Thorny

by Lelia Eye

  “You’re free to leave,” she pointed out.

  “And you aren’t,” I returned. It was a lame comeback, yet it was all I had. But it made her narrow her eyes anyway, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.

  The hair-bearer—Begonia—came forward, and I was shooed briefly out of the room so Labelle could be prepared for bed. I could hear Begonia speaking soothingly, trying to calm Labelle down, but it didn’t sound like it was working. Words like “ugly” and “beast” came to my ears. Perhaps I should have felt offended, but I didn’t. I was too distracted by the thought of what was happening behind that door.

  At last, I heard Labelle giving instructions on how to properly arrange her hair so that not even a strand would end up touching me. I knew then that it was about time for me to go back inside, and I began to scratch at the door.

  “Go away,” Labelle said gruffly.

  “Nice try, Shaggy-Locks. Now, let me in.”

  “My hair is not shaggy,” she muttered.

  Begonia opened the door. I trotted inside and leaped onto the bed without any further ado.

  Labelle let out a squeak of surprise before she regained her composure and gave me her best glare. “You had better not touch my hair.”

  “That’s the last thing I want to do,” I grumbled, hoping she didn’t know it was a bald-faced lie.

  I curled up on top of the covers and stared at her, my ears twitching at the sound of Begonia’s departure. If I thought sleep was imminent, I had another thing coming.

  My sensitive nose picked up the floral scent of Labelle’s hair without me even trying, and I felt a whine stick in my throat. This was a very bad idea. I turned my thoughts to something else—to punishing her for attempting to remove me from her bed, just as she should. Just as I should let her.

  I could see her staring at me in the dark with wariness and female pique. I wondered if she could read my mind and see all the small acts of vengeance that I was trying to conjure up—nibbling on her toes, drooling in her hair, and sleeping on her feet, to name a few.

  I shifted, trying to avoid those unhappy eyes . . . and the growing fear in that beautiful face.

  Bah. There really wasn’t enough room at the foot of the bed for me to sleep comfortably, and Labelle might very well take it upon herself to kick me off in the middle of the night. Besides, I would not want to get strangled in her hair. Talk about terrible ways to go out.

  “Your bed is uncomfortable,” I told her as I jumped off. “I’m sleeping on the floor.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. “I’m not doing this for you.”

  After turning in a circle, I plopped onto the floor and put my head on my paws. I fell asleep almost instantly, so it wasn’t a big deal. When I woke in the morning, there was a red pillow underneath my head that I was pretty sure hadn’t been on the floor before, but I didn’t mention it, and neither did Labelle.

  I waited outside the room while the hair-bearer dressed Labelle—how that was possible must have been an event in itself—and then Labelle came out, and we walked forward together, Begonia trailing behind with the long and luxurious locks. To my disgust, we came upon Nettle and Poppy in the hall. They watched me cautiously, their fear stamped on their faces with such obviousness that even a three-year-old would have asked what monster was after them. In fact, Poppy was actually hiding behind her sister.

  “Ugh, what an ugly wolf,” said Nettle. I wished she would venture into the woods and get gobbled up by a witch. She completely lacked any imagination.

  I looked at Labelle. Her lips were pinched, and her chin was trembling. She obviously did not want to be followed by such an “ugly wolf.”

  I sat down beside her, at a loss for what might have been the first time in my life, and Poppy ventured forth, looking at Nettle as if for approval while still peeking out from behind her, “Look, it’s Beauty and the Beast.”

  Tears fell down Labelle’s face.

  I growled, and the stepsisters jumped, which gave me a strange sense of satisfaction. “I should eat you both,” I snarled, feeling my hackles rise with my rage. “The world wouldn’t miss you. But your stepfather might, and I actually respect him. I’ll leave this place, but you had better hope our paths never cross again. I might find myself hungrier next time. We big bad wolves can be unpredictable.”

  And then I left, without looking at Labelle and without sparing the insensitive stepsisters another glance.

  That was the first time I had ever made a sacrifice. Well, maybe “sacrifice” wasn’t the right term, as that would imply giving up something I actually had. But it was the first time I had ever truly denied myself even the opportunity to obtain something. And it hurt.

  Had I lived at Silverthorn for more than a year, I probably wouldn’t have made the same choice. However, my lonely life was still new to me, and I didn’t think much about the future and the prospect of eternal loneliness.

  I tried to think of my mother instead, but there was pain there, too, and my thoughts were drawn back to Labelle. Leaving Beauty behind physically did not mean I left her in my mind. And I wished, stupidly, that I could have taken that lousy pillow with me.

  Chapter 4: Fairly Lonely

  The journey back to the enchanted castle was much slower than the journey to the merchant’s manor. I took my time, watching where I placed my feet . . . and feeling as if there were a great load on my shoulders. I had left something behind, and every step I took made that more and more clear. And then, when I finally walked through the doors of the castle, I found myself under attack.

  “How could you just leave?” were the first words of the assault. “Why would you let such an opportunity slip away?”

  “Spying on me, Scarlet?” I said, trying to keep the weariness out of my voice as I plopped onto the floor in the entryway, sensing a lecture coming on. “I would think that sort of thing beneath you.”

