The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  While the town’s builders and craftspeople engineered the Gate, the Elders discussed how best to guard it. The daytime guarding was no concern. There were plenty of strong men around to stand at the Gate and check the travelers who came in for trade, and then make sure they left again before the Gate closed at sunset. It was the nighttime guarding that worried the Defaiders. Who among them would risk that? How could they keep themselves safe, especially out in the fields, guarding their flocks? They thought of wolves and soul eaters and shuddered.

  Then one day, all the children of Gwenith seven years of age and older were summoned to the meetinghouse, and this is what they were told:

  The Elders had conferred, and they agreed it was only right and proper that the children of Gwenith should be the ones to guard the Gate every night. They would also be responsible for leaving the Gate at night to watch the flocks. The children of Gwenith had been passed over, after all. The Beast posed no more danger to them. Therefore, who better than the children to guard the Gate each night? Who better than the children to go out into the pastures at sunset and watch over the sheep until daybreak? Of course this responsibility wouldn’t be expected of the youngest—those under the age of seven. But all the others would be divided evenly among posts on the Gate and sent out into the fields with the sheep. Just as the sheepdogs left their scent to warn away wolves and foxes, so the children of Gwenith would be lanterns in the night, warning away any creatures of The Beast who might be tempted to visit ill upon the village.

  It was additionally agreed that one man of Defaid should stay up with the children each night, to make sure the Gate stayed closed. That man would remain in the guardhouse, safe inside the Gate. Then they gave all the Gwenith orphans a reed whistle to wear on a leather cord around their necks. At first sign of danger, the orphans were to blow on their whistles, warning the villagers from sleep so they could seal themselves up in their root cellars, safe from soul eaters and other Beastly things.

  And thus the orphans of Gwenith became the watchers of Defaid. And thus Alys learned exactly how much she’d do just because a man in black and white told her to.

  NINE

  Alys had once thought she loved to be awake at night, but that was the notion of a stupid child who lay in bed and had the luxury to decide if she was tired or not.

  Now, Alys was tired all the time. She felt sick all the time, too, day and night. More than once she had fallen asleep with her chin on the Gate, and awakened seconds later with angry splinters buried deep. A few splinters were the least of her worries, though. One misstep on the narrow walkway that circled the Gate and down you went—a fall of twenty feet that nothing softened. It had been a few months since the children began watching, and already there had been broken bones. It was only a matter of time, Madog muttered to Enid, before one of them broke their neck. And then, Madog said, maybe the Defaiders would see reason. They’d have to admit that this was no job for children.

  Then one of the children did break his neck. It was Bergam, an only child like Alys, and also just seven years old. Alys was out in the pasture that night, so it was Enid who told her the next day how she’d heard his cry in the dark and then the sound of his body making contact with the ground, and how she didn’t think she’d ever forget that terrible bump in the night.

  Madog was wrong. Bergam’s falling changed no minds in the village. The Elders only told the Gwenith children to be more careful.

  Alys had almost fallen to her death once herself. It was during the first freeze that it happened. The walkway was slick with ice, and Alys’s eyes hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the night. Now, Alys could walk the entire perimeter of the Gate with her eyes pressed closed and her hands tied behind her back. But at the beginning, every night was a terror—a fight against sleep and falling.

  The children were meant to keep their distance from each other. They weren’t to talk or huddle together. They were to disperse themselves evenly and watch. So when Alys lost her footing on the icy walkway, when her hands clawed against the side of the Gate and found no purchase, she should have fallen to her death with no one to catch her. Instead, someone lunged after her—a quiet little boy named Delwyn, who’d stuck close behind her because he hated to be alone. And somehow, together, Alys and Delwyn managed to pull themselves upright again instead of breaking their necks. Alys and Delwyn clung to each other in the moments after, their two hearts beating so fast. Then she whispered a quick thanks to him, and they each found their footing again.

  Now, every day that passed in Defaid was the same for Alys. Mother woke her at noon for dinner and chores and a few simple lessons, fed her supper before sunset, and then sent her off to her post on the Gate or to guard the sheep outside the Gate. When sunrise ended her watch, Alys returned home again to breakfast and sleep, just as the rest of the village was awaking.

