The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  As Alys reached the Gate, she saw the bottom half of her least favorite guard sticking out of one of Pawl’s caravans. The guard’s name was Ffordd, and he was the worst of an unpleasant bunch, taking far too much satisfaction from his power over the comings and goings of travelers, and Gwenith children especially.

  His front half was buried inside the wagon, where he was no doubt examining its contents and possibly taking a stealthy cut for himself. Beti perched on the front seat of one of the wagons, and she looked surprised to catch sight of Alys so early in the day. She waved and smiled. Cian sat in the other wagon and Alys sensed anger rising off him. He seemed to loathe Ffordd as much as she did.

  Meanwhile Pawl stood behind Ffordd with hands on hips, waiting for Ffordd to finish. Pawl glanced over at Alys, caught her eye and winked, grinned, mimed kicking Ffordd in the arse. Alys would have liked to laugh, but she could only smile a little and wave before moving on. Her worry for Mother rose in her belly like floodwater.

  Once through the Gate, Alys made straight for the stand of elms that delineated here from there—the borders past which no child of Gwenith or person of Defaid should be traveling. She pulled off her mittens and the cold nipped her knuckles as she peeled off several curls of slippery elm bark. All the while she worked, she listened and looked for villagers. All was quiet in the snowy fields. Mother had warned her to keep an eye out for the village’s deer hunters. They’d travel farther afield than the other villagers, and quiet as they kept, they might see Alys before she spotted them.

  One road led from Defaid to the old farmhouses and beyond, and Alys stayed off it. She kept the road to her right shoulder and shielded herself among the trees. This slowed her down, but also kept her hidden. After a mile of hopping narrow streams and ducking branches, she was hot and sweating in her wool, despite the cold. Finally the trees opened up into meadow and rolling fields that used to be cultivated but had since gone to weed. Now Alys was as exposed as the rabbit she’d pointed out to Ren as it hopped through the snow.

  The first of the old farmhouses she reached was a sad, sunken creature that crouched on the landscape, gray and dead, shutters akimbo. The next of the farmhouses was the same, and the one after that. Then finally came the house that Alys remembered from her first months in Defaid. In case Alys lost her way, Mother had told her to look out for the house with the white front door. Not chipped white, or cracked white, or the pale gray of white gone to dust. This door would be white, pure white. And the house’s roof wouldn’t sag.

  And there it was. Alys wouldn’t say that it looked well, but it looked well enough. And livable, even after all these years of emptiness. All the shutters hung straight and even, closed tight against whatever might try to batter them. Alys wondered how many secret trips Father had made here. Many, from the looks of it. She took one last, long look around her, reassured that the world was quiet except for the flight of a few birds. Then she walked around the house and saw the tree, just as big as she remembered it. It was as wide around as a barn door, with a tangle of limbs that looked as if they were all reaching out in different directions and would have split apart if only they could.

  Alys turned away from it and twisted the knob of the kitchen door, and walked inside. It was damp and chill, as Alys expected, and empty of furniture. The closed shutters kept out the light, so Alys left the door open. The room was swept clean and the hearth was empty of even a single log or pile of ash. Father was careful. But not so careful. Along one wall was a stash of tools, unrusted and well-used—saws of various sizes and shapes, hammers, an axe. Alys lifted the shovel and carried it and the basket out to the massive tree.

  Alys held the shovel vertical and felt around through the layer of snow for a soft spot in the soil. The tree’s roots were as thick and tangled as its branches, but soon Alys detected some give beneath her, and she shoveled away a mound of snow to find a spot of soil roughly the right size and shape. She began digging, using her foot to press down on the shovel, through the chill, hard earth.

  About a foot beneath the surface, just at the point where Alys might have buried Mother’s bundle, there was already a bundle, wrapped in linen that had gone as brown as the earth that covered it. One more strike of the shovel and Alys might have torn right through it, but she stayed her hand just in time. Alys knelt down in the snow and stared, and for the first time she allowed herself to ask the obvious question, here where there was no one to answer her. What was Mother having her bury beneath this tree?

