For the Last Time and Other Tales

by Z.N. Singer

  He nodded. Sarumah smiled. “Marvelous! You can help me look, and the books can help keep you occupied while you're here...what?”

  The Beast held up his hands – three times the size of a man's at least, covered with hair and callused at the tip. Sarumah winced a bit. He was right. The hands were very dextrous but he almost certainly could not turn pages safely. And books were precious commodities – many of the ones here would be very difficult to replace. “Well...” her voice drifted off. She felt very awkward, having uncovered something else he could not do as a Beast. “Well, all the more reason to hurry,” she finished finally. And, to her mind, somewhat lamely. “Come on. You can answer questions while I look for the right section. I think we can still narrow things down, even if you can't speak.”

  So they set off down the impossibly large halls created by the towering bookshelves. Ladders were periodically spaced to allow access to the ones higher up. As they went, Sarumah posed questions to the Beast, doing her best to stick to ones that could be answered with a shake of the head.

  “Was it done by a man? I mean, is this a magus' spell?”

  The Beast shook his head. Sarumah was relieved. If the answer had been yes, it would have meant one of two things. Either the Beast had in fact been a bad man after all, or someone had somehow managed to learn how to cast dark magic again. She would have hated either one. If it had been the second, then as the one to discover him it would have been her duty to hunt down the rogue, and as for the Beast...she glanced over her shoulder at him, following slowly behind, for all his great size probably meant outpacing her would have been all too natural. His eyes wandered over the shelves, and their expression was quiet and awed, an intelligent being wondering at the riches around him.

  No. The Beast was no criminal. She was sure of that.

  “Then, was it related to something you did? Did it happen right after you did something, or something occurred around you?”

  The Beast shook his head without changing its rotation as it continued to scan the long lines of books.

  “You must have loved to read, when you were a man.”

  He nodded. A tinge of regret came to cloud the wonder, and Sarumah wished she hadn't said it.

  “How about a place? Do you think a place had anything to do with it?”

  Now the Beast paused entirely, his head coming to rest directly ahead as he gave thought to the question. He met her eyes and nodded.

  Now Sarumah stopped too, turning to face him, drawn, as he was, by the uncovering of a clue. “It was a place? Man-made or natural? Oh sorry, sorry!”

  The Beast sort of seesawed his shoulders, that slight tilt to his mouth and head that made her think of a smile combining to say, as clearly as any words, that no offense was taken at all. Really, he was remarkably expressive despite being silent. It was intriguing. Just how much, the scholar in her suddenly wondered, did you really need speech to communicate? Possibly not nearly as much as it was used, judging by the Beast.

  “All right – was it a man-made place?”

  The Beast shook his head. Now Sarumah was beginning to feel downright excited. “It was a natural magic then. Was it...was the land open?”

  The Beast shook his head.

  “Closed land...” She paused, trying to think how to word the next question. “Was the...was it closed in by...living things?”

  The Beast nodded.

  “A...forest? You changed while in a forest?”

  The Beast nodded, rapidly – both of them were getting excited.

  “How long did it take? Oh, I did it again, I mean – did it take a long time? More than a day?”

  The Beast paused. A strange look came over his face. Slowly, he lifted his shoulders: a shrug, and a very uncertain one at that.

  “You...don't know? Then...you didn't notice the change at first at all?”

  He nodded.

  Sarumah frowned, but it was a thinking frown. “Were you...aware of time at all?”

  The Beast shook his head, a slight cloud in his eyes his attempts to remember the vague period in which he'd somehow become something else.

  “Well...all this does narrow it down. And it's given me enough so I'll know I've found what we're looking for when I see it. But Beast...it is still going to take a while. The library is vast, and so is the world. If you were unaware of time, very little is impossible. Strong magic places can...swallow those who go there, and regurgitate them far from where they should have been – and what they should have been, as well. Beast, did you know the forest was magic when you entered it?”

  After a pause – a slightly embarrassed one, she couldn't help thinking – he nodded.

  “Then...why did you go in?”

