Beauty in the Beast (8 page)

I fell backward onto the snow, the cold as sharp as pain.

The huge form of the Rolph-beast did not leap
at
me, but
past
me. He landed two body-lengths away, just close enough that the glow from the gas lamp still dimly illuminated his body, and turned to throw a long look over his shoulder at me. The eyes that stared back at me were not monster eyes, but human ones, and they were round with terror. For one long moment, neither of us moved, gazes locked. Then, Rolph’s ears flicked back and he flinched away. With a strangled cry, he sprang into a run, leaving me with an afterimage of pain.

“Rolph!”

But the storm swallowed him up.

I called his name again and stumbled after him, plunging headlong into the full force of the storm, which ripped my breath away. I reeled, hugging my arms to my chest.

A sick feeling curdled in my stomach, and I knew with certainty that Rolph would not return as long as he wore that skin.
I should have known. His electric presence. His story.
But I had never encountered anything like him before. I knew nothing of the alchemy that had transmuted him, nor the witch magic that had touched him.

But I did know that out in the blizzard, Rolph might not last the night. Though he wore a wolf’s pelt, even he could not withstand the frozen claws of this wind. I feared that to leave him would be to condemn him to death.

Surely, diving out into the blizzard after him would mean my own end, but I had a trick to skirt it.

Just as dusk exists between day and night, there is a place that exists between the physical world and the spiritual world, where the voices of men and spirits echo long after they have faded from hearing. Scraps of dreams remain here, forgotten between the ghosts of people and the glittering dust that is the remembered laughter of the Fae. It is not a place for people or faeries, but for faded memories and for the strange, dangerous things that are neither physical nor ephemeral.

I only hoped that I would not be caught by those creatures that waited for me to trespass in their realm.

I closed my eyes and clasped my hands at my chest, as if in prayer. I parted my hands as if parting a curtain, and took a step forward.

The storm fell away from me. I opened my eyes and found myself in that place between one breath and the next, where the wind and the cold were just afterthoughts, buffeting my hair and brushing my skin, but reaching no deeper.

An even, gray glow illuminated the world in perpetual dusk. Behind me, the cabin shimmered as if through a haze of heat. The stomper, a dead machine of metal and steam, appeared as a faded black hulk. Juxtaposed against this, the sled shone with the vitality of wood and canvas, shot through with bright streaks of rope.

Whorls of windblown snow swirled around me. Like everything here, the snow did not appear as substantial as it did in the physical world, and I could see through it easily.

Behind me, suspended in the air like glittering frost, was the memory of my presence: a banner stretching to the cabin door, retracing the path I had taken. Near to this, but never quite crossing it, a long scarlet gash shot out into the night. Rolph’s path. Already, it had begun to fade. Little lasted for very long in this dusk realm—even less so in a storm. Though its full force did not reach here, the blizzard kicked up a chaos that blurred the memories and artifacts, causing them to shift and dissolve more quickly than normal.

“Rolph!” I called, and the word was snatched up in a spiraling flurry of snow wind, the letters tumbling and disappearing.

I followed the red trail away from cabin. The charged, mixed smell of Rolph-the-creature hung around it, along with the uneasy feeling of fear and hunger he had left in his wake. Around me, the landscape appeared as a wasteland of streaking snow. No shadows of animals appeared here. All had found shelter from the blizzard and lay dormant. Even the spirits seemed to have fled, for I could see no bright mementos of their existence either.

I came upon the road that my companions and I had strayed from the night before. The snow had long since covered the stomper’s tracks, and no memory of our passing remained. I turned back to see that the cabin had become a tiny doll’s house in the distance. My long, frosted path glimmered like snow leading back to it, and I hoped that it would hang there long enough to guide me on my return.

As I paused there with one foot on the road, I sensed a quickening. I lifted my nose to scent the air, but I already suspected the danger I was in. A smell of musty fallen leaves, of death on the edge of rot, made my insides curl tight like a closing fist. Here was the risk of walking between worlds: I was not the only one who traveled here. Other things ran in this territory, things far older and fleeter than I, which waited with infinite patience and infinite hunger for mortals to stray here, where they did not belong.

I cast one last desperate look about myself. “Rolph!” I cried, though the attempt was in vain. The red of his trail was little more than a haze now, and where it went, I could not tell.

Shapes began to form in the streaking patterns of blowing snow. At first, they appeared as smears of white, just thicker snow that seemed for a moment to take form and trot around me before swirling away again. And then they were the black shadows in between the flurries, long-legged and lean. I could hear their panting on the wind, a sound almost like dry laughter, humorless and jeering. They knew that my only chance to escape was to leap back into the storm and blunder back to shelter.

