Bryony and Roses (7 page)

Holly stood up and brushed dirt from the seat of her pants. (Both she and Bryony wore trousers around the farm simply because it was easier, although Iris said it was barbaric and wore long skirts even when feeding the chickens.) “You can’t distract me, you know. What does our questionable mental state leaving the city have to do with your Beast?”

“He’s not
my
Beast,” said Bryony, nettled. “And it’s the same feeling, you know? I feel like anything could happen. And I might be able to fly.”

Her sister raked her hands through her hair and blew her breath out, sounding a bit like Fumblefoot when he was exasperated. “Well. If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is.” She gave Bryony’s shoulders a brief, fierce squeeze, which reminded Bryony oddly of the Beast’s grip on her fingers. “It seems like you need to do this, so I won’t stop you. And I’ll try to keep Iris from driving you mad.”

“Thank you,” said Bryony gratefully.
 

Holly surveyed the line of burlap sacks and the green riot of the garden. “Just be careful. And come back to us as you can.”
 

On the morning of the seventh day, Bryony loaded up Fumblefoot, said goodbye to her sisters, and went into the woods.

Despite what she had told Holly, her heart sank with every step of Fumblefoot’s jarring stride. She had gathered her bundles up in the gloomy pre-dawn light, and the last sight of her garden made her throat tighten. Even plants that usually stayed dormant until well into May were thrusting up green shoots to bid her goodbye.

Only the roses, clawing across the fence and the side of the barn, stayed sullenly quiet, as if they now begrudged even the few reddish-brown leaves that they had unfurled. That was fine. Bryony was suspicious of roses now, and would have rooted them out if she hadn’t thought that it would involve copious amounts of blood and swearing.
 

There had also been her sisters. Iris, with many tears, had pressed a dozen pouches on her, each one embroidered with a flower. “For s-s-seeds,” gulped Iris. Bryony was absurdly touched. Apparently, while Bryony had slept, her sister had been awake, huddled by the fire, embroidering flowers. It was a more practical gift than she would have imagined Iris to be capable of.
 

Holly had waited until Iris had turned away, and then slipped a package into her hand.

“Keep it on your thigh,” she muttered in Bryony’s ear. “You can cut a slit in your skirts for it. If the Beast goes for you, make me proud.”

Bryony had begun laughing, despite the gravity of the situation, despite Iris sobbing quietly on the doorstep, as much at the dangerous glint in Holly’s eyes as at the fact that her sister had just given her a dagger.

Gont the blacksmith must have made it. It resembled one of the long knives the hunters carried, but lighter, with a hilt made for someone with smaller hands. You could gut a deer or a man with it, if you were so inclined. Bryony suspected that she was
not
so inclined, but then again, perhaps she’d simply never had the opportunity. Life had so far presented her with very few people to gut.
 

Possibly that was about to change.
 

She would have wondered how on earth her sister could afford it, but the blacksmith’s interest in Holly was well known, and Bryony was fairly sure that interest was returned.

Well. At least she need not worry about how her sisters would be taken care of while she was gone. And since the knife made Holly feel better, Bryony carefully strapped it to her thigh, although she suspected that if she tried to pull it on the Beast, she would slice her own leg open and probably bleed to death.

Yeah,
that’ll
show him.
 

She was a great deal more comfortable with her pruning shears, which were wickedly sharp and had a curved blade that could give someone a serious poking or chop their finger off, assuming that they were obliging enough to hold their finger out and allowed it to be so chopped. You had to saw a bit going through the tougher branches, presumably fingers wouldn’t be any easier…

Fumblefoot stumbled and poked her reproachfully with his nose. He had so many plants and twigs and burlap-wrapped stalks tied to his back that he looked like a small hillside. They were not terribly heavy, although a pot full of damp soil could weigh a great deal more than one would think, but they were bulky and awkward, so Bryony had chosen to lead Fumblefoot instead of riding.
 

The Beast had assured her that it would be easy to find the house again. “Go into the woods,” he said, “and the path will appear.”
 

