The Beast Is an Animal

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  Beti brought Alys her clothes. She’d let them sit by the fire so they were warm to the touch. Then she turned her back and began to busy herself at the hearth, giving Alys a view of her stout back and the opportunity to remove her borrowed shift and put on her own clothes without feeling watched. Alys wanted to braid her hair back but didn’t know where her leather laces were. The fire blazed and the room was blissfully warm but still she shivered. Although she’d thought she was better, the effort of standing and dressing nearly sent her back to the floor.

  “Here child, sit here.” Beti pulled one of the heavy chairs away from the table. “I’ll make you some tea. And there’s stew.”

  “Just the tea, please,” Alys said. “I don’t think I can eat quite yet.”

  “Well, we’ll have to work around that, because you need to eat. Maybe we’ll just try some toast and cheese for now. You need some hot food in your belly.”

  Alys nodded, tried to look grateful. Her stomach turned at the thought of eating. She couldn’t.

  Beti sliced cheese onto bread, put it in a frying pan with a knob of butter, and set it over the fire.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  Beti poked the bread in the pan, shifted it to keep it from burning. “About a day.”

  “And we’re in Gwenith, aren’t we?”

  “Ay. Aren’t too many good houses left standing, but this is a sturdy one. We often stay here when the good folks of Defaid send us packing. It’s a nice place to rest a bit in the bad weather.”

  The smell of hot bread and cheese should have made Alys’s mouth water, but instead it made her feel ill. “When he comes back I must thank Pawl for saving me. That’s the second time in my life he’s done that.”

  “It’s still only once, my love. It was Cian who found you in the snow. He saw you staggering in all that white, picked you right up and brought you here. You’re lucky he’s such a big strong boy, else we wouldn’t be talking right now.” Alys’s cheeks flamed hot. Cian of the brown eyes had picked her up in his arms and carried her here. She wanted to fold in on herself from the embarrassment of it. And then that other thing again. That . . . tingle.

  Beti set a mug of hot, milky tea and the plate of toasted bread and cheese in front of Alys. Then she crossed her arms over her rough apron and smiled.

  The front door flew open with a bang, and icy wind blew into the room again. Pawl and Cian both had big bundles of wood and kindling strapped to their backs.

  Beti rushed over to close the door behind them.

  Pawl and Cian dropped their bundles near the hearth. Cian pulled off his gloves and set to building up the fire. Alys found herself transfixed by his hands as he worked. They weren’t freckled farmer hands. Or callused carpenter hands. They were smooth and quick and nimble and a beautiful brown. . . . Tingle.

  Beti sat down at the table, and once Pawl had shed his coat and boots he did the same. They both looked at Alys expectantly, as if waiting for something remarkable and entertaining to occur.

  Alys felt herself blushing and didn’t know where to set her eyes. It was too unsettling to look at Cian, and too burdensome to look at Beti and Pawl with their hopeful expressions. So she looked down at her plate. A slick of oil separated from the browned and melted cheese. Her stomach turned. Still, she forced herself to reach for it. She broke the hunk of bread in half with her hands, hoping that a smaller portion might not disgust her so. The bread was thick and gave off yeasty clouds of steam as she tore it. She hadn’t eaten in how long? But it was as if the longer her stomach had gone without food, the less she wanted it.

  Still, she felt sure that eating some of this bread and cheese would make Pawl and Beti happy, and she found herself wanting to do so. That’s what a good girl would do. She picked up the smaller of the two pieces and brought it to her mouth, took a bit between her lips and teeth. Chewed.

  But instead of tasting bread and cheese she tasted dust and ash.

  Cian sat down at the table and smiled at her. Alys’s stomach cramped forcefully. She thought she might cry. She pushed the plate away. “I’m sorry, Beti. You’ve been so kind. But I can’t. I can’t seem to taste anything.”

  “Oh tosh now child, no reason to get upset about it.” Pawl patted her hand. “Drink your tea. That’ll cure what ails you. And when you’re ready, you’ll eat.” He rose to his feet and pulled a large jug from a shelf. Then he poured a clear liquid into two mugs and gave one to Beti, kept one for himself, and set the jug in the middle of the table. He didn’t offer any to Cian or Alys. At once Cian looked less happy.

