In the Night Garden

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “There is nothing you can do,” I protested. “She is too far gone; even I can smell that. Throw her from the tower and put her out of her misery.” But the Witch only chuckled deep in her throat, the gurgling of a hundred mountain streams.

  “I have made it my specialty, Beast, to thwart the magic of this particular man. I have grown since our last meeting; he only wallows in the depths of his few filthy skills.” She stopped, and her eyes grew sad. “I am afraid I cannot erase the beast from you, however. I cannot make you the girl you were. These things cannot be undone, once they have gone so far. In the old days it could be done, and easily, by any of my mothers before me. But much has happened. I cannot rejoin you to the tribe of maidens. But I can welcome you into the tribe of monsters. You will live; you will be rescued.”

  The beast-maiden’s eyes grew large with the weight of bitter tears. “But without my beauty, what am I? I cannot marry this way, and surely by now my father and stepmother are dead. I am as stupid as the day I left her; in fifty years I have learned nothing that would make her proud of me. This is all I am, a maiden in a tower, and for that sad race there is no salve but a Prince, hung around their necks like an anchor in epaulets. What else is there for me?”

  “Nothing,” a voice growled from the shadows. One of the heads curled her lips backward into an O of hate. “You are ugly now; no one will have you!”

  “You’ll stay with us and like it, dog-daughter!” The beaked head cawed laughter, smacking her gums.

  “Good for nothing but the circus!”

  “Maybe the wife of a farm goat, eating garbage in the pen!”

  “Queen of the dung flies!”

  “Empress of monkeys!”

  The heads cackled together, spitting and snarling. A few simply wept without words. The Witch scowled.

  “Don’t listen. They are already dead. The Wizard gave them voice to torture you—they long ago escaped this place.”

  “We’re not dead, little Witch! Try your parlor tricks somewhere else! She’s ours!” The heads pealed off into laughter again.

  “Where could I go?” Magadin asked pathetically. “How could I live?”

  “Beast owes me,” the Witch answered. “He will take you to the sea, where you can find work on the ships anchored there. Or you can take one to lands far away, where no one can follow you. If I am not mistaken, he thinks you very lovely now.” She grinned knowingly at me.

  “Certainly, my dove,” I replied with dignity, “the fur much improves what I saw from the foot of the tower. I have friends in the seaport of Muireann. With me at your side no one will refuse you. You are one of us, now. I assure you, we are gentler to each other than the wretched race of maidens. I will watch over you.” The woman seemed to acquiesce. Her eyes lit like yellow candles.

  “Now,” said the Witch, “you cannot go anywhere bleeding and broken like a bird who has fallen from her tree.”

  She took the maid’s face in her hands, winding her fingers in Magadin’s dusk-honey hair, and closed her lips softly over the beast-girl’s mouth.

  All the muscles in Magadin’s tortured body seemed to relax. The wounds caused by the sprouting of her wings healed in a breath, feathers covering the ruined flesh. Her tail became healthy and full, while her fierce claws receded a bit, into a civilized length. The fluttering wings at her braid tips melted into the rest of her hair, darkening it to a burnished bronze and thickening the mass into a leonine cascade. Her legs straightened slightly so that she could walk again, though they kept their rounded doe-shape, and the fish scales did not disappear from her calves. Her skin took on a rich, even tone, and the stripes on her flesh grew darker, more vibrant, seeming to become their own natural shade rather than a stain on her skin. Magadin was altogether a radiant beast now, her transformation complete, yet forever unfinished. I approved greatly.

  But the heads howled in loathing and horror, their taunts dissolving into spittle-filled gibberish. As they parted, the two women glanced at each other in triumph and walked towards me hand in hand, ignoring the thrashing heads entirely. The maiden’s deer gait would always be strange, like a foreign dance, but she was smiling. The three of us left the tower as swiftly as foxes, emerging onto the snow-dead grass as the tower began to shake with the rising screams from within.