  It might have been companionable, spending every night with the other children of Gwenith. But they were all too tired to talk or feel even an urge to play. Alys’s friend Gaenor was fading under the strain, as if she were growing invisible before Alys’s eyes. In Gwenith, Gaenor had been pink-cheeked and always laughing. Now she was a sallow-skinned shadow of herself with ribbons of purple under each eye.

  Alys supposed that she must look much the same. All the children of Gwenith did. Whether each of them was dark-haired or light, tall or short, with eyes of stone or moss, there was never any confusing a child of Gwenith with a true child of Defaid. The Gwenith children had a hollow-eyed look to them. The circles under their eyes ranged only in their depth of color, from green to gray to plum. And there were no stout children of Gwenith. Most looked as if a strong wind might blow them off the Gate at night. And of course, occasionally, one did.

  The children of Defaid, on the other hand, were apple-cheeked and careless. They laughed easily, played in the sunlight, and slept soundly in the dark.

  Alys didn’t much like the children of Defaid. Them or their stupid rhymes. She had come to hate all of the old songs, despite the fact that she’d sung many of them herself, back in her Gwenith days. Now, though, she felt different about them. Those rhymes stuck in her ears and she wished she could shake them loose, but they hooked themselves in and wouldn’t let go.

  If you think It cannot see you

  You are surely wrong

  Hide beneath your bedroom covers

  Try to sing a song

  While It creeps up ever closer

  It will softly coo

  Sorry dearie, you’re in trouble

  Beast has come for you!

  She thought back to all the times she’d frightened Gaenor with such rhymes and she felt that must be some other child—not her—who’d done that. And in some other life. Ever since Mam and Dad had been taken by the soul eaters, and The Beast had come to Alys in the fforest, those old songs had brought Alys’s stomach up to her throat. She felt her heart harden and darken when she heard some thoughtless child of Defaid singing one. She wanted to grab one of them by the hair—maybe precious Cerys, one of the prettiest little girls in the village—and tell her exactly what The Beast looked like when It came for you. How It didn’t coo, It spoke to you from the inside. Made you feel the wind. She wanted to watch Cerys’s eyes grow wide with fear. Wanted to make her cry.

  Alys scared herself sometimes. When she got angry like that she was certain that no other child of Gwenith had such nasty thoughts. The other Gwenith children were tired. Weary. Sad, often. But not angry. Not bitter. Alys’s bitterness had a sharp taste. It sucked her mouth dry. Outwardly, though, Alys was just like any other child of Gwenith, and she found that the others had stopped looking at her as if she had the answer to some mystery they couldn’t fathom. She was as tired as they were. She moved through her days with the same resignation they did. Their lot was the same.

  Alys had thought she dreaded the night when she was little, but now the night was a monster that perched big and dark before her every day of her life. And that monster’s home was the Gate
, a mountain made of wood that Alys was coming to know better than her own bedroom. She was losing the ability to imagine a time when it hadn’t existed, when her days and nights hadn’t been patterned by it. It was bad enough in the summer, when days were long. But in winter, it seemed they’d barely finished their chores when the light had begun to shift, and the Gate called to them.

  Each evening, the children of Gwenith climbed up the Gate, or walked off into the darkening fields with sheepdogs trotting by their sides. Meanwhile, the villagers of Defaid gathered around for their last glimpse of the purpling horizon while the men locked the doors to the Gate good and tight. Then they all sang a hymn:

  Shepherd watching,

  Watching over

  We your flock

  Of humble sheep

  Thank you for your

  Tender caring

  We your flock

  Now go to sleep

  Alys had always refused to sing along with the villagers’ sunset hymn. And eventually, all of the children of Gwenith stopped singing. For many of them the moment of resistance came with their first snowfall—or rainstorm—spent slipping along the walkway, or huddled under the leaky roof of one of the watchtowers, or shivering out in the fields. Not that it mattered, Alys reckoned, whether the children of Gwenith sang along or not. The children of Defaid sang loudly enough for all of them.