  Beti took a long sip from her mug. She regarded Alys thoughtfully. “You haven’t got a fever anymore. It broke in the night. And anyway, fever takes away your appetite but it doesn’t take away your taste. How long haven’t you been tasting anything?”

  Alys thought back. There were the apples and cheese she had eaten when she was tied up in the cellar. That had tasted just fine. Then there was the bread in the small shack in the fforest where she’d spent the night. That had tasted like dust. And in between those two meager meals were the trial and the cage . . . and the wolf. Her mind traveled to that poor animal, and it was like an arrow shot, straight and true. This was her punishment for the unnatural thing she had done to that wolf. She had turned it into nothing, and now that nothing filled her mouth.

  “It’s been a few days,” Alys said.

  Beti shook her head. Took another long sip. Pawl poured himself more and topped off Beti’s cup. “Well,” Beti said, “you’ve had a shock, no doubt. What those sour-faced Defaiders did to you I can only imagine. We heard what happened when we went back the next day. I thought Pawl was going to do something awful to those Elders. It was all Cian and I could do to hold him back. So we got in our wagons and came here.”

  “I said to my Beti, ‘I know where she’s gone. Back to Gwenith. Back home.’ And I was right, weren’t I?”

  “Ay,” Beti laughed. “You were!”

  “Good child,” Pawl said, patting Alys’s arm. “Another night of resting up here, and we’ll all be well fortified. Then on to Pysgod in the morning. We need more fish, eh, my love?” He reached over and tucked one of Beti’s errant strands of hair behind her ear. “I do love to trade when it’s good and cold like this. And this winter’s dragging on something fierce. Should be spring by now. But that’s good for us. The cold makes people desperate. You know, Alys, some Lakers like to trade in the spring and summer when the weather’s warm and the roads are easy. But I say, better to enjoy the nice weather back in the Lakes and take sinful advantage of all the hungry villagers in the winter. Don’t I always say that, Beti?”

  “Ay, ya do,” Beti chuckled.

  Alys felt herself smiling while Beti and Pawl talked. She imagined going to the Lakes with them and how it might be. An impossibly happy life unspooled before her like thread.

  And then the thread turned knotty and Alys remembered why she was here instead of Defaid. Because she was a soul eater. Because she was evil. And how long would it be before Beti and Pawl found out? How long before Cian saw her for the monster she was? And what if . . . what if she did something awful to one of them? What if Cerys and Ffordd and the wolf were only the beginning? What if she were turning, slowly but surely, into a creature like Angelica and Benedicta? What if that was why she couldn’t eat? Because food wasn’t what she hungered for anymore?

  Pawl had continued talking. “I’ll teach you everything I know about trading, Alys. You’ll be a fine foxy dealer by the time I’m done with you.” He gave her a broad wink.

  “I can’t go with you to Pysgod,” Alys said.

  Cian glanced up at her, wrinkled his brow, but said nothing.

  “Whatever do you mean, child?” Beti said. “Course you will. Where else have you to go?”

  Alys reddened. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to go with you. I used to long to live in the Lakes with you. But . . .” Alys looked around her. “Perhaps I should stay here. Maybe this is where I belong?”<
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  “Ooooh,” said Beti. “No, child. No. This ghost town’s no place for you.”

  “No ghosts here,” Pawl said, gulping more of his drink. “Soul eaters saw to that. No soul, no ghost. When a soul eater gets ya, poof. Yer gone.”

  Cian gave Pawl a dark look.

  “I’m not afraid of it here,” Alys said. “It’s my home, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not staying here, child, and that’s final.” Pawl’s voice was firm in a way she’d not heard it before. She wanted to yield to it, rest into it. But she couldn’t let herself.

  “Listen to Pawl, child. And in this cold?” Beti said. “You’d never be able to keep yourself warm and fed. No offense to you child, but even I couldn’t. Not to mention, well, child. There’s things out there.” She glanced toward the door as if one of those things might be standing just on the other side. Little did Beti know, Alys thought to herself, that one of those things was sitting right across from her.

  Alys couldn’t let herself give in to the temptation to go with them. She wouldn’t.

