The Beast Is an Animal
Page 10
Father looked at Mother, kept chewing.
“Eldred,” Mother said, so quietly it might only have been her lips moving. Alys smelled fear, sharp and nose-curling.
“I know, Heledd. I know.” Father’s eyes shifted to Alys, then back to Mother. Mother nodded, picked up her fork, and ate.
As Alys walked along she passed the schoolyard, where the youngest children of Defaid had returned to play after finishing their dinners. She saw seven-year-old Ren leaning against the fence that surrounded the schoolyard. He was Madog and Enid’s oldest child, and just about to begin watching at night. Alys paused next to him and followed his eyes.
The children of Defaid were all standing in a perfect circle while one sturdy boy walked around them, singing:
The Beast is an animal
You’d better lock the Gate
Or when it’s dark, It comes for you
Then it will be too late
The Beast is an animal
Hear It scratch upon your door
It sucks your soul then licks the bowl
And sniffs around for more
The Beast is an animal
It has a pointy chin
It eats you while you sleep at night
Leaves nothing but your skin
On the last word—skin—the boy touched a small blond girl’s shoulder and then he took off in a tear around the circle, chased by the girl. The children all screamed with joyful terror as he ran for the little girl’s empty spot in the circle. Alys used to know all the Defaid children by name, but the older she got, the less she paid attention. She recognized the boy, though. He was one of the High Elder’s grandsons, a sly bruiser named Wyn. He was the type of boy who always did his worst when the adults weren’t looking. He easily reached the little girl’s spot before she could catch him, and now the girl was It. Alys shook her head. That poor girl would be It for the rest of the afternoon if she didn’t find someone smaller and slower to pick on.
Children and their games. Alys couldn’t imagine she had ever been similarly enchanted. Maybe the games had gotten meaner. Then she remembered how she’d taken such pleasure in frightening Gaenor.
Alys looked down at Ren, who was leaning his chin on the fence. “Where’s your mother?”
“The babies,” Ren said, his eyes fixed on the children. Enid and Madog had just had twins, boy and girl. Alys supposed that meant that Enid was busy. She looked at Ren closely. He was thin, not so pink and bright-eyed as usual. She rested her palm on his brown cap of hair and felt his weariness in her own bones. She felt something else, too—a yearning that stretched and stretched and made Alys feel the tiniest bit dizzy. Ren looked up at her, surprised. She pulled her hand away.
“There you are,” a woman’s voice said behind them. It was Enid. “I’ve just got the twins down for their nap. Come, you.” Enid was twenty-five now, and starting to show her age. “We’re getting Ren ready for watching,” she said. “He’s learning to sleep when the sun’s up.”
With all the wanderings of the older children, the Elders had begun to look to the next generation of Gwenith children to guard the pastures and the Gate. Fifty of them had made the journey from Gwenith eight years ago. There were only twenty-five left—fully half of them had been lost to accident, illness, or wandering. Ren was the first of the new crop.
“Oh,” Alys said. “I thought he looked tired.”
“Yes, tired. Well, aren’t we all?” Enid had been given special permission not to watch while she was pregnant, but once her babies were a year, she’d have to mount the Gate again and the twins would be left with one of the village families each night. At least, Alys supposed, Enid and Madog could keep an eye on Ren if they were all on the watch together.
“Will they let you keep Ren with you,” Alys said, “when you watch?”
“Madog’s asked the Elders about that.” Enid smiled tightly. “We’ll see. Come, Ren.”
“I could help,” Alys said, without thinking. She thought about Delwyn, how he’d saved her that first winter. “I could keep an eye on him, too.”
Enid gave her a real smile now—no teeth, but soft, rounded cheeks. She even reached for Alys’s hand for one brief moment, and Alys felt the rasp of Enid’s calluses. Then Enid turned away and pulled Ren along behind her. The boy slowly peeled his eyes away from the children, and Alys watched mother and son walk away. She noticed how Ren’s trousers bagged around his hips, pulled tight by an old belt of his father’s. His cuffs were folded up several times. Room to grow, she supposed. She could hardly believe that she’d been so small once. That at Ren’s very age, she’d first climbed the Gate herself.
