It was Delwyn. Alys remembered that needling voice, like a scratch inside her head.
Alyssssssssss
Come heeeeeeeeeere
Alys climbed across the tree branch and slid to the ground. She looked, sharp-eyed, into the crisp darkness. It was colder up here on the mountain.
She saw him, the moon reflecting off his white-blond hair, peeking from behind a tree as if he were playing with her.
“What do you want?” she said.
He floated and skittered to another tree, peeked from behind it again.
“Stop playing, Delwyn. I know what you are.”
“Maybe I know what you are, too.” He laughed like a child playing a schoolyard game. But sharper. Nastier.
Then he stepped out, floated forward, no hesitation or playing now, and his face, oh, his face was not the face of a child.
How could Alys ever have thought it was? Was it because a child’s face was what she had expected to see? Was it because she so badly wanted to find her Delwyn again—the little boy she’d clung to on the Gate, whose heart beat against her own? But this was no longer Delwyn, it wasn’t even anything that truly looked like him. His skin pulled taut and transparent over the bones of his face and his once green eyes were black, so black. Black like two holes in his head. Holes you could fall into.
She felt a tug in her heart while she looked into those holes. Then a pull. She clutched her chest. No.
“No, Delwyn. You can’t do me like that. I’m not like the other poor souls you’ve taken.”
The tugging stopped. He had no power over her, and she knew why. It was his face that gave him away—or it was her ability to see his face that did. Perhaps this was one of the things that had made her so different all along—that she saw the truth of things. That beauty could sometimes be ugly, and that you didn’t always find good and evil where you expected to—or where you’d been told to find them. Now, she saw that this Delwyn wasn’t her young friend who ran away, mourning for his brothers. That boy had died long ago. This Delwyn was something else—had become something else—and she could see him for what he was. She could see through his skin to where there should be a warm beating heart, but where there was instead only ash.
Delwyn’s face crumpled in on itself, he rushed toward her, and Alys nearly retreated but stood her ground. Then just as suddenly he stopped. He touched his face, as if he could see himself and his monstrosity through her eyes. He looked at his hand, which was as skeletal as his face. And as he looked at his hand, he floated backward and backward until he withdrew into the depths of the mountain, beyond where she could see him.
THIRTY-FOUR
The next morning, Alys felt a deep certainty that she would meet The Beast before the day was out. It felt so present to her, so near, that it was as if It were moving right alongside her. Always she scanned around her, either side and above, but there was no sight of It. No sound.
She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast, and she felt weak with exhaustion. Seeing Delwyn’s dead face last night had sickened her, robbed her of sleep for the rest of the night. While she walked she took a bite from an apple, and her stomach rose up to meet her throat. She spit it out, and then tossed the apple far into the woods.
Where it landed at the clawed feet of The Beast.
Come. It’s time.
It leapt straight up and vanished into the tree cover, and Alys dashed into the woods where It had been, thinking of nothing other than the impossibility of following a creature with wings. Then she saw It land again far ahead of her, and she dashed on.
And so they went, beyond the point at which Alys felt her breath burn in her lungs, past caring about how many times she’d fallen and scraped her skin bloody through her trousers. Late afternoon passed into evening and the light shifted golden, then pink. The land grew steeper and steeper until finally Alys looked up and saw The Beast standing over her, on a rock ledge far above her head, the setting sun shining behind It so that Alys had to squint.
She climbed up to It, hand over foot. Once she was near the top, The Beast hinged forward and down and grasped her arm with one long clawed hand, then lifted Alys up and through the air and onto flat rock. Then It released her and Alys looked up at It, The Beast. Tall and furred, winged and fanged, It looked evil but It seemed good. Alys wanted to ask It which It really was, but she knew It wouldn’t answer. She might as well ask the wind if it were good or evil. Like the wind, The Beast was neither. At one time she’d wanted to be able to think of herself as good. Now she wished only to be like The Beast. Neither. As it was, she feared she was far more evil than good.
The Beast was not looking at her, It was staring ahead, and It drew Alys’s eyes there as well. It led her onward.
