The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  She walked on, deeper and deeper into the fforest. No direction, just deep.

  When she heard Its now-familiar voice in her head—the voice that was inside of her but didn’t belong to her—she felt a thrill of excitement. This was wrong, she knew, very wrong. And yet this was why she had come to the fforest. This was always why she came to the fforest. To find It.

  You saw them again, and they saw you.

  “Ay,” said Alys. “Both.” She looked all around her and then she caught sight of The Beast, stepping with long, knee-bent strides around trees. Alys regarded Its leathery wings and wondered what It must look like flying through the air.

  It came closer, ever closer. And then It was sniffing the air around her, nostrils flaring over fangs and black tongue. Alys smelled Its breath in her face. Like fallen leaves.

  It tapped the iron bracelet on her wrist with one long claw.

  Give me that. Give me that.

  Alys pulled it off and handed it over. The Beast hooked it with a long claw. Held it.

  Did you see what they did? Did you see them take what should not have been taken?

  “No,” Alys said. “Not until after.”

  Like before.

  Like before. Like when her mam and dad were killed. Of course. It was the same. They had left her and taken others. And she had let them. She hadn’t raised a hand to stop them. Hadn’t spoken a word of warning or threat. It hadn’t even occurred to her to do so. She truly was an evil girl. Maybe this was why she was safe from the soul eaters. They only ate good souls. “Why? Why didn’t they take my soul, too?”

  They don’t take children.

  “Why not?”

  They don’t hate children. Yet.

  “Yet?”

  The Beast didn’t answer. It cocked Its head at her.

  Alys looked into Its wet, black eyes and the fforest around her dissolved and she felt herself falling. It was as if a great hole had opened in the earth, and she were falling in and down. There was nothing in this hole. The hole itself was nothing. There was no more weather and wind. There was no scent of mud and water. The hole was all around Alys. There was no sound, not even the sound of her own scream, muffled and trapped in her lungs.

  Then Alys was back again, the fforest growing up around her, the sound of water dripping off leaves, the scent of moss.

  You felt the hole. It grows wider and deeper and bigger and blacker with every soul they take.

  Alys shook her head, tried to shed the image—the feeling—of that awful black hole. It brought a terrible memory to mind. “I saw a picture once,” Alys said. “A picture of you. And you were sitting at the bottom of a big, black hole catching doomed souls in your mouth.”

  I do not do that.

  “No,” Alys said, and she realized that of course she didn’t believe The Beast did that. This creature in front of her might look like the picture in the book, but It wasn’t the same thing at all. Alys thought back to what Pawl had told her on the way to Defaid long ago: The stories the Elders told about The Beast and soul eaters were stuff and nonsense they used to scare their people. The High Elder’s book was a story, wasn’t it? A story the High Elder told himself and his people to keep them on the righteous path. To keep them in line. Keep them from wandering deep into the fforest where there were no starched aprons and white collars. No meetinghouses. No rules. No bracelets and ledgers.

  Alys looked at The Beast. “What are you?”

  I am The Beast. That is all I am. That is all I have ever been.

  “Is the hole a threat to you?” Alys said.

  The hole is a threat to all of us, to everything.

  “Can’t you close it? Can’t you stop the soul eaters? You’re The Beast. Can’t you do anything?”

  The Beast was silent, so Alys did the only thing she could think to do. She touched It. She placed her hand right on the center of Its furred chest. Her first thought was how fragile It felt, like touching a bird that was more feather than flesh.

  Then she was flying. She was growing. She was swimming. She was sprouting leaves, and losing leaves. Animals were nesting in her, beetles and worms crawled through her, eggs hatched in her. She was becoming earth and water and air.

  Then she knew. The Beast could no more stop the soul eaters than the wind could stop them. Or the rain. Or a leaf.

  You’re the girl. The one like them. You must close it.

  Alys had wanted an end to the wondering about The Beast and why It showed Itself only to her. Now that she knew, she felt panic rising inside of her like a flock of startled birds. “You want me to close the hole,” she said. “When? How?”