  The Witch never looked back, but gestured carelessly towards the black monolith with her left hand as she and Magadin climbed onto my back. The tower promptly shuddered like a coughing crone and crumbled into the earth.

  In the Tower

  VISIONS OF SHORN SKINS AND BEAST-MAIDS MILLING IN HIS MIND like harem girls, the boy left the cedar grove and the girl, who now slept on the bed of pine needles, exhausted by the telling of her own story. He thought he could see the bright pale eyes of wild birds in the branches, like pearls strung on threads of darkness, waiting for him to leave so they could tend to her.

  As he stole back into the Palace without a sound, he was quite confident that he had acquitted himself perfectly—even the Prince could not have been so stealthy. But as he shut the door to his own bedchamber, a brazier flared, flooding the room with amber light like a fruit dashed against the wall.

  Dinarzad sat among the furs of his bed, a long slender stalk of straw in her hand. She held it aloft, still smoldering over the torch.

  “Well.” She chuckled. “You can’t blame me. I gave you fair warning.” She moved then, quick as a fly-bound spider, snatching him by the forearm and dragging him up a long staircase. Without another word she flung him into a small tower room, and turned the key in the great lock. The room was bare save for a tiny bed and wind-washed flagstones, illumined by the sapphire-ringed fingers of dawn, which pried at the window.

  The boy yelped in frustration and kicked the meager bed. He let a few furious tears fall like blows onto the cold floor. All was truly lost now—there were not even linens on the bed with which to fashion a rope. He was a stupid child after all, stuck in a tower like the deformed maiden, when he should be roaming the marshes like the Prince. It was all wrong, upside down, unnatural. The boy punched the stone wall in mute anger, and instantly regretted it, rubbing his bruised knuckles as his eyes watered in pain.

  Outside the tower keep, Dinarzad closed her almond eyes and took a deep, jagged breath, harsh as a sword drawn across a thick chain. She knew she would be punished terribly for letting him sneak out in the night. Her welts had not yet healed from the last time a child escaped from her nursery. But she was the Sultan’s daughter, and no amira of her standing would let terror or wounds show to anyone. She banished her tears as she strode down the polished steps, the key tucked into her robes. But when she crawled into her own bed, she began to weep silently under the wolf pelts, her tears wetting the down pillow like rain on the snow. She wished for nothing but to sleep past her punishments and wake to a Palace with no children for her to look after, no whips tipped in lead, and no prized brothers to mock and loathe her.

  When the girl woke and the great wings had moved from her pale body, she saw the dark-haired boy had gone, and she let hot, secret tears fall into the black earth.

  The night was full of weeping.

  Dinarzad brought the boy supper in the tower the next evening, just as rose and flame were beginning to divide the sky between them. She said nothing, punctuating her exit with the slow rolling of the iron key in the lock. The boy did not eat it all, though he was hungry. He set aside some of the dense, sweet bread and onions, saving the apples like gold ornaments in useless hope.

  The boy leaned against the tower wall, seething. He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors. Aerie seemed to have the girl’s strange eyes, and he could not even recall something so simple as the color of Beast.

  Standing on his toes, he stretched to reach the window-sill and peer into the Garden below, to spy at least the top of a cypress under which the girl might be lying. The trees stood high before him like quill pens in pots, wafting slow
ly in the night wind. And they were beautiful, because she might be resting under one of them.

  Except that she was not, for she stood in the manicured grass at the foot of the great gray tower, staring up at the helpless boy with eyes wide and dark as an owl’s throat.

  The girl watched him silently. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that she would climb up the craggy stones and ivy to rescue the boy, though she had certainly never heard of such a thing. For a moment, she let herself be filled and warmed with knowing that he had looked for her.

  When it was fully dark, she hooked a toe into one of the cracks between stones and began to climb.

  The boy heard her scrabbling up the ivy and nettles that clothed the tower. He was excited to know she drew near, but ashamed that it was again she that had hunted and tracked him. He should have jumped, he decided. A broken leg was not such a tragedy.

