THIRTY-SEVEN
Alys stayed in the aerie that night. It was too dark to climb down, and she had no desire to. She needed to bed down in the shelter that Angelica and Benedicta had made for themselves—this nest that held them close in a world where they didn’t belong. Alys gathered moss and leaves around her, breathed in the scent of soil. Surrounded by earth and water, held up by a tree, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
The next morning, she awoke to a pink sky and a specific hunger for food. She longed for oatcake, for the wrapped cheese and apple that were tucked away in the pack she’d left at the foot of Angelica’s tree. Mother would have said this was a good sign of health, to want to eat. Mother. Alys felt tears form in the corners of her eyes. Thinking of Mother made Alys long for home.
Where was home now? There was no question. Home was with Cian. Home was with Pawl and Beti, and with all the children of Gwenith. And she knew home was waiting for her.
Alys climbed down from the aerie and retraced her steps along the cliff. The sky brightened and her lungs filled with fresh, salty air. As she walked she ate an apple down to its core, savored sharp cheese and grainy oatcake, and she thought it the most delicious food she’d ever tasted. She licked her fingers, ran her tongue across her teeth. Her mouth tasted of oat, not ash. Her belly felt gloriously full.
The fullness didn’t last long. By the time she’d reached Benedicta’s cave, Alys was ravenous again. The hole beyond had receded. It seemed to grow smaller even as Alys stood there. At its edges, ash had once again become rock and dirt. It was still barren, but with the possibility that someday, something might grow there again. Alys sat down near the mouth of the hole and she found she no longer feared it. It had become a healing wound, not a gaping tear. She wanted to care for it, not to recoil from it. She reached into her pack and pulled out the last of her dried fruit. She tried to nibble it, to make it last, but she couldn’t. It was so good. So good to eat. So good to taste, to feel.
In that moment, she was washed over with something so unfamiliar to her that at first she didn’t have a word for it. Then the word came to her.
This was happiness. This was what it felt like to be happy. To be grateful for your own skin and bones. To believe you had a place in the world and you were loved completely—all parts of you, light and dark. And to love someone back—completely.
A shadow crossed the earth in front of her, and Alys looked up to the sky. The Beast flew overhead on Its broad wings. It didn’t look down, but she knew It wanted Alys to see It there. That It was there for her. She wondered if she would ever see It again. She surely wanted to, but she thought perhaps she didn’t need to. She’d made a nest for The Beast inside of her, in that place that was neither good, nor bad, but was simply Alys.
AND
THIS IS
WHERE
THE
STORY
ENDS.
She’d told the other children of Gwenith all about it. How at first you didn’t notice the sound from it, and then it was all around you. How it spread out forever and ever in front of you. But she couldn’t tell them what it was like to touch it, because she had never yet done that.
Alys looked back at them all now, their laughter carrying in spurts and sparks on the sea air as it whipped and swirled off the water. Ren was holding Madog’s hand and pointing at the water. “See, Dad! See? It’s just like you said it would be!”
Enid put the babies down in a sandy spot well away from the water’s edge and they chortled and dug in with chubby hands.
Beti clucked over the babies, told Enid and Madog to run and enjoy the water, and she and Pawl would look after the little ones.
Alys had made Pawl promise that if he came along on this trip to the sea he’d leave the jug at home. And he’d been as good as his word. He always had been, after all. “Go on, lass!” Pawl called to her now. “Dip a toe in!” He waved and smiled at her, and she waved and smiled back.
The other children were spread out all along the ocean’s edge. Some sat in the damp sand content enough to take it in with their eyes, shook their heads at going any farther. Others teasingly pushed sisters and brothers toward the waves. For the first time since Alys could remember, they really did look like children. Happy children with the world in front of them.
Alys had taken her socks and boots off, and she looked down at her feet, so white in the bright light of day. Then she looked over at Cian’s brown feet, and then up into his brown eyes. “Are you ready?” Alys asked him.
“Ay, fair Alys, I’ve always been ready.” And he had been. He’d received her with open arms the day she returned from the mountain. As if truly he’d never once stopped expecting her. As if she were the one he’d always expected. He took her hand now, and into the sea they walked.
Alys shrieked when the first cold wave lapped up to her knees, shrieked more when it came clean up to her belly, freezing the breath in her chest. But suddenly she warmed from the inside out, and then she felt it—a lift just under her feet. A moment when her feet weren’t touching ground at all. She held onto Cian’s hand so tight at first, and then it happened again and she was off—off her feet and in the water and she let go of Cian’s hand and she looked at him.
And then she laughed.
Peternelle van Arsdale is a book editor who never thought she’d write a book, until one day she had a glimmer of an idea that became The Beast Is an Animal. She lives in New York City, where she is at work on her second novel. Visit her at peternellevanarsdale.com.
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Simon & Schuster • New York
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
authors.simonandschuster.com/Peternelle-van-Arsdale
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Photo credits:
When it’s dark: copyright © Thinkstock/john north
You’d better lock the gate: copyright © Thinkstock/Gudella
Hear it scratch: copyright © Thinkstock/yuriz
It sucks your soul: copyright © Thinkstock/ehrlif
The beast is an animal: copyright © Thinkstock/swkunst
MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Peternelle van Arsdale
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ISBN 978-1-4814-8841-9 (hardcover)
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Peternelle van Arsdale, The Beast Is an Animal
The Beast Is an Animal Page 25