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As he stole back into the Palace without a sound, he was quite confident that he had acquitted himself perfectly—even the Prince could not have been so stealthy. But as he shut the door to his own bedchamber, a brazier flared, flooding the room with amber light like a fruit dashed against the wall.
Dinarzad sat among the furs of his bed, a long slender stalk of straw in her hand. She held it aloft, still smoldering over the torch.
“Well.” She chuckled. “You can’t blame me. I gave you fair warning.” She moved then, quick as a fly-bound spider, snatching him by the forearm and dragging him up a long staircase. Without another word she flung him into a small tower room, and turned the key in the great lock. The room was bare save for a tiny bed and wind-washed flagstones, illumined by the sapphire-ringed fingers of dawn, which pried at the window.
The boy yelped in frustration and kicked the meager bed. He let a few furious tears fall like blows onto the cold floor. All was truly lost now—there were not even linens on the bed with which to fashion a rope. He was a stupid child after all, stuck in a tower like the deformed maiden, when he should be roaming the marshes like the Prince. It was all wrong, upside down, unnatural. The boy punched the stone wall in mute anger, and instantly regretted it, rubbing his bruised knuckles as his eyes watered in pain.
Outside the tower keep, Dinarzad closed her almond eyes and took a deep, jagged breath, harsh as a sword drawn across a thick chain. She knew she would be punished terribly for letting him sneak out in the night. Her welts had not yet healed from the last time a child escaped from her nursery. But she was the Sultan’s daughter, and no amira of her standing would let terror or wounds show to anyone. She banished her tears as she strode down the polished steps, the key tucked into her robes. But when she crawled into her own bed, she began to weep silently under the wolf pelts, her tears wetting the down pillow like rain on the snow. She wished for nothing but to sleep past her punishments and wake to a Palace with no children for her to look after, no whips tipped in lead, and no prized brothers to mock and loathe her.
When the girl woke and the great wings had moved from her pale body, she saw the dark-haired boy had gone, and she let hot, secret tears fall into the black earth.
The night was full of weeping.
Dinarzad brought the boy supper in the tower the next evening, just as rose and flame were beginning to divide the sky between them. She said nothing, punctuating her exit with the slow rolling of the iron key in the lock. The boy did not eat it all, though he was hungry. He set aside some of the dense, sweet bread and onions, saving the apples like gold ornaments in useless hope.
The boy leaned against the tower wall, seething. He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors. Aerie seemed to have the girl’s strange eyes, and he could not even recall something so simple as the color of Beast.
Standing on his toes, he stretched to reach the window-sill and peer into the Garden below, to spy at least the top of a cypress under which the girl might be lying. The trees stood high before him like quill pens in pots, wafting slow
ly in the night wind. And they were beautiful, because she might be resting under one of them.
Except that she was not, for she stood in the manicured grass at the foot of the great gray tower, staring up at the helpless boy with eyes wide and dark as an owl’s throat.
The girl watched him silently. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that she would climb up the craggy stones and ivy to rescue the boy, though she had certainly never heard of such a thing. For a moment, she let herself be filled and warmed with knowing that he had looked for her.
When it was fully dark, she hooked a toe into one of the cracks between stones and began to climb.
The boy heard her scrabbling up the ivy and nettles that clothed the tower. He was excited to know she drew near, but ashamed that it was again she that had hunted and tracked him. He should have jumped, he decided. A broken leg was not such a tragedy.
Of course, it did not matter. The girl was here, and that meant she must like him a little. It was not just that she wanted to tell her tales; it must be that she missed him, too. This thought rose up in him like a blinding sun. Embarrassed, he snuffed it out, showing her his most welcoming, yet dignified, face.
But when she pulled herself onto the sill, glistening with sweat, she would not come inside, only perch in the window like a half-tamed parrot. She was afraid, of him perhaps, certainly of getting caught. Up till now he had taken the punishment, but if she were found in the Palace, it was very likely she would be killed. His breath caught with the realization, with admiration for her bravery. Once again, she had outdone him.
“I… I know you wanted to hear the rest of the story…” she whispered, and somehow he felt ashamed of it, for the first time, as though he were taking something precious from her, and caring for nothing but the gleam of the prize.
Nevertheless, the girl began to speak again, and her voice filled the room like a copper bell. The boy closed his eyes.
“I WAS TRUE TO MY WORD,” SAID BEAST. “AFTER THE Witch left us in her Glen, I brought Magadin to the village of Muireann, and arranged to have her hired as a sail-mender on one of the great ships. All told she has done well enough for herself, considering. Of course, there remained the last leg of the two-fold price the Witch exacted for my life. You must see now, that I am bound by my word of honor to give over the skin. Now my debt is done.”
The Marsh King spat and snorted a loud hrumph from his perch in the air. “I think this is all most unpalatable!” He accused Beast with eyes that flashed like eels snapping their tails. “You liked that horrid human! You thought she was beautiful! It’s unnatural! I think you loved her! How disgusting—you know the other monsters would never stand for it. The beast-maid is one thing, but a human woman? At any rate I think you like her better than me. I don’t recall you ever giving me your skin, even when I wanted to kill that wretched salamander who annoyed me so last spring.”
Beast was immediately conciliatory, jostling the Marsh King with his head, which smeared the monarch’s wiry beard with thick blood. “Poppet! You know I like you best of all. I chose to be your courtier—I could have chosen anyone. She was nothing, a momentary infatuation—not even infatuation! An aesthetic admiration, that’s all! Don’t be angry. You mustn’t begrudge her, when there is so much trouble ahead.”
The Marsh King seemed to cheer up slightly, sniffing a little. Suddenly, he started and brusquely strode away from the Prince.
“Well, lad, I suggest that you have your prize and ought, to put it politely, to clear off. Matters of state to attend to, don’t you know.” The pair promptly left Leander sitting in the swamp with his breeches soaked through and a skin which, if it had not to begin with, was beginning to smell.
By now it was nearing evening, and the Prince guiltily decided that, since Eyvind was soon to come into whatever adventure had been stored up for him, he needn’t actually return to the tavern to deliver his message. After all, it had probably already occurred, whatever it was. He resolved to send a message-boy when all of this was over.
This almost quieted his conscience.
And so he made his way home, discovering the second truth of Quests, which is that, mysteriously enough, the path homeward is a great deal shorter than the path deedward. The sun slips easily through the sky, as if on a golden rail, and earth seems to positively skip by under one’s feet. Adventures rarely occur on the home trek, as if fate wills the loyal and successful Prince to the bed at the end of his duty. It was almost pleasant to walk back to the Witch, except that guilt and fear gnawed at his stomach like starved mice.
So it was that when the Prince returned to the Witch’s hut, he trembled, but had, at least, the same heavy boots given to him by the tavern-keeper, which had not failed him. It was perhaps an even trade. It was the last night of the full moon, and darkness lay on Knife’s little farm like a thick-fingered hand. The milling geese were now quiet, and the plow stood in the half-light of the stars like a skeleton. The door of the hut was ajar, and Leander, the Leucrotta skin tucked neatly away, bent his dark head and crossed the threshold.
Knife was not in the vast kitchen, though the hearth still glowered stubbornly, despite having long since been neglected. But behind a second door she lay curled up on a great bed, with the gray geese surrounding her, fashioning a blanket the color of waves over her gnarled body.
Leander knelt quietly at her side and pressed the red bundle into her hand. She turned her head in mid-snore and grimaced.
