by Zoe Marriott
And yet he was the same creature who had tried to kill me and eat me. Who had nearly clawed my father to death. Who had devoured Grandmother. Who had taken Kyo.
Why – why – why – had he saved me? Fished me out of my grave in the Dark Wood where he had knocked me himself with his great paw, and carried me back here, and tended me with every appearance of true concern? Why lie, why take on that human, or human-like form, why pretend to be my friend? All those details. The way he had tended the animals. The very clothes on my back, made with such tender care and attention. His voice as he whispered the names of his lost family.
Had all of our friendship truly been nothing but some sick game to him?
No. No. Don’t think of it.
It made no sense. But nothing in this place made sense. The curse on the mountain, my people’s suffering, had never made any sense. Magic, enchantment, beasts and mazes… How could an ordinary village girl hope to understand any of it? It was a nightmare, had always been a nightmare, even when it seemed it was a dream.
“Hana-san!” shouted the beast.
No, I thought grimly, forcing myself to crush the first rush of desperate panic down, squeezing my sobs into pants and then slow, deep breaths. Your game is over, beast. We will play a new game now, and I will make the rules.
It was already too late to try to employ any kind of tactics. I had lost track of where in the maze I was almost at once, and even if I had managed to run for my life logically and coolly, it would not have done me much good. I did not know the way out, and the only safety was away. Away from him.
So his voice became my guide. Whenever I heard him, all I had to do was keep going in the opposite direction.
“Hana-san! Come back!” he cried. “You are too near the centre of the maze! This is dangerous!”
Not as dangerous as you.
Yet soon, it seemed, every other turn led me into the biting cold, or to a dead end. The long curving corridors that I had walked with Itsuki – no, the beast – by my side seemed to have closed up, giving me no choice but to travel around in ever decreasing circles as the sound of his voice grew closer and closer.
Why was I surprised that this accursed place had turned on me too? What else had I expected it to do? It was his home, after all. The whole maze was a wicked trap. But if he caught me now that he knew I had seen through his deception, seen him for what he truly was … the Moon alone knew what he would do to me.
At last I found myself cornered. Ahead was another dead end, to my left an impassable ice-encrusted corridor. I turned at bay to see Itsuki – the beast, the beast, call him, call it what it is – bearing down on me.
“Please…” he pleaded as he slowly approached, his hands, the same great paws that had nearly ripped my arm from my body, held out in a pose of supplication.
He had taken the time to hide himself – his hood was pulled fully forwards and the wrappings were back in place so that the telltale white and black and glittering green lay concealed. He looked like the man I had known and cared for – once more my dear friend that I could trust above all others. For an eye blink I felt my resolve, my knowledge, waver.
But there! On my right, an opening, a narrow gap in the hedge that I had somehow missed. I dived into it.
It was a garden I had never seen before. A silvery flat pool of water that stretched from one wall of thorns to another, uninterrupted save for a bridge woven of twisted white branches. On the other side of the bridge was a second opening in the dark hedge. Beyond that, an ice-free thorn corridor.
Escape.
“Hana, don’t! It is a trap!”
I scurried away from him onto the uneven surface of the bridge. The branches flexed and gave strangely underfoot, and a sense of alarm caused me to glance down to check my balance even as I darted forwards. I saw the sky reflected in the still water, and the bridge’s arch of pale branches, and my own face too, staring back at me, white as death with eyes like gaping black holes…
It was not my face in the water. It was a skull. The skull of some large animal that lay at the bottom of the pool. And those white sticks I saw were not reflections of the bridge, but the bones of many other animals, at least a dozen, lying beneath the water, bound in place by chains of bleached wood.
The bridge stirred sinuously beneath my feet, like a creature stretching after a long nap in the sun. I flung myself forwards – and hit a wall of spiny branches that spun up around me. They moved before my astonished eyes, forming a jagged cage. Even as I seized the nearest branch and wrenched at it with all my strength, I realized the bridge was sinking, dragging me down, down, towards the silent still pool and its graveyard of drowned animals.
A thunderous roar shook the air behind me – the beast’s roar. It was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard. I was trapped. My knees gave way.
In the next moment some immense force hit me from behind. With a jarring crash, the wall of dry branches fell away, as if they were no more than the thin skin of frost on the surface of a puddle. I was propelled through the hole in the cage, and tumbled down the other side of the bridge, rolling head over heels in a landslide of rattling broken branches. I landed on my front and skidded a good two feet – clear of the water, clear of the deadly garden and its trap – into the corridor of the maze beyond.
Shaken and gasping, I rolled to my knees and looked back into the garden I had just escaped.
Itsuki – the beast – was on the bridge now. He … he must have jumped onto it behind me, ripped a hole in the branches with his bare hands, and knocked me off … but he had been caught in the wreck of the cage. White branches wrapped around his ankles like manacles, and wove around his wrists.
The bridge was dragging him into the pool in my place.
Unlike me, he made no effort to struggle. I was sure he had the strength to break free whenever he wished. But he only crouched, motionless, head bowed, as the bridge spun ever more branches around him, and slowly, slowly sank downwards. I remembered my fall into the hot spring just a week or so ago, the shock of the water surging into my nose and mouth, how it had burned – and the strong hand that had hauled me out and hit my back until I coughed the water out. His hand.