THIRTEEN
Alys’s boots crunched in the frost that laced the dirt beneath her feet. The basket was heavy on her hip, and though she’d wrung Father’s linen shirts until they no longer dripped, still she felt the moisture seeping through her wool overcoat. It was just past dinnertime, but the sun looked weak and tired, as if it had held its weary head up long enough and it could hardly stand the effort.
Normally Mother would have had the washing hung when the sun was still on its rise. But she was feeling poorly today and she asked Alys to wash Father’s shirts and then hang them up to dry. It had taken Alys twice as long as Mother to perform the same task, and to do it half as well. Alys figured the wash would be more frozen than dry when she retrieved it by supper, and would end up dripping in front of the fire, a grand, steamy mess.
In planning out Defaid, the Elders had declared it slovenly and unseemly for laundry to be strewn about the village. Clothing touched skin, and skin was a private matter. So the women were instructed to do their washing in their own kitchens and yards and then hang their laundry to dry on the communal lines in the southern corner of the village. Only women were allowed there, lest a man catch sight of a woman’s limp underskirt hanging from a line. The women were expected to be able to control themselves around the men’s saggy braies.
The washing lines were strung between tall posts and each family had its own stretch of line, some longer than others depending on how large the family was. Mother’s line was short. The nearest line to hers belonged to pinch-faced Mistress Daniels, and next to her was Mistress Hardy. When Alys arrived with her bundle, both women were there. Their youngest children hung miserably at the two women’s legs, sniffling and crying to go home. Lined up around all the other washlines, the same scene unfolded in dreary progression. Gray-faced women were hunched over baskets, and were clung to by wet-nosed children.
Neither Mistress Daniels nor Mistress Hardy nodded or spoke to Alys, nor did she expect them to. Anyway, the women were too busy gossiping about the travelers who’d just arrived that morning to pay Alys much mind.
Alys’s trip to the washlines hadn’t allowed her time for a curious stroll past the travelers’ caravan, so she hadn’t yet laid eyes on them. She wondered if it might be Pawl and Beti. They were due for a visit.
“Is that boy their son, do you think?” Mistress Hardy said, pinning up a pair of her husband’s massive trousers.
A son? Well then it couldn’t have been Pawl and Beti. And she’d so hoped it was them.
“It’s all the same to them, I imagine,” said Mistress Daniels. She stopped her own pinning and lowered her voice. “You know them travelers marry their brothers and sisters, don’t you?”
Mistress Hardy clutched a damp apron and widened her eyes. “You don’t say?”
“I do say,” said Mistress Daniels. “Sons, nephews, daughters, nieces. It’s all the same to them. Foul creatures. And I’ve heard tell that the men lie down with men, and the women with women.”
“What for?”
Mistress Daniels cut two hard eyes at Mistress Hardy, who appeared no less confused as a result.
“But here’s the thing,” said Mistress Hardy. “Why would the Good Shepherd keep safe such savages?” She shielded her daughter’s left ear with one of her hands, and pressed the child’s right ear into her skirt until the girl stru
ggled. “How is it they can travel anywhere they please, but aren’t taken by them. The soul eaters?”
“Travelers are The Beast’s wicked stepchildren, that’s how.” Mistress Daniels nodded her head short and sharp, and Alys found herself slowing her hands despite herself, taking longer with the washing than she ever needed to. The nonsense that these women talked. That all of them talked. As if they knew anything about soul eaters. Or travelers. Or anything. It was no wonder Mother called Mistresses Hardy and Daniels the Blind and the Dumb.
“You don’t say,” Mistress Hardy said. Her eyes were so wide, so thirsty for more, Alys thought they might loosen in their sockets and fall clean out of her head.
“I do say,” said Mistress Daniels. “Mistress Miles told me they sacrifice their firstborn children to The Beast. Chop their heads right off, and say a toast to The Beast with their babies’ own blood.” She hissed her words now, and didn’t notice her son had stopped crying and was staring at her, mouth open, nose running thick and yellow. “Ay, and after that they dance naked under the moon.”
