Beastkeeper

by Cat Hellisen

  The bird was warm in her mouth, and Sarah had to fight against the urge to crunch down and swallow it. Don’t. Don’t think about it. Instead, she let the trees and the branches open before her and show her where they wanted her to be.

  She was far from the castle now, but still going in aimless circles.

  The magic of witches and humans and curses had failed her completely. It was time to trust something older. She held on to the tiny bit of humanity she had left and gave up the rest of herself to being a beast.

  It felt like letting go of a balloon. The little speck of her that was a girl who liked to read, who missed her mother, drifted away until it was lost in the sky. It became easier to race through the darkening boughs. The trails widened and the forest led her on. Her paws did not break the fallen twigs, the way a girl’s clumsy feet might, and the branches did not whip her cheeks or tangle in her fur. She felt no cold, just warmth and speed.

  She was only vaguely aware when the second beast joined her again, and together they ran. This time there was no crowned buck to follow, no loyal, beautiful, cruel boy bound to the forest and to the shape of its magic. There was just the forest itself.

  Another beast, older, greater than either of them, slipped from the darkness and became the head of their pack. His horns were sharper now, his fur longer, bright-washed by rain and snow. He ran silently with them.

  Sarah felt the pack-rightness of her father alongside her, of her grandfather ahead, and redoubled her efforts, pounding her legs against the frozen ground. There was ice in her lungs, frost on her fur, and starlight-bright snow swirled around them. The trees were glass-coated. The forest was leading them to the Within. Sarah leaped ahead, knowing what she needed to do.

  The river waited for them. The pathways had taken them to a bank that was less steep, where the rapids ran shallower, and a trail of rocks broke the surface like a bridge of old tusks. White water frothed about their roots. Sarah paused on the snow-deep bank and felt the cold wet her belly.

  The other two beasts looked at her in concern. The older one howled mournfully and said nothing. The younger merely sat and said nothing. They wanted her to run away with them. They did not understand why she had brought them here to this terrible river.

  They said nothing.

  They told her this with their ears, their eyes, their whines and growls.

  Even her grandfather had lost what was left of him here in the forest.

  Sarah’s legs were numb. The only warmth now seemed to come from the bird in her mouth. It was a coal against her tongue, and the urge to drop it and cool her burning jaw with mouthfuls of snow was strong.

  Pain. Drop. Drop. Drink, the beast part of her mind clamored. It was a rage of instinct, but Sarah tightened her grip, clenching her teeth like a cage around the coal-burn of her mother’s body.

  My name is Sarah. My mother’s name is Merete. Her mother’s name is Freya. We have not always been beasts. She turned to the huge shadowy figures. My name is Sarah. My father’s name is Leon. My grandfather had a name once: Eduard. We have not always been beasts.

  Her father’s eyes were animal, with not a flicker of human understanding anywhere in them. He had run with her because he sensed pack-rightness, nothing more. He had no words; he had lost his love, and himself. He whined, turning away from the raging waters and disappearing back between the long trunks of the pine trees.

  Her grandfather watched her as if deep inside him a little part still understood what she was doing and why, but he made no move to go with her.

  Turn back, and be a beast complete, or go on and do this one last human thing. Sarah looked at the raging waters. Perhaps it would be better if she just followed them, after all.

  Her heart tightened as if an invisible fist had closed around it, and Sarah whined softly. She held the burning body firmly in her mouth and took an awkward leap to the nearest wet-black rock. It was slippery as eel skin, and she scrabbled there, her claws splayed for a better grip. Water splashed against her, drenching what little fur had stayed dry this far. She was bedraggled, the wet fur clinging to her skin. She felt smaller and weaker.

  The next few stones were easy enough. They lay close together, and with slow, careful movements, she inched her way toward the center of the river. The water ran black, shadows of deep green flickering below her. Sarah hung in place. The distance to the next rock was too far for a simple jump. Even as a beast, she wasn’t sure she would make it. Her heart was hammering as she looked back to see if her grandfather was following.

  The bank was spotted with her paw prints. The large beast still sat, watching her progress. His black horns rose in high coils behind his ears, and for a moment, he looked like something that wasn’t flesh and bone and fur, but a shadowy nightmare creature. He raised his blunt head and howled once, a sound that set the trees to shivering, their snow loads dropping from them like falling cloaks. Then he turned and walked back into the forest.

  The knowledge that even her grandfather had given up hit Sarah so hard that she almost lost her balance. Her back legs slipped into the water, and she scratched and wriggled, trying to get a grip on the black stone and pull herself up out of the freezing current.

  Finally, she had all four paws back on her outcrop. Her soaked fur provided no protection from the cold now. She shook, only her fierce determination keeping her from just letting go and falling to the water and allowing it to take her away. She knew she wasn’t going to make that leap to the next rock, but she gathered her paws under her, crouching down and preparing her hind legs like springs. The rock wavered in her sight. A beast would give up. A beast would go back to the woods and forget this.

  She jumped. The water tore and roared beneath her, and her brief flight ended in a splash that almost made her drop the burden she carried. The current pulled her away from the rock, downstream.

