The Beast of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  He’d said “young miss,” not “child,” It might be he’d heard that part of what she’d said in the kitchen. She wished he’d believed the rest, too, but he was a man of the real world, and he’d never believe in the Old Ways.

  “I just want to come to Brim, You can bring me back here before you start the hunt,”

  Da rubbed his neck and gazed up at the clouds. “I will be passing back this way,” he admitted. Then with a shrug, “All right, Hanna. But tell your mother you’ll be coming along.”

  Five minutes later Hanna returned with the market basket. She climbed up the cart steps and settled herself on the high seat next to Da. Da jiggled the reins, and Gib started down the dirt track. “What’s the basket for?”

  “Mother wants some salt for the baking and tamalla herb to help Miles sleep off the pain.” She settled the basket in her lap. “I’ll get what herbs I can at Gurty’s stall.”

  Gib rounded a bend, and the cart bounced up and down on the rutted road. Hanna wiggled on the hard seat. Her legs and arms were still sore from helping Miles hobble through the woods hour after hour last night.

  From her high perch she watched the meadow grass swaying in the morning wind. Mother and Da had called it all a dreamwalk. But it hadn’t been a dream. She was sure. Still, why had Miles sided with them? Miles’s lie stung as much as Mother’s words. We had a right proper family, but when the midwife died the night our girl was born, and when they saw the child themselves … saw the child themselves … The words spun round and round in her head in time with the cartwheels below. She would never belong, with her mismatched eyes and her strange dreamwalks. Never grow up and marry and have a family of her own. She wanted that as much as any girl.

  “Your brother was brave to fight the wolf,” said Da.

  “What? Oh,” she said. “Aye, he’s brave.” She managed to say that, but nothing more, the words “He lied!” waiting to leap off her tongue.

  Hanna ran her hand along the mending stitches in her skirt: only the smallest of stitches now where the tear had been. She felt alone, even sitting close to Da, and as they neared the town, she hoped it wasn’t too late to find the Falconer.

  Down by the docks Old Sim lowered the net he was mending. “Oh, well now, you’ve missed the leafer. He just took Skep’s boat. If you look out yonder,” he said, pointing his large-knuckled hand out to sea, “you can see him yet.”

  Hanna stood beside her da and gazed beyond the docks to the swelling water. A small boat was sailing toward the little offshore island, and the day was clear enough to see the Falconer sitting tall and gray-caped in the stern.

  “He should be back tonight,” said Sim. “If there aren’t too many gone down with a fever and such on Tyr.”

  Da gave a quick nod. “Thank you kindly.” He patted Hanna’s back. “You buy what Mother needs at the stalls, and we’ll meet back here, daughter.” He turned stiffly and headed up the road for Mic’s cottage.

  Up at the market Gurty had but a single bundle of tamalla, and the price was very dear. “That’ll be three drena coins,” she said, and she wouldn’t bargain lower. The bag of salt sold for much less, thank goodness, and Hanna was back down at the shore long before her da arrived.

  Slipping off her boots, she crossed the wet sand and bent to retrieve a clamshell and a moon shell, both broken. A half treasure, Granda used to call them, but Hanna gathered even broken shells sometimes.

  A rushing wave brought seaweed to her feet. The long strands tickled her bare legs, wrapping them in wet green ribbon. She shivered and danced about to free her feet, running from the foamy wave, but a round shape tangled in the green made her turn and look again. Another wave came, stole the seaweed and the stone. It was a stone, wasn’t it? Hanna dropped her shells and ran closer. The wave receded, and just as the stone was rolling away, she swept it from the shallows and held it in her open palm.

  Wet foam hissed softly along the sand. Water washed about her bare legs, rooting her feet deeper in the sand, but she stood still, looking at her treasure. The stone was egg shaped, a blue gray color, and as translucent as morning mist. She turned it over. A small, jagged line shone bright white against its side, like captured lightning.