I turned to face the cabin and braced myself. Before I lifted my hands to part the curtain, I spoke words of prayer. “Friends, still the winter wind so that I may find shelter and Rolph may survive the night.”

Over the whistle of the blizzard and the slavering of the between-creatures came a distant whispering, muffled as if through a closed door, but I could not make out the words.

My moment of supplication was all the creatures needed to close in. As I raised my hands, long jaws snapped toward me, and I rent the veil apart to dive through it into the hard arms of the gale. The cold squeezed me like a fist.

In my hastiness to tear out of the dusk realm, I left the membrane between the physical world and the dusk realm ragged and tenuous. Teeth clacked behind me with a sound like an icicle cracking. Cries like the screaming of men raised behind me, urging me faster. The creatures had followed me through.

Gray light leaked from the dusk realm into the physical, just enough to see my feet disappear into the snow with each footfall, and just enough to see the blurred forms of my death. They flanked me as I ran, ghosts in the squall. One launched toward me to rip at my sweater before dematerializing into snow and whipping through me, tearing the warmth from me with teeth of ice. I stumbled from my course, only to meet the wrinkled muzzle and glowing green eyes of another phantom, this one more solid.

I flailed backward into the snow and screamed as jaws closed around my ankle, so cold they burned my skin. I kicked my free foot and hit solid flesh. The pressure around my ankle released, and I scurried backward through the snow. They crouched over me, now completely materialized—wolves with eyes that smoldered like green coal. The one I had kicked shook its head and then dived in again to worry my pant leg, causing the limb to shake like a rag doll. As I tensed my muscles to let fly another kick, a second creature took a jawful of my hair and dragged me sharply across the snow. Teeth nipped at my wrists as I grabbed for my head. Something scalding dripped down my arm.
Blood.

I let out a howl and balled my fist, backhanding the soft, cold nose that closed in for another nip of my wrist. With a snarl, I swung my other fist into the face of the one at my head. It released my hair with a muffled yelp.

Teeth tore at me, but I stood, skin stinging with a dozen shallow wounds. The wet cold of snow wept through my pierced boots, and the wind bit at my skin where my clothes had been tattered.

I would never get far enough to reach safety before the creatures stopped playing with me and took me down for the kill. Filling my lungs with frigid air, I made a silent plea to the wind.
Take this blood, my offering to you. Carry my cry to sympathetic ears.
I threw back my head and screamed for help, offering my voice and blood and self to the storm. The wind took up my cry and carried it so that it whirled around me before being snatched off into the night, borne wherever the fickle wind would take it.

A weight plowed into me, laying me flat on my back and knocking both air and voice from my lungs. Two heavy paws pressed into my chest, claws biting skin. The smell of dead leaves gave way to the fetid stench of rotting meat as a maw opened over my face, revealing a throat the color of void. The jaws closed over my nose and mouth, and suddenly, I was being drawn up, spirit lifting out of my body. My life became a spiraling thread of breath that the creature sucked greedily from me.

The storm seemed to still itself. A calm fell, as if the world disappeared in the face of eternity. In that moment, I knew that I had given it all up for
this
. I should have had regrets, but I had none.

I stared up at the lips of my death and my fear fled. I closed my eyes.

My world numbed and the roar of the storm flattened to silence. In the growing void I heard only one sound. A breath. Little more than a whisper at first, then building into the chuff of a bellows as it grew closer. But it wasn’t mine.

The breath rolled into a growl. The great weight went sailing off of my chest. The world rushed back to me.

Bodies hit the snow with a muffled crash and snarls rent the air like ripping metal. My eyes snapped open and I jolted upright. By the gray light, I could just make out the writhing of dark forms close by. A bone-biting chill passed through me as a flurry of snow sailed toward them and smudged into the hulking shape of a between-creature. The other creatures appeared—two of them mid-leap—to set upon the attacker.

I scrambled to a crouch but could not move. My nose caught a familiar smell of musk, man and bitterness at the same moment that one of the creatures ripped savagely at a body below. I screamed and clapped my hand to my mouth.

Massive shoulders, a back and two arms sprang free, sending the green-eyed creatures tumbling. A head, muzzled and eared like a wolf’s, arched and roared. With a backhand and a then a roundhouse sweep of his claws, the beast that was Rolph knocked three dark creatures from the air as they launched toward him, but missed the one that sprang to his neck. Rolph bucked, but the between-creature held on with tenacious jaws. He flung his head, swinging the creature like a doll, and it smeared back into a swirl of snow. Rolph doubled over as two creatures took ahold of each of his arms. With a heave, he swung one to smash atop the other. The snow exploded, and I was not sure what became of them—whether they had truly impacted, or dematerialized into ghosts.