  And so years passed this way, and Alys grew from a small, hollow-eyed child into a taller one. She looked back on her first days in Defaid now, and wondered how she had ever survived. The things she knew as a twelve-year-old dwarfed the things she thought she knew at seven. Though some things, of course, had remained the same. Alys still loathed the Elders and gave their mistress wives as wide a berth as she possibly could.

  This wasn’t always possible, however, because Mother was often sending Alys on some chore, usually outside the Gate. Mother probably meant this as a kindness—a way of giving Alys some air. But to gain that sliver of freedom, Alys first needed to visit Elder Miles or his wife to ask for permission. After the Gate arose, the High Elder had divided the town into wedges, like a pie. Each wedge belonged to one of the Elders. Elder Miles was their Elder, and Alys thought of him as the High Elder’s own personal shadow. He stuck so close to the High Elder, in fact, that Alys had a private nickname for him. She called him Shoulder. Wherever the High Elder was, there was Shoulder Miles, leaning in, whispering into his ear.

  Ordinary Defaiders could travel in and out of the Gate as they wished, on just three conditions. One, they had to check in and out at the guardhouse. Two, they must return before sunset. And three, they could never, not ever, return to the old abandoned homesteads. The punishment for trespassing in those parts was banishment from Defaid forever. Alys figured the Elders knew that if the villagers got a taste of their old places, of the fresh air that could be breathed out there, they’d never return to this dusty, overcrowded town.

  Children of Gwenith were given even stricter instructions than the ordinary Defaiders when they wished to leave the Gate. They were required to visit their Elder and have their names signed into a big book. Then they were given a numbered iron bracelet to wear while out, and to return when they were back. The wearing wasn’t the important part—it was the returning. Each Elder knew that if a bracelet didn’t come back to him at the end of the day, then a child of Gwenith had wandered.

  The Elders of Defaid feared wandering more than anything else. Alys would have liked to see the High Elder’s face if ever he woke up one day to find all the Gwenith children gone. But that would never happen. The children knew the bargain they’d made. They gave Defaid their eyes and ears, their bodies and youth, and in exchange Defaid gave them shelter, food, clothing—and some illusion of safety. There was more than cold and hunger to fear on the long road between here and anywhere else. Stories had begun to circulate among the children about visions in the night pastures—visions of women like trees, whispering and singing, promising sleep and rest. It was only the older children—sixteen and older—who’d seen the tree women so far. And none had followed those lulling voices. But it was a matter of time, Alys thought, before one of them did. To sleep. Who among them wouldn’t sacrifice anything for that?

  None of the children of Gwenith had to be told to keep these visions to themselves. Confessing such a thing to a Defaider would get you lashed—or worse, banished. So the children of Gwenith never spoke of the singing except to each other, and in the hushest tones as they walked out to the fields.

  Alys wondered sometimes if any of the people of Defaid ever heard the singing, ever saw the soul eaters. She thought not, though. Defaiders were snug within their Gate at night. No singing would reach their ears there. Inside their great wooden walls, the Defaiders were protected. Nothing came through the Gate that the Defaiders didn’t expressly invite. Travelers were allowed in for trade, but they had to be out before sunset. The guards made sure of that.

  Alys could never glimpse a traveler without thinking of Pawl. She had seen him many times over the years. He and his wife, Beti, always had a smile for Alys. And every time he saw her, Pawl said the same thing. “There she is, the lass I found. Isn’t she a pretty one?” He’d told her how the Elders wouldn’t let him take her back to the Lakes with him, though he’d tried mightily to convince them. And there was only so hard he could push, he insisted, or they might never let him sell there again. Besides, he’d thought she was better off with her own kind, in a safe, stable home, not a drafty caravan. He hadn’t known then—couldn’t have known—what the Defaiders would make the children do. Alys heard his excuses and she saw that he meant every one of them. But even at age twelve, old enough to know how this world worked, she wanted him to be braver than his excuses. She wanted him to pick her up and take her back to the Lakes with him, with no thought to consequences. But she would never again ask him to save her from her circumstances. And they never again spoke of that day that he had left her in Defaid, and of how she’d cried for him.

