The laugh was human.
It was one thing to wish to hunt down and destroy the animal that killed her father. It was entirely another to think that what had killed him was, in some small way, human. It made his death something else.
It made his death murder.
A rabid animal, a man-eater, deserves nothing more than a swift death to spare anyone else the fate her father had suffered. But a murderer?
That deserved a kind of vengeance that turned Yeva’s heart to ice.
Behind her closed eyes, images played like light through colored glass. Fragmented, flashing so quickly from one to the other that her thoughts became as scattered as the light itself. The Beast’s snarling maw, inches from her. The calm with which he spoke of her family’s torture and death if she betrayed him. The anguish in his eyes when the blindfold fell away and she saw his face. The swath of trampled snow carving a path for her to carry her wounded dog with greater ease.
At some point the still images became moving scenes of things remembered and things imagined, and soon the scenes became dreams, and Yeva slept.
Yeva was awakened the next morning by Doe-Eyes’s urgent whining and a cold nose digging into the crook of her elbow. Though she could not tell in the windowless room whether it was morning, she felt like she’d been asleep for days. But as she rubbed at her eyes, she saw that her bow was missing, and her quiver of arrows. He’d taken her weapons. Even the fletching knife that had lain on the floor ever since she’d stabbed him was gone, leaving only a spatter of old blood where it had been.
Doe-Eyes whined again and Yeva slipped off the divan and into a crouch, assuming she’d see her favoring the injured leg. Instead Doe-Eyes gave an awkward, urgent sideways hobble, which, after a moment of confusion, Yeva recognized with a burst of clarity.
“You’ll have to hold on,” Yeva told the dog, thinking with dread of the long flight of stairs required to reach the outdoors. “And promise not to wet my tunic if I carry you, because I only have the one.”
The Beast had not forbidden her to leave the room, only to flee the castle entirely, but her hand trembled anyway as she reached for the latch. It gave under her touch, and the door swung outward. Doe-Eyes hobbled past her, galloping in a stiff-legged, slipping way up the staircase ahead of Yeva. At least she would not have to try to carry her and the lantern.
Yeva felt as wobbly as her dog as she followed in Doe-Eyes’s wake. She found that the staircase was not as long as she’d remembered from the day before, that exhaustion had stretched the distance out in her memory. Doe-Eyes remembered the way, and as soon as Yeva opened the door at the top of the staircase, Doe-Eyes scrambled forth, making for the massive front doors.
They still stood open, and a faint spray of snow blown in by the wind glistened in the sunlight cast upon the floor. She had not noticed yesterday that the floor was a polished marble, smooth except for the places where the stone had cracked after centuries of the castle settling and shifting. Doe-Eyes bolted toward the sunlight, and Yeva trailed after her.
The clouds had cleared in the night, and the glare of the sun on the snow was so blinding Yeva had to stand just inside the doors, holding her arm across her eyes to shade them and squint to track her dog’s progress. Doe-Eyes went only a few paces down the outer wall of the castle before dropping into a crouch to relieve herself.
Yeva turned her face toward the brilliant morning. The sun was only a few handspans above the far mountains, but it was still bright enough reflected on the snow to make her eyes water and nose itch with the urge to sneeze. She wiped at her eyes and scanned the valley, tracking the river from where it passed under the bridge before her, on toward where it vanished in the trees to the west.
There was no sign of the Beast. No new tracks led from the door except those Doe-Eyes had just made, and though it was difficult to tell new tracks from old, Yeva didn’t think any of the churned frozen slush leading down to the cave was fresh. So where had the Beast spent the night?
Somewhere in the castle, Yeva knew, she’d find whatever she needed to survive. Kitchens, latrines, perhaps even some room not too badly decayed for her to sleep in. The Beast might prefer to live deep underground, but Yeva could not bear the thought of spending one more night with the weight of all that stone over her head. And if nothing else, it would be impractical to bring Doe-Eyes up and down those stairs every time she needed to go out.
