by Lucy Tempest
A couple of miles past the square, Maple slowed from a trot to a walk as we were engulfed by the castle’s shadow.
Perched on its worn, stony hill, it was a menacing sight. The main structure was a gigantic, sheer rectangle, its facade made entirely of dark, rain-stained slate. It had conical, capped towers and a smattering of turrets that bordered arched, curtained windows and towering stone fences topped with sharp, metal spikes that glistened with simmering threat.
When Maple finally came to a stop before the towering black iron gates, fog emerged from beyond them in thick, curling clouds, turning this midsummer day to a chilling autumn dusk.
Shaking down to my toes, heart stumbling in my chest and cutting off my breathing, I stared up at the castle. Half a dozen gargoyles stared down at me from the distance. And there was no discernable way in, aside from the locked gate.
With a loud huff, Maple turned her head, gearing up to leave. I pulled on her reins, the sudden chill intensifying the tremors of exhaustion and dread.
“Wait! We need to find a way in.”
She stomped her hooves and made complaining noises. I could feel her growing fear, feel her itching to leave. I didn’t blame her. If not for my father being held captive in there, in danger of being the Beast’s next meal, I would have run and never looked back.
I dismounted, and almost crumpled to the ground. I clung to her mane to steady myself, giving her the other apple as I stroked her neck in encouragement and gratitude. Then I squinted up at the nightmarish edifice.
It was as if it absorbed light and radiated danger, exactly what I’d imagined an evil creature would reside in. All it was missing were a murder of circling crows and cracks of perpetual lightning.
Setting my hands on the cold, damp gates, I let out a shuddering breath. I’d come all the way up thinking I might find a way in once I got here. In my books, the hero or heroine always had a plan, or found a convenient one when they most needed it. It was clear none of those stories had anything to do with reality. Reality was the harsh, ugly and merciless place both my father and Ada had been trying to protect me from…
A metallic creak startled me, had me stumbling back a few feet. A carpet of thick, freezing fog taller than me rolled out, encasing me in an instant layer of frost that turned my hands slippery, my hair damp and set my shoulders shaking. A gust of wind followed, dispersing the cold spirals into blanketing vapor and carrying a low, hair-raising hum coming from behind the gates. A chorus of rustling leaves or of sinister whispers, I didn’t want to know which.
But the gates were open. Somehow. All I had to do was run in, find my father and lead him out to Maple.
So why wasn’t I running?
I was stuck to the spot, lips and fingers going numb, eyes drying out as I stared up at the Beast’s abode.
As much as I hated to admit it, I was too terrified of going in there. I…
“Bonnie!”
The shout hit me between my shoulder blades, almost had me keeling over. It was only then I heard the approaching stomp of hooves.
Teetering around, I saw Castor on a white stallion, galloping up the hill towards me. I didn’t need to see his face to know he was livid.
“Get back here now!”
The imperiousness of that order gave me enough spiteful courage to stagger past the threshold. Before I lost my nerve, I broke out into a sprint through the gloomy grounds, splitting the eerie fog in my path, cracking the glaze of ice that had settled over me, and regaining body heat in a burning surge.
As I ran, I caught glimpses of my surroundings in the ghostly illumination of the fog-blanked sun. But it was only halfway between the gates and the main castle door that something caught my eye, what I’d thought a short oak tree from a distance. As I passed it, I couldn’t credit what I saw. It had no fruit, only flowers. Not blossoms, but the biggest roses I’d ever seen. About a dozen of them, in different colors. One was even blue!
Shaking off the entrancing sight of the impossible tree, I ran up the cracked stone steps towards the massive oaken doors, my mind racing with my two options. Either put Adelaide’s lock picking accounts into practice or bang on the door and take my chances begging the Beast for my father’s life. I decided to try the former first, as it had a slightly lesser chance of ending in certain death.
I’d failed to find the door’s lock and was frantically concluding that it was bolted from the inside when I heard a shuffle of movement. Before I could draw another breath, let alone retreat or hide, the left door creaked open.
Without giving myself a chance to wonder about what was letting me in or why, I rushed in and the door slammed shut behind me.
I stood in total darkness for heart-uprooting moments thinking I’d only succeeded in providing the Beast with an extra live meal.
After moments, when nothing attacked me, my eyes adjusted enough to realize that subdued light was struggling from the iron-boarded windows on both sides of the door. Then with a faint buzz burst above me. It was a bulbous glass lantern, like the bottles from an apothecary. Its soft light was still not enough for me to scope out the place.
Clenching and unclenching my damp, freezing hands, trying to control my tremors, I walked further in and more lights burst to life with my every step. What I could see of the inside of the castle was nowhere as scary as the outside, with the walls spread in panels and paintings and the floors paved in multicolored mosaic patterns and images.
Swallowing down my rioting heart, I forced myself to think. Every book I’d ever read that was set in a castle had prisoners locked in a dungeon or a tower. My father was probably…
Something collided into the front door with a shuddering crash. I leaped with a muffled shriek and torches burst into white flames, lighting the way up a spiral staircase.
“Bonnie!” Castor shouted from outside, muffled but incensed. “Get out this instant and leave all this to me.”
