Bryony and Roses (14 page)

“Yes. The house produced any number of clippers before we found one that wouldn’t break.”

“You didn’t have it removed as a young Beast?”

“No,” said the Beast dryly, “nor were my ears cropped to conform to breed standard. If you’re quite though…?”

“Oh! Yes, sorry.” Bryony released his foot. The Beast put it down on the floor and twitched his robes back over it.

“At least you don’t have a tail to dock,” she said. “Or were you born with one of those, too?”

“I was born quite human,” said the Beast. “My mother was very kind and would likely have kept me even if I
had
been born a Beast, but fortunately for all, we did not have to find out. In fa—”

He stopped in mid-word. The air in the library had become suddenly heavy, and there were shadows in the corners that were not at all the friendly shadows of shelves and books.
 

A rustling noise sprang up around them, like dried leaves rattling in an autumn breeze, and the breeze itself struck them a moment later, although it did not touch the pages of Bryony’s book or make the candle flames dance.
 

Bryony reached out blindly and caught the Beast’s sleeve. She felt his hand cover hers, as she tried to peer through the deepening darkness. Even the small shadow under the footstool had become as deep and dark as a well.
 

“I should not have said that,” said the Beast. “Forgive me.” Bryony was fairly sure that he was not talking to her.

The strange breeze whistled around them twice more, then whispered away. The rustling leaves fell quiet, and the candlelight grew warmer and pushed back the shadows. Bryony looked to the shelf-ladder, and could see the bindings of the books in its shadow, and even make out the titles on the spines.
 

“What was—” she started to say.

He squeezed her hand, short and sharp, and she fell silent.
 

The Beast stared down at his clawed hand, where it lay over her small human one. “I will try to make more noise when I walk.“

“That would be very kind,” said Bryony, returning to the book in her lap. She made a show of turning the pages, but her eyes did not register a word.

So. The Beast had once been human. And someone…or something…did not want him to speak of it.
 

Interesting.
 

There was little to do in the garden at the moment. Bryony puttered around for a few minutes, brushing her fingers over various leaves, crushing the leaves and smelling the pungency of lavender and sage.
 

She could only do this for about ten minutes or risk denuding the garden, so she shoved her hands in her pockets and scowled.

“You have a fierce expression,” said the Beast, coming up behind her.

She didn’t jump. He had been making an effort to click his claws on the floor inside the house, but there was nothing he could do in the grass. Still, she was getting used to it.

Apparently you could get used to anything.

“Bees,” said Bryony.

The Beast looked around. “Really? Where?”

“That’s it. There aren’t any.” She scowled at the brave white flowers on her peas. “No bees means no pollen means no peas. Or beans or squash or zucchini or tomatoes. The root vegetables will be fine, but if they don’t set seed, I’ll run out eventually and then no more radishes and rutabaga.” She scowled at the rutabaga, which were growing with great enthusiasm in this magical garden.
 

And it’s the least they can do, since they’re the reason I’m here in the first place.

“I would not expect bees,” said the Beast slowly. “Bees are creatures of order and good magic.”

Aha!
Bryony’s mind pounced on that. The rest of Bryony stayed very still, so as not to wake the listening magic.
 

“We do get flies,” said the Beast, “and some beetles. I don’t suppose they’ll do?”

There was a faint bitterness to the air, a hint that something could be listening very soon. Bryony talked over the top of it, in hopes of throwing whatever-it-was off the scent. “Not the same. I suppose if House makes me a paintbrush, I can walk around dusting pollen between flowers and pretend to be a bee. Though it’s not much fun.” She scowled again. “Then again, I don’t have much else to do.”

“Hmmm,” rumbled the Beast. “It is possible, actually, that I may be able to help you. Give me a few days…”

He turned, his cloak flaring, and strode across the lawn. His great feet left gouges in the turf. Bryony knew that the marks would be gone by morning.
 

Now what was that all about?

At dinner that night he was distracted. When Bryony pressed him, he said only “I have an idea, but it may not work, or it may be beyond my skill. I do not want to promise you what I cannot deliver.”

When she pushed her chair back from dinner, he took her arm in a perfunctory fashion. “I will escort you to the library. I have my own work to do.”

“You didn’t ask,” said Bryony.

He blinked at her.

“Oh! Bryony, will you marry—”

“It’s all right.” She patted his sleeve. “I didn’t want you to get in trouble, that’s all.”

He smiled at her, a real genuine smile that reached his eyes, and then went off to his own devices.
 

Without the Beast around to dig holes—and keep her entertained—she spent much of the next morning pacing back and forth.
 

The manor house was marvelous for that. It took nearly five minutes to go from her garden, through the front of the house to the courtyard, around the birch tree and back out again. The house opened the necessary doors for her. Bryony could always think better when she was walking, and she felt that she had need of all her mental powers now.

Bees are creatures of good magic. The Beast doesn’t expect to see them here.
 

That means the magic here isn’t good.

Well, that was hardly a surprise, now was it? Even if House sometimes seemed kindly, there was clearly something much, much darker at work.
 

She abandoned that line of thought in favor of another one.
 

There had been other people here once. Not for a long time, the Beast had said—but they had been here.
 

That doesn’t actually mean that the Beast had other victims. Or guests. I admit that ‘victim’ doesn’t seem to cover what you are anymore.
 
He could have meant his family or servants or anything.

For all you know, his whole family were turned into Beasts and he’s the last one alive.
 

Functionally immortal. Hmm.
 

It would have been obvious to a much denser person than Bryony that there were things that the Beast did not, or could not, say out loud.
 

That listening silence. The breeze. Something was watching them and eavesdropping. Something that limited what the Beast would or could say.
 