  That was still the last time she’d cried.

  Alys had just finished washing the last supper dish when Mother said they must go to the Gate. It was a late summer day and already night seemed to be falling faster than it had just the day before. Alys went to her room to put on her extra nighttime layers of wool and looped her whistle around her neck.

  Tonight she was to be out in the pastures with the sheep. A night like this the pastures could be pleasant. She could walk through the tall grass all night, and the sheepdogs were a sort of comfort, even if they weren’t at all interested in people. They were working dogs whose only focus was keeping the sheep safe from foxes and wolves.

  But walking through fields of grass never failed to remind Alys of the night in Gwenith when the soul eaters had come. Ever since she had first heard about the singing and the tree-women visions of the older children, she’d kept her ears pricked for their music. Sometimes she thought she heard it, heard someone calling to her, a gentle shushing, and then she realized it was just the wind in the leaves, the rustling of branches. She wondered how long she would have to wait to see the soul eaters again, and what would happen when she did. She felt drawn to them and frightened of them at the same time, and it was agony to her. The other children may have stopped looking at Alys as if she were different, but Alys knew better. Every day she felt like a monster walking among the innocent, felt as if she were trapped on the other side of a locked door. This feeling that Alys’s true self was hidden created a distance between Alys and everyone around her, even the other children of Gwenith. She had no real friends among them. Not anymore. Her closest friend, Gaenor, had died of fever when they were both ten. Gaenor had been fading since the first day she’d arrived in Defaid, and in one week of sweat and coughing she had faded fully away. Not even Mother could save her.

  Alys thought about all of this while the Defaiders sang their evening hymn, and then none too soon she was walking through the Gate with a black, tan, and white sheepdog by her side. Ahead o
f her on the path toward the pastures was Delwyn, whom she’d clung to on the Gate back when she was just a wee child of seven. He walked with his two brothers, Albon and Aron, who were both sixteen years old and identical twins. Delwyn was twelve now, the same age as Alys, but she was a good head taller than he was, and broader, too. He was just a slip of a thing, with hair so fair as to shine white in the moonlight. He was so quick and quiet on his feet that his brothers had nicknamed him Rabbit.

  Delwyn wasn’t so quick today, though. Alys could tell he wasn’t well by the way he dragged his feet. And she saw that once Aron was sure the doors to the Gate were closed behind them, he knelt down and pulled Rabbit onto his back to carry him. It occurred to Alys that Delwyn was too old to be carried—she couldn’t imagine anyone carrying her. But Delwyn looked more like a child of eight than twelve. As if he had decided to stop growing in this place.

  Alys caught up with them. “Is Delwyn not well?”

  Albon looked at Alys, a worried expression on his face. “Fever,” he said.

  Alys was silent. All the children knew what fever meant. It meant that you could wake up in a few days’ time feeling better, or you could sink ever deeper and in a week’s time you’d be dead. Like Gaenor.

  Aron said, “We’re going to bed him down under a tree, and leave a dog with him. Then we’ll watch his pasture for him. Our Rabbit needs sleep if he’s to get better.”

  They weren’t supposed to do this. If the Elders found out, Albon and Aron would be punished severely—maybe even banished. But the Elders wouldn’t find out. Who would tell them? And no Defaider was ever brave enough to leave the Gate at night and check on them.

  Alys’s pasture, bound on all sides by dense hedges to keep the sheep from wandering too far, was beyond Delwyn’s. She waved goodnight to the boys and walked on with her dog.

  Hours passed while Alys walked her pasture. The moon arched overhead, then dipped westward, and that, finally, was Alys’s signal that she could pause. She had grown chilled in the night air and needed to eat something to stay awake. She sank to the base of a tree and pulled out the food she’d wrapped for herself before she left home. She ate a hunk of sharp cheese with brown bread, then sank her teeth into an apple, and after she gnawed it down to seeds and stem, she sighed. Clenching her legs beneath her, she rose to a crouch and heard a mew.