  The snow melted cold beneath Alys’s knees and shins and spilled into the tops of her boots. Alys told herself that she should cover this up and find someplace else to bury Mother’s bundle. That would be the wisest course. But instead, Alys lifted the stiff little bundle from the hole she’d dug. She set it in her lap, then carefully unwrapped the aging linen. Inside, she found a tiny, baby-shaped skeleton, small enough to fit in her palm and as light and fragile as a bird.

  Alys wrapped it up again, gently, and put it back in its resting place. Then she lifted the bundle Mother had given her this morning out of the basket and placed it next to the other. She didn’t need to open the fresh bundle to know what was inside. Brother or sister, they could rest there together. Alys rose to her feet, brushed the snow off her legs, and buried them both. When the dirt was in place, Alys covered the mound with snow and pressed it down smooth. She looked around her at the gently undulating whiteness. The tracks of birds and her own footprints were the only signs of movement or life. Beneath the snow, though, all hidden by the smooth whiteness, Alys imagined a dark tangle of roots, grasping and curling and reaching, each cradling a bundle wrapped in linen.

  This was why Mother never smiled.

  Alys wondered how many miscarriages Mother had endured. How many times Mother had stolen through the Gate and made a furtive trip out here to bury another bundle under this tree. It was no wonder she kept the bundles secret, no wonder she buried them where no rule-abiding villager would ever find them. No woman would want Mother to birth her baby into this world if she’d known how many of Mother’s own babies she’d lost.

  But that wasn’t the reason for Mother’s silence. No, Mother never told a soul about those bundles because they’d surely call her a witch if they found out. The Elders would say she’d caused this, that a woman who knew how to bring babies into this world knew just as well how to do the reverse. If the Elders knew what Mother had done here, they’d say she was a bride of The Beast. They’d accuse her of dark magic. They’d burn her. Or crush her under stones, or drown her first to see if she’d float. And if she floated, then they’d burn her.

  Alys thought about the root Mother needed, and Mother’s yellow skin and pained eyes this morning. The odor of rot and blood. She remembered what Mother had done for Mary all those years ago. The tea she’d brewed to help Mary pass the afterbirth so she wouldn’t succumb to fever. Alys needed to do the same for Mother now. She turned back toward the house and returned the shovel. She opened one set of shutters to let in more light, then lifted up the door to the root cellar, right in the center of the kitchen floor. Scents of earth and damp rose up to meet her. She climbed down the ladder to a room just wider than her armspan, just tall enough for a grown man to stand in. The floor was packed dirt and the walls were lined with shelves, mostly bare. There was one shelf full of canning jars, and Alys set to finding the one that Mother needed.

  It wasn’t easy in the dark. The small space seemed to snuff all light, air, and sound. Alys quickly felt suffocated, her heart beating too fast in her chest, making it difficult to concentrate. She was too conscious of the passage of time and what it might mean if Elder Miles sent riders after her. It was causing her hands to shake, her bladder to weaken with dread. She had to lift each jar into the slender shaft of light from the kitchen above. There must have been twenty different kinds of roots, all equally knobby and desiccated. Most were labeled with names. A few had only scratches on the bottom. Finally she found the one with six parallel scratch m
arks, and she withdrew one of the roots and wrapped it in a bit of linen. She unhooked her coat and then the front of her dress, and she tucked the linen inside her shift, next to her skin. Then she hooked herself up again. Finally, she climbed up into the kitchen, breathing deep gulps of fresh air. She wiped her forehead where cold sweat slicked her skin. For a short moment she sat on the edge of the root cellar, her legs dangling down. Her heartbeat still thrummed in her ears but two distinct sounds pierced through and caused Alys to clutch the kitchen floor.

  Footsteps and laughter. Both right above her head, inside the house.

  SEVENTEEN

  Alys thought quickly. It was a long, exposed walk back through the meadow. She needed to be quiet, quiet as a mouse to get out of the house unheard. And then pray that whoever was upstairs didn’t think to open a shutter and look out while she made her escape.