Yeva decided to explore. A part of her shrank from the idea, uncertain what horrors she might uncover in a castle prowled by a cursed Beast. But the rest of her thrilled to the thought, curiosity settling in and overwhelming her fear.
Because there was another reason to search the corners of this crumbling, ancient castle. Somewhere, somehow, she would find the key to destroying this Beast. He was too fast and too strong for axes or bows, but she would find a way. She would discover the secret to killing him.
Now that her urgency had eased, Doe-Eyes was moving much more stiffly on her wounded leg. But Yeva could not order the dog to stay put. Whenever she tried, Doe-Eyes would drop down onto her haunches, tail wagging furiously—and then, as soon as Yeva turned her back to leave the great foyer, she’d hear Doe-Eyes’s toenails click-clicking against the marble and then feel her hot breath on the backs of her calves.
“Fine,” Yeva told her finally, in fond exasperation. “You can come along. But don’t complain to me when your leg hurts tonight.”
Doe-Eyes only grinned at her, hobbling along, lolling tongue jouncing with every step. In truth, Yeva was glad for the company.
She kept her explorations to the ground floor for Doe-Eyes’s sake. She found room after room of faded tapestries and grand marble floors. One room held piles of rusted, ancient armor scattered at regular intervals—a display room, a decorative armory. Another room held a dining table so long Yeva could not have thrown a butter dish from one end to the other. Some of the chairs were missing—others were broken into pieces, or rent apart, their cushions spilling stuffing like entrails onto the floor.
She came to another hall, lined on one side with what had once been a series of stained-glass windows, most of which were smashed now. Snow had blown in through the empty stone frames, lying in wispy drifts in front of each window. Yeva crossed over toward one that still had some pieces of the original glass clinging to its edges. She reached up to trace her fingers over the vivid gold tips of a bird’s wing. There’d been no illustrations in her father’s book of tales, but Yeva had always imagined the Firebird this way: wings outstretched, golden, shining even in the palest winter light. She felt a sudden pang of loss for the images the windows had once held.
Her boots squeaked against the blown snow as she turned, but the sound made her pause. True, her steps had crunched against the snow, but not on the broken glass that should have been scattered everywhere if centuries of storms had blown the windows in. Yeva crept to the edge and gripped the window frame as she leaned out, peering down below. There was only the empty expanse of a snow-covered courtyard. But she knew that somewhere beneath the drifts of white would be the remains of these windows. Because someone had broken them from the inside.
Yeva left the snowy hall and moved on. She found the latrines, and the kitchen, covered in cobwebs, each pot and dish dull with dust and age. She found no bedrooms, for they must have been on the second or third floor, but she did stumble across enough sitting rooms with moldering divans and sofas that she could certainly make a bed for herself if she could stand the smell of mildew and age. Given a choice between the cleaner divan in the Beast’s room underground and a pallet on the floor of a sitting room within reach of the outdoors, she’d choose the latter without hesitating.
Her stomach was growling unhappily, but Yeva had seen no sign yet of the Beast, or of food he’d left for her. She’d given her word not to run away, but did that include leaving the castle to find something to eat? He’d confiscated her bow and she had no wire for snares, but even in winter she might be able to find edible roots
if she searched. Though roots would do little to satisfy her hunger.
If only she had some way of finding the Beast and asking for her bow.
As if the thought had summoned him, a roar echoed through the halls, vibrating through the soles of Yeva’s boots. Her heart jumped into a flurry, and Doe-Eyes pressed in sideways against her leg, ears flung back flat against her skull. Yeva pushed the instinctual flash of fear down.
He needs me, she reminded herself. He won’t hurt me.
And yet he’d killed her father.
The sound came again, and this time Yeva thought she heard words in it. “Girl!” the Beast was roaring. “Where are you? Come.”
Irritation rose up, warming her where fear had frozen her feet to the ground. “Who does he think I am?” she asked Doe-Eyes. “Some quivering servant? To be summoned whenever he wishes?”
Doe-Eyes didn’t answer.
