by Lelia Eye
That was a load of you-know-what, but if she didn’t want to talk, I couldn’t force her. So, I just said, “All right.” And then I finished my meal, and I bid her an early goodnight.
Before I knew what I was doing, I went out to the fountain. The rose wasn’t there of course; it was still in Elle’s hair. I jumped up onto the bottom tier of the fountain and stared into the water. A wolf’s face stared at me, surrounded by a halo of scattered stars, but it still wasn’t my face.
In a sort of inexplicable panic, I jumped down from the fountain and ran into the castle and then to my room, where I fumbled with the chest and then removed the mirror and dropped it to the floor.
I stared into it, studying the wolf’s face, and then I said: “Mirror, show me my human face.”
My features swirled into view. My face had aged some from three years ago; I looked more deserving of the title “young man” than “boy” now. My hair was still dark and curly, but looking at it gave me pause. Was it darker than it had been before?
I clenched my jaw and looked closer at the mirror. Were there flecks of yellow in my green eyes? And my human face . . . was there a faint diagonal scar across it? Was I really me anymore? Could I ever be me again?
I heard soft footsteps behind me and then: “You are more than just appearances.”
“No, Scarlet,” I said, stamping a paw on the mirror. “I’m not.” Appearances were everything. Beauty could never care for the Beast. I was a fool to ever think it was possible.
And I was a fool to keep hoping it was possible.
Chapter 11: Fleece as White as Snow
In the early morning, before Elle woke up, I went out among the roses.
Every day, I would pick a rose for her and place it at the foot of the stairs to her tower before she descended for breakfast, so this was nothing new. What was new, however, was the way I felt. For some reason, overnight, all my confidence (and much of my sense of balance) had left me. I felt on edge and clumsy, unsure of what to do with myself. Should I pick two roses today? But no, three would make too many flowers for one head, wouldn’t it?
And then I had problems finding a rose I liked. While I usually didn’t have to worry about the rose matching Elle’s dress—I suspected that was thanks to the Invis, though I guess Elle sometimes rejected the outfits they chose—that was not what had me in a panic. Rather, I kept coming across roses I had given her before.
Then I had a flash of inspiration. There were trellises by the chicken coops!
I hurried to the chickens, and amid their shrieks (despite the earliness of the morning, some had already come out to greet the day), I managed to extract a pink-tipped white rose from its fellows.
Picking roses was never an easy process for me. The flower’s stem, of course, was covered with spines, and while my tongue was tough, it wasn’t so tough that it was invulnerable to a thorn. Yet this was something I wanted to do; I felt it important that I pluck the rose myself rather than having the Invis do it, even if I had to bite through the stem. My tongue suddenly wasn’t something to save at all costs anymore.
With a bleeding tongue and a thumping heart, I rushed back to the castle to place the rose at the foot of the stairs that led up to Elle’s tower. I wasn’t certain why, but I feared she had already made her way down. I was just plain antsy.
But when I went to the dining room, Elle wasn’t there yet, so I stood in front of the room and waited. I was there for a while, though, and I had to shift positions more than once, as my cape kept tangling itself in my feet.
At last, Elle appeared (had I really feared she wouldn’t?), the rose in her hair perfectly matching her dress.
“Thank you,” I muttered to the Invis, hoping they would know what I meant. Then, I gave a slight bow, managing to avoid entangling myself in my cape, and I said: “After you, milady.”
Her answering laughter was light, like a brief tinkle of yuletide bells. “Yes, milord,” she said, entering the room with mock haughtiness.
The Invis had already pushed out my chair far enough for me to jump into it, but Elle pulled it out further and with a gesture said, “Milord.”
If I had been human, my face would have turned bright red. As it was, I felt my ears go back in embarrassment. I muttered, “Thank you,” and then I hopped up into the seat.
