Bryony and Roses (22 page)

“Oof!”

Bryony looked down and discovered that she had walked into a split rail fence.
 

It was such a normal homely thing, to eyes that had become accustomed to marvels, that she wanted to throw her arms around it and weep.
 

She didn’t, because crying on fences was definitely crossing a line somewhere.
 

It was the fence around the cottage. She climbed over it and into her garden, her own beloved garden, the first one she’d ever planted, with all the mistakes and failures and unexpected glories of a first garden.
 
She loved her new little garden in the corner of the Beast’s manor, but this was her heart.
 

“Oh dear,” she said aloud. It was late afternoon. Half the day had passed, somehow, and the sun was starting to sink. “Oh, garden, did you miss me? I missed you. I see that Holly has done her best, but no one ever thins beets enough on the first try, do they? And oregano, you are growing positively out of control, and I do not think that is at all appropriate conditions for a perfectly nice bunch of lupines, and—tell me that isn’t mint!
In the ground?”

It was nearly dark by the time she had grubbed all the mint out to her own satisfaction. (A misleading phrase, really. She would have been much more satisfied if she could have scorched the ground with fire and salt.) She washed her hands in the rain barrel and walked into the cottage, drying them off on her trouser legs.

Holly stood at the kitchen table, chopping up a sausage with a very large knife. She looked thinner and not terribly pleased. Perhaps it was a substandard sausage.

“Gont?” she said, turning toward the door. “Is there something—OH MY GOD!”

She let out a shriek and charged at Bryony, her arms wide, which would have been much more welcoming if not for the butcher knife.
 

What is with the women in my family running at people with knives? I shall have to ask Iris if she ever does it…

“Put down the knife!” Bryony squeaked, diving behind a chair. “I will hug you as much as you like, but don’t stab me!”

Holly flung the knife in the general direction of the sausage and pounced. The next few minutes were a whirl of sobbing and laughing and “Tell me what happened!” and “It’s been months!”
 

Eventually they settled down a bit and Holly poured them both out a glass of cider. “Now tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

“You first,” said Bryony. “Where is Iris? How have you been? I worried about you both so much, but I tried not to—”

“You worried about your garden,” said Holly, sniffing. “Which is just fine, let me tell you!”

“Yes, I know, I was out there earlier. You planted the mint in the ground.
Never
plant mint in the ground.”
 

“It’s a
plant.
Plants go in the ground.”
 

“Not this one.”

Holly made an impatient gesture. “I might have known you’d want to talk plants. Enough! Iris is fine. She moped about for a month and then the weaver’s son married her. She still lights a candle for you every night and goes to church and prays long extravagant prayers “for our dear lost one.” It’s pretty nauseating.”

“I’m sorry she’s so unhappy,” said Bryony, frowning.

“Feh! You don’t know our Iris at all, then, or you’ve forgotten. She loves being miserable. It’s her hobby. She’ll be a bit put out that you’ve actually returned, and she’ll have to get a new sorrow to milk.”

Bryony put a hand over her mouth.
 

“And did you marry your blacksmith?”

“Gont? Not yet. I may, but he’ll have to build me a house. I love his mother dearly, and I will
not
live in the same house with her. Fortunately she feels much the same way.”
 

She leaned forward. “Now. That’s all that’s happened here. Talk.”

“Did you put compost on the garden?”

“I will get the knife if you don’t start talking.”
 

Bryony leaned back and exhaled. “Well. Um. I don’t know where to start…”

“The beginning. Then the middle. Then the end. Now talk, and I’ll try not to interrupt.”

In the end she told Holly everything.

She almost left out the bit with the green-eyed man and the frustratingly erotic dreams, but she included them anyway, because they seemed important. The Beast had said that dreams in the house were sometimes true, and she trusted his judgment in the matter.
 

On her finger, the tiny gear ticked quietly.

Her sister leaned back, when she finally finished, and exhaled slowly.

“I know,” said Bryony. “I made a hash of it, didn’t I?”