Perhaps he had been wrong, or perhaps the path had simply not expected her to get such an early start on the day. It was nearly an hour before the trees opened up, and Bryony found her feet on the path that ran beside the stone wall.

The Beast was waiting for her, on the other side of the gate.
 

He was more alarming than she had remembered, or perhaps Bryony had softened the less human edges in her memory. She had not recalled that his tusks were so large, or his eyes so yellow.
 

I’ve made my bed. Time to lie in it, I suppose.

His eyebrows rose when he saw Fumblefoot plod into view.

“Bones of the moon!” he said. “What is all of
that?”

“You told me to bring what I needed to garden,” said Bryony defensively. “That’s plants. By definition.”
 

“I was thinking of seeds,” said the Beast, opening the gate. “And… I don’t know. Trowels. Shears. Perhaps a shovel.”

“You can’t tell me that there is no shovel in this place,” said Bryony.
“Everyone
has a shovel. Except we only have the one, and I didn’t want to take it, because my sisters will need it.”
 

“The house can probably come up with a shovel.” The Beast took a few steps back, but Fumblefoot flatly refused to walk through the gate. Bryony sighed and began unloading him, setting the bundles and pots inside the wall.
 

“I did bring seeds,” she admitted. “But some of these plants are my friends. I wasn’t going to just leave them.” She ruffled her fingers through the lavender.
 

“Oh good,” said the Beast dryly. “Here I was afraid that I had kidnapped a sane person by mistake.”
 

“If you are going to kidnap travelers, you will simply have to take what you can get,” snapped Bryony. “If I don’t meet your standards, I’d be happy to return home.”
 

Which was true this morning, although it hadn’t been completely true for several days prior. If the Beast sent her home, Bryony suspected that the mystery would nag at her until the day she died.

 
The Beast raised his hands in surrender. “I yield, I yield. You are a perfectly acceptable…err…victim. I apologize for having questioned you.”

Bryony was not quite sure how to reply to this, so she changed the subject. “I need to send Fumblefoot back to my sisters.”

The Beast eyed the pony with frank disbelief. “I question what crime your sisters could have committed to deserve him.”

“Look,” said Bryony, annoyed, “he may not be very impressive, but he can pull a cart if you’re patient with him, and he’s very good-natured, which is more than I can say for
some
people. And his previous owner had beaten him half to death trying to get him up a hill and Holly jumped on his back—the owner, not Fumblefoot—and nearly beat
him
half to death, and I gave him all the money we’d made that season for the poor bea—creature—and also promised him that Holly would leave him alone, and we had to live on potatoes for two weeks because of it, so he’s
ours
now, okay?”

There was a brief silence. Bryony petted Fumblefoot’s nose fiercely and told herself that she wouldn’t look at the Beast. She hadn’t meant to say the bit about the potatoes.
 

“Um,” said the Beast. “I see. I had no idea. I, er, apologize. If you’ve unloaded him, then I’ll send him back.”

“Thank you,” said Bryony. She checked to make sure that there was nothing to catch on any twigs or branches, and carefully looped the reins up out of the way. He was still wearing the saddlebags, but they were empty now. She checked the snaps to make sure they were all closed and wouldn’t flap, then checked them again, because she was stalling.

“Be good, Fumblefoot,” she told him finally, rubbing her sleeve against his cheek. “Be good for Holly.” Fumblefoot lipped at her fingers and gazed up at her with a mild brown eye.

She stepped back. The Beast waited a moment longer, then moved up to the gate. The pony stamped a hoof and glared.
 

“Go home, Fumblefoot, and find your way safely,” said the Beast, and laid an open-handed slap on the pony’s rump.

Affronted, Fumblefoot broke into a trot down the roadway. His gaits were never very reliable, but Bryony didn’t hear him stumble as he trotted away and out of sight.
 

“That should bring him safely home,” said the Beast. “Unless a more powerful magic intervenes, and that’s really quite unlikely. Very few powerful magics are concerned with ponies.”
 

Bryony turned away and pretended to busy herself with the stack of pots. Her eyes were burning. It felt like her last link with home had just trotted away out of sight.