In addition to cutting up food for me, the Invis had spread the pieces apart to make them easier for me to grab with my teeth. Seeing as I had a voracious appetite, this meant my plate had to be refilled multiple times, but that was fine since the Invis managed to do it inconspicuously. It was strange to see food “sneak” onto my plate, but I appreciated the discretion.
After we were perhaps halfway through our meal, Elle said to me: “You know, I was thinking the other day . . . why don’t the Invis hold books for you?”
I grimaced. That was actually a bit of a sore subject. “Well, I don’t know the exact reason, but I figure either they don’t have the patience for it, or they were instructed not to, because they won’t do it.” Before she could ask more questions—like who would have instructed them or how I had read books before coming to Silverthorn—I changed the subject to the first random thing I could think of.
“Do you know the history of how Magnolia was formed?”
She grimaced. “History isn’t really part of a lady’s education. All I know is it had something to do with the kingdom of Airland.”
“That’s because everyone in Magnolia hates Airland so much that they don’t like to talk about it,” I said with a snort. “But it all started in Europe. A man named Phoenix from Germany and a man named Hawthorn from France met in England and became great friends. They learned that they had both always wanted to meet a fairy but never had. So they decided to go to Ireland and try to find one.”
“Why Ireland?” Elle asked.
“Because for some reason, that’s the main place where everyone believed fairies lived. It took the two men a little while, but they finally found a beautiful fairy with hair the color of sunlight. Her name was Avalon, and she told them that many of the fairies were in despair because people were blaming them for a potato blight.”
“Why would someone blame all fairies for a potato blight?”
“I don’t know,” I said, slightly irked at the interruption. “I don’t remember. Anyway, Phoenix and Hawthorn had heard of a land overseas that was beautiful and bountiful. So they decided to find as many fairies as possible and take them to this safe haven. Well, many of the fairies had families, so they had to go as well. And when Hawthorn and Phoenix learned there were fairies hiding all over Europe, they tried to gather those fairies, too. And as they did, other people without magical blood who were unhappy for various reasons wanted to go with them.”
“How many people did they take with them?”
I gave the wolf equivalent of a shrug. “I don’t know exactly. I just know they took several ships. But Hawthorn and Phoenix rode on the same ship, and during that time, they both fell in love with Avalon.”
“Uh oh.”
“Uh oh’s right. When they went ashore, they fought and decided to split the land into two kingdoms. Hawthorn named his kingdom Magnolia in honor of a beautiful magnolia tree he saw when he first stepped foot on land. Phoenix decided to name his kingdom Airland in honor of both a beautiful eagle he saw flying in the air and the homeland of the beloved Avalon.”
“Was he the one who won the fairy’s heart?” Elle asked.
“Yes.”
“So that’s why you’ll occasionally find French names here—and German names in Airland,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yeah. Most Europeans were distributed evenly among the kingdoms . . . except for those from the two kings’ homelands.”
She nodded but said nothing else. She appeared to be mulling over my history lesson. At least she had forgotten to ask more about some of the weirder aspects of my life.
The rest of breakfast passed uneventfully, and afterward, we went on our morning walk.
It felt like a horde of moths were frantically fanning themselves inside my stomach, so it was with great relief that I heard her say she was going to visit Soleil.
“You go ahead,” I told her. “I’m going to walk in the Rose Maze.”
I had seen some hedge mazes owned by some of Magnolia’s richer nobles, but none of those could hold a candle to the maze found at Silverthorn. While there were roses all over the castle grounds, many of the prettiest could be found in the Rose Maze.
The Rose Maze was much like one made of hedges, but instead of green hedge walls, there were walls made of roses. At each corner, a new type of rose could be seen, so that you might be walking along a wall of red roses, only to turn the corner and find a wall of orange-and-pink roses. The rose walls were thick, but I believed—and I could have been wrong—that there was a mixture of large shaped rose-bushes and carefully manicured climbing roses.