“I love you,” said Holly. “You’re my sister, and I will always love you.
 
There is absolutely no shame in escaping from a kidnapper, and if you had gutted the Beast and walked out of the house, I would not blame you in the slightest.”

Bryony made a faint noise of protest and her sister waved her into silence.

“That said…
God
, you’re dumb.”

“Very,” said Bryony mournfully. “I kept thinking that if you were there, you could figure it all out.”
 

Holly shrugged one shoulder. “I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know who this fellow in your dreams was, although I’ll say I don’t much care for the sound of him. But for the love of little green apples, why didn’t you just hand the Beast a book and have him start underlining words to spell out his story? You were halfway there with the birch tree thing.”

Bryony put her head in her hands.
 

“The house could read, sort of,” she said. “At least, very simple things…”
 

“Then you could have written up all the possible scenarios in as complicated a form as possible and handed him a list and asked him which poem he liked best. You might have narrowed it down nicely that way.”
 

“In the future,” Bryony said, her voice somewhat muffled, “I shall make sure that you are the one kidnapped by magic beasts.”

“Oh no,” said Holly. “I’m quite comfortable with my blacksmith, thank you very much. I’ve not the least interest in your Beast, except insomuch as he makes you happy.”

Bryony lifted her hands and stared at her. Holly shook her head.

“Didn’t figure that out for yourself, either? Really?”

“It’s a pity we didn’t have mail,” said Bryony grimly. “You could have sorted all this out for me, and I would have been home in time for tea.”
 

 
“Quite likely. The solution to the Beast’s problem looks bloody obvious to me.”

“What? Tell me!”

Holly folded her arms. “The Beast only ever asked you for one thing.”

Bryony looked at her blankly.

“I imagine you stopped noticing pretty quickly,” said her sister, shaking her head. “You probably got in a routine and stopped paying attention. You do that, you know.”

“I am a horrible terrible person,” said Bryony. “I freely acknowledge this.” She rubbed her thumb over the clockwork ring, feeling the tiny teeth of the gear against her finger. “Now for God’s sake, tell me!”

“You didn’t say you’d marry him,” said Holly gently.

Bryony stared at her. Against her skin, she felt the gear move a notch.
 

“I’m an idiot,” she whispered.

“That’s what I said.”
 

“No, no, wait.” Bryony clutched at her head. “What if it was more magic? What if I said yes and he
died
or something? I didn’t know what it would do! Maybe
I’d
die or the house would eat me or—or—”
 

“Is the Beast particularly stupid, do you think?” asked Holly.
 

“No! He’s smart! And—and—he’s funny. Like we are. Sarcastic. And he makes the most beautiful little clockwork things and he doesn’t mind when I poke him and read bad poetry to him and he helped me dig my garden—”

“Spare me the catalog of virtues, I beg of you.” Holly lifted her hands. “I haven’t forgiven him for kidnapping you yet, although I see that I may shortly be forced to accept him into the family. Don’t give me that look. At any rate, if he is
not
stupid, and he had the option
not
to kidnap various travellers, why would he seize only on someone young and female and able to marry him?”

Bryony blinked a few times.
 

“Now, being me, I’d say nefarious reasons, but since I don’t think you’re quite so far gone as to be in love with anyone truly evil….well. Marry the monster and be done with it.” She scowled. “If it turns out that he is evil, I retain the right to round up a mob of villagers and have him killed.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” said Bryony weakly. “Am I in love with him? Are you sure?”

Holly gazed into her cider. “I believe I need something stronger.”
 

“But—”

“You never get to poke him and read bad poetry at him again,” said Holly shortly. “How do you feel?”

A chasm seemed to open up inside Bryony’s chest, and her heart and stomach fell into it.
 

She stood up so fast that the chair pitched over backward. “I have to go back!”
 

“Well, obviously.” Holly picked up the chair. “Settle down. Iris needs to know you’re home, and I’ll tell Gont where we’re going—”

Bryony blinked at her.