“Girl!” the roar came again. “COME.”
Yeva’s hands balled into fists, and she took off back the way she’d come. From the many-faceted echo of the Beast’s roar, she guessed he was in the grand foyer. She burst into the hall, Doe-Eyes skittering along beside her, and drew in a breath to shout back at the monster as soon as she saw his great bulk silhouetted by the pale light coming from the open door.
But the Beast was laden with something, leaning backward and dragging a large burden in his teeth. He stepped sideways, ears flicking straight up as he heard her footsteps, and halfway turned. The thing he was dragging was a deer, glassy-eyed as its head lolled toward Yeva. The Beast stopped, his great red-gold eyes rolling toward Yeva, his teeth clamped around the base of the young buck’s neck. He opened his mouth to drop his burden, working his jaw for a moment as if relaxing the muscles there.
“I have brought you food.” The Beast staggered a step to the side, then dropped onto his haunches, jaw still hanging slightly open as he tried to conceal his quicker breathing.
Yeva was struck so suddenly and so vividly by a memory that her own mouth fell open. He looked so very much like Pelei, her other dog, whenever he brought home a dead squirrel or rabbit he’d caught—where Doe-Eyes was tidy, Pelei would bring the mangled carcasses straight into the house, deposit them on Lena’s clean rug, and then stand there amid the blood and the fur, panting and grinning proudly as if to say, Aren’t I a good dog?
The Beast was still watching her, clearly waiting for some response. When Yeva didn’t say anything, his face darkened, the brows lowering and his jaw closing. “Well?” he demanded.
Yeva’s breath caught up with her and she frowned. “Well, what? Do you expect thanks? You’ve made me your prisoner. I’m not going to thank you for feeding me.”
“Eat or don’t,” growled the Beast. “I care not.”
Yeva took a deep breath. There was no question: no animal could be this temperamental, this . . . childish. There was without a doubt an element of humanity, however deeply buried, within this Beast. “You care because you have gone to all this trouble to catch and train me, for whatever purpose you won’t explain.”
The Beast just snarled at her, and turned to stalk away, toward the opposite side of the castle from the one she’d explored.
“Beast!” Yeva called. “Wait!” And when the Beast paused, she did as well, gathering her thoughts. “Do you know how to dress a carcass, or only how to devour it?”
“I am not your servant,” the Beast replied, glaring at her over his shoulder.
“No,” Yeva agreed. “But I have no knife, nothing with which to carve meat from these bones. I cannot simply rip off chunks with my teeth as you would do.”
The Beast was frowning still, but his aggravation turned to consternation. “If I give you a knife, you will try to kill me.”
Yeva’s stomach growled again, and she could not help but roll her eyes. Just now, killing the Beast was not foremost in her mind. “I won’t try to kill you when I’m hungry.”
The Beast stared at her. She stared back at him. Doe-Eyes looked between them, still ill at ease in the Beast’s presence and pressing close to her mistress. In the end, the Beast grumbled low in his throat and led Yeva outside, lugging the deer with him, dropping it in the snow some distance from the door. He vanished and then reappeared some time later with her pack, in which Yeva found everything she’d brought with her. Though the food stores were nearly gone now, and the willow bark too, the other medicines were there, and her wire for snares, and the fletching knife as well.
Dressing squirrel and rabbit was one thing—butchering the carcass of a deer was another. It was always her father who’d done this work when she was a child, and by the time she had its innards in a pile beside the carcass, she found she wasn’t hungry anymore after all. Her bloody hands shook, and she wiped at her brow with her sleeve to buy time. She would not show weakness in front of the Beast, who stood some distance apart, watching her carve up his offering.
Doe-Eyes, who’d been snatching up various organs and then hobbling away to gulp them down with one wary eye on the Beast, finished eating the deer’s liver and skipped back to press against Yeva. She paused before reaching to scratch at the dog’s ears, her eyes on her blood-coated hands.
The Beast gave a low rumble. “You are inefficient.”