  “Never mind that. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. How could you let this chance escape you?” She wasn’t happy. But neither was I.

  “A chance for what, Scarlet?” I asked, trying to find the energy to show the deep fury that was making my bones ache. “A chance to be scorned by Labelle’s entire family? What a life I let escape me! Come on—why would you give me Silverthorn if you didn’t want me to live here?”

  With a snarl, she said: “I didn’t give it to you—the castle belongs to no one.” She gave a shake of her head, throwing off some of her anger toward me. There was a glint in her eyes, and she seemed to be focusing on something I couldn’t see. “The merchant’s family should be punished.”

  I shook my own head, focusing on her first sentence and trying not to think about the latter. “You didn’t give Silverthorn to me,” I said flatly. “Whatever. Scarlet, you know what? I have a story for you.”

  She tilted her head to indicate that she was listening, but I could tell she was impatient from the way she shifted her feet and huffed. That simply made me more determined to speak. I wanted her to feel pain, as I was feeling pain. It was wrong of me, but I wanted to lash out. And I thought of the hurt I had been carrying around for years and latched onto it, as a drowning man will grasp at anything nearby, no matter what the cost.

  “Like the rose that was her namesake, my mother was a magnificent specimen of beauty—one of the prettiest women you would ever see. But she had the misfortune to be married to my father. He was a proud man who hated many things, including books. My mother always said his hatred of books was linked to his hatred of magic and flights of fancy. He was a hands-on sort of man who saw books as not only a waste of time but also as harmful things. It didn’t matter that reading was something my mother and I enjoyed.” I growled beneath my breath in frustration. “She was always making excuses for him. She shouldn’t have.”

  “You—”

  “I’m not finished, Scarlet,” I cut her off, getting to my feet and staring at her intently. I could feel my shoulders hunching as if I were ab
out to leap. “My mother read with me in secret, against his orders. But eventually, my father found out. He roared for me to leave the room, the stench of alcohol on his breath nearly enough to knock me over. So I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door. And then I put my eye up to the keyhole.”

  She had turned away from me, but I assumed she was still listening, and I continued. “She pleaded with him not to be angry, and he knocked her to the ground. That was the day I started hating him . . . and the day my reading sessions with my mother stopped. After that, books became almost impossible for me to find due to instructions given to the servants and nearby merchants, and I began to hate my father more.”

  “You shouldn’t hate your father,” she told me as she turned back to look at me, though I was not convinced she really meant it.

  “I’m supposed to love him despite everything he did?” I asked, raising my voice. I had begun to pace back and forth across the entryway like the caged lions in traveling circuses. “Tell me, is it fair that I should finally have access to such a great library—that in front of me are all the books I could ever dream of—only to find that I can’t even read any of the books without a way to hold them and turn the pages?”

  Her lip curled upward in a slight snarl. “That is not what this is about—”

  “Then what is it about?” I shouted. “Just tell me! Because I certainly don’t know!”

  Rather than respond, she turned and left. I didn’t bother calling after her. Even if I had actually had the energy, it was not worth the effort. I was too angry, and she didn’t want to listen to me.

  Growling under my breath, I went outside to try to cool my temper. I walked among the orchards, through the gardens, and past the livestock. I feared being the beast I looked, and that made me especially irritable. I worried that soon the inside and the outside truly would reflect each other. The way that I had talked to her was inexcusable, I knew, even if she had ruined my life. I should have been glad that she had not decided to completely abandon me as I had been abandoned long ago. But it was hard to think about the positive. It was much easier to focus on how everything had gone wrong.

  I had changed since becoming a wolf. I could list many ways I was different, but one of the most disturbing changes was that I didn’t dream anymore.

  While human, I had remembered most of my dreams. I had dreams about fighting dragons or chasing villains across the land. They were always so vivid and exciting, and I enjoyed waking up in the morning to see if I could remember what adventures my mind had concocted. I even had dreams where I had long conversations with my mother, telling her about everything that had been going on in my life. Those dreams had felt so real that it was hard to convince myself in the morning that they hadn’t really happened. To go from all that to no dreams at all bothered me immensely.

  How much of a person’s humanity was tied up in their dreams? I didn’t know, but I feared the answer. Did you dream because you had a soul? Had I lost mine? What exactly did going from human to wolf mean? What was the significance of dreams to humanity? Were dreams an essential part of what it meant to be human?

  Even if it were just about digging a hole for a bone or chasing my tail or hunting rabbits, I would have felt comforted to have remembered any dream. But I couldn’t force myself to dream, and I didn’t know if I did anymore.

  And while it was easy to grow worried, it was easier to get angry.

  I tried different things to find an outlet for my anger. I tried hunting, I tried destroying things, and I even tried howling at the moon like some half-crazed monster . . . but nothing relieved my rage. Everything made it worse.

  The next time my red-furred visitor came, my anger had grown substantially. Oh, I tried to hide it, but there was no way to extinguish such a flame. Though she probably suspected what I was on about, she did not flee when I said, “I have another story for you.”

