The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  “What is that?”

  “To have no fear. To sleep.”

  “Is that what Albon and Aron wanted when Benedicta and Angelica killed them?” Alys knew it was cruel to say this, but she reminded herself that she was speaking to a monster, not a boy. A monster who had killed so many times. She thought of all the poor souls he had sung to in the fforest, and then sucked from this life and disappeared forever.

  Delwyn put his head to his knees, reminding Alys of Benedicta. It was as if neither of them could stand to see themselves, or to be seen. As if they had looked into a mirror for the first time and been disgusted by their own reflections.

  “They aren’t tired anymore. Or frightened,” he said.

  “No, they aren’t anything at all. They’re gone.”

  Delwyn lifted his head from his knees. “I want to be gone, too, Alys. Can you make me gone? I’m dead already. Dead in my soul. Turned to ash and yet somehow still here. It would be a small thing for you to kill me. Hardly a killing at all.”

  She’d promised to take Benedicta’s soul. And she would do it. But she couldn’t kill Delwyn. Not him. There had to be some other way. The Beast told Benedicta she could throw herself into the hole, put an end to her suffering that way. It was horrible to imagine that for Delwyn. But then Alys reminded herself this wasn’t Delwyn. Not anymore. “You could go to the hole. It would be quick, and painless. And then you’d be gone.”

  Delwyn squeezed his purple lips together. “I’m frightened of that hole.”

  “You made that hole, Delwyn. You and Benedicta and Angelica. It’s a part of you. And I think it can give you what you want.” Alys felt a clench of disgust in her belly, offering nothingness this way, as if it were a gift. But if Delwyn could help sew up that wound in the earth, maybe something living and real would fill that space again. And maybe Delwyn would be a part of that.

  “Will you go with me? I don’t want to go alone.”

  Delwyn looked more like a child again to Alys’s eyes. Perhaps it was a trick of the flames, or the sadness in her own heart—her longing for her friend to be what he was. Whatever the reason, the outlines of his face had softened, and Alys saw flashes of the boy he had been. “I will. Right now.”

  Alys stood, and walked around the fire to him. Then she held out her hand.

  When Delwyn placed his hand in hers, it felt cool and dry, like a handful of bones, not flesh. He stood and they walked together, Delwyn as insubstantial next to her as her own shadow. He seemed to know the way better than Alys, unbothered by the darkness or obstructions, and then he stopped.

  The hole lay ten feet in front of them, and Alys’s feet were buried in ash. She felt in herself the terror of falling in, and she felt the same in the small hand she still held in her own.

  “It will be quick, you said. And painless?” Delwyn looked up at her, his face glowing in the moonlight, looking more than ever like her friend now.

  Alys felt her eyes stinging. Looked into the face of her friend, remembered the years of searching the horizon for him. She felt the loss of him again. And again and again. She gently squeezed his hand. “Yes, Delwyn. Painless. And then no more pain anymore.”

  Delwyn looked forward, released Alys’s hand. Turned to look up at her again. “Good-bye, Alys.”

  Ten steps more and he was gone, a flash of white-blond hair descending into black.

  Alys sank to her feet and sobbed.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The next morning broke to a steel gray sky and wind that raked across the rocks.

  Benedicta tried once again to convince Alys to take her soul, not to make her lead Alys to Angelica. “Go with you, girl, why?” She stalked around the cave, flying close to Alys, then retreating again. Over and over she’d done it, all the while railing against Alys. “You made me a promise, but you lie. They always lie. People and their lies.” She whirled and swirled, leaving a trail of sticks and leaves.

  Benedicta maintained her constant arguments as Alys followed her up the mountain. And each time Benedicta accused her of deceit, Alys repeated her promise. “I will do it, Benedicta, I will kill you. But not until you’ve led me to Angelica. I’m not a liar.”

  “A liar who lies would say that,” Benedicta said.

  Alys followed Benedicta through seemingly endless pine forest. The trees grew thick, dark, and close, and all was silent except for the dripping and trickling of springs and the scurrying of small animals through crackling underbrush. After hours of this, when Benedicta had finally wound down her constant complaining, Alys stopped Benedicta with a question that had plagued her. “How do you choose what souls you take, Benedicta? Why attack Defaid but leave the Lakes alone?”