  The wave drew back like a breath. Hanna held the stone up to the sunlight. Granda had once said the Sylth Queen favored sapphires above all other jewels, and hearing that as a small child, she’d looked for blue stones herself. Up on the mountain and down at the shore. She was an island girl and not a Sylth Queen, after all, but an island girl could find a stone and see the beauty in it. Granda had taught her that.

  The wet stone began to dry in the wind, but it was still a soft, shining blue. Hanna drew her feet from the sucking sand where the waves had buried them, and headed along the beach. The stone might be a piece of luck, and she sorely needed luck right now. She could imagine it was a kind of jewel, given to her freely by the sea, one for the holding and not for the wearing.

  Cupping the smooth beach stone to her side, Hanna looked out over the water. Tyr Island was only a mile from shore, and she could make out a few fishermen’s cottages from where she stood. She wondered which cottage the Falconer was in and whom he was tending now. How strange that only days before she’d feared the old man so. Was it the gentle way he’d tended Miles’s wound that had changed her mind toward him? The music he’d played on his silver ervay, or the way he’d poured her thool and bid her drink before he’d bothered to fill his own cup?

  Now she was seeking him as she never thought she’d do. Wanting the look that came to his weathered face when he was thoughtful, as he had been last night. It might be the sick on Tyr Isle needed healing, but it was hard to believe that anyone in all of Noor needed the Falconer more than she did today.

  The salt wind played across her face as she rolled the stone around in her hand. The Falconer had said there were powers at work—that they were in a deal of danger. Miles’s teacher wouldn’t have said that if it had all been just a dream. And he’d promised he would help her if she told him everything. Now here she was ready to tell. Wanting to tell, and he was gone.

  THE ARGUMENT

  When the Darro and his ghost pack came for Rory, he and his dog gave them great chase.

  —THE LEGEND OF THE SHRIKER

  MILES RAISED HIS HATCHET AND CHOPPED OFF THE SMALL branch from the fallen tree. Beside him Hanna stripped the greenery from the slender branches and loaded the kindling into the wheelbarrow. Miles knew well enough why Da had sent them to gather kindling this morning, for Da thought work was the answer to all trouble. The past three weeks he and Hanna had passed from stony silence to bickering to angry silence again. They’d waged a secret war between them, or so they thought. It seemed Da, at least, had noticed.

  “You’ll come back with a great load of kindling and more kindness between you,” Da had said.

  Miles straightened up and looked across the broad meadow. His bones ached from the strange transformation he’d undergone. And the scab down his right arm still hurt where it did not itch and itched where it did not hurt. He’d had to chop the wood left-handed, which made the chore all the harder.

  Hanna laid more kindling in the barrow. “Da was right to send us out,” she said, “It’s time we talked.”

  “What about?” said Miles, though he knew, of course. Still, he sought to show no sign of worry. Hanna must believe it had been a dreamwalk on the full-moon night three weeks ago and nothing more. She must think that for her safety and for his.

  Hanna crossed her arms. “I saw it, Miles. That night in Shalem Wood. The …” She shivered.

  “The what?” he challenged.

  “You know.” She looked at him. Her blue eye was the same color as the patch of sky he’d seen above the clouded mountain peak when they set out this morning, and it looked just as troubled.

  Miles turned back to his work. He chopped another branch from the fallen pine. He didn’t want to lie to her, but if he admitted to seeing the Shriker—more than that, if he ad
mitted to her or anyone else that he’d shape-shifted …

  He recalled the fiery look in the Sylth Queen’s eyes when she made him promise to keep his power secret. The hatchet slipped in his sweaty hand. He gripped it harder. Granda once told a tale about a wicked boy who stole a jewel from the Sylth Queen’s hair. Queen Shaleedyn turned the thief into a spider. And now Miles remembered that there had been a spider weaving her dark tresses that night in the deeps. He tensed thinking of it. Then, of course, there was Enoch.

  No, he wouldn’t agree with Hanna. And it wasn’t only to protect himself, though that was a part of it. He couldn’t risk the queen’s anger, nor risk her taking his power from him, which would be the very least she’d do. He needed his shape-shifting gift to keep Hanna from the Shriker. He’d promised Granda he’d protect her.

