She remembered her sister’s words to her as she prepared to rush into the wood in search of their father, the words she’d ignored without a second thought. We need you here. And she’d abandoned them anyway.
No. No. She would not think of them. Not until it was done, and their father’s death was avenged. She couldn’t afford to. She forced her heart to harden, pushed her sisters from her mind.
It was two weeks after she’d moved into the castle above when the Beast came as usual to fetch her for the day’s work. This time, however, he stopped at the far edge of the bridge and sat down, fixing his eyes on Yeva.
She fingered the bow over her shoulder and eyed him back, uncertain at this change in their routine. “What is it, Beast?”
“Your skill at hunting in your wood is sufficient,” the Beast announced. “Now you will begin hunting in mine.”
Yeva’s brow furrowed. “Yours? I don’t understand.”
The Beast hesitated, his gaze sliding toward the forest beyond the overgrown road leading to the castle. “It is difficult to explain without—” He stopped short, as if someone had stolen his breath.
Yeva’s pulse quickened, curiosity tingling its way up her spine. “Without violating the terms of the spell?”
The Beast’s jaw fell open, and if it weren’t for the number of sharp, menacing teeth his mouth held, Yeva might have laughed at the shock written across his animal features. He went absolutely still, even the tip of his tail that was usually so expressive. For an instant he was so like one of the crumbling gargoyles on the battlements of the castle that Yeva thought maybe just speaking of his secrets had turned him to stone.
But then he heaved a breath and dropped lower to the snow, crouching like a wounded animal, forelegs bent and breath stirring the top flakes with each puff. “You are clever,” he mumbled.
“I know stories,” Yeva corrected. “The bespelled can never speak of what afflicts them—that is always part of the curse.”
The Beast’s eyes flicked up. “You believe I am cursed?”
It was Yeva’s turn to hesitate. Her mind still could not decide whether he was a man who had murdered her father or a beast who’d given in to animal instinct and torn him to pieces. And it still couldn’t decide which would be worse. Either way he would have to answer for what he’d done.
“I know you aren’t natural,” she said finally. “And you can clearly hunt far better than any human hunter could, so your need for me must mean you have a task you cannot complete on your own.”
The Beast said nothing, didn’t confirm her guesses. But neither did he deny them.
“And this existence is clearly . . .” Yeva paused, swallowing. “It’s clearly miserable.”
The Beast stayed silent.
“So, yes.” Yeva took a deep breath. “Yes, I believe you are cursed.”
Still the Beast gave no reply, which gave Yeva time to study his face. Though he’d dropped his eyes again, there was something about his features that caught her attention. He seemed different today, and not only because he’d changed their routine by halting at the end of the bridge. His muzzle seemed somehow less elongated, his eyes less bestial, his mouth more expressive and less fanged. The longer she stared at him the more it seemed, in the sun-dazzled glare, that he was somehow also a man kneeling in the snow. She blinked, and blinked again, and could not dismiss the image.
“Enough,” the Beast said abruptly, giving himself a shake that seemed to cause that humanity to fall away like shed fur. “It is enough for you to know that there is another world inside these woods, one you have not been trained to see. It is in this world that you will find your eventual quarry, so it is this world with which you must become familiar.”
“Another world?” Yeva glanced out toward the wood as the Beast had done.
“The easiest way to explain is . . . think of your stories.” The Beast’s face was turned aside, revealing only a sliver of his profile. “The stories you told of Ivan. That is the world you must learn to see.”
Yeva found herself clutching at the grip of her bow, not in fear but in a sudden thrill of excitement. Her father had mentioned seeing flashes of things that could not exist—he’d told her of spirits and demons and creatures that had no names. But all children were told such stories, and all children grew out of them. She had never imagined the things her father told her might be reality.
“So what am I hunting today?” Yeva asked, a million imagined images flashing before her eyes. She thought of the glass wing tips still clinging to the window frame in the long, shattered hallway.
The Beast’s lips pulled back, and Yeva could not decide whether it was a smile or a snarl. “Today,” he said, “you will be hunting me.”
Yeva felt like throwing her bow down in frustration. After three days of hunting the Beast, she could find no trace of him until he appeared close to sundown to bring her back to the castle. She knew now that it had to be magic, and her thoughts screamed at the unfairness of it. After all, she was human. Only a girl with a bow and a pair of strong arms and eyes. And none of those things could help her when tracking a magical creature through a forest that, for her, held only squirrels and deer and jays.
She’d been so sure this was a step toward achieving what she needed to do, that learning to track the Beast would be part of learning how to kill him. But that seemed farther away than ever, now that she knew how truly impossible it was to get the advantage on him.
The Beast was as frustrated as she was. She could read it in the gathering tension in his voice each day when he ended the hunt by revealing himself to her. So when, on the fourth day, he appeared early—no more than an hour or two after midday—Yeva’s heart flickered with a beat of panic. Was she to be punished?
But the Beast merely sat there, appearing from behind a tree as she walked. He stared at her, contemplatively, and for once, Yeva refused to let the stare unsettle her. Instead she stared back, fingering the fletching on the arrow she kept nocked to her bow.
