“For me?” The Marsh King brightened considerably, his whiskers rising with pleasure. “Almost all the young men come for Beast! I have not had a visitor in ever so long. What is it, my fine, attractive, excellent young man?”
“Eyvind wants to know how much longer he must wait for the sea to turn to gold.”
The Marsh King furrowed his great brow and peered at the sky. “I can’t say that I know a chap by that name,” he admitted sadly.
“He… he used to be a bear. You made him a man?” The Prince was suddenly embarrassed. The story had sounded convincing as a stone plaque when the tavern-keeper told it. Yet the elderly monarch still humphed and hohumed to himself. At length his face lit up like a festival lantern.
“Oh!” he cried. “The astrologer-bear! Of course! Well, you know, not too much longer, I imagine. Perhaps before you get home to your Witch-woman. Perhaps not. I don’t exactly keep an almanac of such things, you know. And why should I? I am quite the master of my own shape. And now that that is answered, what in the world could you want with my dear friend Beast?”
“I… I need his skin. To restore a maiden to life. It was I who killed her, so I owe her the remedy.”
“Oh,” said the King distastefully, “how vile of you. What a disgusting operation you propose. Absolutely out of the question.”
“Now,” a deep voice like bellows squeezed by mammoth hands sounded across the Marsh, “my dear friend, you ought not to speak for me when I am not present. It is quite rude.”
Across the long swamps came the dark scarlet form of the Leucrotta, antlers blood-bright against the sky. The smell of him filled the saddlebags of the wind—the smell of still pools of blood glittering under the sun, in well buckets and wine casks, china vases and reed baskets, the hot, coppery smell of its wetness, slowly spreading.
But his hide was strangely beautiful, the color of dark, secret rubies and garnets scattered on the snow. And his antlers towered like turrets armed with strong-armed bowmen, forking like a blazing forest. His great jaw hung slightly open, revealing the shock of white bone. On powerful haunches he moved towards the Prince, eyes all pupils, sparking like flint within the endless black.
“Certainly, my dear Monarch, I can take care of my own affairs?” he intoned.
“Of course, Beast, I meant no offense. Dispatch him at your leisure.”
“Oh, none taken, old boy. And I wouldn’t dream of trampling all over your jurisdiction. After you,” Beast yielded.
“Oh, no, after you.” The Marsh King bowed at the waist.
“I insist.”
“I won’t hear of it.”
The Leucrotta looked appraisingly at Leander for a long while. “My skin, you say? I had not heard that it had any medicinal value, but if the Witch needs it, I must, as a gentleman and a monster, yield to her.” Both the Prince and the King started, shocked at the suggestion.
“But we must have a battle!” insisted the Prince.
“Don’t be ridiculous, boy. I would eviscerate you within a minute. Just take the skin and scurry back.”
The Marsh King spluttered in consternation. “My dear boy! I must protest! The mess it will make in my swamp! And a skin is not a pocket-watch—you cannot simply hand it over!” He stamped his mossy foot—which of course made no sound as he remained floating just above the water.
The Leucrotta shrugged. “I expect I shall grow another within the month.”
And with that he bent his great crimson head to his chest and tore his hide from his body like a child peels a ripe apple, all in one long, spiraling stroke.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, as the pile of skin beside him grew, “when the Witch was young we were quite social. How can I refuse that delightful creature? She was beautiful in her day, I must tell you—the scars and tattoos, the way her face was mangled was most divine. The deformity of her features was as lovely to me as summer’s first fruit, hanging red and perfect on a dew-bright branch.” Beast sighed dreamily. “Such, well, what you would call ?ugliness’ is so rare, one finds so little of it expressed as it was in her.” He looked pointedly at the Marsh King, who was, if elderly, still handsome in a stately sort of way. “The way her tattoos reflected her scars, in a marvelous symmetry of black ink and punctured white skin—were I but a troubadour I would have composed such songs to her beauty. And the way her hair flashed! Like my own skin burning in the sun!”