“The Good Shepherd help us all,” said Mistress Hardy. “And what do you suppose they do with the heads?
Mistress Daniels wrinkled her brow. “What heads?”
“The baby heads, Agnes. The ones they cut off?”
That’s when the screaming started. Boy and girl let up such a shriek and a howl that Alys nearly dropped her basket.
“Whatever are you shouting about, child?” Mistress Daniels pushed the boy off her skirts and wiped his face roughly with a linen. “Why can’t you be more like your older sister? Quiet as a mouse that one is.” Then she looked up at Alys, her face sealed at the lips. “What are you looking at, girl?”
Alys looked back at her line and hung the last shirt in her bundle. “Nothing, Mistress.”
As Alys walked away, Mistress Daniels raised her voice over her weeping brat. “That one’s just like them travelers. Mind your children around her, Della. Mark my words.”
FOURTEEN
As Alys walked home through the village, the sun sliced sideways across the horizon, casting long, cold shadows. Instead of cutting straight through the village, Alys perched the empty basket on her hip and took the long way around the perimeter of the Gate so as to get a look at the travelers.
It was Pawl and Beti. She’d recognize their four strong, ugly horses anywhere. And of course she always knew Pawl by his red hair—now shot through with more white than when she’d first met him eight years before. Alys had grown fond of Beti over the years, as well. She’d never known a woman to laugh more often, or at less. Beti was nearly as strong and broad-shouldered as Pawl himself was, and it would be a charitable way of saying it to call her disheveled. In truth, Beti wasn’t simply sloppy, she was unconcerned.
With them, there was indeed a boy. Or not a boy, exactly. He stood half a head taller than Pawl. Those women at the washlines were ignorant fools, and no surprise there. Even if Alys hadn’t known that Pawl and Beti had no son, anyone could see that the boy wasn’t the couple’s natural child. His skin was the brown of buckwheat honey and Pawl’s and Beti’s complexions were as pale as Alys’s. The boy’s true parents must have been from the mountains. One of the things villagers from Defaid didn’t trust about travelers is that they came in so many colors. The people of Defaid only came in shades of milk, but travelers from the Lakes were those colors and more. Folks were drawn there from all the far corners of Byd.
Alys tried not to stare at the boy, then discovered that she was doing so anyway. The boy’s eyes were the darkest brown. With a start, Alys realized the eyes that she was studying so intently were looking straight back into her own.
Alys peeled her gaze up and away as if she hadn’t been looking at all, and then she turned her attention to what they were selling from the other villages. There were saddles and shoes from Tarren. Also bags of ground hard winter wheat. There were woven grass baskets and salt fish from Pysgod, the village that clung to the river. The wares weren’t so interesting that Alys needed to be perusing them for long, and there was no sense pretending otherwise. She glanced up at the young traveler again and saw the slightest flicker of a smile playing around the edges of his mouth.
“Our lass!” Pawl poked his head out of one of the caravans, rushed over and grasped Alys around her middle, and picked her up off her feet.
“Oh, we’ve been looking for you, child.” Now it was Beti’s turn, and she lifted Alys just as easily. Alys felt the itchy snarl of her gray hair where it leapt free of its bun.
“Now look what we’ve brought with us, Alys,” Pawl said. “Not pots and pans, no, this time we brought a nice big boy. And what do you think of him?”
Alys felt herself blush crimson, and when she glanced up her gaze stopped at the boy’s mouth, where she saw that same lip curl of amusement that she’d noticed before.
“He’s a handsome lad, isn’t he, Alys?”
“Oh now Pawl,” Beti said, punching him hard enough in the arm that she tilted him just slightly off his feet. “Leave her alone. She’ll run away if you keep teasing her like that.”
“I’m Cian,” the tall boy said. “And you’re the fair Alys that Pawl and Beti can never stop talking about.”
“Ay,” Alys said, “I suppose I am.” She couldn’t bear even to glance in Cian’s direction. The heat in her face had traveled to her stomach, and Alys felt the urge to run. “Well, I should go now. Mother will be waiting for me.” She glanced at Pawl and Beti. “And I’m in the pasture tonight so I’ll need to bundle.”