Two of the creatures broke off from the fray, leaving their brethren behind with Rolph. They charged after me, and I lurched into a run. My legs burned, but not from cold. How long till they gave out?

A heavier rhythm overtook the patter of the creatures’ feet and gained on me quickly. I attempted to put on a burst of speed, but faltered.

Strong warmth wrapped me up, crushing me. I gasped, too shocked to scream, and the world tilted as I was swept from my feet. An arm extended past my head and claws arced out, making impact with something behind me with a meaty thud. Just as I caught my breath, I was released again, landing on my feet to stare into the face of Rolph-the-beast. His nostrils flared with each hard breath, steaming the air. For one drawn-out moment, neither of us moved, our gazes locked.

Rolph ducked his head and gently butted my stomach, rolling his shoulder till it almost touched the ground. I took the cue and flung myself onto his back, arms barely clasping his neck before he sprang into a gallop. My insides fell away as my body went airborne, and I desperately clung to his neck. When my belly again made contact with his warm back, I clamped my thighs around his flanks. I loosened my death grip on his throat and shifted my weight to his shoulders.

At his collarbone, my hands rested on the fur far softer than the thick bristly mat that covered his back and shoulders. It was dry and warm underneath the heel of my left hand but wet at my fingertips, perhaps with snow.

Rolph’s loping pace faltered, and I jostled violently. Turning my head, I peeked out at the world. Tall black shapes like the spires of castles rose into the sky and resolved into evergreen trees. I swallowed bile.

Rolph tripped and recovered, loped and then stumbled. The character of his steps changed, as if the deep snow gave way to firmer, naked ground.

Midstride, Rolph lost his footing and plunged toward the ground. My hands ripped free from his shoulders and I sailed through the air, falling into a tumble. I landed on my back, arms sprawled, over a pad of evergreen needles.

The night was calmer under the trees, as if a blanket had been thrown over the world. Snow had reached the ground in patches and none fell here now. The air thrummed almost imperceptibly, a low note that I could feel in my teeth. The energy of it fortified me.

Cheek smarting, I looked up to find Rolph in a heap close by. His massive shoulders stirred and he heaved to his feet, then stumbled a step before coming to stand on his back two legs. He looked at me suddenly, like a deer detecting a hunter, and we stared at each other.

He let out a pained cry and turned to run, but staggered and dropped to all fours.

“Rolph!” I flew into a run, but stopped short as he bristled and opened his mouth, baring sharp teeth. The steam of his breath poured into the air in quick, small bursts, and I could see his chest moving fast and shallow.

I faced him steadily. “Rolph,” I said, in a gentle voice, “it’s all right. You don’t have to run. I know you won’t bring me harm.” As I spoke, I walked slowly toward him, lifting my hands until he closed his mouth and let me cradle the underside of his long jaw. He stood very still and then, with a wet noise, licked his nose. I smiled, but my mouth stretched quickly into an O of dismay as he turned his head away and collapsed to the ground with a groan.

I fell to my knees next to him and tugged one of his massive shoulders to roll him onto his back. His breath dragged heavily and the spark had gone out of his eyes, leaving him to gaze at me dimly. Whatever strength held him up had suddenly gone out of him. I had seen deer like this, slain and now lying on the ground as the life bled out of them.

Placing a hand on his chest, I encountered sticky wetness. The soft fur of his throat and chest were slick with blood.

My breath hitched and my hands scurried over his chest like panicked animals. Beneath the fur, I felt a deep gash over his collarbone, frighteningly close to the pulse of his neck, though the precious artery still throbbed weakly. I continued my exploration down his trunk, and when I reached his stomach, tears stung my eyes as my hands discovered a wound large enough to fit a fist.

Biting my lip to stifle a cry, I looked up. The air nearby seemed to grow brighter with a soft luminescence—not the gray of the between-world, but a whiter glow, as if the air itself was charged. The thrum intensified, vibrating in my bones, and I knew that the veil between worlds was very thin here. So thin that, if I cared to look for it, I would find no space between them, no dusk realm.

A shiver itched up the back of my neck. Though they did not materialize, I felt the dry-leaf presence of the between-creatures circle us, but they did not attack. Instead, they waited like carrion birds, for they sensed easier quarry than me. Death had marked Rolph. I hissed at the winking green will-o’-wisps and postured over Rolph’s body, challenging them. The hair on my arms rose. Here, where the veil was thinnest by nature, the energy of the spirit realm coursed through me and made me bold.

