The Beast’s Heart

by Leife Shallcross

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Leife Shallcross lives at the foot of a mountain in Canberra, Australia, with her family and a small, scruffy creature who snores. She has a tendency to overindulge in reading fairy tales, then lie awake at night listening to trolls (or maybe possums) galloping over her tin roof. Ever since she can remember, she has been fascinated by stories about canny fairy godmothers, heroic goose girls and handsome princes disguised as bears. She is particularly inspired by those characters that tend to fall into the cracks of the usual tales. She is the author of several short stories, including ‘Pretty Jennie Greenteeth’, which won the 2016 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Short Story. The Beast’s Heart is her first novel.

  Find out more at www.leifeshallcross.com.

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Leife Shallcross 2018

  The right of Leife Shallcross to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 66872 0

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To Dennis, my one and only

  And in loving memory of Marguerite, the best of grandmothers

  Chapter I

  Enchantments and dreams: I suspect they are made of the same stuff. They each beguile the mind and confuse the senses with wonder and strangeness so all that was familiar becomes freakish, and the most bizarre of things intimate and natural. For the longest time after the curse fell, I did not know if I was a beast who dreamed of being a man, or a man who dreamed he was a beast.

  There are moments I recall with clarity from that dark stretch of years in which I lost myself. In remembering them, though, the real is indistinguishable from the phantasm. My initial flight in abject terror from my home is as sharp and shapeless as a shard of glass. I know it happened. Everything since has unfolded from it. The details, though, are the stuff of nightmares.

  I have tried to string my memories together to make some sense of those years. But living under such an enchantment is akin to being trapped in the grip of a restless slumber, fighting towards wakefulness and finding only dreams locked within dreams.

  The first moment I felt as though I were awake, in all those years, was the first time I saw Isabeau, standing in a fall of golden light, hesitating on my doorstep in her poor, patched gown. The sun flooded in, spilling across the flagstones and lighting up the very air around her. It was too bright for me. Her radiance dazzled my sleep-blighted eyes and I crept away to hide.

  Everything before that has faded into shadow, or taken on the livid shimmer of a half-remembered delusion. The decades I spent haunting the wild, wild forests my fair lands had become, terrifying people and savaging any livestock foolish enough to stray within its bounds; the starvation years that inevitably followed, as the forest emptied of all living creatures save vermin and the occasional watchful raven; the shatteringly lonely term of my imprisonment in the home I eventually returned to when my misery finally crushed my rage and I remembered what I once had been.

  If it was a living nightmare that took me into the forest, it was most certainly a dream that brought me out of it, and back to my ancestral home.

  Since I had forgotten myself, my dreams had been wild, primal things, a reflection of the savagery that filled my days. But, as the skin sunk deeper into the hollows between my ribs and my empty belly cleaved to my spine, I lost even the strength to run and hunt in my imagination. Now, each night found me limping through the endless, empty forest in my mind, searching and searching. I had no clear idea of what it was I searched for, except that, unlike during my waking hours, it was not food. My memories of those bitter dreams are of hunting through dark, shadowy trees for something hidden in the heart of the forest; something I feared to discover, but I feared more I would never find, and would be lost to me forever.

  One grim night, as I was nearing the end of my strength, I fell asleep upon a bed of pine needles, curled against the rain soaking through the branches above. At once my mind found itself slinking between the measureless ranks of phantom trees. As I dragged my paws forward, I saw ahead a glimmer of moonlight. I lifted my weary head. The moon never pierced the canopy of this unending nightmare.

  As I looked, the pale gleam began to move. I followed. I was so far behind, and so weak and sore of foot, it was all I could do to keep the errant moonbeam in sight. But eventually, I began to draw closer and I could see I was following a woman. She was dressed in the most exquisite finery, such as would not be out of place at the royal court, and she moved as lightly through the trees as if she were stepping across a dance floor. Her pale skirts were long and trailing, and shone in the gloom. She wore a tall, old-fashioned, horned headdress, from which a gossamer veil floated, dissolving behind her into drifting motes of silver light that sunk away into the dark soil of the forest path. She was a vision so rich and rare, I could not help but follow along behind.

  I soon realised we were walking upon a road that wound through the forest. It was ancient and much degraded, its cobbles displaced by roots and covered by moss. Indeed, parts of it were in danger of being entirely reclaimed by the creeping wood.

  Eventually she stopped ahead of me. I came as close as I dared. She was standing before a ruined gate. It had once been very grand indeed, but now ivy twisted through its rusted ironwork, and the stone columns supporting it were crumbling and broken. I did not like to look at the gate; to do so made me feel miserable and afraid. So instead, I looked at her.

