Beastkeeper (14 page)

And the louder the wrens sang, the more chance there was that the hunting beasts would find them.

She pictured again the beast in the forest, worrying at the rabbit corpse like a terrier with a rat.

A wren would stand no chance. The beast had been huge—one snap of its jaws, and it would crush the tiny bird, piercing heart and lungs and liver with needles made from its own thin bones.

Just.

Like.

That.

“Oh,” Sarah said, and the sound puffed into her palm, was trapped there. That was what would happen if her father and mother ever found each other again. She would die, killed by the one who loved her, by the one she once loved.
And dead beasts stay dead.
It was unbearable. “So cruel.”

Alan leaned forward and stretched out one hand to tug at her wrist, to pull her fingers away from her face. His skin was warm and dry, and he touched her arm with a gentle patience, like he was petting a kitten. “Yes,” he said, his forest voice filled with the welcoming rustle of leaves.

Sarah stared into his eyes—all she could see now in the deep gloom of the cabin—and they were small amber flames, golden pools deep enough to drown in, the glass-yellow of topaz.

They reminded her a little of her grandfather's beast-eyes. She had to go back to see him, to tell him that she understood everything now and that she was going to find a way to stop it all. To set everything right again.

There had to be a way, no matter what Alan or the raven said.

“I have to go,” Sarah said, and pulled her wrist from Alan's fingers and ran out the door.

 

11

THE KEY OF HORN

SARAH CREPT BACK
into the castle, but it seemed that no one had even missed her. She helped her grandmother feed the beast, all the while staring from one to the other and trying to imagine the young girl Nanna used to be. The handsome boy that the chained and stinking beast must have been, to drive a wedge between the sisters so easily.

I haven't got the whole story,
Sarah reminded herself as she slopped the bucket of bones and stewed meat over to her grandmother so she could put it in the cage. There had to be more to it. More to Inga and Freya's tale. She didn't even know her grandfather's
name.

“What was he called?” she said after her grandmother had locked the cage again and closed the door on the sorry beast. “When he was still human.”

“What does it matter?” Nanna snapped. “He's not now.”

“But…” Sarah paused, the empty bucket swinging against her knees as they walked, the rust from the handle biting into her palms. “He can still talk and—”

“How do you know that?” Nanna whirled on Sarah, her hard, sharp face like an ax in the moonlight. “Been poking your nose where you shouldn't?”

“No.” Which wasn't strictly true, of course, but Sarah thought that since Nanna was one big ball of lies, it really didn't matter. “I thought I heard him say something last time.”

Her grandmother sniffed and stood up straight, still keeping one eye on Sarah like a hawk watching a little grass mouse. “Talking doesn't make things human.”

Sarah pulled up her courage inside her and managed to say, very quickly, “Well, I think it goes at least some of the way.”

“Parrots talk,” her grandmother said, after a moment. She looked as surprised as Sarah felt about Sarah standing up to her.

“Nope. Parrots repeat, that's different. You don't have a conversation with a parrot.” Sarah looked around, though of course it was night, and the raven was nowhere to be seen. “If someone was once a human and magic turned him into a beast, but he can still feel and think and talk like a person, then what is he?”

Her grandmother's eyes went waxy and cold, as if they'd filmed over with ice, and Sarah took a small halting step backward. “He. Is. A beast,” her grandmother hissed. “And nothing else.”

Sarah knew better than to carry on arguing, but a flame lit up inside her. Her grandmother was wrong—and she knew it. Sarah knew it too. The man in the cage might be beast-shaped, but he was still a man, like her father was still her father, and the little wren that Alan was hunting was still her mother. Like the raven was her other grandmother.

There had to be a way to set it all right again.

Her grandmother turned around on the path ahead, and gave Sarah a hooded stare. Then, rather unexpectedly, she said, “It's better this way, Sarah.” She didn't sound like the crotchety, malicious woman who made her go dig out flowerbeds all day. She sounded like a woman who was tired of carrying bags of groceries down a long road all by herself. Or who was sick of one more load of dirty laundry—as if she was about to cry but knew that if she started, she would never stop. “It's easier if he is a beast, and that's the truth of it.”

