by A. J. Adams
Sometimes it’s just a vision, but at others I catch glimpses of different futures. Yes, that’s a plural. It’s like a path with different endings. Sometimes it’s crystal clear what triggers them. Like when the Patriarch was attacking the sisters, I saw futures where he was beaten back by the Lady Divine standing up to him and ones where the sisters were leaving.
I kept seeing these every time, but as time went on, the ones with the brighter futures slowly disappeared. So you see, the future isn’t set. We make our choices, and they shape our fate.
As for my reading people, that is a skill I was born with. I sense strong emotions all the time, but I can only read thoughts when I touch people, and that’s not always. As a child, it never occurred to me that this was unusual, so I never mentioned it. The Lady must have inspired my silence because it’s a talent denied even the most powerful sibyls. I knew that if anyone ever found out, the villagers would burn me alive out of sheer fear, and even the duke might have hesitated to have me around.
When I was young and a servant, few people bothered with me. After rescuing the duke, I was so scared of being discovered that I was careful not to mix too much. I limited my visits to the village, avoided touching anyone, and I refused to have a servant, knowing that casual intimacy would endanger me.
It was a bit lonely at times, but apart from the danger, it saved me from being exhausted from being at the receiving end of lots of emotion. But now the Beast’s thoughts blasted out full strength, uncompromising and naked in every way. The sheer force of him was terrifying. Even without the rage battering at me, the idea of having him close to me for days on end freaked me out. I was regretting saving him the second I spotted my own chimney.
After I got him washed, fixed up and into bed, I looked into the fire. Soon I was whipping through futures. In one both of us were in the village, and all I’ll say about that vision was that it involved a lot of flames and pain. In the rest, I saw the Beast leaving, loping through the forest, with me waving goodbye.
Thankfully this time the visions were clear enough for me to spot the linchpin: in the vision with my fiery end, trouble started with the Beast confronting Courtney and a pack of villagers armed with pitchforks.
After that, it was easy. I rolled Courtney up completely and sent him off with his tail between his legs. Then I told myself it was simply a matter of waiting till the Beast had healed. The poor man was a mess. It would take him a few weeks to get better.
Although I didn’t like the idea of continued close proximity, reason told me it wasn’t a huge problem. The villagers liked me well enough but not so much that they’d spend an hour trekking through the forest. I’d get emergencies, but they’d be on horseback and too troubled to hang about.
My visions also told me I was safe, but even so, I decided it had been a stupid thing to rescue the man. “I must have been mad, Saga.” She was sitting next to me, her head on my arm. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
Saga’s compassionate—much more than me, actually. There’s plenty of women who’ve hung onto her while delivering, and the Beast had his face in her fur too while I’d cleaned and stitched. Now she was looking up at me, understanding every word.
“Do you think it’s because I’m part Beast?” Saga licked my hand comfortingly. “Do I feel a connection?”
It frightened me, but I couldn’t stop myself going in and touching him again. He was fast asleep, but even unconscious he looked menacing. He was bruised purple, cut and burned, but there was no disguising the rippling muscles. The tattoos were alien, too. I’d heard of such things but never seen them. On the Beast, snakes, bears, eagles, and wolves fought with spirals, darts, and flashes. From the way the wolves on his side twitched, his ribs were hurting him.
I took a deep breath, willed myself to be calm, and put a finger on a muzzle. I got nothing. I hadn’t seen anything while I was tending to him, either. Maybe it was the poppy. He’d had enough of it to stun a bull. But when Saga leaned in, snuffling at him, he moved.
There was a glimpse of blue and then one word, “Lizbeth.”
It shocked me to the core. Sense told me even Beasts are men, but I’d never thought of them as having feelings. Wild, fierce, and capable of speech but not quite human. This one had raged like a wounded wolf, and yet there was fierce intelligence there. And from the sound of it, love, too. Or rather, loss. He’d sounded devastated.
Saga certainly thought so. She hopped onto the bed and lay down with him.