It’s House. It has to be the house, doesn’t it? It can hear us at any time, and he said not to offend it.

Bryony paced around the birch tree twice. The rose bushes exuded a sweet, heavy aroma into the air.

She hated to think that House might be doing something bad. It always seemed so kind. It had given her a really spectacular wheelbarrow full of chicken manure, and she had dug her gloves into it and danced around, whooping, and the Beast had put his muzzle in his hands and stared at her as if she were crazy.
 

If evil things could create really excellent chicken manure—other than chickens, which were admittedly borderline wicked, most of them—then what hope was there for the world?

She paced some more. Her plants waved at her from the garden.

If the house wasn’t evil, then was the Beast?

She shied away from that thought, not wanting to look more closely at it. Surely it couldn’t be the Beast. He had seen her list of questions, and he hadn’t gotten angry. He’d hinted as broadly as he could that she needed to find the answers.
 

“Come on,” she muttered to herself, as House opened the doors,
“somebody
has to be the bad guy.”

Creepy magic house. Giant terrifying monster. It shouldn’t be hard to cast one of them as the villain, and yet…and yet…

And neither of them explains why there was someone in my room!

When she reached the courtyard, there was a tray of warm buns and a wedge of crumbly cheese waiting on a little metal table. She wasn’t sure if the table and the chairs had been there before. She rather thought not.
 

It was as good a place to stop as any. She dropped into the chair and applied herself to the cheese.
 

The courtyard had not changed. The roses grew in the same way as ever, flowering regardless of the season. She wondered if she should bring them some chicken manure. Even enchanted flowering had to wear a plant out.

They didn’t seem to need it. If anything, they were even larger and more vigorous than when Bryony had arrived. The canes wrapped tightly around the birch tree, leaving cuts that oozed crystalized sap.
 

Maybe she should get in there and cut them back.
 

The thought made her groan. Mere pruning shears were no match for a really entrenched rose. She’d need a hedge clipper and maybe a suit of plate mail.
 

“I’ll start with the shears,” she said, putting her chin in her hand. “I can at least get them away from the trunk…”
 

The roses were sunk deep around the roots of the birch. They were probably stealing the tree’s water, but digging them up might disturb those same roots.
 

Not that I have any hope of digging them up. Rosebushes that size would take a draft horse on a chain to pull out.

Well, whatever the tree needed, it was pretty clear that the
Beast
needed her help.
 

Help to do what? What if he wasn’t the good one?
 

If she helped him, and it turned out that he was an astonishingly good actor and had been evil all along, and went off to begin eating nuns and small children….well…

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” she told the birch tree, and thought she heard the leaves rustling in agreement.

It took two hours to free the birch tree from the roses, and most of that was tying the roses back enough to get in close to the trunk.
 

The rose thorns were wickedly curved and had a malicious bite to them. When she pulled them out, the wounds throbbed as if they had left venom behind.
 

Nevertheless, once Bryony had started, she would be damned if she was going to admit defeat. Her gloves were streaked with sap by the time she fought her way to the birch trunk, but at last she could reach out a hand and pat the white bark of the tree.

“There you are,” she said, in the same tone she would have used to address Fumblefoot. “There you go. Just let me get these nasty bits out of you…”

The rose whips were embedded so deeply that the trunk had swelled and overgrown them. She had to hack through wood to get at some of them, which her shears were completely unsuited for.

“House?” she said. “May I have a saw?”

A saw did not appear, or if it did, it was somewhere under the roses where she couldn’t get to it. Bryony scowled and picked up her shears once more.

It was more butchery than surgery, in the end, but she cut the birch free of the strangling roses. In a few places they had ringed the trunk entirely.
 

“That might have killed you in another few years,” she told the tree. “And then the rose would probably have eaten your stump. Plants can be quite merciless.”
 

She stepped back from her handiwork, down from the raised bed, and onto the tiles of the courtyard.
 

“Inelegant,” she told the tree, “but the roses will grow back and it’ll look less awful. Of course, when they grow back, I’ll only have to cut them again…”
 

She went inside, prying a last stubborn bit of thorn out with her teeth. Her clothes were a mass of snagged threads and her shears were dull, but at least she had accomplished something.
 

When she curled up for a nap that afternoon, she dreamed of a woman in a silver dress, with grey-green eyes. Her face was smooth and youthful, but her voice creaked like an old woman’s. She took Bryony’s hands, and hers had skin as thin as old parchment, the bones fine and hard within.

“My dear,” she said. “Oh, my dear. I think it may be you who will save us. I cannot believe that anyone who is so pleased with chicken manure will be allowed to fail.”
 

Bryony relaxed. There was something odd about the dream—the edges were fuzzier and the woman sharper than any dream she could remember—but if the silver woman understood about chicken manure, then everything would be all right.

“I wish I knew what was going on,” she said. “Who
are
you?”
 

“Someone who was once young and foolish,” said the silver woman. “I am old and foolish now, perhaps. There is little that I may tell you, my dear. Be careful.” She squeezed Bryony’s fingers, like the Beast did when he tried to convey a message. “Be careful of who you trust.”
 

“Can’t you tell me anything more specific?” cried Bryony. This was rapidly becoming maddening. This woman looked as if she knew things that Bryony desperately needed to know.
 

“I am afraid that I cannot.”

“Why can’t you? What’s going on? What is the house? What
was
the Beast? Why is he here?
What does he want from me?”

She woke up with the last words on her lips, and blew out her breath in frustration.
 

She was still annoyed at dinner that evening, and took it out by snapping at the Beast.
 
“Another meal where you sit and watch me and I drink wine and try to pretend that there is nothing strange about it?” she growled. “And quit pulling out my chair. I am perfectly capable of sitting down by myself.”