Roses (26 page)

With a gentle squeeze of her knees, Beauty turned Champ away and they galloped back to the stables, her head full of memories. Life at the castle was not terrible; in fact, she almost had everything that she could ever desire. But she did not have her freedom.

She was in a bad mood for the rest of the day and Beast suffered at their meeting in the library that afternoon.

“Is this book boring you?” he asked.

“No.”

“You do not seem very interested.”

“I am tired.” She shut the book and pushed it away.

“Is something troubling you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Beauty . . .”

“I do not remember agreeing to be hassled continually with questions! That was not part of our deal.”

Beast sensibly moved himself to the other side of the library.

“Perhaps you should go to bed early tonight,” he said as he retreated. “If you are so very tired.”

“Yes! Perhaps I should!” She got up and stormed from the room.

“I shall see you tomorrow!” she shouted. “Like I shall see you every day for the rest of my life!”

She paced her room for the remainder of the afternoon and evening. Several times she walked over to the windows and looked out at the misty void of the moat and the iron gates that imprisoned her.

“I just want to see the other side,” she whispered. “Just for a moment.”

But all she saw was a haze of gray and black.

She snapped at the outline in her room as it undressed and bathed her that evening, complaining when a comb found a tangle
in her hair and yelling when the water in the bath grew too cold. She would not eat dinner and climbed into bed too early and tossed and turned for an hour before she slept.

“I wish to dream of Owaine,” she said to herself. “Please.”

But she did not. When she first came to the castle, she had dreamt of him often. She had seen him in the cottage regaining his health and she had seen him walking through the village, asking if anyone had heard news of her, which they had not. Then the dreams had changed. She closed her eyes now, thinking of lush green hills, waterfalls, and lakes, but her head conjured the sticky heat of Sago and its close reek of sweat and people. She wanted to see the cottage and the temple, but instead she saw Rose Herm’s drawing room and Ma Dane’s study.

She had never dreamt of the past before and it confused her. It could not be the present or the future, for she knew that after the turmoil of the Magic Cleansing, Sago must be a different place. She did not understand much of the powers she possessed, but she knew that they always meant something—her imprisonment in the castle proved that much. She wished to understand herself more; she wanted to be able to harness her gift and direct her own dreams, but she did not know how. She had even tried to look for a book about it in the library once without success.

“I wish to know about Magics,” she had said to the air.

There had been silence.

“Why do you seek such knowledge?” Beast had barked.

“I am curious.”

“You will find no books on such things here.”

She did not mention it again, but dreams of her past came faster and more vivid with each night. When she finally slipped into slumber that evening, after twisting her bed sheets into knots, she dreamt of Ma Dane.

Beauty saw a mob dancing and shouting in the streets of Sago, baying for blood, and she saw a string of starved women dressed
in rags. Blood oozed from their backs where they had been flogged and filth was smeared across their faces. They were chained at the ankles and some were missing their hands. At the very end of the line crawled a woman that could once have been Ma Dane. She was shriveled and gaunt now and her head was shaved to dark stubble. As she was led to the stake she was whispering, “Asha? Asha, will you save me?”

There were men in gray uniforms watching and carrying out the spectacle. They occasionally beat the crowd or jeered with them. Beauty knew that Eli was there, but she could not see Pa Hamish Herm-se-Hollis and suddenly it occurred to her that he could not be there, for he was already dead. She instinctively sensed that he had died the moment Eli handed Ma Dane over to the State.

The women were pulled screaming onto their stakes and there was much sneering and taunting from the crowd. Ma Dane resisted the least of all of them and once she was secured, the fires were lit. The next scene was the dream that had haunted Beauty’s childhood—the knowledge of her aunt’s death—and she awoke.

Her pink room was dark and felt empty. Her sheets were messy, her pillows were on the floor, and her body was wet with sweat and tears. Her chest heaved with the shock of the vision and she gasped for breath. The image of Ma Dane’s poor, crippled body came to her mind and she suddenly forgave her for the seasons of abuse in her childhood, when she never thought that she could. She would wish that fate on no one.

Beauty lay still for a moment, wondering if that was the dream’s purpose. She had begun to feel differently about Ma Dane since she came to the castle—she had begun to feel differently about everyone. She no longer hated Isole, but pitied her instead. She realized that the Hilland villagers did not despise what she was; they feared what they did not understand. She was slowly changing.

She did not have long to contemplate this revelation before the stillness of the room struck her. By now she would have expected the outline to begin rearranging her pillows, light the candle beside her bed, and straighten the sheets.

“I would like a glass of water,” she said, but nothing happened.

The room felt strange—unoccupied. She did not feel watched.

Slipping out of bed, she padded to the door and slowly turned the handle. She looked down the long, empty corridor.

“Beast?” she whispered.

He did not appear and she was sure that he could not hear her.

She walked down the corridor, following it into a hall and then up a twisting turret. She did not know where she was going, but she felt that something was wrong.

There were no outlines to direct her and she rambled through the castle’s never-ending depths. At one point, she opened a set of double doors and gasped, finding herself in a ballroom of magnificent décor and proportions. After staring for a moment at its tall, painted ceiling, she turned and continued her search.

“Beast?” she called another time, but still she heard nothing.

None of the candles were lit and she fumbled in the dark, her heart thumping in her chest. As she stumbled through a drawing room and across another hall, she heard voices and froze.

“I cannot keep it from her much longer.”

That was Beast’s rumbling growl. He was standing in a quad below and one window of the hall was ajar. Beauty edged closer to it, pressing her ear against the pane.

“You must,” replied another voice. It was light and sharp and it seemed to come from the air.

“But she will guess!”

“You must deny all knowledge.”