I didn’t often enter the Rose Maze; it was just one of the castle’s quirks that I usually ignored. As a child, I had been horrible at mazes, and I had refused to enter a hedge maze without my mother, who always seemed able to navigate them with ease. But today, I told myself, was a day for new beginnings, and I was going to walk through it and actually enjoy it. As much as I could anyway.
The one thing that the Rose Maze had going for it was that dead ends were not necessarily bad things unless you were in a hurry. At each dead end was some pretty object—a statue or fountain or unique flower bush. There were a few more bizarre things, too. At one dead end was what looked like a fancy bowl of water on a pedestal—like a bird bath or something. But when you looked down in it, it always showed some pretty scene, like it was a reflection of some sort of painting . . . but a moving painting. One time, I looked into it and saw a seascape with flying seagulls and rolling waves. As I watched, the sun sank slowly, and the colors in the sky changed bit by bit, and then a cat—a big and fluffy white thing with the longest tail I had ever seen—had entered the scene, taking a few steps and then shaking the sand off a front paw, only to move forward a little more and do the same thing.
Another unusual item was a mobile . . . sculpture, I guess you would call it. The metal thing had long “arms” that twisted and turned this way and that, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how it worked. It didn’t seem magical, but I had no other explanation for its seamless movement.
I was staring at the sculpture, mesmerized, when I heard Elle’s frantic shout: “Wolf! Beast!”
Any skill I had at working things out logically flew out the window when I heard her voice. I forgot how to navigate the maze.
In a panic, I started to move forward. Then I started to move backward. Then I stopped.
I tried to sniff out Elle’s scent, only to shake my head at myself with a growl. Such an action would get me nowhere. Just because Elle was close to my nose wouldn’t mean she was close to me as far as the maze’s twists and turns went.
So instead of sniffing, I trotted forward.
“Don’t worry, Elle!” I shouted. “I’m coming!”
I ran around a corner, only to have something white and shrieking fly up in my face. I snapped at it instinctively, only to be rewarded with a mouthful of feathers.
“What’s a rat-nesting chicken doing in the Rose Maze?” I cried to the Invis in frustration as I spit out feathers. “Why do all the blood-beaked bird-brains get free rein?” But there wasn’t time for a full expression of anger, so I continued on, ignoring the terrified bird.
I turned a corner into a dead end, cursed at the manicured hedge sculpture there, and then retraced my steps to take a different path. My heart was pumping furiously. I had to get to Elle.
Every decorated dead end made me more and more flustered, but finally I broke free of the perfumed maze. Then I let my nose take me to Elle. As I reached her in the apple orchard, where she was looking for me, I noticed she was distraught, but not in danger. Since all her limbs were intact, I wasn’t sure what the problem could be. My relief was short-lived.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know what to call you,” she said, wringing her hands. “It’s Soleil. I think she’s in labor.”
It took every ounce of willpower I had not to march back into that stupid maze and kill that stupid chicken. “You brought me out of there for a sheep?” I roared.
Then something strange happened. Suddenly, I thought back to those unsuspecting villagers who had come running up the hill, desperate to save the flock from the jaws of a wolf, their hearts pumping as they moved as fast as they possibly could. And then I was overcome with a deep shame that seeped into my bones. The fact that I had put those villagers through such a panic twice just for entertainment was, I realized, inexcusable.
It was strange that a wolf was actually being called on to help “save” a sheep, but so it was. And though I loathed sheep, I knew I would do whatever Elle wanted from me. It wouldn’t erase what I had done to those villagers, but it was a start.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Why did that phrase always seem so foreign to my mouth? “It’s just, well . . . I thought you were hurt or in danger.”
“It’s all right,” she said, but she looked unsure. She had cowered when I shouted, and I had to make up for it.
“Come on. Let’s go see to that sheep of yours,” I said, shrugging out of my cape. “If you get on my back and hang on tight, I can get us there faster.” I was asking her to make a leap of faith, and by all rights, she shouldn’t have done it. But even though we had only moved at a walk the one time she had been on my back, that girl had heaps of courage. She nodded without any hesitation, bunched up my cape, put it under her arm, and hopped on my back.