I wanted to yell back that I wouldn’t be here if he had come in the first place. But that would be a waste of time I didn’t have. I also didn’t know if I’d be able to walk out, or if I was trapped. All I could do was go further in, do what I’d come to do.
As I headed towards the stairs, I passed through pitch-dark halls on either side. Suddenly all my hairs stood on end. Something big and heavy was shuffling in tandem with my footfalls. The strangest and worst ideas burst in my mind’s eye at once, that of a giant worm slithering across the floor or a bloodied body being dragged in a bed sheet.
A faint memory flickered through my morbid imaginings, of people wrapping my mother’s limp form in her sheets, then lifting her out of the bedroom. At the time, I’d thought she was sick. It had taken weeks of waiting for her to be brought back after she recovered for me to understand that she was gone forever.
The dragging noise distressed me more than it frightened me. I didn’t want to consider what creatures inhabited this place, but it was better that than imagining the ravaged remains of my father being taken out for burial.
Castor slammed against the door again, this time many times in a row, like he was trying to shoulder it down, all the while shouting orders at me. But I was too far now to hear him clearly. And the trail of whispers I’d heard earlier was now louder, some coming from above, some from around me.
I still saw nothing. But I felt a sudden draft that blew my hair over my face before the flutter of massive wings reverberated in my ears.
Another burst of panic propelled me to the stairs where the torches seemed to be guiding me. I was halfway up the first flight when a rasp grated from above. I almost ran back down until I realized what the voice had said.
“Follow me!”
Unthinkingly, I did. The white flames flickered as I passed among them, darting behind the voice. At the first bend, another prodding hiss came from above me.
“Hurry!”
Shock at how close it sounded made me slip on the red carpet covering the stairs. I arrived at the second floor on all fours before scrambli
ng up. A loud flap, followed by hard stomps, like someone walking on stilts, led me further up, where the whispers diverged, becoming distinct if overlapping, as if in argument.
At the fourth and apparently final floor, I was panting my lungs out when a single hiss from far above urged, “He’s though here.”
Dad. It had to be him they were leading me to. Whatever they were. He was alive. He had to be.
A rush of exhilaration washed over me, unbalancing me into seesawing towards the direction the voice came from. A doorway that I wasted no time stumbling blindly into.
One instant I was on a spacious landing, the next I was in a tubular space with nothing but stone stairs that wound up steeply all the way to a dim-lit end.
Heart racing, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled up the stairs. I could barely see with sweat spilling into my eyes, blurring my vision. I didn’t come all this way to sabotage everything with a bone-crushing stumble to the bottom.
The light led me up into an endless chamber with cells along both sides. I got up, snapping my head around. “DAD?”
“Bonnie?”
I burst out running towards his voice. The moment I saw him, I threw myself at his cell, shakily clinging to the bars. “Dad! Are you all right?”
He struggled up from a pile of hay, rushed to wrap his hands over mine. They were even colder than mine, but in the light from the tiny, high window, I could see there wasn’t a scratch on him. He just looked pale and disheveled.
His relieved expression vanished like smoke in a gale, soaring fright replacing it. “You can’t be here.” He unwrapped my fingers from the bars frantically. “You shouldn’t have come, Bonnie. Go away—run.”
I stretched my hands out to him through the bars. “No, I’m not leaving without you!”
“I can’t leave.” He shook his head as he staggered out of reach, then back down on the hay. “But you have to get out before it finds you!”
I opened my mouth to argue, only to close it. Of course, he thought he couldn’t leave. He was still locked in there.
My spastic fingers trembled as I took pins out of my hair as I looked around, hoping that if I didn’t find anything better, I’d be able to pick the lock like Adelaide had told me how.
The flap of wings came from above again then something clanged at my feet. I looked up then down, found a long, black key on the ground.
Not pausing to think who was helping me, or why, I snatched the key up. My hands were shaking so hard it took three tries to slot it in.
As soon as I unlocked the door, my father’s breath caught in his throat as his eyes rounded in fear. Before I could utter another word, a shadow grew behind me, its darkness smothering us both.
I could barely inch my head back to look over my shoulder, suffocating with dread.
And that was before I saw it.
Silhouetted against the light at its back, a huge, hunched creature with clawed hands and eyes that glowed a terrifying yellow towered above us.
The Beast!
A shriek of horror escaped from my gut as I tore the door open and streaked inside the cell, slamming it behind me. It only tore it back open and advanced on us.
Sobs wracking my body, I spread my arms protectively in front of my father, who was struggling to get up. Eyes clinging in terror to its glowing ones, knees about to give way, I braced for the worst.
When it came, the blow I expected wasn’t a swipe of flesh-shredding claws, but a rib-rattling, marrow-congealing rumble.
“How did you get up here?”
Chapter Five
It spoke.
I’d expected a hundred things from the Beast. That wasn’t among them.
But—if it could speak then maybe—maybe I could reason with it?
I kept my arms spread in front of my father, who was now on his feet and trying to push me behind him. For all the good either of our actions would do. That Beast was twice our sizes. And it had already eaten the inhabitants of a whole castle.