“I cannot keep her here. I cannot subject her to my torture.”

“She took the rose—she took the life.”

“
She
did not take the rose.”

“No matter! You remember the spell, do you not?”

“How could I forget?” snarled Beast.

“Without just one rose—without just one life, we die. All of us.”

Beast growled.

“We are lucky to still be here after all this time,” said the voice. “There are evil spells in this castle that try to—”

“We are not lucky, we are cursed!”

At Beast’s roar, the window in the hall slammed shut and Beauty jumped away. The castle was breathing again and the rug beneath her feet was pulled out, knocking her to the ground. She heard high-pitched laughter and staggered to her feet. This was not the presence that guided her about the castle each day; this was not the friendly outline that waited on her; this was altogether different. The hairs on her arms tingled and she ran.

Doors slammed in her face, the corridors twisted away from her, and she heard high-pitched laughter all around. Archways became walls and passageways led to dead ends. Beauty felt something pull at her hair and try to trip her feet.

“Beast!” she cried. “Beast!”

He was there and instantly she felt safe again.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I—I woke and my room felt empty. There were no outlines—I could not see them anywhere.”

“Where have you been?”

“I just stepped out of my room,” she said, as she did not want him to know that she had heard him in the quad. “I called for you, but you did not come.”

“Forgive me, Beauty.”

“I do, but I felt something else just now,” she whispered. “Something that was not the outlines.”

“It is the evil in this place.”

“There is evil here?”

“Where there is good, there must be a balance of evil. I am sorry that you had to feel it tonight, but do not fear. It is gone now.”

“Where has it gone?”

“Back to its corners. You may return to bed safely.”

She noticed that the candles around them were being lit by the comforting, pale shape of an outline.

“Will you accompany me to my room?” she asked.

“If you wish it.”

She stepped close to him and he instinctively moved away.

“No! Stay near. I am scared.”

“If you wish it.”

They walked through the corridors to her room and its door opened for her as they approached. Inside she could see that her bed had already been straightened and there was a mug of steaming tea set on her bedside.

“Do you feel better?”

She nodded.

“Good night, Beauty.”

“Good night, Beast.”

Part Four

The battlefield was awash with bodies and blood gushed in great, scarlet streams. The air was saturated with the moans of the dying, the crack of bones, and the terrified shouts of soldiers. They did not call it the Red Wars for nothing.

They had taken up position on this barren stretch of wasteland the day before. It was cold and boggy here and the men, who had been trained in Sago, were not accustomed to the weather. They had marched straight from the capital—called as emergency back up—and had not had time to acclimatize. Many were sick and sniveling before they had charged into battle that misty morning. They were all dead now. Dead or had deserted.

The general sat on his horse before the battlefield. All of his troops had been wiped out, but there were reinforcements coming now. He had thought that he could go ahead and push these evil creatures back before they arrived, but he had not understood their tactics. He felt the loss of his men deeply and knew that he had been too rash, too hasty. But how was he to know what these
things
could do? How was he to know that they could break every bone in a man’s body just by wishing it to be so?

He waited with his horse until the second unit of troops arrived. It was beginning to snow by then and white flakes fell to the ground, turning to red slush. The men quaked when they saw the carnage laid out in the field and he did not blame them.

“General, where are the rest of your soldiers?” asked their leader.

“Gone,” he said.

“Gone?”

“I am the only one left. I was lucky that my horse carried me to safety and none of those under-realm things could get their claws into me.”

The troops muttered and shuffled their feet, their armor clanging.

“Quiet!” yelled their leader. “General, what do you advise we do?”

He looked across the expanse of death to the distant horizon where the creatures had retreated after massacring his troops. He knew the Forest Villages well—he had been posted here before on various expeditions—and he guessed that they must be hiding in woodland a mile or so away. During his first visit here, he had received the scar that made him renowned in a small battle with some Magic outlaws in that woodland. He touched the silver slither that cut across the middle of his eye for luck.

“I suggest we attack immediately,” he said. “They will not be expecting it.”

But the Magics were expecting everything. When the State army marched across the battlefield and through scrubland to their camp in the wood, they were waiting. There were trolls and griffins and fey, but there were humans, too, and they were the worst of all: Magic Bloods. They were the worst because there was no telling what they could do. Some of them could simply destroy you with a blink of their eyes or send you half crazy with visions.

The general watched as the State men were butchered once again. They ran across the open scrubland, their axes and swords raised, only to fall prey to the creatures standing in the fringes of the wood, watching them come.

“Charge!” he yelled, gathering a bundle of men and leading them running for the woods. He heard the terrible crack as those around him had every bone in their body broken, and the screams as some of them began tearing out their own eyes due to horrific visions, but he pushed onward.

Suddenly he was in the woods, and he saw the startled gaze of many Magic Beings before his horse disappeared from beneath him. He scrambled to his feet, alone in a glade of tall, yellow trees and there was snow at his feet. He circled about, thrashing his sword through the air, knowing that this was a vision and what he saw was not how things were. At any moment he expected to be attacked.

“Halt, I wish to speak with you.”

He jumped at the sound of the voice, which seemed to come from all around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure approaching him, a man as tall as himself with white hair, dark skin, and eyes that sometimes looked silver, sometimes gold, and sometimes violet.

“I will fight you to the end!”

“That will not be necessary, general,” said the dark man. “We have won.”

“You have not!”

“We were always going to win, it is written in scripture. That is the problem with your race. You think yourselves above the gods and that is why you always die.”

“My race? It is your race who are scum!” He spat on the ground and swished his sword so that the air hummed.

“Why do you hate Magics so?” asked the man, stepping closer. “Do you fear them?”

“I fear nothing.”