“Stupid girl!” said a voice that rumbled like an avalanche off the mountain. “Do you wish to become a monster?”
Ayama cowered on the grass, her hands pressed to her mouth to stop the scream that wanted to slip free. She could sense more than see the massive shape of the monster prowling back and forth in the dark.
“Answer me,” he demanded.
Ayama shook her head and somehow found her voice, though it sounded brittle as chalk to her ears. “I was only thirsty,” she said.
She heard a sharp growl and felt the ground tremble as the beast stalked toward her. He reared up on his hind legs, looming over her, blocking out the stars. He had the body of a black wolf and yet the bearing of a man. Around the thick fur of his ruff he wore a lariat of gold and rubies, and the twisting horns that rose from his head were marked with ridges that glowed as if lit from within by secret fire. But most terrifying of all were his gleaming red eyes and the hungry thrust of his muzzle, crowded with sharp teeth.
Ayama’s thoughts filled with the gossip that had surrounded his birth. What beast had the queen lain with to create such a monster? What had the king done to earn such a curse? The beast towered over her like a bear about to strike.
A weapon! she thought, and pulled the axe from her apron.
But the beast only smiled—there was no other word for it, his lips pulling back to reveal black gums and the terrible points of his long teeth.
“Strike me,” he dared her. “Cleave me in two.”
Before Ayama could even think to comply, he snatched the axe from her hands with one thick-clawed paw and dragged the blade across his chest. It did not leave any mark. “No blade can pierce my hide. Do you think my father didn’t try?”
The monster lowered his huge head and sniffed deeply at Ayama’s neck, then snorted. “He sends a peasant, covered in ash and stinking of kitchen fires. You are not even fit to eat. Perhaps I will skin you and offer you to the other creatures of the thorn wood to goad them with offense.”
Ayama had grown very used to being insulted, so much so that she hardly noticed it anymore. But she was miserably tired, and miserably sore, and so frightened that the very bones in her body were quaking. Perhaps this was why she stood, opened her mouth, and in the piercing voice that had vexed her parents bitterly said, “So much for the terrifying beast. His weak teeth require soft-limbed ladies.”
Ayama wanted to grab the words back, but the beast merely laughed, and such a human sound coming from his monstrous body raised the hair on Ayama’s arms.
“You’re as thorny as the wood,” he said. “Tell me, why does the king command a stub of a serving girl to trouble me?”
“The king chose me to—”
In a breath, the beast’s mirth vanished. He threw back his head and howled, the sound shaking the leaves on the trees and sending white and pink petals fluttering from the branches. Ayama stumbled backward and covered her head with her arms, as if she could hide herself within them. But the beast leaned down so close she could smell the strange animal scent of his pelt and feel the warm gust of his breath when he spoke.
“There is but one rule in my wood,” he growled. “Speak truth.”
Ayama thought of trying to explain her family and the offer of the chests of gold and silk, but the truth was far simpler than all of that. “No one else would come.”
“Not the king’s brave soldiers?”
She shook her head.
“Not the perfect human prince?” he asked.
“No.”
The beast’s laugh rang out again, and it was as if Ayama could hear the grinding of bones in its echoes.
But now that she had remembered her voice, Ayama found she was eager to use it again. She had not suffered miles of thirst and boredom and blistered feet to be laughed at. So she pushed her fear aside, summoned her courage, planted her flat feet, and said, blaring and clear as a trumpet, “I have been sent to ask you to stop slaughtering our herds.”
The beast left off his laughing. “Why should I?”
“Because we are hungry!”
“What do I care for your hunger?” he snarled, pacing the glade. “Did you care for my aching belly when I was a child left alone in the labyrinth? Did you use that loud voice to petition the king for mercy then, little messenger?”
Ayama twisted the strings of her apron. She had been but a child herself at the time, but it was true that she had never heard her parents or a single resident of the valley spare a sympathetic word for the beast.
“No,” said the monster, answering his own question. “You did not. Let the good king feed you from his royal herds if he worries so much for his people.”
It was possible the king should do just that, but it was not Ayama’s place to say so. “I have been sent to bargain with you.”
“The king has nothing I want.”
“Then perhaps you might show mercy freely.”
“My father never taught me mercy.”
“And can you not learn?”
The beast stopped his prowling and turned very slowly toward Ayama, who did her best not to tremble even as his bloody eyes fastened upon her. His smile was sly.
“I have a bargain for you, little messenger, not the king. Tell me a tale that can make me feel more than anger, and if you manage it, I may let you live.”
Ayama did not know what to make of such an offer. It might be a trick or simply an impossible task. The beast might be feeling generous or he might just be full after his last meal and in need of some idle entertainment. Then again, Ayama had spent much of her life neither speaking nor being spoken to. She supposed it was possible the beast might simply long for conversation.
She cleared her throat. “And you will cease troubling our herds?”
The beast snorted. “If you do not bore me. But you are already boring me.”
Ayama took a steadying breath. It was very hard to think with such a creature looming over her.
“Would you sit?” she said, gesturing to the ground.
The beast growled but obliged, settling himself by the water with a great thump that sent birds scattering from the dark trees.