  Then she felt Cian looking at her. “You should come with us.” That was all he said. Nothing more. Alys’s heart squeezed and released. Squeezed and released again. A quake. Tingle.

  “It’s settled then,” Pawl said. Nodded to all of them.

  Relief washed over Alys like warm water. She had no decision to make. There was no struggle that would convince them to let her stay here. They wouldn’t let her stay, and in truth she didn’t want to. She would just have to hope for the best, as she’d always done. Hope that whatever monstrousness lurked within her, she could keep it at bay. And if she couldn’t . . . well then she’d run away. But at least she would have tried. Would have known what a happy life felt like, if only for a while.

  “Of course it’s settled.” Beti smiled and reached across the table to pat Alys’s hand. “Never any doubt.” Then she pulled her hand back and drank deep.

  Pawl and Beti talked more of trading, of all the villages that Alys would see with them, all the places they’d take her. She felt her eyes grow heavy, and as Pawl and Beti’s words seemed to slur together, Alys wondered if she were even fully awake—if she might be asleep already and only imagining this. But their voices grew louder and more insistent, and just when Alys’s eyelids were starting to droop shut, Beti burst into a guffaw and Alys jerked awake in her chair.

  Pawl took a long gulp from his cup, then he gestured with it to Beti. “Now, love, didn’t I tell you we’d find our girl here? Didn’t it happen just like I said? I knew they wouldn’t burn up my girl. It would take more than that load of tight arses to do my girl in. I always say, it’s a wonder those Defaiders can walk in a straight line with their arses sewn up so tight. Ya’d think they’d fall right over. It’s a wonder they don’t sneeze shit right through their noses, considering it’s got no place else to go. Don’t I always say that, Beti?”

  “Ay,” Beti laughed. “Ya do. Ya most certainly do.”

  Something odd was happening to Pawl. This wasn’t the gentle man she knew. And Beti’s voice was louder and faster and harder than it had been before. It hurt her ears. Alys glanced at Cian and his face had grown closed, his mouth a flat line.

  “The lot of them act like they don’t shit brown and through their arseholes the same as the rest of us. But we know different, don’t we girl?” Pawl nudged Alys with his elbow. She withdrew her own.

  Beti chuckled and coughed, drank some more. Pawl slapped the table to put the cap to his joke. Cian closed his eyes.

  There was a change in the room, like a turn in weather, and Alys could feel it on her skin. Cian, who’d seemed so open-faced and pleasant when she first awakened, had turned to stone before her eyes. And Beti and Pawl had become freakish versions of themselves, laughing too long, asking questions and not waiting for the answers. She’d thought they’d be pressing her for details about what she’d done to be punished, but they seemed to have forgotten all about it, and about her. They drank up, poured more, talked louder and less intelligibly.

  Alys now wished she hadn’t given in to them so easily. Wished she’d insisted upon staying here by herself. Who were these people she’d thrown in with? Was this what she really wanted? She hardly knew anymore. She wondered if she’d made a mistake, or if she simply didn’t know her own mind. She missed Mother and Father. Powerfully. Missed the quiet of their home in Defaid. Missed knowing what would happen every day of her life. It wasn’t a happy life, but she could trust it. With Pawl and Beti the landscape felt shifty. Unreliable.

  Cian reached for the cork and put it in the jug. “That’s enough. I’ll build up the fire for the night. Time for bed.”

  Pawl followed Cian’s hands with his eyes, lowered his eyebrows and seemed about to argue, but shrugged instead. “Come along, Beti.”

  Beti glanced behind her at the hearth, squinted and seemed to have trouble focusing. “Well, but the dishes need scrubbing.”

  “I’ll do it,” Cian said.