  Of course, it did not matter. The girl was here, and that meant she must like him a little. It was not just that she wanted to tell her tales; it must be that she missed him, too. This thought rose up in him like a blinding sun. Embarrassed, he snuffed it out, showing her his most welcoming, yet dignified, face.

  But when she pulled herself onto the sill, glistening with sweat, she would not come inside, only perch in the window like a half-tamed parrot. She was afraid, of him perhaps, certainly of getting caught. Up till now he had taken the punishment, but if she were found in the Palace, it was very likely she would be killed. His breath caught with the realization, with admiration for her bravery. Once again, she had outdone him.

  “I… I know you wanted to hear the rest of the story…” she whispered, and somehow he felt ashamed of it, for the first time, as though he were taking something precious from her, and caring for nothing but the gleam of the prize.

  Nevertheless, the girl began to speak again, and her voice filled the room like a copper bell. The boy closed his eyes.

  “I WAS TRUE TO MY WORD,” SAID BEAST. “AFTER THE Witch left us in her Glen, I brought Magadin to the village of Muireann, and arranged to have her hired as a sail-mender on one of the great ships. All told she has done well enough for herself, considering. Of course, there remained the last leg of the two-fold price the Witch exacted for my life. You must see now, that I am bound by my word of honor to give over the skin. Now my debt is done.”

  The Marsh King spat and snorted a loud hrumph from his perch in the air. “I think this is all most unpalatable!” He accused Beast with eyes that flashed like eels snapping their tails. “You liked that horrid human! You thought she was beautiful! It’s unnatural! I think you loved her! How disgusting—you know the other monsters would never stand for it. The beast-maid is one thing, but a human woman? At any rate I think you like her better than me. I don’t recall you ever giving me your skin, even when I wanted to kill that wretched salamander who annoyed me so last spring.”

  Beast was immediately conciliatory, jostling the Marsh King with his head, which smeared the monarch’s wiry beard with thick blood. “Poppet! You know I like you best of all. I chose to be your courtier—I could have chosen anyone. She was nothing, a momentary infatuation—not even infatuation! An aesthetic admiration, that’s all! Don’t be angry. You mustn’t begrudge her, when there is so much trouble ahead.”

  The Marsh King seemed to cheer up slightly, sniffing a little. Suddenly, he started and brusquely strode away from the Prince.

  “Well, lad, I suggest that you have your prize and ought, to put it politely, to clear off. Matters of state to attend to, don’t you know.” The pair promptly left Leander sitting in the swamp with his breeches soaked through and a skin which, if it had not to begin with, was beginning to smell.

  By now it was nearing evening, and the Prince guiltily decided that, since Eyvind was soon to come into whatever adventure had been stored up for him, he needn’t actually return to the tavern to deliver his message. After all, it had probably already occurred, whatever it was. He resolved to send a message-boy when all of this was over.

  This almost quieted his conscience.

  And so he made his way home, discovering the second truth of Quests, which is that, mysteriously enough, the path homeward is a great deal shorter than the path deedward. The sun slips easily through the sky, as if on a golden rail, and earth seems to positively skip by under one’s feet. Adventures rarely occur on the home trek, as if fate wills the loyal and successful Prince to the bed at the end of his duty. It was almost pleasant to walk back to the Witch, except that guilt and fear gnawed at his stomach like starved mice.

  So it was that when the Prince returned to the Witch’s hut, he trembled, but had, at least, the same heavy boots given to him by the tavern-keeper, which had not failed him. It was perhaps an even trade. It was the last night of the full moon, and darkness lay on Knife’s little farm like a thick-fingered hand. The milling geese were now quiet, and the plow stood in the half-light of the stars like a skeleton. The door of the hut was ajar, and Leander, the Leucrotta skin tucked neatly away, bent his dark head and crossed the threshold.

  Knife was not in the vast kitchen, though the hearth still glowered stubbornly, despite having long since been neglected. But behind a second door she lay curled up on a great bed, with the gray geese surrounding her, fashioning a blanket the color of waves over her gnarled body.