  Swim, Sarah commanded herself, and her legs obeyed, kicking out, kicking her toward the far bank, cold and white and waiting.

  She lost track of all thought, counting out each kick, each paddle, until finally her forepaws made contact with the ice-crackled edges of the river, and she broke through them like finest glass, to drag herself shivering onto the snow-covered bank.

  She stayed there, and a lethargic heat began to slowly replace the numb cold burn in her legs. A last shudder rippled through her exhausted body. Snow was still falling, and it made for her a white duvet. Sarah grinned mirthlessly. It was like being tucked up for bedtime, feeling the cool bed suck up her body heat and return it to her. A nest.

  It would have all been fine, she could have stayed there and gone to sleep warm and safe. If it wasn’t for the thing in her mouth.

  Hot thing.

  Drop. Her jaws worked, thick ribbons of spit dripped from them as she tried to work the burning thing out of her mouth.

  She couldn’t remember why she was carrying it. Drop. Sleep.

  The beast that had been Sarah paused. It had been doing something, it knew. Someone had wanted it to take the burning thing. It struggled to its feet, shaking off the thin layer of snow. Its legs were trembling. On, said a voice in the back of its head. A clear voice. A human voice. My name is Sarah. My mother’s name is Merete. My grandmother’s name is Freya. We—are—not—beasts.

  The beast struggled up the bank and made for the line of trees, deeper into the Within. No birds called here, and the winds ripped and tore, rising with every step the beast took closer to the last boundary.

  The trunks rose to meet the beast and thickened, joined, until they had created a solid wall. It was higher than the castle towers, and the snow slammed against its smooth black surface to fall in drifts.

  The beast raised one paw to claw against the wall. It could not open its mouth to speak, and all it knew was what the voice in its head was repeating endlessly.

  My name is Sarah. My mother’s name is Merete. My grandmother’s name is Freya. We are not beasts.

  Not yet.

  It dropped down, finally un
able to move onward. The wall was colder even than the ice and snow, and it fizzed and hissed with magic. The beast pressed its burned mouth against the slick black surface, and let the corpse drop. It lay at the foot of the wall, small and perfect. It looked like at any moment it would leap back to its feet and hop about in the snow, bright-eyed, before it took wing,

  The beast stared at the bird, and when it spoke, it had found the words.

  “My name is Sarah, and I am not a beast.”

  With a terrible creaking sound, the wall began to tear. The split crackled down like an arrow point, to end at Sarah’s paws. The gap it made was narrow, but on the other side stood the Within.

  It was green and smelled of apples, and the air hummed.

  Sarah bowed her head to gently lift the small corpse, then clambered up to squeeze through the rift in the wall.

  16

  THE WAY WE END

  THE WITHIN WAS FULL of paths leading under tree boughs that turned from blossom to green leaf to golden apple to black and back again. With every step, the trees changed, shifting between seasons like dancers. White blossoms fell before Sarah’s paws, and brown leaves, and withered fruit, but Sarah didn’t hesitate. She kept her head down and walked on to the very heart of her grandmother’s realm.

  A single giant tree stood there, hollow but still living, its heavily laden branches held up by weathered posts. A green lawn dotted with small blue flowers made a carpet around it, and Freya, in her cloak of white feathers, sat on a chair under the shade of the branches. The chair could have been carved from rock, but was hidden beneath a layer of moss so green and deep it was hard to tell the original material of her throne.

  Alan sat cross-legged at her feet, his hands in his lap. He was staring out into nothing. Where his amber eyes had been were empty hollows, the skin sewn closed. He turned his head as Sarah approached, tilting to hear her better. Around his neck was a fine silver chain, with a little silver bear pendant.

  Freya made no move as Sarah padded closer; her expression was set in blank misery.

  When Sarah was only a few feet from her grandmother’s throne, she dropped the bird. It lay between them.

  “I cannot help you,” Freya said. “The terms of the curse are as they are.”

  “I know,” said Sarah. “I think I understand now. The curse can only end with your death.” She shrugged. “The curse will end anyway.”

  “How?”

  “After me, there will be no more human children to grow up and fall in love with anyone. Nanna has gone mad. Grandfather and my dad are only animals.” The words were hard to speak. Sarah had to say them slowly and carefully, thinking each sound out before she said it. The hardest were still to come. She raised her snout and stared into Freya’s storm-eyes. “And my mother is dead.”

  Sarah shuffled back a little, to get a better look at Alan. Freya had blinded him, but it seemed that even so, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy him. Just as Sarah couldn’t now.

  He’d tried to save them, after all. In his own way.

  “So I brought her here,” Sarah said, and pointed her muzzle at the bird. “We should bury her properly, and then when that’s done, I will go back to the forest.”

  “And forget?” said Freya.

  Sarah nodded. “You told me yourself that curses always go in circles. I am choosing to step out of the circle. Maybe I can’t break it, but I can refuse to be a part of it, to step away from revenge and jealousy.” She looked her grandmother squarely in the face. “I can do what you couldn’t. I can forgive.”

  “You say that because you’re a child, you think it’s simple—”

  Sarah ignored her. “I forgive you,” she said softly, “and I forgive him.” She glanced at Alan. It was hard, yes, but somehow easier than she’d expected, once the words were out. Perhaps it was this, more than remembering her name, that made her truly human.

