The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  The air was still and the snow sifted down fast, straight, and quiet, coating the trees on either side of them in white. As they emerged from the thick band of fforest that divided the abandoned farms from the fields that spread out from the Gate of Defaid, Alys heard the muffled clop of horses’ hooves in the distance.

  Alys heard men’s voices and then she saw there were two riders, one of them another son of the High Elder. The other was the blacksmith. Alys had never spoken two words to either of them.

  “What’s happened?” the blacksmith called out first. “Are you all right?” The men looked confused, then horrified, as their eyes traveled first to Rhys out in front, then to Cerys in the saddle, and finally to Alys, attached to Rhys by a rope.

  Rhys’s older brother was a big boy of about nineteen with sandy blond hair. Alys recalled his name was Alec. “Rhys, where in Byd have you been? Elder Miles and his wife are just about out of their minds. Every man in the village is out looking for Cerys.”

  “Well I found her,” Rhys said. “Saved her from that one.” He jerked his chin at Alys.

  “Whatever’s she done?” the blacksmith said, squinting at Alys from beneath his broad-brimmed hat.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Rhys said. “But I’d advise you to keep an eye behind you. She’s a crafty one.”

  Alec looked at Cerys, and then back at his brother, wrinkling his brow.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Rhys said. “I meant Alys. Now let’s get home before dark.”

  They all headed toward the Gate in silence, and not long after, they approached the first children of Gwenith headed out to the pastures for the night. Alys saw them in the distance, felt them as they grew closer, but she kept her eyes on the snow in front of her feet. She assumed they did the same. She didn’t blame them for it. There was nothing to be done when the son of the High Elder had you by a rope.

  Then she heard a small voice. “Alys?”

  She looked to the child it belonged to, and it was Ren. He’d not only spoken to her, but stopped in his tracks, staring. She shook her head at him, short and sharp. No, Ren, she wanted to say. You mustn’t.

  And then she was past him and she hoped he’d walked on and forgotten about her. Poor Ren, she thought to herself. Leave it to that little one not to know how to save his own neck.

  When they reached the last long stretch of road to Defaid, the sky was as dark as smoke, and there were no more children of Gwenith heading toward the fields. The doors were closed. Alys was delirious with cold and fear, and yet she might have laughed if she hadn’t been bound. In all their lives, these men and Cerys had never known what it was like to have the doors close behind them, to find themselves on the wrong side of that reassuring Gate. The High Elder hadn’t kept the doors open for his own sons. She wondered how Shoulder Miles felt about that, if his heart quaked even a little bit when the High Elder gave the order to shut the doors, even though his youngest daughter was still out there, unprotected.

  Rhys and the other two men raised their voices in unison, shouting for the doors to be opened. From his perch in one of the watchtowers, Madog called down to the night guard, telling him to open the doors, that the men had found Cerys. He said nothing about Alys. She supposed there weren’t words for that.

  NINETEEN

  Once the Gate doors were opened, there was a chaos of pointing and exclaiming that grew as word spread. Villagers lifted lanterns and gathered close to catch sight of Cerys, then withdrew respectfully when the High Elder arrived. Alys supposed that if any of them knew what had happened they might not dare come so near, for fear Alys would try to suck the souls out of them, as well.

  Cerys was lifted down from Rhys’s horse and passed to Mistress Miles’s wide bosom. Cerys looked entirely well to Alys’s eyes, but she allowed herself to be carried as if she might faint, and she leaned into her mother, who wrapped stiff arms around her. Elder Miles told her to take Cerys home. Alys could see how Mistress Miles bit her tongue, fighting the impulse to argue for her place among the Elders. She gave her husband a dark look and then turned away with Cerys. The other wives took this as their signal to depart as well, and they peered back at Alys over their shoulders, their eyes narrow and curious.

  A strange feeling of distance settled over Alys. Voices were muffled and even the people and things that were closest to her seemed farther away than they should be, as if the world were withdrawing from her. She watched the men gather around Rhys. While he spoke, the other men looked at her, clutched their chests, raised their eyebrows and opened their mouths into round caverns. The High Elder was the only one who didn’t move or react. He was the still center, and while Rhys spoke he turned his eyes to Alys and stared.

