Chapter 31
XXXI.
Baró slept fitfully without Rivani beside him even though he exhausted himself between the varied physical expressions of grief and distress left to him without the ability to cry.
His dreams, though not the usual ones of torment, proved torturous anyway, full of recriminations and regrets, full of Rivani and losing her all over again.
When he woke, he ached everywhere. With his arms still wrapped around the furs and blankets that he had pretended were her through the night, he kissed the top of Rivani’s placeholder and struggled not to lose himself in despair.
He withdrew his face from the saturated pile beneath his cheek as he murmured apologies and words of love and bereavement that he could not say to her.
He wiped his eyes even as he buried his face in the bundle of blankets. The tears never stopped.
Tears.
Without a fire, the solar remained too dark to see anything, but something had gone awry.
All his planning, his careful words, the constant tongue-biting, the staunch refusal to tell her how much he loved her — it all amounted to nothing.
He had changed again and this time to a more alien form than horns or snout or hooves.
Although Rivani had not remained to be as horrified as he imagined she would be, he still despaired.
His fingers, his non-clawed, non-hooved fingers, explored furless skin.
He could not credit it. He oversaw the destruction of the roses. He never told her he loved her. She never told him that she loved him! And he never asked her to marry him. And now. She would never love him now. Not as an ordinary human man. Not without the animalistic qualities she prized in him.
He tried to stand and stumbled into the chaise, his legs strange and shaky beneath him.
Just when he had relearned how to walk upright on hooves!
He forced himself back onto his feet, wishing that going on all fours remained a possible alternative.
The chaise too did not feel as small as it had just yesterday as he kept a hand on it to practice his balance.
With every halting step he took, he hated his new body.
His old body. His old body that was new again.
The body of an ordinary man. If he had not cried himself dry during the night, he might have wept for himself.
He stumbled and fell in his progress through the great hall, falling to all fours to take the stairs, and again resuming his faltering gait as he made his way to his rooms. The sun filtered in through the windows making the room brighter and the objects within more visible.
Another moment of cowardice overtook him.
Still, he approached the vanity and sat, now able to fit on the small bench.
Lifetimes passed before he summoned the courage to remove the mirror covering and gaze at the newest changes of his body.
The face belonged to someone else, like something he had seen in a dream.
Not real. Not his. Yet there it was, the face of a man.
The pain of it stung. The face before, the face he had grown into over the last few centuries, however hideous and unnatural, belonged to him.
That slender straight nose seemed far more ridiculous on his face than his snout had ever been.
The absence of horns made him look incomplete.
The lack of fur made him feel painfully naked and vulnerable.
With his finger, he traced the reflection on the glass.
Even his hands had become the tools of a weak, pathetic human.
Although rough from all the years of toil and his nails a good deal longer than they should have been, they were hands that could not hunt without tools and weapons.
If Rivani ever returned, he would never be able to touch her with such inadequate hands.
The only thing he recognized as belonging to his face were the scars from his claws when his body had changed, when he had gouged out the bony plates from his cheek and torn deep wounds into his nose, forehead, cheek, and neck. But the rest of it wasn’t him.
He rose from his seat, disgusted by and despairing from his new reality. He staggered out onto the balcony and glared at the rose bush.
“Mayest thou be damned,” he told it.
His voice startled him. He sounded so different without the massive chest of his former body, without the absurd configurations of his tongue and lips and jaw to produce sound replicating speech. His voice, too nasal, too foreign to his ears, made him never want to speak again.
“Y pofsefsed no desyre to change,” he railed. “Y pofsefsed no way to change — Y ensured that.”
With no response, he hobbled his way down the stairs to stand in front of the flowerless bush.
“Prithee,” he said, “pray hear me.” The courtyard remained silent and breezeless.
“Y am not what Y was or who Y was. Y wolde not seek to change now. Y cannot be this, never agayn. Y am all the worse.” He knelt when there was no response, eyes stinging with tears.
“Y doon not want this. Prithee. She careth about me before. But now...” He bowed his head and put his face in his hands.
He had once, long ago, found himself alone in a body he did not know how to use. He had never wanted to repeat the experience. And yet, here he was, punished anew.
Now what? Came a sweet, silken voice in his ear.
Baró raised his head but did not turn to witness the nothingness of his long-time Tormentor. This time, however, it was relieving to hear anything besides his own unsteady breathing and the frantic beating of his own heart. He remained kneeling.
“Now, everythyng yn me she pryzeth ys gone.”
Now you can go out in the world, She countered. Now you are no longer a prisoner.
“And what good doth that do when the only reason Y wolde venture out ynto the world now ys her?” He shook his head, trying to stop the unbidden tears.
“Better to be here and alone than out among others who wolde maketh me feel more alone yn companie. And yf Y sholde fynd her again, she woldeth not want me lyke this.”
You are handsome enough. There would be others, She encouraged.
He growled at the suggestion. “Nay, Y want none but her. Prithee, take this back. Makest me a monster once more that Y may styll be assured of her regard.”
She told me she loved you, She confessed. She told me she would love you even as a “dull human man.”
“She dyd love me?”
Yes. Yes, she did. There was a pause. If you could only win her by being a monster again, you would do it?
“Wythout reservationne.”
Surprised laughter filled the air. Then go, beast, and tell her that.
.