The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  There was a pounding on the meetinghouse doors. Alys turned toward the sound, bells clanging, and Vaughn and Sayer murmured and shifted, sat up in their seats and stared. “Ay,” Sayer said. Then he rose to his feet and walked toward the doors, while keeping to the perimeter and making a careful arc around Alys’s cage. He listened through the doors, bolted shut from the inside with a long wooden beam. “Who’s banging?”

  “It’s Brother Argyll.” Father.

  Sayer looked back toward Vaughn, eyebrows raised, though Alys didn’t imagine that Vaughn could read his expression through the black.

  “What’s he want then?” Vaughn said, his words hissing through the cold flat air.

  “What you want then?” Sayer said through the door.

  “I’ve brought you wood for the fire,” Father said.

  “Let him in,” Vaughn said. “I’m like to freeze.”

  “Are you sure then?” Sayer called back to Vaughn. “It’s the creature’s father.”

  “Way I see it,” Vaughn said, “creature killed its father back in Gwenith. You know Brother Argyll well as I do. And you’re cold well as I am. Let him build us a fire. He ain’t like to do us harm. Anyways, there’s two of us.”

  Sayer shrugged and lifted the beam from the door. It swung open and cold wind rushed through the opening, tearing through Alys, so sharp that it hurt her teeth. Sayer slammed the door shut behind Father and put the beam back in place.

  Father carried a pack of wood slung across his shoulder and made his way up the aisle, past the cage, not looking at Alys. As he walked by, she held onto the wooden rungs of the cage, so hard that she felt splinters piercing her skin.

  Father shrugged down his load in front of the hearth and set to building a fire. He placed a heavy jug on the floor at his feet, pulled off his gloves, and knelt down to press his hands to the jug as if to warm them. Sayer and Vaughn sat down and pulled blankets up to their chins.

  “That tea?” Vaughn said.

  “Ay,” Father said. He stacked kindling, arranged it with care.

  “Hot?”

  “Ay,” Father said. “Help yourselves.” He stacked wood, pulled out some flint, struck a spark that flashed. He leaned forward and blew.

  Vaughn and Sayer’s heads bent in the same direction and Alys heard pouring and murmuring, and “Oh, that’s lovely” from one of them. The men sighed and shifted back in their chairs. Time passed while they sipped tea and the fire grew big and orange, so hot that Alys felt an occasional lick of warmth, just enough to make her shiver and remember how cold she was. Father sat still and crouched before the fire, watching the flames.

  “How fares Sister Argyll?” It was Sayer’s voice, thick and drowsy.

  Silence from Father.

  Sayer seemed to have lost interest in the answer, because he didn’t ask again. Alys heard a metal cup clatter to the floor. Then another. Father stood and righted the cups. Picked up his jug and his bundle, looked toward Alys. “Oh child,” he said.

  That’s when Alys knew he was there to save her. A groan rose out of her that she didn’t recognize. This was crying, she realized. It was high time, she supposed. Eight long years since the last time.

  Father jabbed the tip of a knife into the heavy lock that hung from the door to the cage and wiggled it around. Then he unlocked it with a sharp tug. He did the same to the lock on the bridle, and then pulled it from her face and took the same knife to the ropes that held her wrists. Her hands freed, Alys wiped her nose and mouth on her sleeve, coughed and spat. “Mother,” she said, her voice a burnt whisper in the back of her throat.

  “Heledd is dead,” he said. “Now come. Quickly. I’m no expert at mixing a sleeping draught and we must get you out before they wake.”

  Mother. Alys had not even been able to say good-bye. Or to thank her for all she’d taught Alys . . . or to tell her how she’d grown to love her. To tell her she knew about Mother’s secret suffering and that she loved her all the more for it. To tell Mother that Alys thought she was the bravest, truest person in all of Defaid.