Gray rock gave way to grass and low, scrubby bushes. But these were only the shapes of grass and bushes, because everything beyond the rock was ash. Grass-shaped ash crumbled to dust as she and The Beast walked across it. Bush-shaped ash collapsed when grazed by Alys’s fingertips. Her hand was ash-gray when she pulled it away, as if she too were turning to ash. She wiped her hand on her trouser leg, wanting it off her.
Beyond the ash was a deep, black hole. Big enough around to swallow all of Defaid inside of it. The scent that rose from the hole was . . . nothing. There was no scent at all, as if no light, or sound, or sign of life at all—nothing that might attach itself to person or animal—existed anymore in that deep place. Even in her dreams and in her worst waking moments of hopelessness, Alys hadn’t known the unnatural sensation of emptiness that she felt now.
“I’m afraid,” Alys said. “You said that I would know how to close the hole when the time came. But I don’t.” She felt panic in her empty stomach. She’d thought the same instinctive knowing she felt when she touched someone—the same that Mother felt when she touched a sick person—might fill her when she came close to the hole. She’d hoped she could heal it the way Mother had taught her to heal a wound, that she’d know how to clean out the poison. But the blackness of the hole gaped before Alys like a growing thing that would only keep tearing and tearing. She was certain that before long, all of Byd would sink into it. She cringed from it.
The soul eaters are making the hole. To close the hole you must make them stop. If you don’t, we will all become hole. We will all become nothing.
“Why can’t you make them stop? Why does it have to be me?” She hated her fear, but nonetheless it bloomed in her chest.
You must be like them to stop them. I am not like them.
“But I am like them,” Alys said. There was the nasty truth. She tasted it in her mouth. No matter how many times she’d tried to push it away, spit it out, it always came back to her. This was why The Beast needed her. Because she was evil. And It needed an evil creature to do this evil work.
You are like them. But you are not them.
Like them, but not them. Like them, but not them. Alys spoke the words to herself, tried to believe them. There was some chance for her still. She had a choice. This was what choosing felt like—it was terrifying. The sun dipped below the horizon. The world darkened around Alys, and she felt the hole’s hugeness and her own smallness. “Where will I find them?”
The boy soul eater follows you. You will not need to look for him.
“And the sisters?”
One is with me. She will tell you how to find the other.
Alys followed The Beast through the darkness to the entrance of a cave. It pointed to a torch and a flint.
Light and enter. I will not follow. You must go alone.
Then The Beast crouched, and leapt, and It was gone up into the dark sky on Its leathery wings.
Alys stepped into the cave and the air became at once closer and damper and cooler. The torch illuminated only the rock on either side of her and the stone beneath and just ahead of her feet. There was too little air. There was no air at all. She fought the urge to gasp, to turn around. Minutes passed as she made her way forward. Then the narrow passage widened and r
ounded into a slightly larger room, and seated there was a woman.
The woman sat on the ground, her back against the rock wall. Her legs were pulled up to her chin, her face down and pressed into her knees, arms drawn into her chest. Her hair, sewn through with leaves and twigs, dulled by mud, enveloped her. Alys couldn’t see the woman’s face, but she knew this wasn’t Angelica. The feeling Angelica gave her was altogether different.
“Benedicta?” Alys said.
The creature looked up at Alys then, her hair parting over her face.
Her hideous face. What Alys had once found so beautiful was now grotesque. Desiccated. All shadows and hollows. Bones visible through transparent skin. Enormous black eyes with no white at all, only pupil. Lips purple like death.
Every rational thought failed Alys, and she wanted only to flee.
“Yes. I am Benedicta,” she said. “I have been waiting for you. The Beast promised me you’d come.”
Alys felt Benedicta’s voice more than she heard it. The creature didn’t move, and yet that voice was inside of Alys, insinuating itself in her chest, wrapping itself around her heart. Alys absorbed Benedicta’s bottomless despair as if it were her own. Benedicta’s need pulled at Alys’s own longing. Alys sensed how injured Benedicta was—and yet dangerous. Still so dangerous. Alys couldn’t allow herself to yield to Benedicta for one moment, or she might never leave this cave.