That night Sarah dreamed of claws and horns and wings, and woke, shivering, to a still, dark castle. It took her a long time to fall back to sleep.

She wanted to dream about her family, about walking with her parents through the park to go feed the ducks on a Saturday morning, or riding their bikes all the way to where the town turned to hillsides. Those were good dreams, and she could have stayed in them and pretended they were real. Instead, she had nightmares of hunts, of cold snow that covered all their bodies like a blanket, until at last all she dreamed of was white silence.

*   *   *

The following day, after lunch and a few halfhearted attempts at the vegetable patch, Sarah jabbed her trowel into the earth and left it there, like a tiny headstone. She was done with gardening. The raven had been avoiding her all day, as if it knew that Sarah had been told the truth.

The raven might be avoiding her, Sarah thought, but just because her grandmothers were cowards didn't mean she had to be like them. She got to her feet and strode purposefully past the rusting hulks of the cars. This time the scraggly hut behind the castle didn't seem half as threatening. Water still plopped off the ragged bristles of the roof, but the drops made a sad, lonely sound as they dripped into the muddy pools. The door was just a rotten tooth in an old man's mouth, and when Sarah pushed it open, the squeal of the unoiled hinges sounded more like a scared animal than an eerie horror-movie sound track.

“Hello?” she said into the dark. Her voice was a little rough since she'd run most of the way there. She had already faced another, younger beast in the woods, and it
had
scared her. But Grandfather was another story altogether.

He was old, and weak, and his paws were crumpled under his body from lack of use, and all he ever ate were kitchen scraps and bones with all the marrow boiled out.

At the sound of her voice, the lurking shape in the cage moved, and a moment later, his eyes flashed like lamplights in the dark.

“Hello,” Sarah said again, feeling a little foolish now. She pressed one hand to her side to ease out the stitch she'd gotten from running. Her face was crackly like old paper from dried tears, and she could feel long itchy scratches where the trees had slapped at her cheeks. “I've come to talk, if that's okay?”

The silence gathered around the two of them, as her grandfather considered. “Talk,” he said finally. His animal mouth made his words sound furred and strange, but at least Sarah could understand him.

She picked her way closer to the cage, and stopped only a few inches from the small door. She crouched down on her haunches. “What is your name?”

The beast frowned, his eyes darkening. It took him a very long time to answer, as though he could barely remember. “Eduard,” he said, and seemed surprised at the sound of it, at his own name.

Eduard. Grandfather.
He was more than just a beast, and Sarah vowed to herself that she would never forget it. She shuffled a little closer. “I spoke with someone yesterday.”

Her grandfather blinked and waited.

“He used to work for the witch who cast the curse on you. He told me the story of what happened to our family.”

“Ah,” breathed her grandfather. “Alan of the Woods.”

“You know him?” Sarah couldn't quite keep the surprise out of her voice, though it did make sense that Grandfather would at least have heard of the witch's servant.

“Not half as well as I would like,” he said. “He's a tricksy thing.”

“Oh,” said Sarah, in a small voice. “How do you mean?”

“He belonged to the Within once, and that means he's more powerful than he pretends.”

“He's just a boy.”

“And you are just a girl,” Grandfather retorted, “but you won't stay one forever.”

Sarah's heart gave a frightened little skip, and she shivered. “That's kind of what I came to talk to you about,” she said. “The curse. I need to know everything you know about it.”

“Why?” he asked sullenly. His teeth were very long.

“Because.” Sarah straightened and stood up. “Don't you think it's possible that there's a way to break it?”

The beast growled and made a coughing roaring sound, so that Sarah took a few worried steps out of reach before she realized he was probably laughing. “Of course there's a way,” he said. “It's in the rules.”