The beast’s hand.
What is he doing? He could easily get loose. Why doesn’t he fight?
Why do you care? asked another part of me – the dry, sneering inner voice that sounded like Kyo. Isn’t this your chance to escape him?
But he’ll drown!
Why do you care? repeated that insinuating inner voice. He is a beast. A killer.
But—
But what?
“Beast!” I shouted. “What is the matter with you? Do you want to drown?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t look up. Didn’t even flinch. He simply stared down into the water as it rose inexorably, past his waist, and lapped at his ribs. As if he’d given up. As if he wanted…
Why do you care, Hana?
Swearing under my breath, I grabbed one of the long, sturdy branches that had broken off the bridge when I burst through its cage of limbs, and surged to my feet.
“Beast!” I called. “Beast, you must take hold of this branch, and I will pull you to safety. Quickly now.”
The darkly hooded head lifted, and I felt his gaze on my face like the heat of a blazing fire. Yet he made no attempt to free himself, or to reach for the branch that hovered a few inches before his nose. The water was at his shoulders now, an unnatural silvery stillness, like mercury, undisturbed by a single ripple.
“Beast,” I said again, and then stopped. I could not find it in myself to plead with him. Neither could I find it in myself to walk away and let him drown.
With sudden, shocking vividness, that moment when I had lain in what I thought was my grave, in the quiet earth, with the sun touching my face, returned to me – and with it the memory of that glorious feeling of peace and acceptance – and I wondered with a pang of doubt if what I did now was truly kindness on my part at all. He was
a beast. He was alone. He lived in a cursed wood, in a maze of thorns, wracked with mysterious crippling pains, feeding on the corpses of humans. And he had done so for at least a hundred years.
It was a horrible life. Even for a monster.
Perhaps he felt the same peace as I had. If so, he must want this, want it to be over, desperately.
But he had not left me to die.
I could not leave him now.
“Itsuki,” I whispered, as the pool washed at his chin. “Itsuki. Please.”
He did not move. The water closed over him. A single bubble popped on the surface. All was still.
I drew in a long, shallow breath. It whistled hollowly in my chest, shaking me like a death rattle. A strange coldness, colder even than Kyo’s icy absence, bloomed at the centre of me, and I felt something crack there, something vital that I didn’t even have a name for. It – I – was breaking, shattering to pieces, flying apart—
A bent white hand broke through the water, fragments of pale wood twined about the wrist, and grasped hold of the other end of the branch that I still clutched in both fists. That terrible rattling breath escaped my lips in a desperate high-pitched sound. I braced my legs, leaned back, and pulled for all I was worth.
Fourteen
“Why did you” – cough – “turn back?” Cough. “Why didn’t you leave me?” Cough, cough.
Water sloughed off him in long silvery runnels. I dropped my end of the branch and backed away, making room for him on the grass. “I don’t know.” My voice wobbled. “I don’t… I couldn’t just let you die.”
Shouldn’t you be running, Hana? Shouldn’t you be hiding? sneered my unkind internal voice.
Too late for that. The furious strength of rage and panic that had fuelled my flight was all used up. I’d made my choice now. I needed answers. But first I had to work out exactly what questions to ask.
I lowered myself stiffly down onto the grass and drew my legs up, ignoring the way the movement pulled at my side, my hip. Perhaps I deserved the pain. I heard the rustle of grass and the wet squelch of his clothes as he flopped over onto his back a few feet away.
Then he began to laugh.
Not the soft, amused huff which I had come to know so well. Not the real, joyous laughter I had heard from him only once. It was a broken, mad laugh that came out gurgling and wet. As I recoiled, somehow shocked despite everything by the savagery of that sound, he dragged himself into a sitting position, and flung away the cloak and the face-coverings, exposing his face with violent, angry movements. My eyes winced from his inhuman beauty – though his expression was so twisted just then that the beauty was almost hidden, like clouds hide the sun.
There was foam on his lips, and it was pink with blood. He swiped at it with the back of his hand. “I wasn’t going to die. Don’t you think I’ve tried drowning before?”
It took me a moment to absorb the meaning of his words. “What?”
The laughter died away. His shoulders jerked inward, hunching. “I assure you, I have attempted to end my life by every possible method this prison has to offer. It’s no good. Nothing works. ‘You wear the shape of a man, but to me you have been a beast. Very well then – a beast you shall truly be. Suffer as I have suffered, beast, until you have learned to love, as truly I once loved. And when you have learned that, suffer still more, until you have proved yourself worthy of being loved in return, as once my beloved loved me.’ That was what she said when she brought me here. That was her curse.”
Her. The Yuki-Onna. Did that mean what Itsuki had told me was true – that he was indeed a prisoner here, and not the architect of this place? If the maze was truly not of Itsuki’s making…
What else was she responsible for?
I shook my head, scolding myself for leaping to defend him in my thoughts so quickly, so easily. He could still be lying. “What does it mean, all that?”