  Benedicta was silent for a while, alternately floating and crawling over branches and rocks. Then she paused and looked back over her shoulder at Alys. Alys had avoided looking straight into her black eyes, her wasted face. But now she had to. Alys felt each emotion that crossed Benedicta’s features as if they were her own. Hunger. Anger. Bitterness. Also fear. “Sister and I decided long ago to hunt at night. And we hunt the lonely. The solitary. It’s safer that way. We slip in, we take, we hide.”

  Benedicta turned away and moved on, but Alys stopped her again with her voice. “Why Defaid, then?” Alys stared at the back of Benedicta’s mud-and-leaf hair. The soul eater had paused midway over a rock, looking less like a woman and more like something that had crawled up from a lake bottom.

  Benedicta glanced back at Alys and one side of her mouth curled up. “We could not resist. It brought back memories. Of another time, another village. You remember. You were there.”

  Alys felt all curiosity drain from her then. That other village had been Gwenith, her home. And now she had no home. She had no more urge to talk to Benedicta. She might have felt anger at her for what she’d done, but instead she felt only vast, aching sadness. It swallowed her whole and it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other.

  An hour or more passed that way, until Alys forced herself to shake the weight from her chest and limbs, to shove the sad thoughts aside. They did not serve her now. Then an unfamiliar sound began growing in Alys’s ears, even before she was fully aware of its presence. It had started like a whisper, and then it took on density. It was as if she were stepping through the sound, as if it existed all around her. It was like rolling thunder, but softer at the edges.

  And then Alys became aware of the path brightening ahead of her, opening to sky and nothing else.

  The sea, when it finally revealed itself to her, was everything that Ren had told her it would be. It went on forever and forever again, and Alys couldn’t believe that anything real could be so vast. This wasn’t at all like the hideous empty hole. This was full and teeming and Alys felt thrilled by it. She gasped with pleasure, everything else forgotten for a moment. She went straight to the edge, looked down, amazed at the power of so much water. It blasted against the rocks with a whomp and blew up into frothy whiteness. It was beautiful and terrifying.

  No wonder Ren had wanted to see it so badly.

  Benedicta crouched on the path ahead of her, scowling. “I thought you were in a hurry,” she said.

  Looking out at the water, an endless expanse that she hadn’t even known existed until not so long ago, Alys felt a deep tremble in her chest, then a sudden lightening, as if something heavy had dropped from her shoulders, something she hadn’t even been entirely aware she was carrying. She still had no plan for how she could fulfill her promises without destroying herself in the process. But Delwyn’s visit last night had given her a thin branch to cling to, the hope that she might not be doomed. She might have some chance to save herself while also saving everyone else. If Delwyn could overcome his fear of the hole and surrender to it, perhaps Alys could convince Angelica and Benedicta to do the same. Perhaps there was still a child hidden within each of them, as there had been in Delwyn.

  She climbed on along the cliff edge, behind Benedicta, the sea always beneath them. By
the time Benedicta stopped and pointed to a tree shaped like a great ladder, the sky was darkening and weak rays of golden light filtered through the few cracks in the clouds. The tree stood tall and straight and alone, and its branches on both sides were evenly spaced as if intended to be footholds. In the tree, balanced among the branches forty feet above her head, was a shelter that was more nest than house.

  “I’ll go first,” Alys said to Benedicta. She didn’t trust the two sisters alone together, not even for a moment.

  The sea filled Alys’s ears and the wind whipped the loose folds of her trousers. She began to climb, and she didn’t stop, not even when the bark ripped into her hands. One hand and foot over another, she kept moving steadily upward and told herself not to rush, since one slip would be the end of her—and of everyone she loved. She looked down occasionally to see Benedicta scuttling up behind her.

  Once at the top, Alys pulled herself onto a wooden platform that supported a tiny hut made of woven branches and a thatched roof. She rose to her feet and looked down, then left and right. The coast stretched on and on. Cliffs and scrub and water. No sign of Angelica anywhere. She reached down a hand to Benedicta. Benedicta’s face was cast in shadow. “Don’t need your help. Liar.”