A multitude of unseen, curious eyes gathered around me. I could feel them like down against my aura, calming my pulse and urging me in whispers to look
up—yes there, there between the trees, where the shadows do not have power
. Not far away, where the trees did not crowd so closely together, the air glowed brightest, illuminating an earthen mound. A faery mound, a place of magic.

“Rolph, you must get up. You must find the strength.” I tugged uselessly at one arm, and he cracked his eyes open to stare blankly into the air. “Come, you must come,” I urged again, with another pull, and this time he snorted and pushed his clawed feet into the ground, shoving himself backward over the blanket of pine needles.

“Yes, that’s it!”

We inched toward the mound, me dragging and him pushing. When finally we reached it, his breath sighed out of him, and for a moment I feared that he had expired. After a short eternity, his shallow breathing resumed, and the dark creatures—crouching just outside the halo of faery light—hissed like the wind through dead leaves. I bent over Rolph’s chest to stroke his face, my tears beading down his muzzle.

“Don’t go,” I whispered.

A glitter drew my attention and I sat up, swiping the tears from my face with the heel of my hand. At the crest of the mound, where I had not seen it before, lay a flower of delicate crystal ice as blue as my eyes. My throat closed at the sight of it.

The flower, an old promise.

I grasped its stem delicately in my fingers. Though cold, its touch did not have the bite of ice, reminding me that in the spirit realm the cold of winter did not gnaw so bitterly as it did here. Nor would my wounds ache me, or time carve lines into my face. The seasons would cycle, one following the next, fickle summer giving way to serene and brooding winter.

In that land, Death would not stalk me, nor take the ones I cared for.

But a woman born of mortal parents has no place in the timeless realm of the spirits and Fae. Though I had walked in both worlds, I belonged only truly in this one, where life and beauty were fleeting. Tears were exquisite reminders that not all is meant to last; memories fade even from the dusk realm. Mountains are tamed by water and wind, and flowers curl and die, and because of this, we cherish their grace.

I was a storyteller, and although many tales have been told about faeries, none have been told without mortals, because without mortals—ever changing, ever growing, ever dying—there are no stories. There is only one story to be told of the Fae—one of an eternal, repeating cycle.

I brushed the backs of my fingers over the soft fur and bristly whiskers of Rolph’s muzzle. Here was something more precious than eternal life in Arcadia.

Once, a promise had been made to me—that I could return to the land of the spirits and Fae and never know death. A very powerful magic was bound up in that promise, and I would give up that chance at immortality in order to save his life.

One thorn adorned the cut stem of the ice flower, a long, wicked, beautiful thorn. Though it had been many seasons since I had spoken the Old Tongue, it still came easily to my lips, and I still remembered the word and characters for “life.” I turned Rolph’s wrist, gently exposing the underside of his forearm and the short, silken fur there. Tenderly, I ran my fingers over the thin skin before bending to carve the letters down it with the thorn. Blood welled, beading and then running over the curve of his arm, but Rolph did not stir. How late must it be before it was too late to trade the promise of eternity for a mortal life?

On my own palm, I carved a single word, the pain distant.
Sacrifice.

I pressed my hand against his arm, sealing blood and skin, and lowered my mouth to his in a reversal of what the dark creature had done to me. Only, I did not suck his breath from him. Rather, I breathed mine into his mouth and nose.

From behind me came a growl like creaking wood, as the displeased between-creatures slunk away.

When I pulled back from Rolph, I watched fur and ears and muzzle recede, becoming the skin and features of the man. He blinked at me, naked and supine, the flesh at his throat whole again.

His brows knit together with a puzzlement that made me smile, though it was a tired smile, because suddenly I felt heavy. “What?” he croaked, then licked his lips and tried again, but he could only find the one word. “What?”

I spread my palm over his heart, my skin cold and his warm, for—even mortal—I was a creature of the coldest months. “I traded my chance for eternal life to save you.” At his quizzical frown, I said, “Yours was not the only story that was true.”

His eyes widened and he searched my pale blue eyes—mementos of a childhood spent in winter. Nearby, nearly forgotten, the ice flower melted into the mound. The air around us was still again—no thrum and no whispers. The gate to the spirit realm had been closed to me.

He raised his hand to cup my face, smoothing his thumb over my bottom lip. “I had wondered if the girl in your story ever found love again.”

I smiled. “Then don’t wonder. Just love her.”

And so he did.