  “Stone her.”

  “Burn her.”

  “Drown her.”

  “Crush her.”

  These words emerged from the murmurs.

  “We will try her in the light of day,” the High Elder said. “In the meantime, lock her in a cellar where she can do no more harm.”

  The men exchanged looks and finally one spoke. It was Elder Yates, the oldest of them. “In whose cellar shall we put her? Surely none where there are children in the house, lest she cast a spell on them. And one of the other children of Gwenith might be tempted to release her.”

  Elder Couch said, “Why not her parents? She’s their punishment, not ours. Have them take her.”

  The other Elders nodded and grumbled.

  “It’s no matter,” the High Elder said. “As long as she is guarded. Elder Yates, I leave this in your able hands.” The High Elder nodded to the men, then left them.

  Rhys watched his father walk away then looked toward Alys. “You’ll be dead by this time tomorrow.”

  Alys sensed a wishful uncertainty in him, as if he were hoping to make it so with his words.

  “Best not speak to the witch,” Elder Yates said. His shoulders were sharply bowed as if time were pressing his head down to meet his bottom half. He looked up at Alys through furry white eyebrows. “Alec, run ahead and tell her father what has happened. Have the cellar open and ready. Elder Couch, go get Vaughn and Sayer. They’ll be her guards tonight.”

  Vaughn and Sayer were two of the day guards, bland and oafish but not cruel. Alys supposed it didn’t matter who guarded her. They would be above, and she would be below. And soon enough, she would be judged and found guilty. And that thought shut down something inside of her, put a stopper in her panic. There was too much to feel so her heart simply closed up and felt nothing at all.

  Rhys tugged her forward, toward home. It was slow going, following behind Elder Yates. Alys wanted only to be warm, and to have the cloth removed from around her mouth.

  A shaft of yellow light stabbed across the darkness ahead of them, through the door of Mother and Father’s house. Elder Yates went in first, then backed away to give them room to enter. Rhys bumped into Vaughn and Sayer on the way in, and they in turn backed into Alec. All but Elder Yates looked unsure of themselves and of what to do with their own limbs. The familiar room was rendered strange to Alys, too full of men and the scents of leather and wet wool. Father stood in his shirtsleeves and work trousers, his hair uncombed and his back to a hearth fire too weak to have cooked anything. Mother wasn’t there. The door to their bedroom was closed. Mother, Alys thought. The root was still in her dress. Father was right here, and Mother was on the other side of that bedroom door, and there was no way for Alys to give either of them what Mother most needed. After all of this—all of this pain, this hope—there was nothing to be done. If Alys tried to give Father the root, she’d only doom him as well. Even if Father could make the excuse that he knew nothing of it, simply possessing the root would be seen as proof that Alys was a witch. And maybe proof that Mother was as well—if they thought to wonder where Alys had gotten the root. If they thought to lift the door to Mother’s root cellar and paw through all her jars.

  The stopper in Alys’s heart loosened again, and she felt terrified and grief-
stricken and angry all at once. Father stood there, looking like he’d seen something so awful that there were no words for it, and no actions either. Alys had such a desperate yearning to talk to Mother, to see her, to tell her how hard she’d tried.

  The cellar door was open, and the damp scent of soil rose into the room from its dark cavern. Elder Yates told Alec to remove the cloth from Alys’s mouth. Alec looked at Elder Yates for a moment, his mouth open, but Elder Yates said only, “Do it.”

  The moment it was off, Alys felt relief. She felt certain she could bear anything so long as she was able breathe unencumbered.

  Elder Yates stood just beyond the open cellar, dipped his chin at it. “Down you go, girl. Rhys, hold on to the tether. Vaughn and Sayer, you pull up the ladder when she’s reached bottom.”

  Alys climbed down the ladder grasping each wooden slat with her bound hands as she descended. She stood at the bottom and looked up into the brightness of the kitchen. The five heads of Rhys, Alec, Elder Yates, Vaughn, and Sayer stared down at her. Then the ladder went up and Elder Yates himself took the tether from Rhys and fastened it to the handle of the door, several feet above her head and unreachable without the ladder.