Beast was paring the last of his skin from his hooves, the pile beside him enormous and deep scarlet, like leather in the shop of a master tanner. Beast himself sat quite comfortably, even redder than before, his muscles shining with pinpricks and rivulets of blood oozing out of him, dribbling like paint onto the swamp grass. The wind pulled at his exposed flesh, but he seemed to enjoy its ghostly fingers on his great haunches.
“Fear not, my little faun,” he assured the Prince, “it is not at all painful. Rather brisk, in fact. I would suggest that the two of you try it, as a fortifying tonic, save that your anatomy is… unequipped, shall we say.”
The Prince looked on, horrified, at the hulk of the Leucrotta, sitting happily before him and bleeding freely from his massive musculature. He began to gather up the skin into his pack.
“Will you not stay to hear of how I knew the Witch?” cried Beast, hurt filling his voice like a winesack. “After I have done exactly as you asked? Didn’t your mother teach you to be kind to monsters who completely fail to gobble you up?” Leander’s face colored abruptly and an awkward silence descended, a woolen shadow settling over the trio.
“Perhaps not,” conceded Beast, “but sit beside me and listen, and all will be well, you’ll see.”
The sun was still high in the wind-wracked clouds, with time enough before the hours became his enemy. In order not to be turned into anything untoward by the Marsh King, the Prince sighed his acquiescence.
SHE RESCUED ME, THE LITTLE MINX. I WAS BATTLING, as luck seems to frequently have it, a Duke’s Son of the Eastern Duchies, the sort with ornate armor of silver and ivory. Terrifically impractical, of course, but they al ways were dandies, the Duke’s boys. I had already gored him through the left side with my antler, but had unfortunately missed all the vital organs, and the ferocity of his blows became as great as twelve wolves who share a mother. He was desperate, the poor thing. But in his desperation he managed to slide his blade just under my ribs, nearly to the hilt.
The highborn scoundrel ought to have done his research. My heart is not near my ribs, as with humans—it would scarcely fit!—but deep in my belly, and his thirsty blade had not come close. Nevertheless I found myself in great extremity, stuck with his grotesquery of a sword and him ready to hack off my head.
But in the moment of his triumph, which must have been so sweet in his young mouth, an arrow shot from the trees with the speed of a heron which has sighted a fish, and buried itself in his shoulder, the force of it flinging him from my writhing body. A radiant thing leapt from the oaks, clad in mangy, marvelously lice-ridden furs, her hair a violent briar. Her thighs were strong and smooth enough, I suppose, but her face was beautifully destroyed, hacked to pieces by some master artist, and painted over with thick black marks. Her smell would have killed a herd of antelope, had they happened by—rancid sweat and stringy meat and starvation, metallic and sharp. I inhaled her delicious perfume like the steam from cooling cakes.
The fabulous apparition sprang onto the offensive Duke’s Son, pinning him to the mossy earth. She landed astride him, panting harshly while she sniffed at his armor like an animal. I imagined the stink of her breath longingly—I was sure it would have that peculiar combination of rotted spinach and boiled egg underlaid with maggoty wood that I so often dreamed of.
“What are you doing?” she rasped, baring her teeth. “No animal is killed in my wood. It is my law—all men of this kingdom know it.”
I was surprised to hear her speak so well—perhaps I had hoped for too much in imagining yellow teeth and a language of grunts and hisses. Nevertheless it
gave me enormous pleasure to see the Prince squirm in fear like an infant pig.
“I—I apologize! I’m sorry! I didn’t know—I… I am not from this country!” he protested to no avail, as she ground her body further into his, causing his pretty armor to pierce his skin. He howled in a most satisfactory way.
“Ignorant,” she whispered, pain lacing her voice like a dress, “an animal has a soul. It might even, on the inside, be something quite other than a monster. Who are you to kill it before you even know what it is?”
“No one! No one! I’m no one!” He began to cry in earnest, now, huge tears dribbling out of his feeble face. Strange, he felt no fear of me, but beneath this human woman he was weak, and blubbering so loudly as to shame even a plain piglet.
She rolled her eyes. “Even nobodies shall not be killed here. But swear to me that you will give up Questing and devote your life to the Princess you no doubt have left at home with nothing to do.”