  Now I had come upon her, I saw her dress was not, as I had thought, a sumptuous c
ourt gown of satin and brocade. Up close, I could see it was constructed of clotted cobweb and the velvet wings of dead moths. It was not embroidered with pearls and diamonds, but decorated with the tiny bones of small animals and glittering with spiders’ eyes. The veil was no veil, but a drifting cloud of tiny insects glimmering with their own milky iridescence. I hunched down, my hackles rising in fear, and she turned to look at me.

  I could not see her expression, but her eyes gleamed in the darkness, green as a cat’s. Terrified, I hid my face.

  When I looked again, the gate was open and she was some distance away from me, walking between the cracked columns. I did not want to put my paws through that gate, but as my eyes followed her, my gaze fell upon the dark, jagged shape of a ruined building far ahead. Something about its lightless, misshapen hulk called to me and I crept forward.

  I lost sight of the woman for some minutes, then, as I slunk along the overgrown path, I spied her again. She was no longer ahead of me, but walking far away, to the side of the ruin ahead. I hesitated, unsure if I should follow her, or my growing compulsion to see what lay amid the broken walls. By the light of the ghostly glimmer she cast about herself, I saw her walk beneath an archway in a tall hedge. I could see nothing but trees beyond. My heart quailed. What could lie through that portal, but the forest? I did not want to go back there. I turned away from the fading smudge of light and started again towards the shattered building looming distantly against the night sky.

  The path twisted to and fro among strange, dark shapes vastly different to any forest tree I had seen, and yet eerily familiar. With every step I took, a sense of creeping unease grew in my breast. Then the path made another twist and before me lay the ruined chateau I had seen from the gate.

  Within its roofless, crumbling walls, burning brands illuminated a scene of the basest debauchery. Bodies writhed and danced and crawled around the figure of a man, who stood among them, his shirt open and his hair wild. In his hand he held a bottle glinting amber in the firelight. His eyes shone with a mad light, and his face was grey with the ravages of illness.

  Pain lanced through my heart.

  I knew him. I hated him. The anger I thought had died erupted into incandescence within me and I sprang forward, snarling.

  But my claws and teeth met with nothing. I crashed heavily upon the stone floor and lay, writhing and alone, amid the cold, dark ruin of the house in which I had been raised.

  Memories came flooding back. A confused and bitter cacophony, with rage and hatred at its heart. I threw back my head to howl, but the sound that came out was a human scream.

  I jerked awake.

  I was in the forest. My hairy paws scrabbled in the sodden mulch as I heaved myself upright.

  Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

  I was still a broken, starving beast – but I remembered now. I remembered what I had been, and how I had been transformed. I remembered the Fairy’s cold, green eyes. Let all who look upon you see the nature of the heart beating in your breast, was the curse she had laid upon me. And only now, with my arrogance crushed and my rage exhausted, could I begin to see the truth of her words.

  But what good was any of it now? I was alone and close to death.

  I hung my head. At my feet, a pale, wet rock glistened in the darkness. It was a curious, regular shape. Not far from it lay another, so similar as to be identical. I looked around. A short distance away, the rain had washed a film of dirt and mulch from the ragged edge of a ruined, cobbled road. My hackles rose as fear gripped me.

  Was I still dreaming? I was so sure I was awake.

  I stepped forward, sniffing. There was an odd tang in the air. It took me a few moments to place the scent. Magic. I don’t know how I knew it, but I realised now the scent had pervaded the forest as long as I had lived in it. Until now, however, the magic had been old and settled. This was fresh and new.

  With sudden clarity, I knew I was not dreaming. The road was real, and I knew where it would take me, if I chose to follow it.

  I could, of course, choose not to. I could slink away into the forest and ignore it. Without a doubt, that would have spelled my death. I did not feel ready to take the path. I did not feel ready to return. But with death as the alternative, my formless fears were no longer of any consequence.

  Not knowing what else to do, I stepped onto the path and began to follow it home.

  Chapter II

  My return was a bleak event. The gates were rusted open, the gardens overgrown and tangled. As I came to the chateau I saw crumbled walls and broken windows and exposed beams like shattered ribs where the roof had fallen in. The elements, the animals and insects had all found their way inside. The furniture, fine tapestries and luxurious carpets were rotting away. Expensive baubles had been scattered and broken and the colours of valuable paintings washed away by rain. If I had not known, I would never have recognised my beautiful home. But I knew now. The moment I put my hairy paws through the gates, I knew it all again.