  When you are ready, then you will know how.

  The Beast crouched, and leapt, and It was gone.

  It was where the fear grew.

  The sisters looked down at the bodies of the boys who would be tired no longer, who would never again have anything to fear. Angelica sniffed the air around them. Nothing. She and Benedicta had taken everything away.

  And out of nothing would grow more fear. That would be a rich meal for the sisters. In time.

  Benedicta reached for her sister’s hand. “Sister,” she said, “next time we should leave no bodies. We should lead them far away into the fforest before we give them their rest.”

  “Why, Sister?”

  “Think of the others. Never knowing what became of the wanderers. Waiting and watching. Can you taste their worry?”

  Angelica touched her sister’s face, saw her own face in her sister’s eyes. “Ay, Sister. Ay.”

  The sheep stared on, chewing. Blank eyes in blank faces. The sisters floated through them. The sheep drifted away from the sisters like flakes of snow in the wind.

  The sisters would return to the fforest now. They would visit the mountains. The Lakes. They would float through some other village’s pastures, beckon to a sleepy traveler. The thought of so many souls made the sisters hungry again.

  Then they spotted another boy. A smaller one than the twin brothers they’d taken, much smaller. This boy lay beneath a tree, a dog beside him. The child didn’t stir, but the dog did. Ears pricked.

  “Sleep, dog,” Benedicta said. And it did.

  “Wake, boy,” Angelica said. And he did.

  The boy’s eyes were open and his heart was welcoming.

  “Sister,” Benedicta said. “This one is just a child. It’s not his time yet.”

  Angelica sniffed the air. “No, not his time. Do you smell him, Sister? He smells like rain. Those other boys smelled sour. This one is fresh. Clean.”

  Benedicta sniffed the air. Agreed.

  “Shall we take him, Benedicta? Take him for our own, never let him turn sour and afraid?”

  Before Benedicta could answer, there was another child. A girl. The girl. The girl who was like them but not like them. They floated to her, and touched her, and flowed through her. The sisters caught her scent of green wood.

  They offered her rest, but she hesitated and so did they. It wasn’t her time, either. She would be a meager meal yet. The sisters looked into the night and they left the girl and the boy where they found them, the boy asleep now and dreaming of women like trees. Dreaming of the sisters.

  The sisters left him there, but not for long. There was a yearning in that boy, the boy with the welcoming heart. The sisters would not have to come for that boy. He would come to them. And soon.

  The yearning would bring him.

  TWELVE

  Mother took the blame on herself for the missing bracelet with the number nine. She told Mistress Miles that it was her fault for sending Alys out so early in the day, before she’d had her sleep. No wonder the child had lost it, she said. And then Mother gave Mistress Miles her last jar of blackberry preserves.

  The day after Alys and Delwyn found Albon’s and Aron’s bodies, Delwyn disappeared. The Elders said he’d run away, but the guards on duty insisted they hadn’t seen him. Alys pictured tiny Delwyn, a hat pulled down over his white-blond hair, tucking
himself into the back of a farmer’s wagon. Slipping out unnoticed. And of course he’d leave in the day. He’d leave when none of the other children would think to look for him or stop him. He’d leave while they were sleeping.

  In time, the loss of the three brothers became a cautionary tale—a story told to the children of Defaid at bedtime. “The wages of disobedience,” they were all told, “are steep.” Minus three children of Gwenith, everything in Defaid went back to the way it was. Except not quite. Because Delwyn was just the first of the wanderers—since his departure, eight more children of Gwenith had run away. Unlike Delwyn, all of the runaways who left after him had been sixteen. They went out to guard the sheep one night, the same as always, and they never came back.

  After the first sixteen-year-old left, the villagers tutted and looked down their noses at the rest of the children of Gwenith. The villagers reminded themselves of what the High Elder had always said: Like seeks like. Those Gwenith children surely had a taint on them, they murmured to each other.

