Beastkeeper (20 page)

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 unable 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 Sarah 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.

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.