“Come,” the Beast said finally.
“Come where?” Yeva asked warily.
“Here, to me.”
Yeva didn’t move, only gripped the bow more tightly and eyed the Beast sidelong, swallowing down fear.
The Beast’s brows lifted. “I will not harm you.”
“Your word?” Yeva asked.
“My word.”
Yeva’s hands shook as she returned the arrow to her quiver, and she stepped closer to the Beast. She stopped when she was near enough to feel the heat of his fur in the cold, near enough to smell that wild smell and see the flecks of red that gave his gold eyes their hue.
The Beast inclined his head, a melding of nod and bow that left Yeva more confused than before—a courtly gesture, so familiar from her time among the baronessa’s retinue, but so alien from this creature. “Turn around.”
Yeva did as he asked, though every nerve in her body told her not to turn her back on him, told her that she was mad to let such a predator so near.
She heard the Beast move closer behind her, and a warm paw came to rest in the center of her back. She suppressed the urge to shiver, certain at any moment she’d feel his claws. Instead she heard his voice.
“Close your eyes and listen.” His voice was very quiet, and despite the vast open wood all around, his words felt intimate, private. Yeva thought that even if someone were standing a few paces away, they wouldn’t hear him. It was as though he was speaking directly into her ears. “Tell me what you hear.”
“I hear you,” Yeva replied. When that got no response, she took a long, slow breath and let her attention move outward. It was difficult to listen with the reminder of the Beast right behind her, but as the sounds of the forest settled into the quiet she almost forgot about his touch.
“I hear jays,” she whispered. “Calling to one another. There is a wind some ways to the east, making the trees sigh against each other, but it’s not coming our way. Snow sliding from a branch.”
“Is that all?”
Yeva, eyes closed, felt her brows knit. “What else am I supposed to hear?”
“Listen.”
Yeva listened. She listened until her ears started to ring in the quiet. She was about to speak, and drew breath to tell him she heard nothing, when something made her stop. The skin at the back of her neck prickled, and not from the Beast’s presence. She felt her head turn, making the prickling stronger. “I hear . . .” Her thoughts emptied as she tried to name the sensation. Something was pulling at her, drawing her attention northwest, and it was a sound. Except it wasn’t a sound, at the same time. “I hear . . . music.”
The Beast’s breath caught, then started again. “Music?” he repeated, sounding surprised.
“I can’t describe . . .” Yeva’s ears strained. It wasn’t music, not really. But her mind could not interpret it any other way, this feeling, this sweeping, rhythmic pulse that kept drawing her attention off through the woods. “It calls to me the way music does.”
“Music,” the Beast echoed again, his voice low and musing, almost wondrous. “That is not what I hear.”
“What do you hear?”
“That is not important. For now, just concentrate on the sound.”
Yeva wanted to know the answer to her question, but she wanted to listen to the music more. Though the sensation was new and alien, it also felt strangely familiar. I’ve heard this sound before, she realized, her entire body tingling. She’d caught glimpses of it, like a distant haunting refrain, in her deepest moments of silence in the wood. When the long days stretched timelessly on, and her mind emptied of thoughts until there was only her footsteps in the snow, only the feel of the bow in her hand, the bite of cold on her cheeks. When everything else faded away, this sound was what was left.
What is it you’re looking for out there? Asenka had asked her.
“I hear it,” she whispered, mesmerized.
“Hold the sound in your mind,” the Beast murmured in her ear. “Imagine that it is not only a sound, but that it is a vision as well. Imagine that you will be able to see it when you open your eyes.”
She instantly saw colors playing against the backs of her eyelids, pulsing in time with the not-quite-music. Blue and white and green streaks of light shot across her vision. She did not dare breathe to speak, but nodded instead, slowly, as though moving too quickly would jar the vision free.
“Now,” the Beast whispered. “Open your eyes.”
Yeva did as she was told. All around were the trees, and the snow, and the underbrush, and the light in her mind’s eye was transposed against the scene. There was a focal point, a spot from which the light seemed to emanate, and Yeva stared at it. Suddenly a woman stood there, leaning against one of the trees. Her hair was long and raven black, and she was naked, as though the cold meant nothing to her. Yeva felt her face warming, suddenly all too aware of the rough wool on her own skin, and of the Beast’s presence behind her. The woman was beyond beautiful, and she stood running her long fingers through her hair like a maiden waiting for a lover. Then she paused, and turned her head. She looked straight at Yeva, and when their eyes met Yeva felt something inside her shatter.
She cried out and stepped back, falling against the warm bulk of the Beast. She fumbled with the bow at her shoulder, trying to grab for an arrow but getting only handfuls of the Beast’s fur. She gasped for breath, fear coursing through her veins, and looked back at the woman—and she was gone. There was only a pair of startled thrush that burst from the underbrush, crying and fluttering off into the distant wood.
Yeva stood, heart pounding. All at once she noticed how much she was leaning against the Beast, and that all her fear was for the strange woman in the wood, and that rather than terrifying, the Beast’s warm presence behind her was reassuring.
She had forgotten for an instant that the Beast was her enemy, that she existed now only to kill him. It had been only a few heartbeats, her thoughts flooded with the music of this strange other world, but she’d forgotten. Her stomach lurched, sickened, and she stumbled away from him.