“Ah, well then I’ve just the thing for you,” Pawl said. “Something I’ve been saving for when you were a bit older. And bigger.” He dashed into one of the caravans and then was back again with a wool coat. Mam’s coat. The one she’d left in Pawl’s wagon eight years ago.
Alys touched the coat, looked at Pawl, nearly threw her arms around him but didn’t. “Mam’s coat. You kept it for me?” She pressed her face to it, but no scent of Mam remained. Silly to think there might be.
“Ay lass, I did. I remember like it was yesterday. You such a wee thing, and it was all you had of her. Didn’t realize I had it until I was a day or more away from Defaid. And then I thought to myself, Pawl, the lass will grow into it someday, and then you’ll give it to her. And now I have.” He laughed and chuckled, wiped his eyes.
Beti patted his arm, wiped her own. “Ay dear lass, you run along then,” Beti said. “The shame of it, sending you children out on a night as chill and damp as this one’s likely to be. The coat will help, won’t it? And we’ll look for you tomorrow day, all right?”
“Ay,” Alys said, and then she did hug Pawl, swift and hard, and hurried off relishing the cold on her warm cheeks.
As she rounded the corner toward home, Alys saw Enid emerging from Mother and Father’s front door. Enid paused for a moment and looked around her as if unsure what to do next. When she caught sight of Alys she walked toward her, head down. It had been a month since Enid had returned to the watch, leaving her twins to the care of a village woman all night. Ren was on the watch now, too, and his company might have been a solace to his mother, but the Elders had turned down Madog’s request that the boy be allowed to watch alongside one of his parents. Madog took the news quietly, but Alys sensed something different about him lately, a set to his jaw that she’d not noticed before and a scent like wet metal whenever she drew near him.
“Alys,” Enid said when she was close enough to whisper, “I have a kindness to ask of you.” Enid squeezed Alys’s hand briefly, and she felt the tickle of Enid’s rough fingers on her palm. “It’s Ren. He’s feeling poorly.” She looked at Alys meaningfully. When children of Gwenith took sick in their first years on the watch, they often didn’t recover. “He’s to be out in the pasture tonight and Madog and I are on the Gate. You said once you’d help look after him, and I’m asking if you’ll do that tonight. Keep an eye on him?”
“Ay,” Alys said. “I’ll look after him.”
As they walked to the pastures at sundown, Ren pursed his lips and blew misty clouds of hot breath into the cold dusk. He tilted his head back and watched the puffs of warm, damp air turn white and then disappear above him. He blew long slow puffs, then short fast bursts.
What a thing to play at, Alys thought to herself as she watched Ren puffing along. He should know by now that seeing your breath meant a long, cold night ahead. A child of Gwenith shouldn’t find joy in the cold.
Puff. Puff. Ren skipped along beside her, occasionally running the back of his hand across his nose and coming away with a long ribbon of snot. Alys dug out a linen from deep in her pocket and handed it to him. “Wipe,” she said.
“Thanks,” Ren said.
“Keep it. And where are your mittens? I know your mam didn’t send you without them.” Ren didn’t reply, he just kept skipping along next to her. “You’ll get tired doing that.”
Skip. “Doing what?”
“Bouncing like that. There’s no need for bouncing. Walking is better.” Again the boy didn’t answer. He’d tire soon enough, Alys thought, and then she wondered what she’d do. She wouldn’t be able to carry him. Not all night. “We’ll walk your pasture first, then mine, and we’ll need to be quick about it so we’re never long away from one pasture or the other. We’re lucky ours are next to each other.”
“Dad did that. Switched me with Lyneth.”
“That was smart of him,” Alys said. She gently pushed Ren toward his field. Their two dogs were already far ahead, no doubt circling the herds as Ren and Alys should be doing. But Ren was slow, despite the skipping. The night had fallen fast and black, and thick clouds obscured the moon that should have been shining on them full and bright. The grass and frosty earth crunched like broken glass beneath their feet. The moisture in Alys’s nose turned to crystal and her eyes burned. She smelled snow. “Cold?”