This isn’t permanent. You’ll find a way to escape, or the Beast will let you go when you’ve done whatever it is that he wanted you for. It’s not forever.
 

“May I show you to your rooms?” asked the Beast, picking up the satchel that contained her few non-gardening-related possessions. “Do your plants need—err—immediate attention?”

He is trying to be polite. He may be a monster, but he is trying.
 

It made Bryony feel a little better. She straightened up and blinked a few times, fiercely, until the burning went away. “They’ll keep until tomorrow. You will have to show me where I can dig my beds.”

The Beast made a sweeping gesture with one arm. Now that the snow had melted, Bryony could see that the manor grounds on either side of the boxwood hedge were exactly as one would expect
. Rolling lawn and gravel paths, as far as the eye can see…
A second fountain reared off to the east, surrounded by shrubs clipped into aggressively geometric shapes.
 

“Anywhere,” said the Beast. “Wherever it pleases you.”

Oh dear,
thought Bryony with dismay, eyeing the military precision of the grounds.
 
My garden is going to look very strange out in all that.
She tried to imagine the purple spires of meadow sage and the exuberance of lamb’s ear.
It will be very untidy.

Well, let it be untidy. The groundskeepers and I will figure something out…

Aloud she said “I will have to talk to your groundskeepers.”

“There are none,” said the Beast.
 

“What?” Bryony turned in a slow circle, waving a hand toward the boxwood. “Who keeps everything trimmed and pruned and mowed and—how? Places like this take a whole
army
of caretakers.” She did not add, “And you could grow enough vegetables to feed a village with all that wasted labor,” but she thought it.
 

“The house does it,” said the Beast. “All of it.”

“So who
does
live here?” asked Bryony, gazing up at the vast manor house. Ranks of windows marched across its face. It could have held the entire population of Lostfarthing, with an entire wing left over for unexpected guests.
 

“I live here,” said the Beast. “And now you. That’s all.”

Perhaps the Beast is lonely.

That was the thought that Bryony kept returning to, all that long morning. It made a certain kind of sense, but she had a feeling that it was not the whole reason, or even a very large part of it.
 

People who were merely lonely did not try to send coded messages by squeezing your hand. Something deeper was afoot.
 

That the Beast was a person, Bryony did not even question, but then, she believed on some level that Fumblefoot was a person, and Blackie the goat, and the neighbor’s large and grumpy tomcat.
 

It was not that she was sentimental about animals. Chickens, for example, were not people. You looked into a chicken’s eyes and you saw the back of the chicken’s eyeball.
 

The Beast, however, was definitely a person, even if he looked like a nightmare.
 

His feet made no sound as he walked. This was understandable on the carpet, where even Fumblefoot’s hooves had been muffled, but then they came to the end of the corridor and a pair of glass doors that led into a tiled courtyard. Bryony’s boots clomped on the tiles, but the Beast glided along as silently as snowfall.

In the center of the courtyard was a little open circle, where a bare white birch tree lifted its branches.
 

All around the base of the tree grew roses.
 

Unlike her sullen rosebushes at home, these were fully leafed out, little blunt ovals of green with dark red veins. There were flowers in every stage from barely budded to blowsy and dripping petals, all of them deep, dark scarlet. Small drifts of petals lay across the tiles.

She did not want to compare them to blood. It was a shame that there were so few dark red things in the world.
 

They’re like…like very dark tomatoes. Or late sunsets. Or a very nice cut of raw meat.
 

Oh dear. Raw meat isn’t much better, I suppose…

“This is where your rose came from,” said Bryony.

“They are not
my
roses,” said the Beast, and his voice was deeper and more gravelly than it had been. “They belong to the spirit of this place. They require no tending.”
 

“Just as well,” said Bryony, forcing a laugh. “I have no patience to tend roses.”

The Beast led her across the courtyard. Bryony saw that the roses were twining around the base of the birch, the great roses shining against the white bark like—well, yes, like blood spatter on snow. In a few places, the stems had bit so deeply that the bark had begun to grow over them.