“Yes, with you staring at me,” Yeva mumbled back, too worn out and drained by the task to worry about angering him.
“Return indoors,” the Beast ordered.
“I need to finish—”
“Return!” the Beast’s voice rose, and he drew himself up taller, looming so that Doe-Eyes wheezed an inaudible whine against Yeva’s arm.
Yeva fought the instinct to flee. “I have to eat!”
The Beast drew one deep breath, then two, and Yeva realized she had too. Patience, she thought. That’s what I’m reaching for with each breath—could he be doing the same?
Finally, the Beast dropped his head. “I will finish your task,” he said slowly. “That is what I meant.”
“Then say that. Don’t command me as if I were your property.”
The Beast growled low and dangerous. “You are mine.”
“You may have me captive,” Yeva said. “You may control when I can leave and what I eat and how long I’m allowed to live. But you don’t own me.” She paused, then added with irritation, “And don’t call me girl, like I have no name.”
The Beast’s tail flicked aside, twitching with anger. “You call me Beast.”
“That is what you are. Have you given me reason to call you anything else?”
The Beast hesitated, scowling across the blood-soaked snow at her. “I will call you Beauty then,” he said. “For that is what you are.”
Yeva remembered her stories, and her decision to call her invisible friend Ivan, and her thoughts could not reconcile that name with the monstrous visage a few paces away. Her father’s nickname for her sounded strange from this creature, this thing that had murdered him. And yet she could imagine him calling her nothing else. From someone else it would be flattery, but there was no falsehood in the Beast’s face. Yeva wouldn’t have been surprised if he were incapable of lying, if his animal nature kept him to the truth at all times.
The compliment caught her so off guard that her response came before she could stop it. “Thank you,” she mumbled, dropping the knife to wipe the blood from her hands against the snow.
BEAST
She calls you Beast, for that is what you are.
And Beauty.
The surprise is not the compliment, not the truth, that she is beautiful. The surprise is not that we wish to help her. The surprise is not even the electric warmth that rises at the sound of her voice, even when she is shouting.
The surprise is how much I long to hear her call me, just once more, Ivan.
THIRTEEN
FROM THEN ON THE Beast brought her meat that had been dressed and carved. She didn’t know how he managed such delicate work with only claws and teeth, because he never let her watch. Sometimes she killed
the game herself, as he continued to take her into the wood to practice her skills. Other times, when her game was scarce, he’d go out on his own. He never failed to bring something home.
She cleared a space of dust and cobwebs in the vast kitchen, and cleaned out one of the four hearths so she could use the roasting spit. A few of the pots and pans she scrubbed clean, and a few plates and bowls as well. One of the sitting rooms she took as her own, and the Beast did not object when she began to sleep there instead of in his lair below. She imagined she was carving off a piece of the lifeless castle itself for her own use—or else bringing that tiny piece to life again. All around her was the dead, decaying carcass of whatever court had once existed here, and she was only living in a tiny corner of its shell.
With Yeva’s cypress salve, Doe-Eyes’s leg began to heal as the days stretched into weeks. She still hobbled, due to the splints keeping her leg straight, but she could move much faster, and no longer favored it the way she had been. Yeva could bring her along when the Beast took her hunting, and though Doe-Eyes was still too slow to catch anything herself, she delighted in galloping after the little scurrying things in the brush that caught her sight, and she slept much more soundly for the exercise. She bore up far better against the cold than Yeva would have thought, although that might have had as much to do with the dog’s loyalty as her hardiness.
Yeva tracked the days with a bit of charcoal on the wall. Though she could not know how long she’d been down in the cell, she estimated it had been at least a month. Which meant that by now, her sisters must think she’d met the same fate as their father. And Solmir must believe the same. How long would his word last? She knew him to be a good man, but if he came to understand that Yeva would never return to marry him and repay him for taking care of her family, how long would he continue to do so? Her sisters had never learned to hunt as she had, and Albe certainly knew nothing about it. How would any of them survive without her?
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