CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The Blackness

Beauty crashed through the forest, clinging to Champ’s mane. They were surrounded by blackness that smothered them. Branches clawed at her cloak and face, and brambles tore at Champ’s feathered hooves, but they galloped on, fighting through the shadows. Then she saw a dim halo of sterling light ahead and guided Champ towards it. Suddenly, they broke into the moonlight and the green, clear space of the hills. Beauty saw Imwane lit in the milky light of the stars and it was as if she had never been away.

“Owaine!” she yelled, but the village was silent.

Champ ground to a halt outside the door of the cottage and Beauty threw herself from his back. She burst inside and found a dying man lying before the ashes of a fire.

“Papa, it is me!” she cried, taking his chilled fingers in her own.

He roused himself and his brown eyes slowly opened.

“My child,” he wheezed. “My Beauty, I be dead?”

“No! No, I am really here. It is me.”

She could not bear to let go of him, but she did so only to light the fire. She grabbed a fur from a chest in the corner and threw it over his shivering body.

“How did yur get away?” coughed Owaine. “What did that creature do to yur?”

“Oh nothing, Papa. Beast is kind, he is not as he appears—”

“Kind? How could—”

“Hush, Papa, hush. Save yourself.”

She filled a mug with water and brought it to his lips, but he pushed her hand away.

“No, child, I be too far gone for that. I be leaving.”

“Papa, you cannot!”

“I be seeing my wife soon. I been waiting for this day a long time and it’s my time, see. I be old and not much good for else. The winter were hard and there were lots of sickness. I be just so glad to see yur again, Beauty. I must be dreaming for sure.”

“No, it is really me.” She bent her head and kissed his cheek. “See? Did you feel that?”

“Then perhaps yur are real.”

She smiled and a tear slid down her cheek.

“Beauty, I be so sorry for what I did to yur. Not a day go by when I don’t hate myself for what happened—”

“Hush, Papa. You saved my life. I had to escape Imwane.”

“I ain’t been able to step in the temple since for shame.”

More tears flowed from Beauty’s eyes. She knew how Owaine loved the temple and she knew that it must have pained him dearly not to attend.

“Would you like to go there now?”

“I can’t . . .”

“You can. I can take you.”

She helped him stumble to his feet—he weighed almost nothing. Pulling more furs over his shoulders, Beauty almost carried him outside to where Champ was waiting. Owaine’s head lolled against his chest and he groaned softly as she placed him on Champ’s back in front of her, so that she could hold him still as they rode.

“As gentle as you can, boy,” she said.

Champ was placid as he carried both of them up the hillside, and he even stooped a little as they dismounted. Owaine’s legs buckled when he touched the ground, and Beauty had to almost drag him through the doors of the temple. It was as cool and quiet as always inside.

“I ain’t fit to be in the likes of here,” he muttered, his eyes flickering.

Beauty looked to the center of the temple, where she had stood seasons ago with a rifle in her hands.

“Nor I, Papa,” she said. “But you did nothing wrong. You have no shame.”

She propped him against one of the gold-flecked walls and pulled his furs tighter around him.

“Where is Isole?” she asked, unable to keep the anger from her voice. “Who has been looking after you?”

“Isole gonna have a baby and says she can’t make the trip here from Dousal. The villagers tried to care for me, but I wanted none of their help. I deserved no help.”

“That is not true!” She hugged him, being careful not to crush his fragile body. “Papa, you did the right thing.”

“I be glad to be leaving this realm, my child. My only worry is yur.”

“I will be safe.”

“Yur will?”

“I have dreamt it,” she lied.

The corners of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I be watching yur from the next realm, my child.”

Beauty grabbed his hand and kissed it, her teeth clenched to stop herself from yelling out her pain. For as long as she could remember, she had loved only one other person in the whole realm and he was about to be taken from her. She wanted to beg him to try and stay; she wanted to force him to stay, but she knew that it was not what he wished. He was ready to go.

“You have done everything for me,” she whispered, forcing back her tears. “You should never feel shame.”

She began to sing quietly, her voice husky:

There was a time when the hills were young,

When creatures ran free as these songs were sung.

Back when the realm was a different place,

And we were all of the same race.

Her voice echoed about the temple and Owaine’s lips quivered in time to the beat.

The time comes and we are called away,

We are all claimed by the gods someday.

They will decide when we must go,

To the realm of the high or the realm of the low.

We know not where we shall find ourselves,

The pattern of our lives begs and tells,

Of the new realm that we shall know,

A place where we will—

Owaine slumped against the wall, his last breath whooshing out of him with a sigh. Beauty held his lifeless hand to her cheek and cried. She did not know how long she stayed there, weeping and moaning, but suddenly she felt that she was not alone. She turned to see the preacher.

“My child, it’s been a long time since we met.”