  That night I crept into the entrance hall, through the drifts of decaying leaves and piles of rubble. My arrival disturbed a veritable horde of verminous beetles, black and glittering, that fled at my approach, scuttling away into cracks in the broken stonework. I lay down before the fireplace. I could not light a fire, but I had my accursed fur. Weary and sorrowful beyond belief, I followed the example of the dogs I had owned, many years before, and laid my great, shaggy head upon my paws and fell asleep.

  When I awoke – seemingly but a moment after I had closed my eyes – it had all changed.

  It was the fire that woke me. The instant I felt its glow on my flank and heard the quick snap of wood, I was roused. At the sight of the flames dancing brightly in the grate, I sprang violently back, hurtling into a chair. I knocked it over, scrambled up and backed away. The chair was upholstered in wine-coloured velvet and familiar to me. It had been a favourite station by the fire once, long ago. Warily I looked about and saw my hall as I remembered it. But to my beast’s nostrils, the air stank of magic, recently invoked.

  As I stared around myself, a movement caught my eye. An earwig crawled over the velvet brocade arm of the fallen chair and disappeared. Then, before my eyes, the chair righted itself and moved back into place. I had been a beast for many years and had only just remembered myself. For longer than I had lived as a man I had let wild instinct govern me, and it governed me still. I fled. The great doors were shut fast, so I bolted up the grand staircase, only to be halted at the halfway landing. Here was an elaborate Venetian mirror; taller than a man, it dominated the landing where the staircase branched. The sight of myself in this mirror brought me up hard. I was frozen. I could not run. Not from myself.

  I was no pretty creature. Not built like a wolf or a bear or a lion; yet, a little of each. I had the lion’s mane – a mass of dark, dark hair growing about my face and neck and over my shoulders. I was massive, my paws armed with long, sharp talons I could never sheathe, and crowning my head were a pair of gnarled and twisted horns. But my eyes – oh, my eyes! They were unchanged; as blue and human as the day the curse had been laid. No wonder people ran in terror from me. To recognise my eyes and know the horror and corruption I had become – how they must have feared me.

  Now my own eyes held me. I stared into them, they stared into me. Around them, instead of a nobleman with elegantly clipped hair and clothes of velvet and satin, was a beast with tangled, matted fur and slavering jaws, grovelling on all four feet.

  After the first shocked moment of realisation, such despair and anger surged within my monstrous breast that, snarling, I hurled myself at the mirror.

  I met the cold, implacable glass with such force it cracked in two. I fell back. What I saw only enraged me further. My hackles rose. Each half now reflected back to me my image. Two sets of shocked, blue eyes now stared at me from within the broken frame. I gave a roar and threw myself forward again, one thought in my brain: No mirrors. I will not abide any mirrors.

  Again
and again I attacked that great slab of mocking, silvered glass. Each time it cracked, a new set of glaring, human eyes would be there, staring out from the abomination of my face. I tore at it with my claws and blindly pounded my horns against its surface. Shards of glass began to fall around me, smashing apart on the marble floor. Finally, the entire thing shattered, cascading to the floor in a thousand fragments. I stood on my four feet, swaying with exhaustion, surveying the destruction I had wrought. It was enough. Nowhere could I see a sliver large enough to show me what I had become.

  What little strength I had left now deserted me. I collapsed, exhausted from my frenzy and torn and bleeding from my work.

  When I awoke the next morning, I was sprawled upon the bed I had used when I was human. The room was hung with cobwebs and thick with dust, but the dirt and tangles had been combed from my fur, the insidious splinters of glass removed and my gashes dressed and bound.

  On a chest at the foot of the bed was a tray upon which sat a most unappetising breakfast. Stale bread, withered fruit and a thin, greasy gruel. Still, I was hungry enough to eat anything. A tarnished spoon lay beside the food: a utensil I had no hope of being able to use. In bitter humiliation I ate by thrusting my blunt nose into the middle of the meal, tearing at the bread and gulping down the gruel as though I were a dog.

  The very act of eating exhausted me, but the room was so cold and drear, I could not bear to stay. I slunk out the door and down the corridor, back towards the entrance hall in search of the fire that had roused me last night. Despite the ministrations of whoever had tended my wounds, I hurt all over. A deep cut on one of my hind feet reopened, leaking blood through the linen bandage and leaving a trail of crimson paw prints across the bare stone. At the great staircase I stopped, wary of subjecting my lacerated paws to the gauntlet of broken glass I had created in my distemper. But I could not see even the tiniest glittering fragment amid the ruins of the rotting carpet and dead leaves clogging the stairs. The only remaining evidence of the existence of the great glass was its ghostly outline on the wall.