“I swear, I swear!” And at this concession the woman stood up, leaving the Duke’s Son inconsolably weeping, the grass beginning to wet his tunic.
“Oh, mightn’t you kill him a little?” I suggested with my best and most courteous voice. Her eyes turned towards me, caves the depths of which could not be sounded.
“It is my law,” she answered tonelessly. “I do not know you. Why are you in my forest?”
“What, precisely, makes it your forest? Have you a Deed?”
“No. I have simply claimed it. Men have learned better than to question that.”
I wriggled with excitement at the gravelly abrasion of her voice. “I am not a man, as you can see. I am Beast, Leucrotta Furialis by species. I was called out by this whelp here. I thank you for your help; it was most kind.”
“No more than I would have given any animal in need.” She slung her bow, a fine ash one she had obviously hewn herself from some lucky sapling, over her shoulder. “I am the Witch of the Glen. All things that breathe within my wood are under my protection. Don’t take it as a personal favor. If you both understand me, I’ll leave you.”
“Wait!” I trotted closer to her, so as to give her full view of my color and height. “I must repay your brave deed. I shall perform any task for you, fair, fair lady.”
Ignoring the wails of the Duke’s Son, who had not risen, but sat swatting miserably at the arrow in his shoulder, she looked appraisingly at me, raising one shaggy eyebrow.
“Would you kill a King for me?” she asked quietly.
“Certainly, my lamb.” I bowed slightly, extending my forelegs. “But I am not precisely inconspicuous, so as to enter a Castle unnoticed, nor equipped with weapons so as to do much damage other than to, well, eat him, which I surmise would be less than satisfactory for you, as it results in the shocking lack of a body. I think I am perhaps not the monster for that task.” I looked meaningfully at the wretched Prince, who by now had seen his own blood, and appeared to be about to faint.
A smile curled across her face like a rapier whipping against the side of an opponent. It was wonderfully hideous.
“Well, boy, what do you think? Would you like to kill a King in exchange for my sparing your life?”
“Oh, yes,” he sobbed feebly, “if it would please you, only don’t shoot any more of your arrows into me! I have a horror of sharp things! I only Quested at all because my father called me a coward and sent me off after the famous Leucrotta! He wants the skin, you see. For assassinating.”
I agreed heartily. “It is possible, my sweet peach, to make a great many vile things with and from my skin. I hear it fetches high prices on the black market in all the best sorts of places.”
“But you will do this for me?” She would not veer from her course. “You will go to the Palace and put a knife in the King?”
“Yes! Yes!” The Duke’s Son had staggered to one knee, to make the traditional gesture of fealty to the Witch. “Only, which one?”
“The King, boy. Who else? In the Palace.”
She was impatient, of course. For witches, there is but one King and one Palace—the one who has wronged them, and the house in which he lives.
In fairness, Kings are often quite as dense, calling themselves sacred vessels and masters of all things above and below when in fact they command a few patches of lonely dirt with even lonelier houses sitting upon them.
“You will know it,” I added helpfully, “for it is bordered by the two rivers, one white and one black.”
“Yes, yes, mistress, I shall go and accomplish your task. Only—I was not only sent to kill the Leucrotta. There is a maiden in a tower—” At this the Witch spat, again rolling her marvelous eyes.
“Those revolting creatures are always getting themselves locked up. If only they would stay that way,” she growled. The Duke’s Son blushed deeply as a girl caught naked.
“Nevertheless, she has been imprisoned by a terrible Wizard of these parts, and I am charged to rescue her—if I complete your Quest, who will complete mine?”
With an exasperated snort, the Witch bent, removed the shaft, and dressed his wound without response. Seeing her work well done, she finally spoke, her voice thorny with delicious irritation.
“I loathe this habit of Quest after Quest. It is useless and shabby as a secondhand crown. But I would do many things I loathe if it earned the death of the King, and perhaps more for the Wizard of whom you speak. I will take on your Quest myself and release the brat from her shack.”
She murmured something to the horse and fed it a bit of apple she had hidden in her pack.