His face was shadowed and she could not see his expression. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and said, “My papa is dead.”

The preacher walked over and bent, closing Owain’e lifeless brown eyes. He placed his palm on top of the old man’s head and muttered something under his breath.

“He’s in a different realm now.”

“How do you know?”

“Did yur learn nothing from the ceremonies I gave?”

“Of course, but why should I believe you?”

“Yur shouldn’t. Yur should know it, and I knows yur know, Beauty.”

She glanced back at Owaine and a whimper escaped her lips.

“Will you help me do the rights?” she asked.

“What about his other daughter?”

“She is with child and will not come. Well, will you help me?”

“As you wish it.”

Dawn was breaking outside and as rose-colored light slipped over the horizon in a sheer mist, Beauty collected Owaine’s bed sheets from the cottage and the preacher helped her swaddle his body. They worked silently, and after they had wrapped and anointed him with prayers they carried him to the next valley and burned his body at the peak of the highest hill—an old Hillander tradition.

Beauty stood at a distance with the preacher, watching as smoke and ash fluttered away. She clasped her hands and bowed her head, remembering all the wonderful things Owaine had done for her.

“I suppose it’s useless asking yur where yur been all this time?” said the preacher suddenly, looking at her fine, embroidered gown.

“You would not believe me.”

“I think I might.”

“I have been in the forest under an enchantment.”

His face remained impassive.

“And what will yur do now?” he asked.

“Soon I will return but . . .”

“But?”

“I have something I must do first.”

“There be a thin line between the work of evil and the work of good,” he said. “Some folks misunderstand the good, for a good must be magnificent if it is to win against an evil.”

“What do you mean?”

“Magics can be good and bad—they just the same as humans. But humans fear them, even those that are good, for they are different.”

She watched him turn and walk away from her, confused.

“You are not shocked to hear where I have been?” she called after him. “You believe me?”

“I suspected as much.”

“How?” she shouted for he was far from her now.

“I’ve read the scriptures!”

Then he disappeared.

“So have I,” she muttered under her breath.

Later that morning, Beauty looked down at her hands and saw that they were shimmering silver. They had looked like that once before, when Eli had appeared, and she ran to the cottage window for fear, but she saw nothing outside except the usual scene of Imwane. She turned away, her chest heavy.

She was packing a saddlebag with provisions. Her instinct told her she must go to Sago, though it was the last place she wished to be. She had hoped that she could rest in Imwane for a while and pretend for a few short days that there had been no castle, no Beast, and no death, but she knew she could not.

Once she was packed she climbed the attic stairs to her bedroll. She had been without her amulet for a long time and she was glad to be reunited with it once more—she needed the strength and the guidance that it gave her. But when she walked through the dust to her bedroll, she found the rusty nail empty and her amulet gone.

She spent the next hour turning the cottage inside out searching for it, but it was nowhere. Panic mixed with grief made her angry and she began breaking things in her haste: smashing plates, knocking over chests, and splitting tools. Her brow was damp and her vision blurring. Suddenly, she felt the wooziness of a vision. She glanced down at her glittering skin and let it wash over her.

She saw her amulet held in olive, manly hands. A thumb with a ragged nail smoothed across the engraved rose and a voice whispered, “Beauty.”

Abruptly, the vision left her and she gasped at the figure in the door.

“Beauty? Be that yur, child?”

It was Hally, and he surveyed the shimmering, silver woman before him and the destruction of the room with a gaping mouth.

“Yes,” she breathed. “It is I.”

“W-where have you been?”

“Away. I returned to be with my father when he died.”

“Owaine be dead? I been checking on him every day though he always tells me to leave.”

“Yes, he is dead, and the preacher helped me send him on. It was on the peak of the next hill if you wish to anoint him.”

“That I do.”

Beauty grabbed the saddlebags that were packed and waiting on the table. She was suddenly anxious to leave.

“Where is Sable?” she asked.

“She died a season back, child. I never seen such a change in a horse so quick.”

Beauty bit her lip, feeling weary of death.

“Yur went so sudden,” said Hally. “Them State men came and then that eve yur were gone and they be hunting all the houses for yur.”

“I am sorry.”

“When they found we did not have yur they left.”

Beauty wondered if she should ask about Eli, but she thought it best if she did not.

“Now I must go again,” she said and she hurried past him out of the cottage.

“Will yur return?” called Hally.

“I do not know.”

She ran up the hillside and found Champ grazing beside the temple where she had left him. If she looked across at the next hill, she could still see tendrils of smoke leaking into the pale blue sky. She pressed her hand to her chest and muttered another prayer for Owaine before vaulting onto Champ’s back. As she turned him in the direction of town, she saw that a crowd had gathered in the valley below and they shielded their eyes against the springtime sun and waved to her.

They saw a shining, silver woman astride a warhorse, and they made the sign of the gods as she disappeared.