I still had to try. There was nothing else I could do. “Please—please let him go!”
At my ragged plea, it cocked its head sideways, the golden light dimming in one eye. They didn’t glow as I’d first thought, but reflected light, like other predators’ did.
“Who are you, and how did you get in here? I won’t ask again.”
Its voice was literally hair-raising, sending goosebumps flaring up my limbs to my scalp, riding a body-shaking shudder. “I-I came for my father.”
Not answering its question was risky, stupid even, testing its temper. But, true to its word, it didn’t ask again, it just slowly straightened to its full size to look down at me in a way that made my teeth clatter.
“You can’t have him.”
“Are you going to eat him?” I blurted out, shudders spiking. “Please, please don’t do this. We’ll get you another sacrifice—a deer, an elk, a bear—all of them! My friend is a hunter—he’ll get you whatever type of game you want. Just please—let him go.”
“I did.”
My chattering and shaking stopped dead, leaving me stiff and gawking at its statement. “Do you consider imprisonment rather than slaughter ‘letting him go?’”
It growled in answer to my scoff, reminding me just what I was dealing with. As if I could forget.
“When your father was dropped on my property, I left him to wander the grounds and find his way out.” Menace blasted off it as it glared down at my father. “But then he stole from me, and for that he must be punished.”
Offense boiled within me, fueling my reckless shout. “My father is not a thief!”
Not that I considered stealing bad on principle, with my best friend a thief who’d always had good or even necessary reasons for her thefts. But my father had a very black and white moral code, and would never steal a thing.
The Beast came closer, sending me stumbling back with a gasp. I could see the outline of its sharp fangs and long hair now, but the rest was still shrouded in shadow. “And yet, he still ripped a rose from my garden.”
Its deep, chilling voice sent shockwaves through me. But even through that level of shiver-inducing fear, I couldn’t hold my tongue. I’d already disrespected it, anyway, and if it was going to punish me for it, there was nothing I could do about it. So why stop now?
“What bizarre logic is that?” My father gripped my shoulders, whispered for me to please stop, but I couldn’t. “On what grounds does plucking a rose warrant a life sentence?”
“On my grounds,” it growled.
“How much is a single rose worth to something like you?” I choked, on the verge of breaking down. “You spared him before, why not spare him for something so insignificant?”
It didn’t answer me.
“Please—please, let him go,” I begged. “If you don’t consider him a sacrifice, there’s nothing you can possibly achieve from keeping him here. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll plant you a whole new rosebush if you need.”
“The rose wasn’t from a bush.”
My thoughts flitted back to the peculiar tree I’d spotted on my way in. I was about to ask what its significance was, if my father and I had stumbled into a fairy situation, but a slam from below had us all jerking in its direction.
“Bonnie!”
At Castor’s distant scream, it rounded on me. “How many others did you bring here?”
“None! He followed me, but I can explain—”
It had no interest in listening to me as it pushed my father back deeper into the cell and pulled me outside. Then it slammed the door, locking it again before tearing away, heading down towards Castor’s approaching bellows.
The Beast was sure to tear him to the pieces. He’d die a gruesome death, all because he’d come for me. I couldn’t let that happen.
I spun around to my father, gasped, “I’ll be right back!”
My father’s cries for me to escape trailed after me as I sped away like wildfire was at my heels. Climbing down the steep steps wa
s harder than the journey up, and I fell a couple of times, and miraculously didn’t tumble the rest of the way down.
I finally made it to floor below to find Castor with his back to me, holding a crossbow, looking around rabidly.
“Come out and face me, Beast! I know you have her, and I won’t leave without her or your head!”
“Castor, you have to get out of here!”
He jumped with a shout, shooting an arrow that chipped the wall beside my head, and had me falling back through the doorway.
The Beast emerged from the shadows, a towering, terrifying figure in the wavering torchlight, and ripped out an ear-splitting roar that had Castor leaping back, fumbling another arrow in place.
It was on him in a heartbeat, slapping the crossbow from his hands. Castor only whipped out a serrated hunting knife and yelled for me to run.
That moment of distraction was his downfall. My warning shout left my mouth too late, accompanying his pained screech as the Beast struck him down.
The Beast bent over him, no doubt to swipe a killing blow, and I was across the space before I knew it. I latched onto its arm, stuttering, “Don’t—p-please—don’t kill him.”
“You’re making a lot of demands for someone who has no leverage here,” it grumbled as it raised me high in the air. But instead of tossing me away, it only kept Castor pinned under its foot, pressing his throat.
I clung to its massive arm, kicking the air, panting, like I’d once done as I’d hung from a tree branch in our backyard. After my father had saved me, he’d immediately cut down the tree and forbidden me to climb any again. And here I was, hanging from a murderous monster’s limb, bothering it enough it might smash me on the ground at any moment.
I could barely breathe, but I still had to beg for Castor’s life. “H-he wouldn’t have come if it weren’t for me—and I wouldn’t have trespassed if my father hadn’t been kept here.”
When Castor went limp, it removed its foot, but still dangled me, raising me higher. “Your father earned his sentence.”