“Why are you here?” Alys said.
“To be killed,” Benedicta said. “Cannot. Cannot go on like this. Lost the hunger. Only tired. So tired. Want to rest.”
Benedicta’s words hummed in Alys’s chest, but Alys didn’t trust them. Didn’t trust her. Rest was what Benedicta and Angelica had offered the children of Gwenith. But instead the soul eaters gave the children death. Worse than death: They gave them nothing. They made them nothing.
Alys remembered what Angelica had told her about Benedicta leaving her—that it was because of jealousy over Delwyn. She wondered what Benedicta would say. “Why aren’t you with Angelica?”
Benedicta shook her head. “I begged her to stop. To let us rest. But Angelica will never stop. Her hunger is never-ending.”
“Angelica told me it was because of Delwyn. That you were jealous of him and wanted to leave him behind.”
Benedicta arched her back and let out a scream so loud and anguished it reverberated around the cave and nearly caused Alys to drop the torch and cover her ears. When silence fell again, Benedicta held her own head between her hands and said, “It was Angelica who grew tired of the boy. When his scent turned sour and then rotten. When he stopped smelling like anything at all.”
Alys thought of long-dead Delwyn, now more ash than child. They had done that to him.
“I left Angelica,” Benedicta said, “because I’m finished. I’m ready to be nothing.” She looked up at Alys with black, unlit eyes. “I want you to take my soul.”
Alys stepped backward, shaking her head hard. “No. No, I won’t. Taking your soul will only widen the hole.” Alys thought of the hole growing and growing, swallowing Cian, Pawl, Beti. Enid, Madog, Ren, and the other children. She pictured their faces sinking into black. Then she thought again of Delwyn’s face, and of what soul eating had done to him. What it had done to this creature in front of her.
“I fear the hole,” Benedicta said. “And yet it draws me. That is why I came here. The Beast said I could go into the hole to become nothing. But that won’t do for me. I cannot.”
“But you must,” Alys said. “If The Beast said that was the only way, then you must throw yourself into the hole.”
“It’s not the only way. The Beast said you would kill me.” Benedicta’s voice was a hiss now, the bones in her face twisted and contracted. “It promised. It told me if I stayed here you would do it.”
The Beast had said Alys would know what to do. But Alys knew nothing, only desperation. “I must stop Angelica. I can’t let her go on taking souls. She’ll destroy us all. Do you know where she is?”
Benedicta’s face twisted some more, her mouth a grimace that looked like an attempt to smile. “A deal. You are offering me a deal. I help you find my sister and then you will take my soul?”
Alys felt defeated. Was defeated. This creature was weakened, but still crafty, and Alys had no skill for it. She wanted only to close the hole, to protect the people she loved. She’d hoped to make herself clean in the process. But maybe she was too ruined for that. She thought of that day in the canoe with Cian—was it only a few days ago? His belief in her goodness. Then she thought of Mother. And Father. Mam and Dad. Little Gaenor. All the people she’d loved and lost and couldn’t save.
It had all come to this. If she couldn’t save herself, then she would save Cian. She would save Pawl and Beti, Madog and Enid. And Ren. Little Ren whom she’d so terrified. She might be a lost soul—an empty soul—but they weren’t. “Yes,” Alys said to Benedicta. “I’ll take your soul if you help me find Angelica.”
Benedicta moved toward Alys on all fours. Not so close, and yet too close. “I will tell you where to look for her. Then you must take my soul. Now.”
The hair picked up on the back of Alys’s neck. Alys might not be crafty, but she wasn’t stupid. “No. You’ll come with me. You’ll lead me to her. And then, yes, I will take your soul.”
Benedicta licked her lips with a black tongue. “I don’t like that deal. What if you trick me? My sister and I have been tricked before.”