  But this was beyond even the Beasts ability to communicate silently. Sarumah finally put a hand on his arm, stopping his efforts. “It doesn't matter. I'm sure you had a good reason. I will do my best for you, Gentle Beast, but it will take time, and my time is not my own. I will receive requests, ones I already know how to solve. I'm sorry, but those will have to come first. Especially if I get one from the King. I'm sorry. Please trust me.”

  The Beast laid a huge gentle hand over the one on his arm. Sarumah smiled. “You must have been quite the gentleman as a man,” she said. “All the more reason to return you to one. For now I seem to have the day to myself, so lets see how far we can get. No...” she glanced around slowly. “This isn't the right section. We need books on places with strong ambient magic, strong enough to powerfully influence what's in them. Magical geography, essentially...this way.” And she headed off down the labyrinthine lanes.

  The Beast followed. One got the impression he was rather impressed with Sarumah's ability to navigate the place.

  They spent quite a bit of time in there, wandering through halls as Sarumah followed her memory, and the map of subjects that appeared to exist only in her head. The Beast felt rather lost, surrounded by book stacks so high it was easy to believe they were in another world, one where beings that moved and thought were the exception rather than the rule, an alien incursion meandering, stunned and awestruck, through this alternate universe of books. For anyone but a magus, such a collection would have been absolutely beyond comprehension – no, even half would have been impossible, just to own, let alone navigate. And yet Sarumah seemed to know her way about always.

  “Everything in this house is regulated by magic,” she told the Beast. “My family has held it a long time, and there is almost nothing left to do except maintain the spells doing everything else. So I spend a lot of time here. I like reading, and the more I know, the better I am at what I do. There's always more to learn – as this place proves!” She added with an impish smile, gesturing to take in the entire impossible expanse. “But I'll admit I am being helped by magic a bit – I actually can't get lost here at all. It's like – an external sense of direction.”

  The Beast was content to simply follow in her wake, and help search the areas she found. Unlike Sarumah, he didn't need ladders: he simply stood his highest to read higher titles, and could even reach most of them. His hands, untrustworthy with pages, were perfectly safe for removing the books themselves. With his help, they were able to amass a sizable collection of starting material.

  “This is the long part,” she said, a bit out of breath, putting her pile on a table. “It's going to be rather boring for you – you don't have to stay.”

  But the Beast seemed perfectly happy to sit and watch her read, and Sarumah found that she was quite happy to have him there. He was remarkably patient: he simply sat, a large silent presence, and managed to be, not an uncomfortable source of attention, but a warm sense of company. Besides for the occasional petitioner, Saruham was used to being alone, especially in the library. She found that she enjoyed having an audience, stopping to read aloud the interesting bits, gesturing and explaining while he watched, clearly listening closely. And in the end it all went by much faster than she'd expected.

  “Goodness, it's dinner
time,” she said suddenly. The Beast, startled, glanced about, probably reflexively seeking something he could deduce the time from. But there was no such thing there. He looked back at her.

  “Yes, more magic. Come on, let's see if the kitchen has thought of anything new for you.”

  The kitchen had. Instead of a large shallow bowl, he now had a deeper bowl that was actually rectangular, with a tapering lip at one end that formed a kind of slide: the Beast could pour the food into his mouth in what was at least a semi-civilized fashion.

  “There, see? Isn't that better?” The Beast indeed seemed pleased. Held with both hands and used with decorum, the new bowls allowed him some measure of dignity when eating. It took him a bit longer than Sarumah to finish though, since he needed so much more. Sarumah watched patiently. His form still fascinated her – it was not quite like any animal she'd read of, and she'd read of quite a few. That might be another way to research his problem, she mused. Search for animals that resembled him, try to find what he'd been turned into, exactly.

  “Ready?” She asked at last. The Beast nodded. “Good.” She got up – and paused. “Beast...do you like gardens?”