“You think I’m letting my baby sister—who has obviously addled her brains with mulch and poetry—go haring off by herself
again?
I don’t think so.”

Bryony felt a grin spread itself unwillingly across her face. “I can’t wait for you to meet him. You’ll say such horrible things to each other. I’m sure you’ll be friends.”

“Right.” Holly picked up their mugs. Bryony rubbed a thumb over her ring and looked down at it fondly.

The tiny leaf was a single notch from the green stone.

“Oh shit,” said Bryony. “Oh
shit
. Oh—Holly! It’s almost done! I have to go back right now! It’s moving! Shit! I thought I’d have more time!”

Holly said something that would have sent Iris into a dead faint and dropped both mugs. She swept up the butcher knife in her hand, grabbed Bryony around the waist and said “Just had to spend an hour saying hello to the garden, didn’t you? Go!”

The gear tried to move. Bryony shoved her thumb down on it, felt the metal catch on her skin. Over the pinprick of pain, she shouted
“IwanttogobacktomyBeastagain!”

The world turned inside out.
 

If her earlier journey had been vague and feverish, this one was fast and brutal. She would have liked to black out, but that didn’t seem to be an option.
 

A wind tore at them, a wind that howled like a mad dog, and the light of the cottage went red and bloody, shot with black. Then the cottage was gone—had they been blown through the wall?—and Bryony felt her skin being flayed. The wind was beating her with whips of thorns. Holly was still holding her, but even as she recognized the pressure at her waist, it was torn away, and she was alone with the terrible red wind.
 

I may arrive at the manor house, but I’m not sure I’ll be in one piece when I do. Oh God, why didn’t the Beast warn me it would feel like this?

Maybe he didn’t know.
 

This seemed likely. She thought perhaps something was trying to bar her way back to the manor, and one magic was pulling her forward and the other was trying to keep her away.
 

I suppose if one were dragged backward through a thorn bush, while it was on fire, it would be a little like this.
 

The wind stopped.

She lay in red-shot darkness. She tried to open her eyes and to her disappointment, they were already open.
 

Am I…in bed? Really?

Apparently she was. The noxious pink bed-curtains were drawn around her, although the light coming through them was darker and bloodier than she had ever seen. She sat up and pulled one aside.

“I knew you’d come back to me,” said the green-eyed man, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I knew you wouldn’t leave without helping me.”

The shadows cast across his skin were dark, almost purple. When Bryony peered past him to the window, she saw a tangle of leaves and thorns.

“I’m dreaming,” she said. “The windows. I saw that in my dreams. You’re from my dreams, too.”
 

He smiled. “You are not exactly dreaming. There are great magics breaking loose, and they let me come to you here, close to the waking world.”
 

He reached out and stroked her shoulder. Bryony realized that she was wearing a thin nightgown and not much else.
 

Did the wind change my clothes? Where is Holly? Did any of yesterday happen at all, or is this a very long strange dream?

The green-eyed man knelt on the bed beside her, his hands moving slowly down her body. Bryony shuddered convulsively. It felt as if he had touched her in some deep, impossible place, touched her and stroked her intimately. Her body throbbed in response, and the green-eyed man smiled.

Wait—wait—

She had been wanting this for weeks. And yet this had happened before, hadn’t it? He’d touch her and leave her aching, and then there would be only waking and emptiness—

Those were dreams. You know, the same dreams where he yelled at you for talking to the Beast.

She pulled away from him. She needed a minute, just a minute, just one, where he wasn’t touching her with that scalding touch.
 

“Poor thing,” he murmured. “Afraid? After all the dreams? Even now?”

She didn’t much like being called “poor thing.” She hadn’t liked it before, either.

She stared up into his eyes.
 

They were green, as green as leaves, and now that he was so close, she saw something that she’d never noticed before.

The pupils of his eyes were not black. They were dark burgundy, the color of rose-leaves emerging in spring.

Something clicked inside her head.