I gave her a cold look. “What have I said about you being in my bed? Do I sleep on your rug?”
Saga knew, but she’s stubborn as hell. Cunning, too. I’d given up trying to keep her off the sofa. This time she shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. To my amazement, the Beast’s arm came up and round her. The fluttering ink calmed visibly. The Beast was comforted by the wolf.
I tugged Saga’s ear. “All right then. But I’m stealing your rug.”
I sat in front of the fire, plagued by doubts despite the comfort of knowing my future. It may have been humane to rescue the Beast, but the duke wouldn’t be happy.
My duty to him was conflicted. I’d saved his life, and he’d rewarded me. That made us even.
On a personal level, I didn’t like the man. Apart from failing me when I’d begged for his help with the sisters, my visions told me he was completely ruthless. I’d had seen him kill often, and not just in battle. And heaven help any woman who came across him when he was drunk. The duke wasn’t above rape, either.
While I didn’t care for the duke, I was one of his subjects. Loyalty is what keeps Prydain together. Then again, if I sent word to Brighthelme, claiming I’d saved the Beast for the duke to interrogate, he’d probably torture him and put him on the woodpile afterwards. I just couldn’t do that.
While I fretted all day, second-guessing myself and agonising over my choices, the Beast was restless, tossing and turning continuously. Within hours he succumbed to a fever. It wasn’t surprising, really, but when I gave him fenugreek tea with honey, all I got in thanks was a low, running snarl. Maybe his throat was sore, but somehow I doubted it. He was a bad-tempered bugger, growling in his sleep and shifting suspiciously when I came near.
Although the Beast was feverish, when morning came I decided I had to go to the village, both to establish my innocence and to find out what was happening. Everyone was in the fields or fishing, but Helga, Durwyn’s little thrall was in. “They haven’t caught the Beast,” she said while looking around nervously.
“He’s probably well gone.”
Seeing everyone else was away, I went home, hoping the villagers would be too intent on tilling the fields for the spring planting to worry about Beasts. When I went back two days later, the villagers were antsy, but there was also good news: the Patriarch was skipping his weekly visit and staying in the Vale.
“We have their prayers,” Theta told me. “With everyone praying to Ullr, we should be safe, don’t you think?”
“Just make sure you include Freyja,” I reminded her.
“Of course!” Theta agreed hurriedly but I knew she’d not spared a thought for the Lady. It worried me, but at least they were back to their work and not scouring the forests, looking for the Beast.
“The squire asked if you could see Old Mathew,” Theta said.
“Another cough?”
“Yes. He wants your red tonic.”
And just like that, I went about my usual business, dispensing tonics, cleaning cuts and helping colicky babies and rickety old folk as usual. I’d visited the village twice a week after the sisters left, and it was simple enough to keep to the schedule because back home the Beast was mending well.
The fever went quickly, but for a fortnight he just slept the clock round. Animals do that, they conserve their energy and focus on healing, and I decided this man was like them. I’d not seen it in people before, but it certainly made it easy to tend to him. I woke him twice a day to wash and feed him, and that was pretty much it.
> Looking after the Beast was easier than tending the bear cub; the man grumbled, but he didn’t bite or claw. At first I didn’t like to touch him, fearing another vision, but as I washed him down every day with witch hazel water, a good cleansing lotion, I didn’t get a thing. My visions were absent, too, but I wasn’t missing them. I put it down to being too tired. Although the Beast was no trouble, just having him around made me nervous. I kept hearing voices and thinking we’d be discovered.
It was a full fortnight after I brought him home that he spoke to me again. I woke him up, fed him some soup and then said, “I’m going to the village. I’ll be back by noon.”
“I’ll go.” He was trying to sit up. “Dangerous for you. To have me here.”
“Right. You barely have the strength to speak in whole sentences, but you’re going to wander off into the forest. Alone.”
The eyes were still yellow and green with fading bruises, but the angry blue was clearly visible. “I’ll be okay.”
“Don’t be a damn fool. Go to sleep.”