  The Beast liked gardens very much – and not just for sitting in or staring at. From the moment they reached it, the Beast no longer followed her – she followed him, as he walked among the plants, fingering them gently, examining the soil, taking inventory as only someone who made gardens would do. Her tour was disrupted, but watching the monstrously sized and shaped Beast examining her plants and flowers with such tender care made up for it. Somehow he fit here, among the plants, as he had not in the house. His silhouette seemed as natural here as a tree or a large bush might have been. She was smiling, she realized. She was happy to see him feeling so at home.

  “You approve?” She asked quietly. “It's maintained by spells as well I'm afraid. I suppose you don't approve of that. To you the labor itself is part of it, isn't it? Part of the magic.”

  The Beast nodded, without taking his eyes off the flowering bush he was investigating. While the books in the library had awed him, the contents of her garden fascinated and enchanted him – for the first time since he'd come, the Beast was utterly and subconsciously at peace. It set off something warm inside her, something that had made her the magus she was. The part that made her glad to offer her magic to the needful. She was happy this part of her home could do so much for him.

  “If the research takes too long, I could give you part of this to care for,” she said quietly. “I can disable the spells for just a small part for you. If you'd like.”

  The Beast looked at her with a smile like warm fire in his eyes. His mouth opened reflexively – but only a growling grunt came out, and the fire died. He looked down and away. Sarumah walked over to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder for a few moments. “How about I bring those books out here?”

  But she didn't find what they were looking for that night, or the day after. Sarumah spent nearly all of that time browsing through one book or another. Even she would normally have been exhausted by this but the Beast's presence, and their regular relocation from the library to the garden, went a long way towards sustaining her. She'd be rather sorry when he changed and left, she thought. She was becoming used to him being here. But if she liked his company that much, who was waiting for him? Surely he had a family, perhaps even one of his own making. No, the sooner the spell was broken, the better. She owed it to him. Him and whoever loved him.

  That there might be no one like that for her Gentle Beast never occurred to her. It simply didn't make sense.

  On the third day, she got her first request since the Beast arrived. Ironically, it was the key after all.

  A villager arrived carrying a little girl and with tear stains on his cheeks. “They said it can't be cured,” he rasped hoarsely. “Say it ain't so Mistress. You're magic, say it ain't so.”

  Sarumah had her laid down on a couch, examined her, with both hand and eyes and magic. “I think I know this,” she said. “Or of it. The cure is very rare but I have it. Wait here.”

  The Beast had been watching from a discreet location: without her having had to say anything, the Beast had known to keep out of sight. His present form was something that few would easily understand. Concern hovered around him like a cloud, making Sarumah smile. He was so very kind, her Beast.

  “I have to check in the library first,” she told him. “This isn't something I've ever seen directly before. In fact I've only read of it briefly.”

  It took her a few minutes to find the book: the disease was greatly feared but very obscure, and the right tome was in fact a specialized study of such dangerous but little known diseases. But she did find it, and after reading a few minutes she closed the book and got up.

  “We can fix her,” she told the Beast, smiling because she was glad, and because she knew he would be glad. “This way. This requires a herb you can only get to with magic, and that's why it's so rare, and so many people don't know about it. But one of my predecessors made sure we had plenty. This way, you haven't been to this part before.”

  Sarumah did not visit the herb and powder room very often, simply because she didn't often have use for it. It didn't look it though: the house spells did not discriminate in cleaning efforts based on use. Rather it showed in that unlike the library, Sarumah had to really look to find where she needed to go, and consult an inventory book, checking numbers against the labels on the shelves. She noticed that the Beast was getting shifty.

  “The girl's state won't change for at least a day,” she told him. “We'll have her first dose well before sunset. There's no need to worry.” The change was visible.

  “Gentle Beast,” she murmured, turning to the correct shelf. Correct, but long, and filled with many other candidates. And when she finally did discover the right jar, it was to find that the reason she'd had trouble spotting it was because it was placed several feet higher than her fingertips could reach. “Oh bother,” she muttered, glancing absently further down the row for a ladder, as she was used to doing when anything was out of reach in the library. But it wasn't the library, and the room's one ladder, she remembered, was tucked in a corner somewhere. “Drat and bother,” she muttered, standing on her toes and straining as if those scant few extra inches could bridge the thirty or so between her and the taunting jar of dried leaves.