Ayama sat down on the ground a good distance away and arranged her apron around her, tucking her shoes back onto her feet. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the beast curled beside the stream, already licking his chops.
“You’re stalling,” he said.
“I’m only trying to make sure I tell the story right.”
He laughed a low, ugly laugh. “Speak truth, little messenger.”
Ayama shivered, for she was not sure which of Ma Zil’s stories were true and which were false. Besides, the prospect of dying made it hard to think of anything at all. But just because no one bothered to listen to Ayama didn’t mean she had nothing to say. In fact, she had plenty. And if it was true that the beast was happy to be spoken to, then perhaps it was also true that Ayama was glad to be heard.
THE FIRST TALE
“Once there was a boy who ate and ate but could not get full. He consumed flocks of geese without stopping to rid them of their feathers. He drank whole lakes, consumed all the fish within them, and belched out the rocks. He filled his mouth with a dozen eggs in a single bite, then had one thousand head of cattle roasted on one thousand spits and ate them one after another, pausing only for a short nap. But still he woke with a hungry rumble in his gut. He devoured entire fields of corn and grain but was as famished when he reached the last row as he had been when he started the first.
“This hunger made him miserable, for it was always with him, a terrible hollow, and sometimes it seemed so big and wide that he could swear he felt the wind blow right through him. His family despaired, for they could not afford to feed him, and the boy was desperate for a cure, but no medik or zowa healer could help. His story was passed around as stories always are, and eventually a young girl in a faraway town heard it. Immediately she went to her father, who was a doctor of many arts and the wisest man she kne
w. He had traveled the whole of the world and gathered secrets everywhere he went. She knew he would be able to find a cure, so they packed their bags and set out for the boy’s village. When they saw fields of cornstalks eaten down to their roots and rivers emptied of their fish, they knew they must be drawing close.
“At last they reached the village and told the boy’s family they’d come to offer their help. The boy was not hopeful, but he let the doctor look into his eyes and ears and when the doctor asked to peer down his throat, the boy tipped his head back obligingly.
“‘Aha!’ said the wise doctor, once he’d gotten a look at the boy’s gullet. ‘When your mother carried you in her womb, did she sleep with her window open?’ The boy’s mother said that she had, for it had been a very hot summer that year. ‘Well then,’ said the doctor, ‘it is simple. In her sleep, your mother swallowed a bit of night sky, and all of that empty is still inside you. Just eat a bit of the sun to fill the sky and you will feel empty no longer.’
“The doctor claimed that it was simple. The boy was not so sure. There was no tree or ladder high enough to reach the sun, and soon he fell even deeper into despair. But the doctor’s daughter was as smart as she was kind, and she knew that every night the sun sank low enough to touch the sea and turn the water gold. So she built them a little boat and they sailed west together. They traveled many miles, and the boy ate two whales along the way, and at last they reached the golden place where the sun met the sea. The girl took a white ash ladle from her pocket and scooped up a bit of the sun from the water. When the boy drank it down—”
The beast released a rumbling growl and Ayama jumped, for she’d been so caught up in the story and the pleasure of being listened to that she’d almost forgotten where she was.
“Let me guess,” snarled the beast. “The miserable boy swallowed a gulp of the sea and ever after that he was a contented, happy fellow who returned to his village, and married the doctor’s pretty daughter, and had many children to help him till the fields around his home.”
“What nonsense!” said Ayama, hoping the trembling of her voice did not betray her. “Of course that’s not how the story ends.”
It was not nonsense. The story ended just as the beast had said, at least every time Ayama had heard it told. Still, she could admit that it had always left her feeling a bit melancholy and dissatisfied, as if a false note had been played. But what ending might appease the beast? Because Ayama had been hushed so often, she had become a very good listener, and she remembered the one rule of the thorn wood. The story needed an ending that was true.
Ayama collected her thoughts, then gathered up the thread of the tale and let it unspool anew.
“It’s true that the boy drank sun from the white ash ladle,” she said. “And, yes, it’s true that he no longer required a herd of cattle for his breakfast or a lake to wash it down. He did indeed marry the doctor’s pretty daughter and worked each day to till his fields. But despite all this, the boy found he was still unhappy. You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled—not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it as the boy did.”
Only when she finished did Ayama realize that, in fumbling for the truth, she’d spoken of her own sadness, but it was too late to call the words back.
The monster was quiet for a long time. Then he rose, his bushy black tail brushing the ground as he turned his back on Ayama and said, “I will leave your herds in peace. Go now and do not return.”
And because the wood demanded truth, she knew his vow was good.
Ayama could scarcely believe her luck. She leapt to her feet and hurried from the glade, but as she bent to pick up her axe and her copper cup, the beast said, “Wait.”
He was little more than a shape in the dark now, and she could make him out only by the red gleam of his eyes and the glow of the carved ridges on his horns.
“Take a sprig of quince blossoms with you and make sure not to drop it as you pass through the wild lands.”
Ayama did not stop to question his command, but plucked a slender branch and ran back along the stream. She did not slow until she had pushed her way through the cruel thorns of the thicket and felt the sun on her face once more.
