Roses
Authors: G. R. Mannering
Roses
G. R. Mannering
Sky Pony Press
New York
Copyright © 2013 by Georgia-Karena Mannering
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mannering, G. R.
Roses / G.R. Mannering.
pages cm
Summary: “A darker retelling of Beauty and her Beast, set in the fantasy land of Sago amid a purging of all the magics in the land”--Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-62087-988-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.M31516Ro 2013
[Fic]--dc23
2013027916
Printed in the United States of America
Map of the Western Realm illustrated by Danielle Ceccolini.
In memory of Richard Hayton
Contents
CHAPTER TWO
The Youngest Daughter
CHAPTER THREE
The Baby with Amethyst Eyes
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Child with Amethyst Eyes
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Incident with Eli
CHAPTER NINE
The Threat in Sago
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Girl with Amethyst Eyes
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Matchmaker
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Woman with Amethyst Eyes
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Gray Shadow
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Proposal
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Red Rose
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Beast
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Enchanted Castle
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Prisoner
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Forbidden
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Library
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Voices
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Nightmares
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Corridor of Mirrors
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Blackness
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Return
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Magic Bloods
Part One
She panted into the chilled air. Snowflakes fluttered around her like ashen butterflies, clinging to her lashes and to the hood of her thick cloak. Champ, her warhorse, tore through the night’s darkness with clouds of warm breath, and his flanks heaved after the rush of the ride.
Before them in the enchanted quiet stood a castle. It was just as it had been described to her, and she grimaced slightly, for she had hoped that it was not real. The snowflakes whirled around its facade without settling, brushing against the latticed windows and marble arches. It was vast and rich with numerous turrets of coppery bricks that appeared to rise higher and higher until they were lost in the white of the snowstorm. Its outline flickered against the magenta sky and shifted under her gaze, as if it almost was not there.
She swallowed hard and pressed her heels into Champ’s sides. The pair made no sound as they approached the gates; the blanket of snow muffled all noise, and Champ’s hooves sank deep into its cushioned whiteness. He flicked his ears. She knew that he did not want to approach, but they could not turn back. She leaned forward and laid her cold, raw hand on his sweaty flank to reassure him.
She was not surprised when the iron gates swung silently open of their own accord. She gritted her teeth as she urged Champ on and reminded herself that she was saving the life of a man who had once saved her own.
As the gates clicked shut behind them, she heard the distant roar of a beast.
C
HAPTER
O
NE
The House of Rose
W
hen she was born, the midwife screamed. It was a reaction she was later familiar with. A child with amethyst eyes, silvery skin, and white hair is abnormal in Pervorocco. The combination is startling and with the later addition of a surly demeanor, she became quite frightening.
But even in babyhood, with the gentle air of innocence, she had terrified the midwife. The young woman held the pale, slippery bundle in her outstretched arms and screamed. The silver skin was so light it was almost translucent, and mauve webs of veins glinted beneath its surface in the shadowed room. The baby was unnatural and freakish to an olive-skinned, dark-eyed race of people, and the midwife’s fingers began to tremble. At that moment the bells at the nearest temple clanged to mark midnight.
The midwife immediately thought the bundle a gypsy’s child, a sorcerer’s child, a cursed child—born at the bewitching hour to steal her soul. She looked up, intending to thrust it into the arms of the
mother, but the mother had vanished. This produced a second scream.
A doctor darted into the room and scanned the beds of dying patients in the yellow glaze of the oil lamps. His eyes finally alighted on the last bed in the corner, where a midwife stood alone, clutching a ghostly child, and he pressed his thumb and index finger together instinctively in the sign of the gods before immediately reproaching himself. Nobody believed in the gods anymore.
“What is it?” he asked, moving reluctantly toward her.
The midwife blinked, but did not answer. She vaguely knew the doctor, as she knew all of the staff at the paupers’ hospital, but names were never shared. There were too many dying people for such trivialities.
The baby began twitching and moaning.
“What is it?” he repeated, wiping his damp brow. Though it was the spring season, Sago was muggy and hot. It would remain like this through all four seasons—the heat never ceased.
“It is . . .” the midwife trailed off, lost for words.
“Where is the mother?” the doctor asked.
An empty bed with unsoiled sheets stretched tightly over a straw mattress stood before them without the faintest indent to suggest that someone had lain there, let alone given birth.
“She was here,” the midwife gasped. “She was here . . . I’m sure of it.”
“Where is she now?”
“I . . . I do not know.”
“What did she look like?”
It would not have been the first time that a mother had given birth and then tried to escape the paupers’ hospital without her child. In the suffocating throng of downtown Sago—the capital of Pervorocco—children were an unnecessary expense and the shantytown orphanages were overflowing.
The midwife creased her brow and licked her chapped lips as if to explain, but then a vacant look passed across her face and she stared off down the ward.
“I do not know,” she said at last.
The baby began crying louder and its tiny, translucent cheeks turned red. It was the red of blood and not the rosy blush of a normal child. The doctor had treated a few Rurlish in his time—a pale, fair race—and yet none of them had looked silvery like this beast.
“How long have you been on your shift?” he asked.