by Cat Hellisen
Six years—or maybe six hundred, or maybe sixty—had passed since Sarah had run from the Within and set out to be as human a beast as she could manage. She lived near Alan’s cottage in the woods, mainly to make sure he was coping with his blindness. For the most part, he did better than she’d expected. Perhaps, Sarah supposed, because he had always been magical—more than a simple beastkeeper.
Over time, Sarah had done her best to build ties to Nanna, and while she still wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around, Nanna had tried, in her own way, to make amends. The loss of all her family had changed her, made her small and broken. The last few years had been better for her, because Grandfather had taken to creeping out from the forest and taking tea at the castle. On some days he was even human, so Sarah figured that love was a fickle thing, and she left them to it.
The beast that had been her father hunted with her sometimes on moonlit nights, but mostly he kept himself to himself, and Sarah saw less of him as time passed. She was sad, in the beginning, but she understood. It seemed there was nothing human left in him at all.
And between themselves, she and Alan had worked out a comfortable sort of friendship, one that never got too close to dabbling in curses. It was safer that way.
Sarah was lying in a spot of autumnal sun, watching the last of the season’s white butterflies tumbling about the hollyhocks, listening to Alan whistling from the cottage kitchen as he made tea (a cup for him, a bowl for her), when the weather turned, and a bitter wind blew Freya right into their meadow.
The cabbage-white butterflies froze in midflight and tumbled to the ground, their wings crisped with an edging of ice. Sarah shook her head and got to her feet.
“Call him,” snapped Freya.
“Call him yourself,” said Sarah.
“Neither of you needs to call me,” Alan pointed out, as he came out of the cottage. “I’m blind, not deaf.”
“You,” said Freya, and before any of them could say another word, she grabbed Alan’s arm, catching him in a viselike grip. He didn’t try to pull free, just stood very still, his head raised to show his throat, like an animal waiting to be slaughtered. He still wore Sarah’s silver chain, and Sarah had never mentioned it, waiting to see if one day he would realize, would take it off and throw it away.
“Oh,” said Sarah. “You’ve made up your mind, then?”
“I have had an eternity to stare at a grave, and to remember, and to regret. I have had time to think,” Freya said. She closed her eyes, and magic bubbled under the witch’s skin, crawling its way into Alan like a host of worms. He gasped, a small sound of muted pain and surprise. The ground shuddered, the trees stretching out with roots and branches as the power swept from Freya and into Alan. A soft roaring throb moved below them as the forest came under new stewardship, and all its ancient magic passed into Alan’s care.
“Be better than I was,” Freya said, her fingernails curling like claws into his arm. She looked to Sarah. “Maybe the girl can teach you.” Then the witch let go, and dropped to the ground, white with frost.
Alan took a slow shuddering breath and shivered. He had been expecting death.
The forest went very still for a moment, and then the wind changed direction, and the power swept up from the earth, through the pads of her paws and up her bones, sparking from her fur like flashes of static electricity. Sarah felt the curse break like a strand of snapping hair. Her animal skin fell from her body, puddling about her like an abandoned winter coat. She looked at her feet, pale and narrow in the long grass, and smiled. She could feel the threads of the curse stretching out and breaking.
In the woods, a beast became a man, and in a castle, two people stared at each other over teacups and remembered being young once, and innocent. The autumn wind ruffled playfully against Sarah’s skin, and she hugged herself. The beast-coat of long fur had been its own kind of blessing, but even as she watched, it was fading away, melting into the grass. Clothes. Clothes would be a wonderful plan right about now.
“You’re human,” Alan said. “I can sense it.”
“Apparently,” said Sarah.
“This calls for tea.”
“I think you may be right.”
“Yours is currently in a bowl,” Alan said. “We should probably do something about that.”
“Clothes first,” said Sarah. “And then we have a grave to dig.”
Together, the girl who used to be a beast and the boy who had become a wizard buried Freya. They patted down the soil, and Sarah put her palm over the hand of the new king of the forest. “Tea,” she said, and helped him to his feet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Beastkeeper was born in a flurry. A wordstorm. And after the last vowels settled in drifts came the job of raising it to its full potential.
My many thanks to all the people who helped me grow the story into shape: Marieke Nijkamp, Nerine Dorman, Jennifer Crow, Frances Thorndike, Elizabeth Retief, and Suzie Townsend and the readers at New Leaf Literary and Media. Special thanks to my editor Noa Wheeler, who asks the wisest questions; to George Newman, who makes me look literate; and to Ashley Halsey and Béatrice Coron for the cover. To the circle of writers who have been my friends for A Very Long Time Indeed. Musers, thank you for being the weird bunch you are, for the inspiration and the late-night sanity check-ins. To Mom, Dad, Chevonne, and Wesley, thank you for being supportive and for being proud of my books. And to my favorite Brian, my favorite Noa, and my favorite Tanith in all the world, who put up with much strangeness while I write, I love you guys. I think I’ll keep you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cat Hellisen lives by the sea and not in a forest. She’s pretty sure she’s not a beast, but with three cats, two dogs, six chickens, and two children, she probably qualifies as a beastkeeper.
Copyright © 2015 by Cat Hellisen
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
First hardcover edition 2015
eBook edition February 2015
eISBN 9780805099836