He was struggling to sit up, hissing in pain, and still grumbling. “Thank you for the bed, the food and the medicine.” He didn’t seem to like the idea. “I’m grateful.” Not much. “But stop calling me names!”
“Sorry, you’re not a damn fool.” I put a hand under an arm and helped him sit up. “You’re a tough Beast, brave—”
“Stop calling me a beast!”
We stared at each other, me surprised and him fuming.
“We are the Skraeling of Thule!”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
He stared at me. “What do you mean, you didn’t know?”
My turn to stare at him. “How would I know what you call yourselves?”
“You’re Skraeling!”
“I’m not. At least, if I am, I don’t think my mother was.”
He blinked and then nodded. “You were a raider’s child. But I thought the Prydain culled half-breeds at birth.”
“Clearly I survived!” It always makes me edgy, thinking about my birth. “So I’m not one of you, do you understand?”
“Even so,” the eyes were narrowed with temper, “you think we call ourselves beasts?”
There was more staring, with him looking sarcastic. At least, I think he was. With the bruises, it was hard to tell for sure, but the rage seemed to dial down to plain old nastiness.
“Now you mention it, it does seem unlikely.”
The Beast, or rather Skraeling, sighed. “You Prydain,” and he said it as if it were a curse. “You don’t know any better.”
“I guess that with you lot running around destroying Brighthelme, the niceties of what you call yourselves got lost.”
The ink swirled, a wall of red hot rage blasted me, and then he was snarling, “They burnt our ship! Under a flag of truce!”
I couldn’t breathe. “What?”
“We came to trade. We were on shore when they burnt our ship. They cheated! Broke their word!”
I felt his righteous rage, and I knew he was speaking the truth. The shame of it paralysed me. “The Guild Steward committed perfidy? He broke the flag of truce? Sweet Lady Freyja, but that’s unforgivable treachery!”
“He was a cheat, the rassragr!”
I didn’t need to ask what a rassragr was. His mind showed the image clearly: a man violated by men. I pulled away, and the image flickered and died.
Although I’d nothing to do with it, I felt guilty. “I’m sorry.” Then I rallied. “But you took hostages and killed them when the families couldn’t pay!”
“That’s a lie!” He was snarling, absolutely furious. “They live with us!”
“As thralls? Nice living!” I’ve always hated slavery. I might have been one of them if it hadn’t been for my visions.
“They’re not thralls. They can leave at any time.”
Again, he spoke the truth. I could feel it coming from him in waves. It also didn’t make him happy, that was clear, too. Ungrateful, cunning, poisonous she-wolf! I knew he didn’t mean me, and I wasn’t going to ask who he was thinking about. The man had a simmering undercurrent of fury that tainted every emotion.
But he’d told the truth about the battle and the hostages. Suddenly I wasn’t sure what to think. Everyone knew Beasts were vicious, wild cannibals without hearts and souls. Yet this one had feelings (mostly rage, but still!) and it had been the Guild who’d been the aggressors at Brighthelme.
We were silent, just trying to figure out where we stood, his cerulean eyes looking intent, as I knew mine were.
Then he nodded, growling peaceably for a Beast, “I am Siv Olafson, known as Skull Crusher, son of Siv Bloodaxe, who was son of Olaf the Red, the scourge of Haven.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Skull Crusher, huh? Bloodaxe and the Destroyer of Haven, too? Impressive.” He was glowering at me again. I could see he was invested in the gory family history. “I’m Bliss.”
He blinked. “One name? Just that?”
“I find it’s enough.” All right, so I’m defensive. You try being a foundling and see how you handle it. “Now be a good Skraeling and lie down. You’re in no fit state to leave.”
“It’s too dangerous. If they find me, they will punish you.”
Despite the snarling and snapping, he was trying to protect me. I was actually quite touched. “Look, Skull Crusher, you’re weaker than a kitten. If they find you, they will kill you.”
“Not if you give me a knife.”