“Well, no one's exactly told me the rules, have they?” Sarah said. She crossed her arms. “So what's the trick?”

“No trick.” The beast sat carefully upright, and his chains jangled and clanked, and beneath his crippled paws dry old bones snapped with crickle-cracks. “Only a secret. One that Freya won't tell you.”

The raven. Sarah had to find a way to get the raven to tell her how to break the curse. Surely she would do it—after all, she couldn't want to see not only her daughter cursed, but her granddaughter too. “Perhaps I can convince her,” Sarah said, confidence bounding up. That was, if she could ever track her down.

“Good luck to you,” said the beast. He sounded amused and resigned. “You'll need it, I daresay. It's not like we haven't begged and threatened and wept.” He cocked his heavy, maned head and considered her. “You have something of her in your face, and it's true she misses your mother more than she'll ever say. Perhaps, if there's any who could sway her, it would be you.” He sneezed, then scratched at his mangy fur, leg thumping and chains ringing. “Go on then, girl—Granddaughter—break her heart, and make her see reason.”

“I won't need to go that far, I think,” Sarah said. She paused, then stretched one hand between the bars to stroke her grandfather's muzzle. “My parents used to call me Sarahbear,” she said softly.

“Sarahbear.” The beast rolled it around on his tongue.

Sarah withdrew her hand and set off, determined to wrangle the truth from her raven grandmother, one way or the other. She paused at the door and looked back at the beast in his cramped, sad cage. “It's not fair,” she whispered. “That Nanna does this to you.”

The beast shrugged. “Perhaps it's all I deserve.”

“Do you want me to leave the door open, so you can get fresh air and a little light?” As she spoke, she was already making plans, and plans on top of those plans. Having goals was making her feel less sorry for herself. Her determination to not let this curse get the better of her was keeping her spine straight and her heart fierce. “I can come close it again before Nanna feeds you, so she won't notice it's been open.”

“And know that the world exists, and moves on without me?” The beast settled back down, nose to tail, his horns gleaming in the faint light. “Thank you, no.”

And Sarah, who almost understood what he meant, closed the door softly. Before she headed for the castle, she went to the half-dug vegetable patch and took one of the small pieces of chalky stone she'd turned up in her gardening. She tucked it into her back jeans pocket, and began to hum.

*   *   *

Typically, the raven was still nowhere to be found.
She's always hovering about when I don't need her.
Sarah skittered through the dark passages and climbed the spiraling staircase up to her room. Everything had been neatly swept and put away. Not by her hands, of course. Nanna's magic at work. Sarah looked around the little turret room. Even though she'd spent her whole life living out of boxes and moving every few months, no room of hers had ever looked less like her own.
I don't belong here.
The thought was fierce.
And I won't be forced to stay.
Alan knew how to get in and out of the forest—that much was true. Next time she saw him, she'd ask him to show her how it was done.

Until then …
There are a few things that need doing around here.
Sarah picked up the bundle of candles that Nanna had left on her dressing table, and picked the knot apart. There was a dusty box of matches alongside them. She took one candle, and stuffed a spare and the box of matches into her pocket.

The lamps still guttered in the hallways, but it was time she found out all the secrets Nanna and the raven were keeping. Nanna was currently in the kitchen—it seemed to be the place she spent most of her time, always busy carving up dead animals to feed to the beast. Sarah had seen her when she'd ventured there to grab a quick sandwich, and Nanna had growled some more instructions about having the vegetable gardens ready.

And now Sarah was ready to sneak through the places she wasn't supposed to go.

Nanna never specifically told me not to wander about the castle.
Of course, if she'd known what Sarah was going to do, she might have left more explicit instructions. Sarah ran along the passages until finally she came to the last of the glowing lamps. She lit her first candle and, with a deep breath, stepped into the dark and made a mark on the castle wall with the chalky stone she'd taken from the garden. Her small, rough arrow stood out bright against the dull stone.