  Instead, she stood there, immobile except for a slight switch of her red tail, and said, “Very well.”

  Maybe she still was upset from my last story, from my questioning of her motives for keeping me captive in this form. But whatever it was, I took my opening without hesitation. I felt like if only I could stumble on the right words, then I could become human again. I simply had to convince her that I was not where I was supposed to be.

  “My father hated magic and anything that seemed related,” I began. “That included books, of course, but it also included medicine. My mother, on the other hand, hated nothing, and she especially loved plants. In secret, she taught me how to make medicines using the herbs in her garden.

  “One day, when I was twelve, she was showing me how to make burn medicine when my father came in. The winter had been harsh, so he’d been unable to hunt with regularity, and it had made him turn more to the bottle. He immediately saw the medicine slathered on my foot where I’d stepped on a hot coal, and he saw a mortar and pestle beside us.

  “I’ll never forget the look of rage that came over his face. It was blank when he first entered, but it suddenly grew redder and redder, like metal heated too long in the fire. And then he began shouting at my mother.

  “I wanted to cover my ears and shut everything out, but suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. I began yelling back at him. He backhanded me and said I couldn’t talk to my father like that. I stayed on the floor, lip bleeding, tears streaming down my face. And my mother . . . she was colder than the bitter wind outside when she told him, ‘Fine. You win. I won’t read to our son again to expand his mind or teach him how to make medicine to heal the bodies of others.’

  “And then she left me with him. I shouted to her as she disappeared into the blizzard no mortal could survive. But she never looked back. And though I kept pleading that she not leave me with such a monster, still she didn’t return.

  “When the plants in her herb garden sprouted in the spring, my father set it all on fire. I stood over the remnants of her favorite lettuce, sobbing, and told him, ‘You didn’t have to burn the lamb’s lettuce, too!’ But my father said nothing; he just stood there like a statue as his wife’s beloved garden burned to the ground.” I closed my eyes briefly, the memory still vivid, still painful.

  After a few seconds of silence, I opened my eyes and continued. “After my mother left, I had a gaping hole in my heart, but I couldn’t blame her for going. Scarlet, who wouldn’t want to leave a life of misery and restrictions, where you couldn’t do what you loved?”

  She had turned away from me, and she finally spoke in a low voice: “She shouldn’t have left you with him.”

  “She didn’t want to be trapped in unhappiness. Tell me—is it fair that I am so close to such a bounty of herbs when I am unable to make a simple poultice?”

  “You are not wounded,” she told me, a touch of irritation in her voice now. And then she left.

  It was a very long time before I saw her again. I began to understand more about what it meant to be lonely. I began to view myself more and more as a beast. And of course, I began to grow angrier.

  One day, I found a pillow with sheep embroidered on it in my room, and I flew into a rage. “Who would want a witch-spawned, pond-scum-sucking, guano-eating sheep pillow?” I roared, and I then proceeded to rip it apart, flinging bits from one side of the room to the other.

  I had made it clear sometime back that I did not want the Invis putting any pillows with animals on them in my room, and I knew they had done it to taunt me. The fact that it was a sheep fed into my rage that much more.

  The wind chime made a hollow gong of disapproval, a couple of panicking frogs jumped out of their suddenly bubbling pond, and the fireplace flared so brightly it nearly blinded me.

  “I don’t care what you think!” I shouted, my head thrown back. “I am a beast! This is what animals do! They destroy things!”

  Some water flew out of the pond and doused me. “I wish I could bite every last one of you in two,” I growled, and then I fled the room.

  I ran through the castle,
creating havoc in any way I could. I pulled clocks and candlesticks off tables; I knocked over suits of armor; I dug at rugs and bit at tapestries. At every step, the Invis showed their disapproval through displays of water and fire and wind. But short of flinging flames at me—which could potentially bring down the castle which they also inhabited—they could do little to stop me.

  I was a beast, a monster, an animal. I was untamed, unwanted, unfettered. My paws were hammerheads that could hit the ground without a sound. My teeth were knives that never needed to be sharpened. My fur coat was superior to any clothing man could make out of sheep’s wool. My eyes could penetrate the darkness; my nose could sift out a thousand scents. I was the Beast.

  I let out a howl and roared, “Open the doors!” And then I flung myself out of the castle, claws clicking against the marble steps. I was natural primal instinct. I was—

  I stopped short. A spark of something undeniably human flared to life within my breast. In front of me was the fountain with the single rose standing at its peak. As I watched it, the bright red color glistened in the sun. The rose’s beauty outshone all things near it. It was perfection.

  I felt myself calming down. A true beast cannot appreciate beauty, I told myself. This rose, this pure beauty—it was the only thing that could comfort me in my sorry state. I had to guard it, hold on to it. As long as I knew beauty was near, surely I would not be a true beast.

  And so, I continued life at the castle. I had many more moments of rage and despair, but the rose could always comfort me. It was able to ground me in my humanity.

  Time passed—slowly, to be sure, but it did pass. And then, not long after my eighteenth human birthday, Gaheris Beauregard stumbled onto the castle grounds.