  She looked at the open cellar door. Mother’s roots were down there. She’d have to close it if she wanted to protect Mother’s secret. Alys tried to remember if the hinges had squeaked when she’d first opened it. She had no memory. Quiet hadn’t been her goal then, speed was. Now she needed both.

  There was high-pitched laughter and low-pitched murmuring. Feet moving across the floor in a shuffle step and then coming to a halt. More murmuring, a giggle, a soft thud. Then silence. No, Alys thought. Don’t stop moving. She needed their noise. But more so she needed to leave. She touched the center of her chest, felt the tiny bulge where she’d tucked away the root. Thought again of Mother’s sallow skin, and the sweet stink of death rising off her. She pushed up from the floor with her hands and brought her feet to a crouch. Then she stood, never making a sound.

  She reached for the cellar door latch and lifted. The hinges squealed. Alys dropped the door, left Mother’s basket, and ran back the way she’d come.

  Behind her she heard the pounding of boots on wood, but there was no time to look for who might be emerging from Mother and Father’s house. It certainly wasn’t Father, and that was all she needed to know. Her skirts dragged in the snow, and she yanked them up. The frozen air burned shallow in her chest.

  Then she heard horse hooves, and she knew she was being run down, knew there was no hope for escape. Still she ran and kept running until the hooves were so loud in her ears that she thought she might be trampled, and a hand yanked her by her braid and sent her sprawling face-first into the snow.

  The hooves stopped pounding and she was dragged up and found herself staring into the reddened face of the High Elder’s youngest son, Rhys. He was tall and solid, and although only seventeen he had every ounce of his father’s unforgiving nature. He’d never spoken to Alys, never so much as looked her way, but even so Alys knew his eyes were a transparent blue. Something about those eyes had always chilled her. There seemed to be nothing behind them, they were like looking into rock. He held Alys in two meaty hands, one twisting her arm behind her back and the other gripping her throat. It was the closest she’d ever been to a boy her own age since she and Delwyn had held each other on the Gate. And then she was just a child. A sharp, musky tang rose off Rhys and Alys tried to pull away, but he only twisted her arm harder, squeezed her throat tighter. It felt as if he’d surely separate the two halves of her arm.

  Still he hadn’t spoken. He examined her face as if looking for something. Then he shoved her away from him. “What did you see?”

  Once free of him, Alys briefly considered running again, but Rhys’s horse stood at the ready and Alys knew it would be pointless. Her only hope was to talk herself out of this somehow.

  “I got lost,” Alys said. “Took a wrong turn and found myself here.”

  He exhaled through his nostrils. Then he hit her, a hard, backhanded smack against the side of her head that sent her reeling and nearly falling sideways into the snow. She turned and spun, dizzy on her feet. The horizon tilted and Mother and Father’s house listed at an angle. Then the world righted itself again and Alys saw a figure in blue emerge from the house. A woman’s shape, topped by golden tresses and a rosebud mouth. Cerys. It could be none other.

  Alys turned back to Rhys, her eyes widening. She thought back to the giggling and murmuring, the shuffling of feet, the soft thud. Cerys and Rhys, in a house where they thought they’d be alone. Cerys, youngest daughter of Elder Miles. And Rhys, youngest son of the High Elder. Unmarried. They shouldn’t have been alone together at all, much less alone together out here, where all were forbidden to go. Alys sniffed the air and wondered how she could have missed the scent before. The scent of fear. Rhys was terrified, even more than she was.

  “I saw nothing,” Alys said. “And if you just let me go I’ll say nothing.”

  Now the scent that rose off him turned acrid. Before Alys could brace herself, Rhys hit her again, and this time she went all the way down. A loud whistling filled her ears. Then silence.

  “She’s not dead,” Cerys said.

  These were the first words Alys heard when she came to, lying sidelong in the snow where she’d landed.

  “I didn’t think she was,” Rhys said.

  “Well you needn’t be short with me,” Cerys said.

  Alys touched her face where Rhys had hit her and felt skin but the skin didn’t feel her back.

  “Get up,” Rhys said.