  The door closed over Alys’s head and she was submerged in black and a still, chill dampness. She continued to look above her while the men’s footfalls circled and stomped, accompanied by low murmurs too muddled for Alys to make out words. She heard the scraping of chairs and imagined them huddled over hot tea, staring at the floor beneath their feet and wondering what powers a soul eater might have to penetrate air and wood.

  Alys struggled with numb fingers and bound wrists to open the front of her dress and retrieve the root. She tucked it onto a shelf, behind a crate of potatoes. Perhaps, if they ever let her talk to Father, she could tell him it was here. Or maybe, if Mother had been able to tell him what she’d sent Alys to do, maybe then he’d think to look for it here.

  Alys heard herself whimper. It was hopeless.

  She was so cold. She fastened her dress again. It hung heavy on her, damp enough from melted snow to soak up the cold and suck it through to her skin. The tether was long enough that she could let her arms hang down while she stood, but when she sat on the hard dirt floor she found it was too short to lie down.

  She felt around in the dark for a basket of apples and then a round of hard cheese. How she could be hungry, she had no idea, but she found herself so starved that she could think of nothing else. She bit through the cheese rind with her teeth, then chewed off a salty chunk and swallowed it nearly whole. She ate three apples down to the seeds, and more cheese until her belly was hard and full.

  She sank down to the floor and leaned against the vertical beam of one shelf. She pulled her knees up to her chin and hugged them with her arms. Eating had warmed her so that her shivering stopped, but only for a while. Then a deeper sort of shuddering took over, waves that seemed to start in her heart and travel to her gut. She was well-clothed, she told herself. She had survived far worse nights than this out in the pastures and up on the Gate. At least here there was no wind.

  I’m doomed, Alys thought. That’s why I’m shaking.

  The shuddering ceased, and Alys felt calm and emptied. There was nothing for it. Tomorrow would come and then she’d know what her future held. And everyone would know what she was. And maybe there was some strange comfort to be found in that. For just the second time since she was seven years old, Alys closed her eyes in the night and drifted to sleep, still as a stone.

  TWENTY

  The women came for her the next day. Alys had been awake for some hours, staring into the darkness and interpreting the sounds overhead. Chairs on wood, shuffling feet around the hearth, low voices. Then a knock on the door that was louder than it needed to be, more men’s voices, more sets of feet. A bit later, the number of feet halved again, and there was a long window of silence. Then there was the knock that brought the women and their higher-pitched voices and footfalls.

  Alys was standing and ready for them when the root cellar door was jerked upward. As much as she wanted to see who looked down at her, she pressed her hands to her eyes to block the light that sliced the solid darkness and sent a stabbing pain into her temple. Peering through her fingers, she first made out four black wedges, then the shapes formed themselves into broad skirts and rough aprons. The ladder dropped down in front of her.

  “Up, witch,” said one of the women, and there was a sharp jerk on her tether. As Alys climbed she saw Mistress Miles on the other end. Next to her was Mistress Ffagan, who held a basket covered with a linen. Mistress Daniels and Mistress Hardy backed away as Alys rose.

  The kitchen was bare and cold. The table was empty and there was no fire in the hearth. Father was absent, although Alys saw his hat and coat hanging on the wall. As Alys scanned the room she saw that Vaughn and Sayer had been relieved of their guard duty by two fresh guards, Ffordd and Enrik. Alys felt certain that she was losing her mind, because she noticed, as if at a distance from herself, that it gave her a tickle of pleasure how Enrik shrank from her, avoiding her eyes. Ffordd stared right back at her, but he kept the heavy kitchen table squarely between them, and his knuckles whitened where he gripped the back of Father’s chair.

  Father emerged from the bedroom he shared with Mother. He looked diminished, shrunken, and his skin was pale, his face unshaven and bristling with gray.

  “How is Mother?” Alys asked, before anyone could think to silence her.

  Father looked at her, an expression on his face that was anguish mixed with apology and disbelief. “She’s not well, and I haven’t the skill to help her. She burns with fever and moans in her sleep. I’ve sent twice for help, but none will come.”