  Then another sixteen-year-old ran away. And another. The villagers’ tutting turned inward. They never spoke their concern aloud, but Alys felt it nonetheless. Fear rose off the village. The scent of it caught in the breeze, tickled Alys’s nose. She knew exactly what the villagers were thinking. Who will guard our Gate if all the children of Gwenith run away?

  While the villagers of Defaid whispered and worried, the children of Gwenith kept their mouths tightly sealed. It was only when they walked to the pastures at sunset that talk sometimes drifted to the wanderers. Some of the children hoped the runaways were safe and sound in another village. Those who suspected otherwise kept it to themselves, especially if they were talking to a child whose brother or sister had wandered. They were careful not to speak of the wanderers and the tree women in the same breath. Enid had given them all tight balls of wool and told them to stop up their ears at night should they ever hear the singing. Alys had noticed the older children roll their eyes at this, and toss the wool away. As if, they said, a little plug of wool would have saved Albon and Aron. And so it came to be that when a child of Gwenith turned sixteen it was as if a great hourglass were turned over, and the waiting began.

  For months after Delwyn disappeared, when Alys should have been watching for something evil on the horizon or lurking among the sheep, she watched for the glow of Delwyn’s white-blond hair instead. From her perch on the Gate, or her watch in the fields, she looked for him every night. And when the doors of the Gate opened in the morning, she always hoped to see him slip through, pale and silent, quick and sly. But he never did.

  After he ran away, Alys began keeping careful track of all the children of Gwenith, plumbing her brain to recall the names of each and every one, even the babies who’d died before they could speak more than a few words. On one of her underskirts that no one but she would ever see, Alys sewed the name of each child of Gwenith, grouping them together, brothers and sisters. The names of those who died, she stitched a thin line of thread through. The names of those who wandered, she stitched a thin line underneath.

  Over the three years since Delwyn’s wandering, Alys had outgrown the underskirt, but she’d cut a neat square of linen out of it, just big enough to contain the names. She kept it tucked away in a pocket in her dress. Sometimes, in the still cold of the night, she parsed the thread ridges of each name with the pad of one finger. She sought out Delwyn’s name most often.

  Now, fifteen years old and standing on the Gate, her keen eyes scanning a dark landscape she’d memorized long ago, Alys allowed her fingers to search out his name yet again. If by some chance Delwyn were still alive, then he wasn’t a little boy anymore. He was the same age as Alys. Nearly a man. Alys wondered if she’d know him again. The night chill wrapped around her. He was dead, surely.

  She felt it in some deep part of herself—a connection broken. A fine thread that had tied her to Delwyn ever since he’d saved her life on the Gate. That thread hung loose now, floating and frayed. Her friend was gone. The soul eaters had gotten him, the same way they would get all of them eventually. Alys sensed Angelica and Benedicta out there, biding their time, taking the children one by one, robbing Defaid of its guardians. And sowing pungent fear among the Defaiders with each one they took. She could imagine them sniffing the air, taking it in.

  Alys often thought of what the soul eaters had said of her when she saw them last—it’s not her time, but it will be, before too long. Alys had only months left until her sixteenth birthday. Her hourglass was about to tip over. It had been three years since she’d last seen The Beast, since It had told her about the hole she needed to close. Time—for everything—was running out.

  A low hoot, barely loud enough to reach her ears, rose up from the nearest watchtower, and Alys turned toward the sound of Elidir signaling the sunrise. It was the boy’s special talent, to know just moments before the first ray would lick over the horizon. Elidir’s only sister, Glenys, had run away two years ago. Perhaps that’s what made him especially watchful.

  Alys made her way to the watchtower, and Elidir nodded to her before she descended. Mirrors were forbidden in Defaid—they were invitations to The Beast, the High Elder said—but Alys didn’t need a mirror to know what she looked like. Her face—long, lean, shadowed—was just like Elidir’s.

  “Wake up, child.”