  Hanna was still frowning at him.

  “I told you, you were dreamwalking,” he insisted.

  She shook her head.

  He pretended not to see. He’d thought to find a spell strong enough to overcome the Shriker on Othlore, but the Sylth Queen had given him power enough to do it here, and soon. Miles wrested the branch from the thick trunk and broke it across his knee. Crack!

  Kill the beast.

  Break the curse.

  He had the power to do it all now through his shape-shifting skill, if he could keep his secret. If no one interfered with him.

  “Miles,” said Hanna. “I know what I saw,”

  Miles tossed the broken branch at her feet. “Chop off the greenery there,” he said. Hanna didn’t budge. “Listen, Hanna. I told you before. I found you in the forest and saved you from the wolf and—”

  Hanna lunged forward and pushed him on the chest. “Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t lie about it anymore! I saw you leap from the high branch, so I thought you’d die, but you didn’t. You … flew.”

  Miles sucked in a startled breath and held it.

  “You changed. Your body changed. I saw it happen. And you saved me from the Shriker.” Hanna looked up at him not so much with anger now as wonder. He’d seen that look before when she’d knelt before the altar in the kirk. It gave him a strange, tingling feeling to be so admired. But he saw fear in her eyes as well, and he didn’t like that so much.

  High above a golden blade of sunlight pierced the clouds. Hanna was still looking at him, waiting for a word. “It’s true,” she insisted. “All of what I saw in the deeps. Isn’t it?”

  A drop of sweat slid down Miles’s forehead. He wiped it away with his sleeve. He couldn’t go on fooling her. What now? “We’ve nearly gathered enough kindling,” he said. “Strip another two or three branches, and we’ll be done.”

  He started on another branch. He’d have to make her promise to keep his power secret too. He would contain the knowledge of it so the queen wouldn’t find out he’d let another see his power. But how to make her promise?

  Hanna came up beside him and crossed her arms. “Why did you say it was a wolf attacked me?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you tell Mother and Da the truth?”

  “What would be the use of that? They don’t believe in the Shriker. They never have.”

  “They didn’t believe me when I told them, but they might have believed you!”

  “Would they?”

  Hanna paced back and forth through the grass awhile, thinking. Yellow warblers flew out of the gorse bush behind the oak tree. At last she shook her head. “It’s true,” she admitted. “They wouldn’t have believed you, either, they’d have said it was the fever on you from your wounds that made you talk so,”

  She picked up her hatchet, stripped her branch. They worked in silence awhile. When the wheelbarrow was half full, she asked, “On the morning we came back. Did you hear what Mother said?”

  “About it all being a story, and it was Granda’s tales that made you dreamwalk and all?”

  “Aye, that, but also …” Hanna wiped her brow with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of mud on her forehead. “That the family was all right, that people were forgetting the Shriker’s curse, until I was born.”

  “No,” said Miles, “She didn’t say that. Only that the townsfolk were afeard after that dark-moon time because the midwife and her man were killed.”

  “And because I was different. She said so.”

  Miles shrugged. “If people talk about your eyes, they shouldn’t bother. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “It does to me. Do you think I heard the Shriker’s call because of … my eyes?”

  Miles thought a moment. “I can’t say, Hanna. It may just be because you’re a Sheen, and it’s Sheens he hates most of all.”

  “If that’s so, why didn’t he call you?”

  Miles didn’t answer. He was stumbling over the question himself. But he managed to say, “Granda said he calls some. He never said why.”

  “Granda said that?”

  “Aye, just before he died.”

  “You should have told me he said that!”

  “You never asked!”

  Hanna sniffed and turned away. He thought she might be fighting tears, but when she turned back round, he saw she had a fierce look.