  Once Benedicta had reached the platform, Alys pushed open the door to the hut and they both stepped inside.

  The little hut reminded Alys of someplace she’d been before, someplace she struggled to remember. Then it came to her. The shack on the mountain where The Beast had led her. This was different, and yet somehow the same. These wild girls had tried to make a home for themselves here. There were two simple beds made of leaves and moss.

  Alys felt a new presence behind her, and she turned. Angelica stood in the doorway, a mirror image of Benedicta. Gone was Angelica’s beauty. Could it have been only a short time ago that Alys hadn’t seen under its surface? She couldn’t imagine that now. Her heart thumped once, twice, so loud in her own ears that she thought Angelica must have heard it as well.

  “You should have looked up, girl. That’s where I perch. This is my aerie, and you are trespassing.” Angelica smiled in the same twisted way that Benedicta had, but Alys felt no despair in Angelica. She was all hardness and meanness and cunning.

  The room darkened as if a cloud had passed overhead, and Alys felt coldness squeeze her heart. In a flash of movement unattached to limbs, Angelica was upon Alys, face pressed in close, so close that Alys could smell the nothing on her breath. Alys tasted the nothing like ash in her own mouth. “I knew you’d come. I’ve been waiting for you.” She turned to look at Benedicta. “I did not expect you would bring her to me, though. Do you love me again?”

  “The girl and I made a deal,” Benedicta said.

  Angelica examined Alys with her big black eyes, the bones in her face twitching and sniffing. Alys felt as if fingertips were spreading open her chest to see what lay inside, and she held herself tight against it. “What does this girl have that you want, Benedicta?”

  Alys didn’t wait for Benedicta to answer. “ An end to her suffering,” she said. “She doesn’t want to live like you anymore.”

  Angelica gripped Alys by the throat with one bony hand, pulled her even closer, so close they might have kissed. “Tell me she lies, Sister. Tell me so, and I will kill her now.”

  “I asked you to come with me to The Beast, Sister,” Benedicta said. “I begged you to, but you wouldn’t. You still hunger. I do not.”

  Angelica released Alys, and Alys filled her lungs with air. Then Angelica stepped toward Benedicta, and the two sisters faced each other, reflections of the same dark spirit. Angelica reached for Benedicta’s hands, pulled them to her heart. “You would leave me forever, Sister? You would truly leave me? All others left us, Sister. But you and I, we are always. Say it, Sister. We are always.”

  In that moment Alys saw Angelica and Benedicta as they used to be—in flashes, in sparks, in a glow that seemed to envelop only them when they touched. They were once again the girls she’d seen float through the pasture. Their shining gray owl eyes, their lovely faces framed by rivers of hair as thick and black and rich as soil.

  “Come back to me,” Angelica said. “We can live here in our aerie forever. Never lonely. Never cold.”

  “We do not live, Angelica. Can’t you see?” Benedicta pulled one of Angelica’s hands from where it pressed into her heart, held it up to Angelica’s eyes along with one of her own. Once again the girls had become more skeleton than flesh, and the hands that Benedicta held up for Angelica were hideous and unnatural. “See what we have done to ourselves? We have burned ourselves to ash. There is no more living for us. We are dead already.”

  Angelica pulled away from her, whirled on Alys. “This is your doing.” Then she leapt for Alys once again, gripped her throat in her hand, squeezed and leaned in close, too close. In the suddenness of Angelica’s lunge for her, Alys felt nothing but fear, and now she felt that fear inside of her being picked apart by Angelica, being sucked through her and from her. And she thought No, no, this cannot be, and she wouldn’t let it happen.

  So she replaced the fear with darkness. The darkness spread inside of her and filled her veins where blood had been. It turned the breath in her lungs to smoke. It lifted her hair at the roots and picked her toes up off the floor.