  Alys pictured Mother’s face, so still and yet so restless. She’d learned to read Mother’s moods in the subtlest raise of eyebrow or drop of chin. She wondered what Mother’s face would have looked like now, if she were still alive and knew what Alys had done. Alys felt shame, burning shame, and then the shame burned itself out and a heavy stone dropped into place inside of her—cold and dead—where her heart and stomach should be. It was all she could do to carry herself forward. But she needed to keep moving, if only for Father’s sake.

  Father lifted his pack to his back and she followed him through the doors of the meetinghouse and out into the silence of Defaid at night. Moonlight glowed across the snow that crusted the roofs. The lamps from each of the Gate’s three towers shone north, south, and west. They walked west, toward the town doors. Alys wrapped her arms around herself, felt the cold sifting through the rough cotton of her shift, the wool of her dress. Her heart felt tight and frozen. She couldn’t conjure the warmth of the fire that Father had built, or the relief she’d felt when he released her.

  When they had gone as far as home, Father stopped walking. He stared ahead while he talked to her, not looking at her, not really seeming to look at anything. “Go to the doors. Enid will meet you there. She has clothes and food for you. Then you must go. Far as you can, away from here.”

  Alys stared at him for a long moment. “Come with me.”

  Father leaned forward and pressed dry, trembling lips to her forehead. She breathed deep and smelled wet wool and wood shavings. Then he pulled away from her. “Go, child. Quiet and quick now. Heledd asked me to bury her beneath the tree behind the old place. I’ll take her there at first light.”

  “They won’t let you,” Alys said.

  Father pushed the door open to their dark kitchen with its empty hearth. “They’ll not stop me.” He closed the door behind him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  As Alys approached the doors to the Gate, she saw Enid holding a sack and a dark bundle. The wind whipped the skirts around Alys’s legs, and she bent her head into it, walked faster, her eyes burning. Enid’s face was white, her lips pale blue lines, sewn tight shut. Over Enid’s shoulder, Alys saw Madog and some of the older Gwenith boys and girls lifting the massive beam that held the doors closed all night. She glanced toward the guardhouse and realized that whoever was on duty there must have been given a sleeping draught as well.

  When Alys drew close enough to touch, Enid reached for her wrist, pulled her in so near that Alys could feel her breath puff warm and damp around her face as she spoke. “Go to Pysgod. Tell them your family are travelers. Tell them soul eaters got them, and you were the only one that lived. It’s close enough to true, isn’t it?”

  Alys didn’t speak the obvious, that Pysgod had no good reason to take her in. She was barely a child anymore, they would feel no obligation. At best they might give her a meal and send her on her way.

  Enid squeezed Alys’s wrist, bringing her back to the moment. “It’s the only thing. Now go.” But instead of releasing Alys, Enid pulled her even closer, wrapped her arms around Alys tight. She whispered into Alys’s ear. “Don’t you ever come back here, Alys. We’ll come find you. And then we’ll be together again.” Alys was afraid to tighten her own arms around Enid, afraid that if she did she wouldn’t be able to let go. She’d feel like a child again in Enid’s arms, the child she was before. Wishing for her mam. Wishing for Mother.

  Enid set the sack down at her feet and unfolded the bundle, which contained a wool dress of Alys’s and Mam’s heavy coat, a scarf and her gloves. Enid helped Alys into them, her breath making white clouds in the night air as she spoke. “Keep to the fforest and follow the river. I don’t think they’ll send anyone after you, but if they do, the road won’t be safe. The river will take you straight to Pysgod. Keep moving. Don’t you dare rest while it’s dark.”

  Enid didn’t need to say out loud what she and Alys both knew. If Aly
s so much as sat down in the snow to rest her eyes, she’d surely freeze to death. Then she’d be food for the wolves. The air was so cold that Alys’s eyes teared and the tears froze on her cheeks. When she breathed in through her nose, her snot turned to ice. That was not a good sign.

  There was a low whistle behind them. It was Madog. He looked to the sky, still pitch black, but his message was clear. There was no time for talk, she must go.