  Alys crawled to her knees and stood up, her stomach rising into her mouth and then pouring out at Rhys’s feet. He jumped backward, and she retched until nothing more would come up. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “I swear, I saw nothing. I shouldn’t be here, and I know that. I just need to get home.” Alys looked up at the sky. The sun was arching toward the west. “I was supposed to be home by the noon bell.”

  Rhys shook his head. “It’s too late for that. You’re coming with me. I’ll tell Father I caught you wandering.”

  Alys’s scalp tingled and she felt light-headed. “Please. You don’t have to do that. I promise I won’t say a word.”

  Rhys’s eyes were as blank and cold as the snow. “Say a word about what?”

  Alys looked between him and Cerys. The girl twitched like a stalked bird. “You can’t trust her,” Cerys said.

  “Go home,” Rhys said to Cerys.

  Cerys looked back at him, her pink lips opening round and startled. “Walk all that way? Alone?”

  Alys had the strongest urge to slap Cerys’s pink cheeks. “Are you frightened of what’s out there, Cerys?”

  Cerys’s eyes narrowed and her upper lip thinned. “Don’t you speak to me. You’re evil, and everyone knows it.”

  Alys smelled burning, like a cinder, or as if her own skirts were on fire.

  “You watched while the soul eaters killed your parents,” Cerys said. “You invited them in. Unlocked the door for them, showed them the way.”

  “That’s not true,” Alys said. Although if Cerys knew what was actually true, she’d think Alys just as evil. And Alys couldn’t have argued with her.

  Cerys crossed her arms over her chest, and suddenly Alys saw her resemblance to her mother. How she’d grow into that square face and that starched apron. Alys saw Cerys for exactly what she was. Thin and transparent as glass. She saw her vanity. Her smug confidence that she was cared for. Her belief that she mattered. Everything that Cerys was—everything that Cerys might become—was laid out before Alys like food on a table. Alys inhaled it, and it warmed her—first from the inside, the blood that flowed through her veins. Then the warmth spread to her skin, like a blush.

  Cerys’s rosebud mouth faded from pink to white. Her cheeks, the same. She clawed her chest, and a sound like choking escaped her lips, which were now bluing at the edges.

  “Cerys?” Rhys said. His horse reared and screamed.

  Cold washed over Alys like a dunk in an unheated bath and she shuddered. She staggered backward, away from Cerys.

  Color rushed back to Cerys’s cheeks and lips. Her mouth twisted, her breathing too ragged for speech. She lifted one arm straight ahead of her and pointed at Alys, her finger hanging in
the air while she struggled for the words. Then the words came to Cerys, and Alys found that she knew what they would be even before Cerys uttered them. “Soul eater,” Cerys said. “Soul eater.”

  This time Alys didn’t feel the blow before the world went black.

  EIGHTEEN

  When Alys woke up she was tied, hands in front of her, and a long strip of cloth was wrapped tight around her mouth. She lay on her side in the snow and her layers of wool were wet through. The light was horizontal, a weak, midafternoon sun that would set in perhaps an hour, maybe less. Mother and Father’s house rose in the distance ahead of her. And behind it, the tree where all their babies were buried.

  “Get up,” Rhys said.

  Her feet weren’t tied, so Alys was able to get to her knees and then stand. Rhys stood back from her a good ten feet and Alys saw she was tethered to him by a long rope. He was frightened of her still. Frightened of what she might do if he got too close.

  “We’re taking you back to Defaid now, and you’ll stay exactly this far from me, do you hear?” Rhys was trying too hard to look intimidating. The effort gave him away. Alys nodded anyway. In truth, she was at his mercy.

  On the way back to Defaid, as Alys trudged in the snow behind them, Cerys occasionally looked back at her. She was up on the horse and Rhys walked alongside her, holding fast to Alys’s rope. At first they had kept up a steady murmur, words that Alys couldn’t hear but could only imagine were full of calculation. Then they fell into silence.

  Soon Alys lost all sense of what time it was. The sky had grown steely gray and heavy. Snow began to fall in fat flakes, thickening so that the way ahead closed in and Alys felt she was being marched into a void, into nothingness. That would be a blessing compared to what awaited her once they reached Defaid, once Rhys and Cerys told the Elders what Alys had done.