  Alys spread. She widened. She looked down upon Angelica now—Angelica had been taller than Alys just a moment ago, hadn’t she? But Angelica was no longer taller. She was smaller, and shrinking. Puckering and wizening before Alys’s eyes. Her skeletal face contracted, her bones squeezed together. And all the while Alys herself grew big, and bigger still. She was filled with dark exhilaration. And now Alys’s hand was on Angelica’s throat, and Alys squeezed and she heard nothing, not even her own heartbeat anymore.

  This was what she had been afraid of. And why, she asked herself, had she been afraid? Why had she resisted this . . . this wonder? This miracle of absence, this obliteration of anything resembling sadness or grief. There was nothing in Alys, and nothing to cause her pain. Nothing to fear, no longer any good or bad to choose between. No conflict or worry or sorrow. No shame. No guilt. Alys needed none of it. She needed only this moment. She needed only the darkness that filled her, that chilled away her pain. That gave her strength she’d never known she had.

  Alys’s eyes closed, and she gasped with pleasure. Angelica was so small now, so small. And Alys was so large.

  Then Alys was falling, and tumbling, and she felt the floor beneath her and it was a shock to her, a surprise to scrape her hands against wood and to have an awareness of her own skin and flesh, and of blood pumping again in her heart and veins.

  Benedicta had pushed Alys off Angelica and was lifting her sister. She held her sister, hands under her arms, and at first Angelica looked as small as a child, but ancient and faded. Then as Benedicta held her, Angelica grew larger, until she and her sister once again matched and they looked into each other’s faces, hollow black eyes to hollow black eyes.

  The moment Angelica had become fully herself again, her eyes widened and she gripped Benedicta by the shoulders. Benedicta’s eyes rounded in response, then her mouth flew open. Benedicta’s bony hands clung to her sister—at once resisting and holding on.

  Angelica was taking her sister’s soul. It was seconds perhaps, moments, and Alys found herself transfixed and unable to move.

  Then there was a shift, and Benedicta’s grip moved to Angelica’s throat. Angelica thrust herself backward, but Benedicta held on, and then it was Angelica whose mouth gaped open. And back and forth it went, the sisters lurching first one way and then another. Alys sensed something else in the room, something unseen, and it lifted the hairs on her arms. Black smoke poured from the sisters’ mouths—poured from one sister only to be sucked into the other. One weakened and the other grew strong, and in the next moment the balance shifted again.

  Alys wanted it to continue, and she wanted it to end. A stench filled the room, worse than any
rot that Alys had ever smelled. The doorway to the aerie stood open and Alys felt an urge to rush past the sisters, to flee downward and never to look back.

  Benedicta fell backward through the door, her sister pushing her all the way. It was over, Alys thought. Angelica would kill her sister, throw her into the ocean below, and then it would be just Alys and Angelica. And then it would be just Alys. Dark Alys. Because Alys would destroy Angelica. There was no more doubt in Alys’s mind. It would mean Alys’s own destruction, too. But hadn’t that always been her destiny? Had Alys ever had a choice? No, she had been doomed that first night she met these girls. Doomed to barely live until she died.

  The sisters were outlined against the sky, steel gray except for a band of light at the horizon, where the sun lit up the space between cloud and water. Benedicta lurched back, and back again. Alys could see Benedicta had given up, there was no more fight in her. And Angelica could see it, too.

  Benedicta’s hands fell away from her sister and she fell backward and backward.

  Just as Benedicta was about to tumble off the platform, Angelica rushed forward and caught her in her arms. Benedicta looked up at her sister in surprise. “Sister,” Benedicta said. “Let me go. I’m so tired.” Her voice was like the crackle of dry leaves.

  The look that passed over Angelica’s skeleton face was no longer black rage. It was pity. And then it was surrender.

  The sisters held each other, no space between them, hair mingling, arms and legs tangled, their lips nearly touching, and then they each breathed the other in—and out.

  Black smoke curled from their lips, rolling and swirling upward from them, rising in a cloud over them and then spreading out and out. The more smoke that curled out of them, the more the sisters shrank and grayed.

  They were turning to ash in front of Alys’s eyes. The ocean wind wrapped around them and lifted them in layers. Hair and skin became wind, and then in one last swirl of leaf and twig and dust, Angelica and Benedicta were gone.