“I won’t do that to you. I know you can see into me, Benedicta. You can see that there are no tricks in me. I only want to stop Angelica. And then I will do what I promised.” And she meant it. Alys realized that she, too, wanted this all to come to an end. She, too, was tired.
“All right. It’s a bargain. But if you betray me I will find your boy—the tall boy with the brown eyes. The laughing boy I see when I look inside your heart. Yes . . . that one.” She laughed—all grim, gray teeth. “I see him in you. You hold him close. Betray me, girl, and I will find him and he’ll be less than a memory when I’m done with him.”
Alys felt anger flare inside of her, smelled it acrid and bitter in her own nose. She tamped it down, squelched it before it engulfed her. “We’ll leave in the morning. At first light.”
When Alys turned to leave, Benedicta scrambled the rest of the way toward her and gripped her arm with a bony hand. “You do what you promised. Or I’ll kill them all.”
THIRTY-FIVE
It was blackest night when Alys emerged from the cave, and she sucked fresh air deep into her lungs.
Alys felt the nearness of the hole although she couldn’t see it. She was outside the ash line now, in a scrubby area of low trees and large rock formations. But she knew the hole was just beyond. And she knew it was growing still, getting closer all the time. She could feel it in her heart, her soul.
She hung her oilcloth and crawled underneath it, but sleep wouldn’t come. She crawled back out and made a small fire, dug into her pack for water. Alys’s fear of what was to come sucked all the moisture from her mouth, and the water was cool in her throat.
Time passed, and Alys stared into the flames. Images floated through her head. Cian’s face, most of all. The times he’d grasped her hair in his hands, kissed her. She didn’t feel the stomach flip of excitement that usually came when she thought of him this way. She felt only sadness and a sure sense of loss. The promise she’d made to Benedicta closed the door on any happiness she might have had with Cian. If she did what Benedicta asked of her, she would become like them. And then Alys would be the one seeking her end in that hole. Maybe that was what The Beast had planned for her—and for them—all along.
Alys allowed her eyes to be entranced by the flames, not even blinking. The heat sank into her skin, burned her cheeks, and she tried to feel nothing else.
Then, through the flame, in the darkness beyond, she saw two small, white feet.
“Alys.”
She looked up at Delwyn. His face was as horrifying to he
r as it had been yesterday, but she felt a change in him. Something that had been closed to her before, the hard black nugget at his center, had weakened. She could sense the cracks.
“Yes, Delwyn.”
He was quiet for a long moment, and Alys thought he might float away from her again. Then he said, “Do you remember the Gate?”
“Of course I do. And I remember how you saved me. Do you remember that?”
Delwyn cocked his head. His black eyes widened with effort. “I remember my brothers. How the Elders blamed them for dying. How they looked at me like I was wrong on the inside. How I hated them.”
Hate. Alys knew hatred. She remembered how powerfully she’d felt it with Ffordd and Cerys. How it warmed her belly at first, but then how it turned to ash in her mouth. “Albon and Aron were sweet boys. As were you,” Alys said.
“Were,” Delwyn said. “Sweet boy no longer, am I? I am old now. Old and . . .” He held his hand in front of his face “. . . ugly. I can remember when I was a child, Alys. But I can’t feel it anymore. Being a child is like a story someone once told me. A story I don’t believe anymore.”
Alys looked at him, tried to conjure the Delwyn she’d known. Tried to erase this face and these hands and skeletal feet from her mind and see only his white-blond hair, his quick, nimble body. She managed for a moment. “Sit with me? Here, by the fire.”
Delwyn hesitated for a moment, then crouched down opposite her, the small fire between them.
There was something that Alys needed to ask him, although she dreaded his answer. “The other Gwenith children, the ones who wandered. Did you kill them all?”
Delwyn nodded. “Some I did. Some Angelica and Benedicta took.”
Alys reached into her trouser pocket, pulled out the bit of embroidered linen with the names of all the Gwenith children. She ran her finger down the list. Those poor children, she thought. So tired, and wanting only to rest.
“I didn’t mean to do wrong,” he said. “I only gave them what they wanted. What everyone wants.”
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