  “Listen, Hanna,” he said, “Granda was sure the beast called to Polly Downs. Why else would she have gone to the woods on a dark-moon night? I’m sure the girl knew the legend as well as anyone on the isle. And think, Hanna, Polly’s eyes were brown. Both brown. So you shouldn’t be going on about your eyes the way you do.”

  Hanna broke a small branch across her knee. “I should leave here,” she said. “I’m the one putting you all in danger.”

  “Take no thought of that, Hanna. I’il protect you.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “I have my ways,” he said proudly.

  After loading the last of the kindling, Miles pushed the wheelbarrow across the meadow. He’d never heard of anyone battling the Shriker and coming out alive. Miles’s chest swelled with the thought. I’m the first. The very first.

  At a turn in the road he glanced down to Brim village far below. From so high up mountain he should not have been able to see the villagers walking from shop to shop. But his eyes were keen as a falcon’s, and his vision was sharp enough to pick out the shop where he always stopped to buy twine for Da.

  Miles blinked, still wondering at this new power. He still had a patch of fur on his neck from his first wolf change. Would these sharp falcon eyes last for good and all?

  “Did you see the baker go inside just now?”

  “What?” said Hanna. “From this far away? I can only see the rooftops, and they’re small as nutshells.”

  It was true enough, and an ordinary boy wouldn’t have seen more than that himself. He licked his lips, tasting the pleasure of it. They started up the road again, the barrow rumbling under its weight of wood.

  “That night when you changed,” said Hanna. “How did you learn the magic to do that?”

  The back of his neck pricked. “I told you before that I had skills in magic.”

  “Aye, but the power to change your form like that. How did you learn to—”

  “A meer does not give away his secrets.”

  “But you’re not a meer!”

  “Not yet, but I’ve been studying magic, and I will be someday.”

  Miles stopped before a broad brown puddle. “You know I’ve wanted to go to Othlore. You’ve known that secret always. I’ve never kept it from you.”

  “Aye.”

  He kicked a pebble into the puddle and watched the ripples growing outward as it sank. He had to make her promise now. “What you saw in the deeps must stay a secret, Hanna. You’re not to tell anyone what you saw me do.”

  Hanna tilted her brows, unconvinced.

  Now it had come. The thing he’d feared to ask and had to ask. “After,” he said. “After what happened. You took me to the Falconer?” It came out more as a question because he only half remembered that part of the night.

  “I found the ivy-cove
red door,” she said. “And you stumbled in.”

  He didn’t want to ask more, but he had to know. “Did you talk with my teacher while I slept on the pallet?”

  She paused to look down at the puddle, then lifted her eyes to him. “Aye. A little.”

  Miles’s heart beat wildly. His parents did not believe, so his secret was safe with them. But if Hanna knew about his sylth gift and the Falconer knew as well, his second promise to the Sylth Queen would be broken.

  “So you told him what happened in the deeps while I was sleeping.” His voice shook. “And you told him everything. Didn’t you!”

  He saw her flinch. He’d flung the words at her the way Mother flung the wet washing against the rocks.

  “I didn’t!” she snapped. “He said he would help me if I told him all, but you awoke and we left right away.” She toed a pebble on the muddy road. “The Falconer knew we were in danger. He said so himself.”

  Miles took in the news, relief flooding through him in a sudden, cool wave. “Ah, well, he saw my arm and all.”

  “It was more than that.”

  Gray black clouds raced overhead, casting shadows over the gorse bushes and the holy thistle that grew along the road. The Falconer had meer powers. He could help them as no other man could. But Miles couldn’t turn to his teacher. Not after going against him and stealing the spell from his book. Miles felt a sudden ache in his chest. If he could find the courage to go to the Falconer now …

  No, he thought, and shut the feeling out. He’d left the meer behind the day he stole the spell, and he couldn’t turn back for help. There was too much at stake. He had to keep his power.

  Hanna peered at Miles’s wavering reflection in the brown puddle. “When we left the Falconer’s … Aetwan’s warning. ‘Change thrice and you free dark power.’ I think it’s something to do with your changing shape that night. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Miles didn’t move. Didn’t answer.