  Leander knelt quietly at her side and pressed the red bundle into her hand. She turned her head in mid-snore and grimaced.

  “So, you’re back.” She sighed, propping herself up in her strange feathered bed. The birds rearranged themselves, regarding him with dozens of beady eyes. “I suppose that makes you a good Prince, as Princes go. But you’re early. The dark moon rises only an hour before dawn, and it is not yet time to give my girl her second birth. And there is one thing more to tell.”

  She shifted, and the geese moved with her, stretching their long necks to lay their heads on her, to touch her in any way they could. Silver wings like crossed arms covered her chest.

  “I told the first part for myself, so that you would know what was. This I tell for you, so that you will know what is to come.”

  THE KNIFE CUT TRUE, BUT NOT DEEPLY. THE Wizard did not even spare a hand to staunch the blood from his own wound. It was a thin scarlet line under his chin, above the collar’s iron rim, but only one line among many on that leather-thick expanse of flesh. In one fluid motion like wind moving from one willow to the next, he caught my grandmother’s hand, snapping her wrist in his grip, and thrust her own knife into her belly.

  Grandmother stood still, surprised, looking at the knife’s bone handle jutting like a new limb from her body. And then suddenly she choked, and bright blood erupted from her white lips. She collapsed into my arms as the Wizard ducked into a small room behind the throne, servants in tow, looking after his shallow wound.

  And through all this, the King had said nothing, nor moved, but watched it with a falcon’s curiosity. He did not take his cool eyes off me for a moment. Grandmother lay like a child in my arms. She smiled wanly, and the blood kept pouring out of her, deep, dark blood from the depths of her, thick and black until it was not, until it was silver and pale, flowing over my hands, over my lap like a little brook of fresh water. I was soaked in it, and Grandmother reached up, her hand dripping with the stuff, and put her fingers into my mouth, so that the light trickled down my throat.

  It tasted of nothing at all.

  “You see? I can fill you up after all. You are all of us now, all that is left, drenched with blood and light like our long-dead grandmother in that terrible tent. You are strong enough to buy our vengeance for us. With my death, I instruct you.”

  She smiled, just the faintest shadow of a smile, and died, with a noise in her throat like dried beans rattling in a gourd. There was nothing left in her; the blood-light had seeped into me and she was a shell, a hole, empty space.

  I did not weep; I would not let them see it. I took the knife with its thick bone hilt from her flesh and clutched it
tightly in my bloody fist.

  And as I looked up at the King in all his jewels, for a moment I could see a shape just behind him—a pair of black eyes glittering amid bristled red fur.

  It was the Fox, and he was laughing.

  I could never discover what they did with my grandmother’s body, but it was removed from the hall as though it were kitchen rubbish, a pile of apple cores and pig fat. The stains were scrubbed from the floor when the Wizard returned, his throat bandaged.

  The King had never taken his unblinking eyes from me, and now I stood before him in rags which had once dreamed of being white, covered in the dark glut of her blood, my face streaked with it as though I had painted myself for war, or marriage. The Wizard pushed back his braided gray hair from his creased, high forehead and addressed the King.

  “That leaves only the girl, my lord. I will take her into my tower, if I have your leave.”

  But the King raised a silky hand, dismissing the suggestion. I stared hard at him as his eyes ranged over my body, clawing at me, trying to gain entrance. For he had conceived a terrible lust for me in his heart, and I could see it grow like a bristled boar behind his gaze.

  “You have your tower, Omir. And I have mine.” His voice was quiet and utterly cold, a foul wind through the feathers of a dead crow. I saw the understanding that I had gripped like a new blade at the moment I saw him watching me dawn in the Wizard’s pale eyes. It was a thick-tongued silence as the three of us thought furiously, each to gain his end.

  Finally, the Wizard won through, and spoke in a brusque tone that excluded me as wholly as a doubled fist.

  “My lord, may I speak to you in private for a moment?”