CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The Dead

Beauty struggled to the surface, pushing debris and bricks out of the way. Her eyes and mouth were covered with dust and her ears were ringing. As she wriggled through the rubble, pieces of wood and bricks slammed her body and created deep, mauve bruises. Her broken fingers throbbed and her head ached with a dull, incessant pain.

Finally, she felt the clammy air of Sago on her cheeks and she gasped in a lungful, coughing and spluttering. She rubbed the dust and chippings from her eyes and looked at the crater that she stood upon. Around the square, several other buildings had fallen and there were mounds of rumpled remains everywhere.

Beside her, a hand was sticking out from beneath a fragment of wall. Lifeless.

She felt something against her chest and looked down to see her amulet. She did not remember grabbing it before the basement caved, but she was glad to have it all the same. Her skin was still shimmering silver and the amulet seemed to warm against it. When she touched the engraved rose at the center, a shiver ran through her.

She must leave.

A shrill whinny sounded through the echoing silence, and Beauty ran to the stables behind the fallen building. Champ and the stable were still intact and she cried out in relief, throwing open the door to let him canter out.

She was desperate to leave and she calmed him quickly, the eerie, deserted silence pressing on her as she did so. With her body still bruised and aching, she climbed upon his back and clung to his dark mane. She did not need to tell him where they were headed—he seemed to already know. She looked one last time at the crater where the basement had been and then she turned Champ away.

They galloped out of Sago so quickly that even if Beauty had had her eyes open, she would have seen nothing. She wove her fingers into Champ’s mane and trusted him to carry her away, shutting her eyes to the death and destruction she had witnessed. Her cheeks were stiff with splatters of dried blood and her head pounded with pain, but she pretended not to notice. She had to return to Beast—that was all she knew.

Night came and went and still Champ galloped onward. During the next day, Beauty found some of her strength returning and she sat taller, taking an interest in where they traveled. By the glimpses she stole of the crowded streets and many inns that they passed, she guessed that they must be leaving the Border Cities. She remembered how once Owaine had been so excited to return to his hills, and she remembered how she had not understood what he found so beautiful in their green, rolling isolation. She understood now.

If I can just reach the Hillands, everything will be all right, she told herself. I just need to reach it.

On the third day, Champ began to slow. It was subtle and he still traveled at an impossible speed, but Beauty noticed it. She looked down at her hands embedded in his mane, and she saw that they were not shimmering as brightly as they had. The enchantment was fading.

“Go, boy!” she urged, and he tried, but he could not travel as fast as before.

On the fourth day, they were forced to stop when evening fell. Both felt drained though they pretended not to notice, and they made camp beneath a tree in a wood.

“We can reach the Hillands tomorrow,” said Beauty, her voice tinged with hope. “Do not fret, boy. We will be there tomorrow.”

But the next morning they were weary. Beauty looked at her hands and they glowed only faintly. She hoisted herself onto his back, ignoring her tender muscles, and urged him on. They were in the midst of the Forest Villages and she prayed that they could reach Imwane by nightfall.

“We are almost there, boy,” she whispered.

The day was hard. Champ galloped as fast as he was able and Beauty rode him with all the strength she had left, but they only reached the edge of the Hillands before nightfall and they were forced to stop due to sheer exhaustion.

Beauty collapsed onto the ground, too tired to even unpack her bedroll, and Champ lay on the grass, his nose tucked under him. They did not even eat; they just slept deeply under the scatter of stars until dawn. When she woke, Beauty knew that something was wrong. She could feel it like a pull across her chest. She opened her eyes and whispered, “Beast.”

Her sense of dread only increased throughout the day as they fought their way across the hills. Champ’s bay coat was soon black with sweat and his mouth foamed, while Beauty was almost delirious with pain. Her broken fingers were now puffy and bruised and she had deep scratches on her arms. But she refused to stop.

As the sun was setting and casting jets of amber and gold across the horizon, Beauty and Champ tumbled down the hillside into Imwane. A few villagers sat outside their cottages and they watched with amazement as the great warhorse thundered over the valley and straight into the forest, a silver woman slumped on his back.

Hally, who stood on the threshold of his house, made the sign of the gods and all of the villagers copied him, holding their hands to the sky long after Beauty and Champ had disappeared.

The forest was the worst part yet. Champ stumbled through the bracken and vines, and Beauty was clawed and pulled from his back by the thick branches. Often she tumbled from his shoulders and had to wrench herself astride him once more. Both were exhausted and lost. Before, they had needed only to ride into the forest and they would be pulled toward the castle like a magnetic force, but now there was no such guidance. The light was disappearing and frustrated tears began to collect in Beauty’s eyes.

“Beast?” she cried, but there was no answer and the forest seemed to swallow her voice.

An hour later, she saw a glint of dull silver through the trees and she rode Champ toward it at a lackluster trot. A pair of rusty, iron gates appeared and Beauty cried out, stumbling from Champ’s back in haste. She fell against them, for they would not open of their own accord and they creaked as she tripped into the grounds.

“Beast?” she called, but there was no one.

She saw broken fountains, dried and cracked. There were weeds in the flowerbeds and fractures in the paths. Trees bowed with fruitless, gnarled branches and meadows lay barren and black. The moonlight fell dimly on this dead place.

“Beast?”

She ran to the forbidden walled garden and peered around the archway. She gasped, for every rose had been destroyed. Their red petals lay like a crisp carpet across the ground and crackled beneath her feet. Bare heads withered on shrunken stems and brown leaves curled. At the center of the garden, the magnificent rose that had so awed her was gone. Its stem was cut clean.

“Beast?” she cried.

Champ hunched over by the gates, too tired to go on, and Beauty left him to rest. She ran through the grounds by herself, approaching the castle at a frustratingly slow pace, for she was weary and ill.

“Beast?”

The castle was dry and dead looking. Its silence was tomb-like and the roses covering it were black; they hung from the vines in rotten clusters that dripped to the ground.

Beauty ran to the great double doors and heaved at them with all her might. They shifted eventually, though she was forced to pause and catch her breath from the struggle. She allowed herself a moment of rest before she hurried into the dark, foreboding silence.

“Beast?”

She stumbled down a passage, opening the doors herself.

“Take me to the corridor of mirrors!” she said, but there was no one to hear her. “Take me to the corridor of mirrors!”

There was no sound.

She dragged herself up flights of stairs, across one bare quad and through various passageways, but she recognized nothing—every room looked the same. She could feel no presence in the castle, either good or bad. Just death.

“Beast!” she screamed. “I did not mean to be gone so long,” she shouted in a hall that echoed. “I always intended to return! I promised that I would return!”

She ran deeper into the castle, following different routes wildly with little success. At one point she fell to the floor and lay there for a long time, sobbing into the embroidered carpet. It took all of her willpower to pull herself back up and go on.

She prayed as she searched, pressing her thumb and index finger together as she ran from room to room. Then, suddenly, she saw it. It was a passage that she faintly recognized and she cried out in surprise, hurrying through it to the flight of stairs at the end, hoping that this was it.

“Beast?”

She climbed the stairs and fell through the door at the top. A dark corridor opened before her and, peering through the gloom, she saw two walls of mirrors smashed to shards that glistened in the darkness. At the opposite end, a huge form lay on the floor, a dying red rose clutched to his chest.

“Beast!”