  Alys nodded to Madog and the other children as she walked through the Gates. She looked behind her long enough to wave to Enid, who stood watching her. Then the doors closed, and Defaid was a wall of black, shut tight in front of her. She looked up to the nearest watchtower, the lamp glowing orange, and made out the outline of a hand. She raised her own in response. Then she turned around and looked to the world in front of her, a world of snow, dead fields, and the black spikes of trees everywhere the sky met the earth—south, north, west, it was all the same. She looked south, toward Pysgod, which was days away she figured. She’d never been there before, but she knew the reason no one ever traveled there—no one except a traveler. It was because you’d be forced to make camp in the wilderness between here and there. The wilderness where wolves roamed and soul eaters hunted.

  Alys curled her toes in her boots, stomped her feet to shake feeling back into them. She expected to hear the hard thunk of packed snow, beaten into ice by feet and hooves and wagon wheels. But instead her heels sank into slush. She looked down to see a black circle of melt around her feet, as if she had burned a spot into the earth. And then the spot spread out to her right, forming a long, black path in the white snow leading to the north fforest. She looked south again toward Pysgod, the way she was supposed to travel, and the wind picked up hard and howling, blowing snow and ice into violent, opaque swirls. It bit her cheeks like teeth, blinded her. Alys staggered backward, her feet sinking into slush again, and she turned to put the wind at her back, even for just a moment, to catch her breath. It bellowed behind her, and nudged her north, forcefully, unmistakably.

  But north there was nothing. North was wilderness and the corpse of a town that was once called Gwenith.

  The wind blew and screamed in Alys’s ears, like a human howl. The cold dug its fingers under her coat, raked its nails across her skin, stabbed straight into her heart. She shivered and shook. There was nothing for it. She had to move, to get away from here. Then she could figure out a path back toward Pysgod once this storm was over. She took to the black, melted path north. At least, she told herself, no man or woman of Defaid would ever follow her there.

  And the sisters would feed on the fear . . .

  The sisters moved through the fforest, snowflakes parting before them like sheep. They looked at each other, blinking crystal lashes over ice-gray eyes.

  A small boy with white-blond hair floated between them.

  Something drew the three. It was a scent. Their eagerness grew stronger along with the scent, and soon they no longer floated. They sailed. They flew.

  “The fear, Sister, do you smell it?“

  “I do, Angelica.”

  “This is not our fear,” the boy said. “We did not make it.”

  “No,” Benedicta said, “the other made it. The green wood girl.”

  Sister nodded to sister. The green wood girl. They scented her. She had left her mark.

  “Alys,” the boy said. “That is her name. Alys.”

  “She is like us now,” said Benedicta.

  “More like us, but not us yet.” Angelica sniffed the wind. “She leaves them now. But she leaves them huddled. They lock their doors and windows. They pray.”

  The three stopped. They had arrived. They stood in the snow, in the dark. Lanterns flickered weakly in towers above them. The three looked at the great wooden Gate, the pile of sticks these villagers had erected to keep them safe, to contain their fear. But the fear was too much to be held now. It oozed and rolled over the Gate, it coated the land like mist. It filled the soul eaters’ nostrils, and the scent was sweet.

  “It’s time then?” the boy said to the sisters.

  “Yes,” the sisters said. “It’s time.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Alys followed the dark ribbon of melt straight into the wilderness. She had been in the fforest to the south many times, but she’d never been in this fforest before. This was the black bristle of land that divided the safety of Defaid from the dead patch that once was Gwenith, her home.

  This was the fforest that mothers and fathers warned their children about, the one that all the stories were told about, the place where nightmares hatched. It was just a fforest, Alys told herself, no different from any other. Yet somehow it seemed darker than any fforest she’d ever been in before. Branches clung together overhead and roots locked together underfoot. The tree trunks seemed to writhe and bend around her, beckoning her in and closing up behind her. It felt like being swallowed.

  The wind muffled to a hum and a whine. She still felt the cold clean through to her bones, but now it was more of a settled ache than the sharp pain it had been before. Snow and ice crusted the fforest and the moon reflected off the white surfaces so that Alys could just make out the path in front of her, the path that stayed damp and black no matter how icy and white the rest of the fforest remained. She looked behind her and the black ribbon that led back to Defaid was gone, iced over and white again.