  Large, strong hands wrapped carefully around her waist. Sarumah started. And then, slowly, and so smoothly she was hardly aware of moving, feeling almost as if she were floating rather than being held, she found herself lifted up until the jar was in easy reach.

  Her hands grasped the jar, but she didn't take it off the shelf right away: she paused, taking in the sensation of being held so high, of having hands that strong and large, that could so easily kill her, holding her up here so gently that she felt as if she was there by her own power. She looked down. Definitely the Beast's hands, secure around her waist. She looked over her shoulder: the Beast's face was almost directly behind her. She smiled, and took the jar off the shelf.

  “Thank you,” she said, and he put her down, as gently as he'd lifted her. But for some reason, the moment didn't end. It just kept going, with her standing in front of him, jar in her hands, face turned back towards him, and he with his hands still gently, gently clasping her waist. Until finally, he slowly removed them, and the moment slowly let go of them both. Only then did the Beast look away from her own face, towards the jar she held.

  The hands that had lifted her so slowly snatched the jar from her hands so fast she hardly realized what had happened for an instant. The look on his face was so terrible, so urgent, for a moment she forgot who he was, and was frightened. “Beast...Beast, my Beast, what...” But the Beast could not answer her in words: after staring at the jar, at the contents inside for an endless moment of taut, frenzied scrutiny, he could only look at her with urgency in his eyes, shaking the jar towards himself in an impotent gesture to replace the words that rumbled urgent
ly in his chest and mind, but had no means to escape. And slowly, comprehension dawned in Sarumah's eyes.

  “That herb...Mengever's Root...you know it? That disease...and you...gods defend us, you must be joking. The Innexian Forest? You were changed in the Innexian Forest?!

  But the energy and conviction with which he nodded, hand still emphatically waving the jar of Mengever's Root, was no joke. Sarumah shook her head in slow disbelief.

  “I've never heard of this...” She took the jar from his hand. “We'll take care of the girl first,” she told him. “Then it's straight to the library. I don't think this will take long. I've never heard of this directly...but I've heard many things about that forest that this might explain.”

  The man nearly collapsed, tears streaming down his face like fountains, when Sarumah came in with the jar and told him his daughter was going to live. He was also, once he'd recovered enough to be, almost embarrassingly grateful, abjectly swearing every form of recompense he had, even though Sarumah told him repeatedly that none was required. “Bring her to visit when she's well,” Sarumah told him at last. “Seeing the results of my work will be my payment.” And, after a great deal of convincing and the entire process of administering the first dose and portioning out how much more he would need, he finally accepted this. He walked backwards out the door, thanking her all the way.

  Sarumah closed the door and, with a slightly guilty sense of relief, hurried towards the library, where she knew the Beast was waiting.

  The Beast was indeed waiting: he was pacing up and down before the shelves like the proverbial caged lion, more beast-like in his agitation than Sarumah had ever seen him.

  “Not a lot is known about the Innexian forest,” Sarumah told him as they walked, her in the lead, towards whatever books she had in mind. “That's because no one who goes in without magical protection ever returns. No one's even really sure what they're protecting against – obviously the forest has powerful ambient magic, but the only way to find out exactly what that magic is really doing is to leave the protections down...and no one who's done that has ever left. Magi who plan to return use everything they've got, and leave no wiser then when they entered. All we know is that expeditions must be carefully planned and overseen by a magus strong enough to protect everyone with him from beginning to end. But that herb, Mengever's Root – it grows nowhere else, and it can do things nothing else can, much of it medical in nature – that's only one of several lethal diseases it can cure. Which is why that ancestor I mentioned made his expedition: it was a gathering trip, and he planned it to be the last we would need to make for as long as was humanely possible. But of course once they were inside they also observed as much as they could, and searched for signs of what had happened to everyone who'd failed to leave. His account of the trip is as good a source of information on the place as you'll ever find, if not the only one you'll ever see – there aren't many, and copies of any of them are prized to magi. Here. The tenth shelf up, left side. Rough leather binding, stenciled title.”