  Beti rose from the table, pushing upward with a great effort. “You’re a good lad. Bless the day we found you.” She hooked one foot on the leg of her chair and nearly went over, but Alys jumped to her feet and caught her in time. Beti breathed out heavily with an oof and a grunt, and Alys smelled something familiar on her breath. She tried to recall the scent and it came to her that it was much like what Father used to thin the whitewash for doors and fences. Her nose curled and she fought the urge to pull away. Beti threw an arm around Alys’s shoulder, and Alys led her to the wider of the three mattresses on the floor. Beti dropped onto her butt and began to struggle with her shoes, so Alys set to unlacing them for her. Then, to Alys’s horror, Beti undressed down to her shift, exposing great folds of flesh in the process. Alys averted her eyes while Beti crawled under the blankets and commenced to snoring as soon as she was horizontal. Pawl managed to take off his own boots. When he reached for his pants buckle, Alys fled across the room. Within seconds, his snores matched Beti’s.

  Alys looked back over at them. Cian was leaning across Pawl and had two arms under Beti. “What are you doing?”

  “Turning Beti on her side. That way she won’t choke to death if she throws up in the night.” Cian grunted a bit under Beti’s weight, then stood up.

  “Is she sick?”

  Cian looked at her, wrinkled his dark eyebrows. “Drunk. Never seen drunks before?”

  “You mean, what they were drinking from that jug made them that way?”

  “Yup.” He sat down at the table and ate the bread and cheese that Alys had left on her plate, wiping the plate with his finger and licking off the crumbs. He seemed calm and open-faced again now that Beti and Pawl were off to bed.

  “Why do they drink it if it makes them sick?”

  “Because they like how it feels on the way there.” Cian looked straight into her eyes when he spoke to her.

  Alys found it was impossible for her to do the same and still speak words that made sense. She glanced just a bit away, into the fire. “How does it feel on the way there?”

  “Wouldn’t know,” Cian said.

  “They’re awfully loud when they drink,” Alys said.

  Cian laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.” He stood up and made a neat stack of the dirty plates and mugs.

  “I can wash those for you,” Alys said.

  “No need. I’ll leave them until morning.” He built up the fire and stretched.

  Alys hovered uncertainly near her mattress. Cian’s bed was perpendicular to hers. So close. She wanted to take off her shoes, stockings, and dress, but the very thought of doing so with him near her made her face burn. She was deeply conscious of his body and hers in the same room.

  She snuck a glance at him and he was looking back at her, his face once again impossible to read. “I’m going out to fill a jug with snow so we’ll have water for tea in the morning.”

  “Oh,” Alys said. “Yes.”

  He moved past her and was gone in a rush of open door a
nd wind. Alys quickly unlaced her boots and pulled off her stockings and dress, then slid under the covers in only her shift. She closed her eyes and pulled the covers up to her nose. She could be sleeping by the time he returned, she thought. Or at least she could pretend to be.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cian came in and brought the cold air with him, and although Alys had every intention of staying motionless as death she couldn’t help flinching and pulling the covers around her.

  “Sorry about that,” Cian said. “But think about me out there walking around in it.”

  Alys lowered the blanket to her chin, glanced up at him and then away. “I’m . . . thank you.”

  He laughed. “Eh, it wasn’t so gallant. I had to lift a leg anyway.”

  Alys’s scalp heated up, blood rising to the roots of her hair. She felt as stuttering and stupid as she ever had around Cerys or any of the children of Defaid who seemed always to be laughing at something. Alys couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. Certainly not since she’d left Gwenith at the age of seven. What had there been to laugh about since?

  Cian sat down on his mattress. “All right, Alys. I am about to remove my trousers. You may watch, or you may close your eyes. Either way I’m going to do it. I just figured I’d give you fair warning.”

  Alys closed her eyes. But the degree to which she felt a tickling urge to open them, to see what that boy looked like under his clothes, brought that tingling feeling again. She squeezed her eyes tighter. She heard the swish of blankets, and then a sigh.

  Alys opened her eyes. The room was dark except for the orange glow of the fire. Cian lay with his feet toward the hearth, his head just an arm’s length away from hers. She’d only slept this close to someone once before, and that one time it was Ren, and he was just a child. But Cian, he was no child.

  Now Alys felt no desire to sleep at all. She was feeling better, and her old rhythms took over. The night was for watching. But there was nothing to watch here. Nothing except the fire, and the thick thatch of Cian’s black hair where it rested on his pillow. She stared at the fire, let the quiet settle and wrap around her. She waited for Cian to fall asleep so that she could relax the muscles in her belly that seemed to hold tight whenever he was in the room.