potatoes in her old kitchen that she’d soon have to leave, Mother said to Father, “Hot in the summer and cold in the winter, that’s what a wooden house is.” She shook her knife in the air. “Of course the High Elder doesn’t have to move. Oh no. Not him in his stone house.”

  The rush to build new homes as well as the Gate itself was fevered and desperate. It was full autumn now, and once the weather snapped cold and the ground froze there would be no more sinking pillars into the ground, or digging cellars. So it seemed that every day, the village of Defaid grew more crowded with structures, and the Gate rose and lifted around all those structures like something looming and alive.

  The Gate was shaped in a triangle, with covered watchtowers perched on top of the three corners. From the roof of each watchtower there was hung a strong iron hook for suspending a single lantern. In the floor of each watchtower, there was a trapdoor and a ladder, and these were the only routes up or down the Gate, a climb of twenty feet. The entire perimeter of the Gate was connected by a long, perilously narrow walkway, attached to the gate three feet below the top. Finally, there was one set of doors through the Gate. The doors opened twenty feet wide and fastened shut with a piece of wood so large and heavy that it would take eight men to close the doors each evening.