  Oh, Mother. Alys remembered the odor that rose from her the day before, like a rot coming from the inside. Alys stared down at the floor, willing Father to look there, too, to know what she’d left down there. But Father was too stricken. And with a certainty that felt like sinking, Alys knew that Mother’s fever was raging too hot for any root to help her. Mother had taught her what happened to women when the afterbirth fever got into their blood. Once that happened, nothing could be done.

  Mistress Ffagan widened her eyes and clucked her tongue. “Oh dear. Dear, dear. Poor Heledd.”

  Mistress Miles didn’t take her eyes off Alys, as if Alys might vanish were she unwatched for even a moment. “How could any of the good women of this village come to this house of evil? How could you ask it of them? They have their own families to care for. There’s naught here to be done. This is a cursed place, as are all who reside in it.”

  Mistress Ffagan rested one hand on Mistress Miles’s forearm. “My husband asked me to thank you for your work in the meetinghouse last night, Brother Argyll. The structure you built for us is more than adequate, and that will not be forgotten.”

  Father sagged, grew smaller yet. “And what about my Heledd? Will you forget her? What has she done but care for all of you? She sewed you up and cured your fevers. She brought your babies into the world and lost hardly a one of them.”

  “Ay, but she never had a one of her own, neither. And that’s an unnatural thing.” Mistress Daniels cut her eyes at Mistress Hardy, pointed her chin at Alys. “And now we know the reason for that. No seed could catch with that creature here.”

  Mistress Ffagan sighed and shook her head. “Mistress Daniels, please close the shutters. Mistress Hardy, if you would, light some lanterns.” She looked at Father. “Brother Argyll, you should be with Heledd. We women have work to do here.” Enrik and Ffordd exchanged looks, and Enrik rubbed his nose as if he had a furious itch.

  “What sort of work,” Father said.

  “That’s naught of concern to you,” Mistress Miles said.

  “Ay, it is. This is my house, and that’s my daughter.”

  “As shall be noted when the witch is put to trial,” Mistress Miles said.

  Mistress Ffagen formed her mouth into a round O and covered it with a smooth,
plump hand. “Oh dear. Oh dear, dear. Brother Argyll, I’m sure Heledd needs you. Do go to her.” She widened her brown eyes at him.

  Alys felt Father’s gaze on her as he left the room, but she couldn’t bear to look at him now. She thought she might shatter if she did. She kept her eyes on Mistress Hardy, who finished lighting a second lamp just as Mistress Daniels shut out the winter sun. It spilled through the cracks between and around the shutters, but the room was cast in gloom. Alys heard the bedroom door open and close and when she turned Father was gone.

  Mistress Miles stood with her back to the front door, facing the table. “Sit down.” While holding onto the tether with one hand, she pulled one of the heavy chairs from the table. It was Alys’s own chair, the one she sat in for dinner and supper each day.

  Alys sat, and against her will she felt a hard squeeze of fear inside of her, and her heart began to beat just a bit faster. Her back was to Mistress Miles and the other women, and she faced the cold hearth across the room. No fire was lit, so at least there would be no torture by burning, she told herself. She could face anything but burning. She had helped Mother with burns before. Mother had said there was no worse pain. If it didn’t kill you, you wished it would.

  Enrik and Ffordd stood to her right, their backs to the door that led to Alys’s bedroom. Enrik pressed his lips together so tightly he looked on the verge of crying or throwing up. Ffordd was no longer squeezing the back of Father’s chair. Instead, he was holding a thick hoop of rough rope. Alys’s heart thumped painfully. Her eyes traveled to the basket that Mistress Ffagan hugged tight to her belly. She wondered what was in there.

  “Bind her,” Mistress Ffagan said.

  Ffordd leaned in so close to Alys that she might have bitten his ear if she’d had a mind to do it. She imagined the taste of his blood, the tearing of his flesh, and most of all, his terror and pain. She shocked even herself amid all these thoughts. Is this how evil worked as it grew inside of you? Once it rose to a certain level did it spill over, and then there was no more controlling it? What would The Beast think of her now? Then she realized, it hardly mattered. There was nothing Alys could do about that hole now. Probably there never was. This creature she’d become—this is who she really was.