“It means never, Hana-san. There is no end to this wretched half-life. Not even death. Not until she judges that I have suffered enough. And it will never, ever be enough.”
This wretched half-life. “You are the beast, aren’t you? You are that monstrous thing.”
His head tilted in acknowledgement, the white mane of hair still dripping. “I … change. With the Moon. When the Moon is new, I am a man. As it ages, I begin to twist and reform. When the Moon is dark, I become the beast. The beast is … a beast. I cannot control what it does. I don’t know what it does. I don’t want to. But … I know enough to recognize the signs. The claw marks. I knew that it must have been me who hurt you.” He put one hand over his face. “I didn’t know how to explain. You were already so afraid, and I just wanted to help you get better.”
“You don’t remember?” I whispered.
It was the answer I had sought, little though he realized it. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. Itsuki had eaten people, devoured them so completely that even their bones had never been found, and I … oh, merciful Moon … I couldn’t tell him. I could not say the words aloud to him.
To know what he had done would drive him mad. Perhaps that was even the point of it.
It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his will. Itsuki might have killed and consumed humans when he was a beast – but the magic that transformed him, stole away his rational mind and left him a ravening monster that was everything he would hate and fear, was the same vile enchantment which called my people into the wood at the dark of the Moon like rabbits to be slaughtered. And that magic was not his. He didn’t have control of its power. He didn’t even know it was happening.
It was the Yuki-Onna’s doing.
She must be mad. To do this to him. To us. She must be completely insane.
And I was trapped here within her maze. She had seen me through her peacock spy. She had chosen to leave me be so far for reasons that were almost certainly malign. I was filled with fear at the thought of such a vengeful creature and the inimical forces she must command.
Yet at the same time I felt a surge of relief, a lightness in my spirit that approached joy. For Itsuki was the monster in the forest, a terrible, unnatural beast … but he was still my friend.
There had been no game, and his lies had not been to torment me but to protect himself. I could forgive that. I could forgive anything, so long as he was Itsuki, that gentle kind giant who sang lullabies to his patients to calm them, and let fox cubs play hide-and-seek in the folds of his cloak.
But that in turn raised another question, one that had gone unanswered for too long.
“Itsuki, why? Why – by the Moon’s sacred face – what happened between you and the Yuki-Onna? What did you do? What could anyone possibly do to deserve all this?”
He shook his head, the movement one of mute misery.
“You must tell me. You owe me the truth.”
He flinched, then so quickly that the words ran together, he said: “I killed her.”
The bald statement sat between us like a stone. I swallowed hard.
He could not mean as the beast. She had made the beast.
Then the words of her curse that he had repeated came back to me. I remembered that Yuki-Onna were not true nature spirits but the souls of the dead which had arisen again. Usually women who had died of exposure. I got unsteadily to my feet, took two wobbly steps forwards, and knelt again by his side on the smooth short grass. My voice, when it emerged, was like iron. “Explain.”
He hunched inward even further, still hiding his face. “I … I don’t want…”
“I know you don’t. It’s time you did anyway,” I said firmly. “I’m caught up in all this, my people are caught up in all this, and at the root of it is you. You, and her.”
“Your people?” he asked, letting his hand slide down enough that one poisonous green eye blinked out at me between his fingers.
I met his look steadily. “For one hundred years, we have been unable to leave this mountain. The Dark Wood that rings our village – the wood that hides this maze, that hides you – is cu
rsed. We’re trapped. Just as you are trapped. And … people disappear. They leave their beds at the dark of the Moon and they vanish into the wood and no one ever sees them again. My grandmother. My brother, Kyo. They were both taken. My father was one of those people, too – but he came back. I found him. Somehow he escaped. Only he didn’t escape intact. He wouldn’t wake up. There was – is – some dark spell on him, the same spell that called him into the Dark Wood, and it will kill him if we can’t break it. I came into the Dark Wood to hunt the monster that was responsible, to free my village from the curse, to take vengeance for all I’d lost. I came to hunt you. To kill you if I could.”
He shuddered. “And afterwards the wood brought you to my door.”
“So you could save the girl that the beast nearly killed. My memories were all … locked away. I suppose my mind sheltered me until I was recovered enough to remember what I had seen without going mad. But I remember now. Everything we have suffered. This isn’t idle curiosity. I am as bound up in this magic as you are. You must tell me how it happened, Itsuki. You must. Tell me.”
The one eye of Itsuki’s that I could see slid shut. He seemed to brace himself – and then he nodded.
“First of all … you must know that I am not from your forests. I grew up in the City of the Moon. The great Tsuki no Machi that lies at the foot of this mountain. My house was very wealthy and powerful. Too wealthy and powerful. My father lived in the belief that anything he wanted was his by right. He was not pleased when his first two offspring – sons – died one after the other of childhood illnesses. When I was born, he took me from my mother. He said her coddling was what had made my brothers weak, and that he would make me strong enough to survive. He was content to leave my little sisters to her care, when they came along. I strove to be perfect, to be his exact mirror image. I don’t think I ever allowed any idea in my head which he hadn’t put there. To waver would have been betrayal in his eyes – and in mine.”