Back across the wild lands Ayama walked, the blossoms tucked safely in her apron, and yet the hot sands did not seem to touch her feet and the sun did not burn her shoulders. She did not have to squint against the bright sky. When at last she reached her valley, she whooped with joy.
At the sight of her striding into the town, people unbolted their doors and threw open their shutters and ran down the street for—as Ayama could see from their faces—none of them had expected her to survive.
Immediately they peppered her with questions, but when she tried to answer, the townspeople pinched her arms and shouted that she was a liar.
“An enchanted wood in the wild lands?” scoffed one man. “What rubbish!”
“She never went to find the beast at all,” accused another. “She spent the afternoon napping in the shade of a screwbean tree.”
But Ayama remembered the quince and took the sprig from her apron pocket. The flowers were fresh and unwilted, their white petals still damp with dew and tinged with pink. The blossoms glowed like a constellation in her hand. When the townspeople looked upon them, they could taste the tart flavor of quince on their tongues; they could feel the soothing touch of shade falling over their skin. These were no ordinary flowers. Now the people listened as Ayama stood with the sprig clasped in her fist and told them of the beast’s promise, and when she had finished, they led her all the way to the palace, murmuring in wonder, forgetting that the girl they now looked upon with awe still had the marks of their pinching fingers on her arms.
The king gazed down from his throne with cold eyes when Ayama spoke of the beast’s vow, but he could not deny the magic of the quince that bloomed sweet and strange in Ayama’s hands, its petals only now beginning to turn red.
“Such a marvel!” said the king’s handsome human son, smiling brightly. “And what a brave girl to attempt such a task. Her pockets shall be weighted with jewels and all shall sing songs of her courage.”
Ayama returned his smile, for it was impossible not to bloom in the prince’s sunny regard. But what she really wanted was a glass of water.
The queen took the flowers from Ayama, eyes sparkling with what might have been tears. “You must do as you promised,” she told her husband.
So the king called for three chests of gold and thirty bolts of silk to be brought to Ayama’s family.
That night, Ayama’s parents rejoiced, and Kima kissed her sister’s cheeks, while Ma Zil looked on, wearing a smug expression as she chewed her jurda.
Ayama saw that no one had cleaned the grate, that the clothes had gone unwashed, and the pots had not even been stacked for washing but still sat upon the stove, crusted with food. She thought of the gentle quiet of the thorn wood and sighed as she lay down upon the hearth. When she woke the next morning, she was not at all sure she hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. It was only when she looked at her arms and saw the nicks and cuts the thorns had left upon her skin that she knew all she had seen in the wood beyond the wild lands was real.
The monster kept to his word and the herds were left untouched by anything but weather. The king returned to his failing war, the people worked their land and traded in the market, and soon remembered their old complaints as their taxes mounted and their sons and brothers were buried at the front. But then one terrible morning, Nemila Eed woke to find her jurda fields destroyed, all her crops uprooted and left to wither in the sun. The same was true of her neighbors’ properties to the north and south. There were strange tracks leading into the dust of the wild lands.
The people clamored for the king to set things right, and some even whispered that the queen should
be put to death for birthing such a monster to torment them so. Again, the king called for a messenger, and this time he promised lands carved from his own best estate as reward.
“We are rich now,” said Ma Zil, sitting by the fire that night. “But just think how fine it would be to live in a grand house where Kima could receive suitors. Then she would be sure to make a good marriage. Ayama, wouldn’t you like to wear white furs in the winter and eat sweet persimmons and sleep in a proper bed?”
Ayama was not at all sure she would survive a second meeting with the beast, and she couldn’t very well enjoy persimmons and soft cushions if she’d been eaten. But her grandmother laid a rough palm upon her cheek and swore that no harm would befall her. And if Ayama was honest, some small part of her wanted to return to the wood. Her family was rich now and had many servants, but they’d gotten so used to ordering Ayama about that they’d forgotten how to treat her as a daughter. She still slept in the kitchen and scrubbed the pots and watched as the bolts of silk were cut for Kima’s gowns, and her mother’s hair was dressed by a dainty maid who wore a flowered pinafore. People tipped their hats to her in the street now, but they never stopped to talk or ask how Ayama was faring. The beast might shout and snarl, and he might well devour her, but he’d at least been interested enough to listen to her speak.
So when dawn came, Ayama took her little copper cup and the axe that she used to chop wood, and tucked them into her apron. She placed her wide hat upon her head and once more set out for the wild lands.
The journey through the dust and brush was just as long and wearying the second time. When at last Ayama reached the iron-colored trees of the thorn wood, her throat was dry as burnt bread and her feet ached from walking. She pushed eagerly through the thicket, and as soon as she felt the silver light of the stars upon her shoulders, she heaved a contented sigh.
Only then did she remember to be afraid. After all, the beast might be hungrier. Or angrier. He might have forgotten the mercy he’d found when he’d let Ayama pass safely from the wood before. But she was here now and there was nothing to be done about it. Ayama followed the silver stream, letting the soft leaves and damp soil cool her feet, and tried not to think of the beast eating her in one bite—or worse, two.