  There was a long moment of silence as Freya considered her. “There are days…” she said, and laughed bitterly. “Almost every day, if we are to be honest, now, at the end of it—almost every day I wish I had never met Inga. I cursed her because she couldn’t see what I wanted her to see. And I cursed Eduard because he was handsome, and vain.” She stood, and walked down from her stone chair to lift up the little bird.

  When Sarah had entered the Within, the corpse had stopped blistering her mouth. It was nothing more than a simple dead bird.

  Freya held it in her palms and pressed her mouth to the feathers. “And look what it brought me,” she said softly.

  “You can break the curse,” Alan said.

  Freya snorted in disgust. “I cannot,” she said. “I am the witch of the Within, the most powerful of my kind, and I will not.”

  “You could pass your power on.” Alan turned his blind face away from them both, as if even now he couldn’t bear to look at the scene before him. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “Ah,” said Freya softly. “And you think you should be the recipient, beastkeeper?”

  “It’s amazing the things you learn when you start listening to the forest,” Alan said. “You’re the witch of the woods, true enough, and the woods are endless and ageless, but you’re not the first, nor will you be the last.”

  “Is he right?” Sarah growled. “Could you have ended it all?”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Freya. “The power that you think I can so simply transfer, as if it were a rubied crown, or a title—it is the only thing that keeps me alive.” She drew her cloak around her. “And even if I decided to simply walk to my own death, something could still go wrong. If the vessel I chose were too weak or flawed to hold my power, there would be magical backlash beyond imagining. The storm you saw when I was freed would be nothing more than the merest glimpse of what could happen.”

  “You had him,” Sarah said, and looked to the blind boy. “You could have stopped it all, freed my mother and father, Nanna and Grandfather, everyone, if you’d given it up to him?” She lunged up, driving Freya back into her seat, pinning her in place with her heavy paws on the witch’s chest. “But you didn’t. For what?” she roared. “Give it up. Give it up now, or I will tear your throat out myself.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I’ve threatened you before,” Sarah said, “and you were quite right: back then I didn’t mean it. But I promise you now that things have very definitely changed.” She closed her teeth around Freya’s throat and held her. She felt the flesh moving under her teeth when Freya whispered.

  “Even now, I am stronger than you could ever be. I could call down birds to tear your eyes out, I could raise storms that would strip the skin right off your bones—”

  “So why don’t you?” Sarah said, the words muffled. “Why. Don’t. You.”

  “The same reason you will not close your teeth and tear out my throat.” Freya began to laugh softly, breathlessly. “Or perhaps the only thing stopping you is fear. Kill me, and see what happens.”

  “No,” Sarah said. She held on to the word forgive, and though it took every ounce of self-control she had, she managed to ease her jaws loose and step away from her grandmother. I can do this. “Alan?”

  He shifted at the sound of her voice.

  “Stand up and take hold of my fur.” Sarah leaped down to stand next to him. He curled one hand in the ruff of her neck. The touch shocked through her. Not in a heart-fluttering, weak-at-the-knees kind of way, but with the knowledge that in his own fashion, Alan was as cursed by Freya as any of the rest of them had been. “Get on,” she said, “and hold tight.”

  “What are you doing?” he said, but even so, he did as he was told, clambering onto her back like she was some kind of strange, shaggy pony.

  “Leaving,” said Sarah. “And so are you. You did terrible things to save her. I brought her daughter back—I’m her own granddaughter, and still she won’t do what she should have done in the first place.”

  “I cannot,” Freya shrieked. She held one hand at her throat, but Sa
rah could see the little red points where her teeth had nicked the skin. She wondered if she should have done it. No. This is why the curses never ended. Because they were all of them so desperate for revenge. I’ll break it my own way. Still, she hoped that Freya might yet change her mind. It wasn’t that she wanted her grandmother to die—there had been enough death. She merely wanted everything settled and ended, with a happily-ever-after like when curses ended in fairy tales.

  Except this wasn’t a tale—or it was, but as Freya had said when she was still a raven, it was the part of the story no one liked to tell: the unhappily-ever-after.

  Sarah walked carefully forward, closer to Freya, worried that Alan might lose his grip and fall, but he had a good seat and his fingers were buried deep in her fur. The woman shivered once as she approached, but otherwise she made no move. “You can,” Sarah said to her. “You just won’t. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not a beast, I’m just beast-shaped, and the rest of the forest is waiting for me.”

  She turned away from the throne of moss and the witch who occupied it, but she couldn’t stop herself from glancing back. “You can keep your power, you can keep the Within, but the day you realize that what you want has cost you more than it’s worth, you will know where to find us.”

  Freya watched her, thin-lipped and stone-faced.

  “Now,” Sarah said to Alan, “hold fast.”

  And she ran.

  17

  AFTER

  IT WAS THE END OF SUMMER, when the leaves on the trees were just considering the approach of autumn, and the first few had already begun to curl and fall. The wind was rising, still playful but with the snick of winter in its jaws, when Freya left the Within.