  Alys was already awake. She’d heard Mother’s footsteps. But she waited for Mother to speak before she opened her eyes to the rough wooden ceiling of her bedroom. Unlike her restless sleep of childhood, now Alys slept flat on her back, unmoving as death the moment she lay down. She woke up as quickly.

  Mother hovered outside her bedroom door, pausing long enough to be sure Alys wouldn’t fall to sleep again. Not that Alys ever would. Alys got out of bed, pulling smooth the woolen blanket that covered her narrow bed. She dressed in knit stockings, sturdy lace-up boots, and a dove-gray dress that used to fall to her shoes but now just barely grazed her ankles. She would need a new one soon. She had a brown dress, too, and that one was longer but she hated it. The skirt was cut too narrow and it tripped her up when she took a broad stride. She also had a blue dress, and that one was fine, but this wasn’t a blue dress day. It was a gray dress day. Alys took the wooden comb from the small table by her bedside, flattened her hair to the nape, then braided and tied it with a thin strip of leather. Last, she pulled on her whistle.

  The day was cold and clear. Through the closed shutters she could hear the sound of children laughing in the town square. Defaid children. The younger ones had spent their morning in lessons and soon their mothers would be calling them home to dinner. The older ones—fourteen and over—would have spent those same hours learning trades, caring for animals, sewing and laundering clothes with their mothers, harvesting or shepherding with their fathers.

  The Gwenith children were just beginning their day. In houses all around the village, they were getting dressed in layers of wool. After dinner they’d do their chores. Those of school age would get an hour or so of lessons. Not as much instruction as the children of Defaid received—there wasn’t time for that—but enough to teach them their letters and simple sums. Then it would be time for supper. Then watching. Last night was the Gate for Alys. Tonight would be guarding the sheep.

  Alys sat down to the table that Mother had already set for dinner. Father was there, hands in his lap. His flat-brimmed hat hung on a hook on the wall, and his steel-gray hair was wet and raked back from his head. Alys could see the lines from his comb. His shirt was clean. He always changed it before dinner. By supper he’d once again be sprinkled with a layer of sawdust. It would catch in every crease in his face, collect in his ears.

  “Good day, Father.”

  “Alys,” he said.

  Mother set heavy plates before both of them, then brought her own. Mutton in gravy, potatoes, a pile of stewed greens, brown bread and butter.

  Father closed his eyes. Alys and Mother joined him. “Good Shepherd, we thank you for
this bounty.” He opened his eyes and picked up his fork.

  “Elder Miles stopped by looking for you,” Mother said.

  “Oh,” Father said.

  “Looked for you in the wood shop. Couldn’t find you.”

  “Wasn’t there.”

  Mother looked at him, waiting. Alys knew she wouldn’t be able to wait long. Mother had a restless, impatient streak that she worked hard to tamp down. Perhaps that was why she and Alys got along so well. It was something else they shared. “I know that. Don’t know where you were, though. Folks like to know where folks are.”

  “Ay. Folks do,” Father said. He put a large piece of mutton in his mouth, chewed meticulously. Swallowed. Drank some water. Alys almost smiled. She ate instead.

  The lines at the corners of Mother’s eyes multiplied and she put down her fork. “Eldred.” This was father’s given name, and it was Mother’s signal to him that her patience was at its end.

  Father lifted his gray eyes to meet Mother’s brown. “I was helping Lloyd mend his roof.”

  Mother seemed to shorten in her chair. She blinked, glanced quickly at Alys, and then away again when Alys looked back. “In the village?”

  “Outside. The old place.” Father glanced up at her, then down at his plate again. “Branch fell on Lloyd’s roof in the last storm. Ripped a clean hole. Not so bad, but it needed seeing to.”

  “Did you have permission to go all the way out there?” Mother asked. Mother surely already knew the answer to that question. There was no granting permission to go out to the old homesteads. It was strictly forbidden. No exceptions. Mother stared at Father, full in the face, awaiting his answer in any case. Alys saw that Mother had yet to eat anything. But Mother never did eat much. She was all bone and sinew.