When she turned, he was calm, watching her as though nothing strange had happened.
“What was that?” Yeva fumbled with her quiver strap to adjust it, disentangling her cloak from about her, trying to compose herself.
“Her name is Lamya,” the Beast said. “She and her sisters live in the next valley but they travel often, and Lamya prefers lying by the side of my river to shed her skins in the sun.”
“Shed her . . .” Yeva blinked, trying to understand. “Shed her skins?”
“She is a dragon.” The Beast’s brow furrowed. “Have you not seen a serpent’s shed skin before, in the wood?”
“But . . . but she was a woman, not a serpent at all.”
“She is that too.”
Yeva stared into the trees, trying to summon back that burst of color and music. She thought she heard a distant, rhythmic pulse, like the leathery flapping of great wings, but then it seemed nothing more than a far-off gust of wind. Yeva’s head spun. “Beast, what . . . what is this?”
The Beast sank down on his haunches. “This is my world.”
“The . . . the thing you need me for,” Yeva said. “You want me to hunt a creature from this world, your world.”
The Beast nodded.
“Lamya?”
“No, not Lamya.”
“But you won’t tell me what it is?”
“I cannot.”
Yeva let her breath out in a rush. “How can I hunt a thing if I don’t know what it is?”
The Beast was silent. Yeva had come to know him well enough to see from the set of his face that he was troubled. “I . . . I do not know,” he said finally. “But if you can see Lamya, then you will be able to see her, too.”
Her.
Yeva filed the tidbit away, tying it down in among the other scraps she’d collected. For now they were shreds of next to nothing, but perhaps, if she gathered enough of them, she’d be able to stitch them together into a tapestry with answers. For now, she would wait and listen for that far-off music. For maybe, somewhere in its rhythmic pulse, in the way it seeped into the empty spaces of her heart like warm honey into dry bread . . . maybe in that music she’d find the way to kill the Beast.
“Beast,” she said, making her voice steady, letting it warm.
“Yes?”
“You said that you didn’t hear music.” Yeva watched his face. “What do you hear?”
“For me,” the Beast replied, “it is like a heartbeat.”
Yeva fought a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “The heartbeat of the forest.”
The Beast gave himself a little shake, then tilted his head eastward. “That is enough for today. We will return now.”
As he turned to pass her, the Beast moved on top of the snow, his paws not even stirring the loose snow dusting the icy crust. Yeva’s boots crunched through, but he moved like wind, like spirit. He was showing her how he could travel through the forest without leaving a trace, and Yeva watched each step as if hypnotized.
“It is the same sound I heard,” the Beast said as he passed her, “when I first saw you.”
BEAST
We remember a time of such clarity. We were Beast, we ran with wolves and hunted prey, we lived on the wind and breathed the forest. We wanted nothing but to be, to run, to endure. Want didn’t exist.
And we remember another time, too, a time of longing and desire, where we existed as nothing but want . . . always the next unattainable thing. There was no joy in what we had, only in what might come.
And now these two selves, these two minds cursed to exist as one, every day grow more at odds. We return to our den to pace and end up railing against the darkness and the dirt—we lie before the fire in our room and itch at the confines of stone and mortar.
Only she frees both of us. She moves like beauty, she whispers to us of wind and forest—and she tells us stories, such stories that we wake in the night, drea
ming dreams of a life long past. She reminds us of what we used to be.
She whispers to us of what we could be.
FOURTEEN
YEVA AND THE BEAST fell into a pattern as the weeks began to stretch. Though she still could not track him through the forest, even as she developed an ear for magic, she discovered other wonders living in the Beast’s valley. Trees that had faces, voices, peeping at her one instant and gone the next. Lights dancing in the distance, riding the storm winds, laughter calling her to join them. A fox that stopped and smiled at her. Birds that flocked together this way and that on the wind, painting shapes in the sky over the meadow: a face, a cresting wave, a herd of running deer.
She asked the Beast about them all. Sometimes he had names for them, and sometimes he did not. Sometimes, very, very rarely, she’d tell him of a creature even he had never seen. Yeva thought, privately, that those moments seemed to delight him. She asked him each time, at each new wonder, whether that was what she was meant to hunt. Each time he said no.
It was nearly two months after moving into the castle, by her charcoal tally on the kitchen wall, that she woke to find the Beast crouched in the corner of her room.
At first she didn’t see him, and rose half sleeping from her nest of blankets to add a few logs to the fire so the room would heat while she woke the rest of the way. Doe-Eyes never bothered to wake when she did, grumbling happily from her part of the pallet until the fire drew her out to bask in its heat. Yeva wrapped herself back up in her blankets and jiggled her knees up and down to bring the blood back to her toes, and waited for warmth.
The shadows in the far corner moved, and Yeva let out a shriek before she could stop herself. She’d seen dark, frightening things in the musical wood, and her dreams had been more troubled since she’d begun to see this other world. She reached for the fire poker before she could think.
The Beast stepped forward into the light and blinked his round eyes at her. “We did not mean to frighten you.”
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