Do you know, he meant it? “You idiot! You can barely stand, and you want to fight?” I pushed him gently back on the bed. It was like pushing rocks, but he went down. “Nobody will find you today.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Actually, I do know it.” I was convinced that if there were trouble, I would have seen it. Then I looked at the writhing ink. He was a fighter, and he was defenceless. I didn’t need to see his thoughts to know how he felt.
I went to the scullery and got my best knife, the one I use for boning fish. I went back and presented it to the Beast. “Here. Take this, okay?”
The relief came off him in waves. “Thank you, Bliss.”
He held onto it and lay back. My guess had been right; the ink had stilled considerably.
“Try not to stab yourself in your sleep.” I ignored the snarl. “I’ll be back soon.”
I loaded some cough mix and cleansing lotion into my cart, called Saga to me and made my way to Theta’s cottage.
“Did you hear?” she was calling to me as I came up the path. “The Patriarch says it’s Ullr’s punishment!”
So the old fat gut was back and everyone was upset again. “What’s going on?”
“Our sheep had a lamb without eyes, and the smith says his house has been invaded by a ghost!”
As Fowler is too cheap to hire a ram, and his stock consists of generations of breeding father and daughter with uncle and niece, I was amazed any of his lambs were born hale and hearty.
As for the smith, he was famed for his overactive imagination. Most of us think we see elves in the woods at some point, but the smith had claimed ships were floating over his cottage in the middle of the night. Right. Ships that travel in space. Clearly his beer had a touch of ergot.
Still, it doesn’t do to criticise too openly, not in a small place where we live cheek by jowl, so I kept to the point. “We often have sickly lambs, and the smith has more visions than I do.”
Theta stared at me. “Can’t you see? They’re signs from the heavens! Portents! We’ve offended Ullr! First he sent the Beast to plague us, and now this! We’re cursed!”
The Patriarch had hit a new low. “What did we do to deserve such terrible punishment?”
“We’re too slack with sinners.” Theta gave me a sideways look. “Ullr forbids drinking.”
Oh great. The Patriarch was aiming to stoke up fanaticism just as he had in the Vale. They’d banned ‘demon’s brew’ there too. The few who did make it, selling it as medicine, had to pay
huge licensing fees. And no points for guessing who issued those!
“If drinking is an affront to the gods, all the nobles would be dead.” Okay, so I was pissed off. “And it’s well known that Freyja has wine with her sacrifices, and Wotan and Apollo love a goblet or two, as well.”
“But that’s gods, not common folk,” Theta whispered. “The Patriarch says Ullr is punishing us.”
“Considering the Beast was the one who was beaten, I don’t see how that works.”
“He’s out there! Waiting!”
So the Patriarch was turning the Beast into a fairy-tale monster. Well, the villagers would soon realise that it was total nonsense.
“Look, Freyja loves us. The mantle of her loving care lies over us all.” I ploughed on, not waiting for Theta to agree. “I’ve brought you some cough medicine. Hops and liquorice. One bottle for you and one for your father.”
She hesitated a long moment and then smiled and took them. “Thank you. Dad says it’s the only thing that helps. He does get chesty this time of year, but he won’t wear a hat in spring. He says it coddles the body.”
“Well that’s men for you. Stubborn to the bone.”
Theta hesitated. “Bliss, the Patriarch says you’re trouble.”
My stomach did a flip-flop. This was a direct attack. “Me? Why?”
“He says you’re a Beast!”
“How can I be? I’m a child of Freyja!”
“Yes, of course.” But Theta didn’t sound convinced. “Nobody believes it.” That was a lie. “And of course nobody believed that you had anything to do with his escape.”
I didn’t blush, but Freyja knows I felt awfully guilty. That niggling doubt, the voice that said Beasts were our enemies, was speaking up loud and clear. And if the duke ever found out, I’d go from sibyl to witch in an instant. Not all my talents would prevent it. The woodpile beckoned.
“We should’ve killed the Beast straightaway!” Theta cried. “We had the wood and everything! He would’ve gone up in flames, and that would’ve been the end of it!”
“You would’ve burned him alive?”