“Go,” she ordered the lad, “and kill nothing but the King. Return to the Glen when your murder is complete.”
The Duke’s Son scampered off. I heard much later that he caused a great scandal by killing some poor, inoffensive monarch in quite another part of the world.
But I was left with an unpaid debt, a pauper before a jeweled queen.
“But as for my part,” I purred, “I am still your own Beast, to do with as you like.”
She considered for a moment. “Is your skin really a tool of assassination?”
“Undoubtedly, my little lemon tart. It is quite a unique appendage—I grow new ones each month like a fruit tree. Cut into strips and combined with certain ointments of belladonna and hyssop, it can cause paralysis in men born under the sign of the goat. Soaked in an infusion of yarrow and fennel with a dash of Manticore blood, it will cause a woman who has conceived under a new moon to miscarry, or the resulting child’s heart to stop in its sleep at the age of seven. Yet that same child, wrapped in a blanket of the skin, will revive, so long as it forever after keeps the skin against its own. This is a particularly good trick, as the child will drop dead should it lose the skin, even if he or she should live to one hundred and seven by its grace. Ground into a powder with a handful of ants from a common hill and a measure of pickled salamander liver, it will cause a man overfond of public speech to swallow his own tongue at a banquet in his honor—there are many applications, each peculiar to the man or woman it is meant to harm. It is utterly devoid of noble uses, I am told. But I have not researched the matter properly, so I could not say. It is, of course, in demand for these properties, and not for warmth or shelter.” I was suitably proud of my skin, for it made me an Exotic Animal, rather than simply average. The Witch furrowed her excellent brow, which was the exact texture of curdled cream.
“Then my price is twofold. One day I will require your skin. You must give it to me without question or hesitation. Agreed?”
“It is an honor, my crumpet, my plum. I shall await your summons. And in the meantime, I shall trumpet your beauty to the corners of the earth, so that all may know what I have learned: that a jewel dwells in the Glen, and she is beyond all rubies that the earth can press into life.”
The Witch laughed, a sound like a saw cutting across rusted iron.
“Two, you must help me get this girl free—it is a silly task but the sooner done the sooner we are rid of her. Will you come with me
?”
I suppressed the sudden desire to dance with glee. “With profound pleasure, my honeycomb. In fact, we may accomplish this all the sooner if you would,” I could hardly contain my eagerness, “deign to ride upon my back.”
“Is there always such camaraderie between monsters?” she mused.
“We must look out for each other,” I answered softly, “for we are a small and dwindling band. Didn’t you know?”
“I have not always been a monster,” she murmured.
She climbed onto my back with the ease of a whisper, as though she had ridden me for a decade. For a moment I heard her breath catch strangely, as if in recognition of a lost love, or a child long dead. She wound her hands into my mane with great tenderness, and if I am not mistaken, actually put my mane to her face and breathed in my smell.
“It has been years since I have sat astride a horse,” she marveled. I protested that I was not a horse at all, but she did not seem to hear. “The place most maidens find themselves caught is to the northwest of here, in the center of a nameless forest, in a nameless tower.”
It took less than a day to arrive there, and I reveled unexpectedly in the sensation of a rider, of her small weight like a branch of holly and her gruff company. It is a pleasant thing to be tame, to recognize a rough-carved voice. I shall not say it will not happen again.
The tower itself was solid black stone, hewn from one great block of obsidian, so that it mirrored the forest around it in a dark, rippling mockery of its green beauty. The sky overhead was a uniform gray, like the metallic flesh of a cannon, and sullen clouds dragged themselves west. The fragrant pines and birches would not grow near the tower, which stood in the center of what once must have been a meadow, but was now only a circle of leached grass, dead and white. The thing tapered, as towers do, to a sharp point, giving the impression of a great arrowhead rising from the earth. Its architecture was unnatural, beyond even what magic can build, and I could smell the blood of children in the gently waving grass at its base. It was a coldly terrible place, but the Witch seemed undisturbed by it. She dismounted and strode to the foot of the tower, and called up to its wicked heights.