Despite occasional bouts of human clumsiness, I was actually fairly graceful in wolf form. This body—though bigger than that of ordinary wolves, at least according to what I had read—was made to tackle tough terrain at speeds fast enough to catch a fleeing deer or rabbit. And so Elle and I flew across the ground as a dolphin glides through the sea, my gait actually smoother than it had been while walking. Elle clung tightly to me, to be sure, yet it felt like she was showing some trust in me, and that was amazing.
When we reached the sheep pen, Elle practically jumped off me, and it was all I could do hide my amusement. She really was worried beyond belief about her pet sheep. It didn’t matter that the Invis had handled hundreds, if not thousands, of sheep births—not to mention sheep could actually labor by themselves most of the time—no, Elle thought something Had To Be Done.
Much though I had hated being a shepherd, it had forced me to learn a few things. I would have preferred to leave the lambing process behind a wall of enforced forgetfulness, but now I was forced to rely on my powers of recall.
“All right, Invis,” I said. “Elle is going to need a knife, warm and soapy water, and some towels.”
“I’m going to need them?” Elle squeaked.
“Yes, you. I don’t exactly have hands here.”
“All—all right,” she stammered.
“I’ll keep the other sheep away while you work. Now, see how the ewe—”
“Soleil.”
“—is on her side, with her head in the air? That means she’s almost ready.” I moved to the ewe’s backside. “And see that, erm, reddish bubble thing?” This was way more awkward than when I had been taught (probably because Elle was a girl).
“Yeah.”
“That’s the water bag. Pretty soon, the ewe’s water is going to break, and then you’ll be able to feel the lamb or lambs.”
“Lambs?” she squeaked.
“Careful there, or I’ll think you a mouse,” I warned. “Yes, lambs. It’s not uncommon for them to have twins. Sometimes they even have three lambs.”
“All right.” Her voice sounded shaky, and she was clutching my cape to herself like she wasn’t sure what she had gotten into. But I was here, and I was ready, and it was too late for her to back out of this now.
By this time, the Invis had delivered the water and towels, a
nd I examined the objects for a second before instructing Elle, “Wash your hands. When the water breaks, clean the ewe’s, erm, hindquarters, and then you’re going to go, ah, inside the sheep to feel the lamb.”
“I am?”
“Seriously, are you a woman or a mouse? I thought girls were supposed to be good at this sort of thing.”
“Excuse me if I’ve never helped a sheep give birth before!”
“Don’t you girls get some sort of manual on how to have babies or something?”
“My mother died when I was young, and my stepmother doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” she snapped. “I’m sorry I haven’t experienced a lot of requisite female nurturing!”
I felt my ears go back, and something akin to guilt clenched my heart. “I didn’t mean to upset you, all right? You’re just going to go in and learn the presentation of the lamb and help get it out if necessary. It’s easy stuff.” If the presentation was normal, anyway. But I wasn’t about to get into that.
She nodded, put down the cape, and got to work on washing her hands.
After the bag was broken and everything cleaned, I instructed Elle to put her hand in a sort of cone shape and tell me what she felt. “Do you feel the nose?” I asked her. “The legs?”
A sheep came near to see what was going on, and I nipped at its feet to get it to move away.
Elle had made a face as she entered the ewe, but now she wore an expression of awe. “Yes! I can feel the nose in between the feet!”
“Good,” I said, relieved. While I had been forced to deal with a number of different kinds of births (having been lucky enough to start my job as a shepherd close to lambing time), I would just as soon not deal with describing how to help a ewe with a difficult one. “That’s a typical presentation. Normally, it’d be best to let the ewe labor on her own for a while, but Soleil is a little small, so let’s help her out. Now, during one of her contractions, pull the lamb.”