  Alys shuddered and quaked, a shiver that started in her gut and spread outward. Her teeth banged together, and she lost her footing more than once because she couldn’t feel her feet.

  This was hopeless, she knew. It was too cold, and the way was too far. If she could make it all the way to Gwenith, she might find shelter there. She might be able to build herself a fire in one of the houses that hadn’t yet sunk into the ground. But she’d been walking for hours already, and she couldn’t imagine walking hours more. She’d die before she even made it halfway. And that was assuming she knew where she was going, which she did not. Already she felt the awful temptation to sink to her feet, to curl up here among the roots and drift away. Maybe the roots would wrap around her, pull her down and under where the earth was still warm.

  She heard the long, looping howl of a wolf. It was off to her left, and not far away at all. Another howl, in answer, to her right. She looked into the wilderness, but as sharp as her vision was she could only imagine their outlines. Two different howls, two different wolves. And where there were two wolves there were surely six or more.

  Running would do her no good. The wolves would want that, then they could nip at her heels, take her down from behind. The hair lifted on Alys’s arms and a shiver rattled in her chest.

  She heard the crunch and swish of paws in snow, fur brushing against bark. The sounds came from both sides, circling her. She stood still and waited.

  The crunching and swishing took shape around her, and hunched forms emerged from the trees, white and gray, black and mottled. There were six wolves. No, eight. They whined and yipped, uncertain and excited.

  One was bigger than the rest. Braver, nearer. Eyes locked on Alys.

  She had never been this close to a wolf before. It was nothing like a dog, there was no dog in it. There was nothing at all in it that Alys recognized. Alys had never felt terror like this. She lost herself to it.

  Wolf lips lifted over teeth, wolf nose twitched and sniffed, wolf tongue licked the air. Wolf fur bristled over back and haunches. Wolf felt no cold.

  Now Alys felt no cold. She had no memory of cold. Only blood. The hot scent of urine in snow. The pack. She sniffed the air. Panted. Growled low. She felt a hunger in her belly, a gnawing. She hadn’t eaten in so long. She felt the fur on her back lifting and reaching, excited and wary. She salivated. Wolf breath filled her chest and wolf blood flowed through her veins, and she pawed the snow with her wolf feet. She took it in. The wolf was her, and she was the wolf. Its wolfness filled her like smoke. She smelled it in her nose, and tasted it bitter in her mouth. And she found that she loved t
he bitterness, she burned with it.

  And then she was no longer wolf anymore, she was Alys again, but sharper and stronger and more awake than she’d ever been before. She was Alys, but not tired. Not questioning. She was Alys, but not sad. She felt herself rising off the ground with joy. The night was black around her, but she could see through it. The cold raked her skin, but did not penetrate. Her toes grazed the ground, but did not need to rest.

  The big wolf was down, deflated, emptied. It lay in the snow like a pelt stripped of flesh. The other wolves yipped and cried, then withdrew into the darkness of the fforest and were gone.

  The sound of their yips brought Alys back to herself. The cold bit the inside of her nostrils. Her feet sank into snow, and she shook as if she’d been stripped of all her layers of wool. There was a dead wolf in the snow just in front of her, and she knew that she had killed it. Sickness rolled from her feet to her bowels to her stomach and then into her mouth, and Alys fell to her knees retching. What came out smelled like death. It steamed and sank into the path in front of her.

  Alys looked at the big wolf and reached out to it, laying her hand on its muzzle. She stroked its belly and spine with her other hand. Alys had seen death before, too many times. But she had never before been the cause of it. She had drained this wolf of what once made it alive. Not its blood, or its flesh. Something else. Something more important. This dead thing in the snow wasn’t a wolf anymore, it wasn’t anything at all. The creature that had bared its teeth at her just minutes ago, that had looked bigger and broader than a man, now seemed insubstantial in her hands, as if she might pick it up and toss it away.