Chapter 13 #4
All the creatures of the land fled before the beast, and when they reached the road, every man they met turned and ran. Ciwa began to feel sorry for the beast and realized that he must be even more lonely than she.
The guards fainted when she knocked on the castle door with the beast at her side, but her brother appeared at the window of the tallest tower, flanked by archers.
“Sister,” said Dochau, “I do not believe my eyes! You have captured the beast! Now, step aside, so that my men might kill the creature that has brought such fear and suffering to my land.”
“No!” cried Ciwa. “I promised, brother, that no harm would befall him unless he threatened violence against us.”
Dochau laughed. “A promise to a beast! The shepherds fear for their flocks; the villagers fear for their children. The creature must be killed!”
“You must kill me first,” said Ciwa, and stepped between the archers and the beast. For she had sworn an oath before God and the trees of the forest that no harm would befall him. She threw out her arms and closed her eyes, waiting for the arrows to fall.
“As you like,” said Dochau, turning away from the window. “I had planned to kill you, sister. Some of my new subjects conspire to overthrow me and put you in my place. But now both my foes are slain.”
And he motioned to the guards to loose their arrows.
Ciwa heard the shafts whistling through the air toward her and readied herself for death.
But then God, who had never forgotten her, performed a miracle.
The arrows froze in midair. They turned point over vane and reversed their journey up, up, up, through the window of the tallest tower and straight into Dochau’s heart.
But that was not the only miracle God performed that day. When Ciwa opened her eyes and found herself unharmed, she turned with a cry to the beast, expecting him to be stuck through with arrows. But he had transformed into a handsome young man, with a circlet of gold upon his head.
“I am Ciaran,” said the man who had been the beast, “and this is my land. Your stepmother laid a curse upon me. But now I am restored to my body and my kingdom.”
Then Ciaran took Ciwa’s hand in his and said, “I must repay you, lady. Will you
The last page was missing.
It was torn clean from the book; Caroline ran her fingers down the ragged bits of parchment that still clung to the binding.
No matter; she could recall the ending without the text.
Ciaran and Ciwa married, ruled justly for many years, and were blessed with a dozen children.
And for a century, all was well in Gwent.
The wording was a bit stilted, but the story was the same. In Carys’s version, Saint Ciwa looked like a biscuit advertisement, all rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes, the beast beside her no more than a large, shaggy dog.
This Ciwa, like all medieval saints, was flat-featured and mournful, the beast at her side not a wolf but something else.
Something strange and terrible that walked on two legs, made of long ears and long teeth, its arms ending in claws.
And all along the margins, framing the O of the first word, were flowers.
Caroline carried the book to the moonlight from the window, raised it. There could be no doubt. But still, she pulled out her mother’s ring and held it to the page.
The same pointed caps, the same wide, open petals.
Fear blazed through Caroline, sudden and urgent. She collected all the books, swept a hand along the empty compartment to ensure she had left nothing behind, winced as her fingers came away gummed with spiderwebs. She set the wood panel back in place, pressed the corners down until it was flush.
—
Back upstairs in her garret bedroom, Caroline lit the lamp to its lowest burn and spread the books on her desk.
The collection of fairy tales she set farthest away; she was not ready to consider the drawings again, the flowers that perfectly matched those on her family crest, those in the garden. Those in her dream.
She could feel the creature’s breath on the nape of her neck, the field quivering under its feet.
There are no such things as beasts, she told herself. No such things as curses.
But an image flashed through her mind, sudden as a cymbal. The papered walls of Rab’s room, the strange arrangement of C’s, H’s, O’s. And the only legible words: The curse is the cure.
With a shiver, she opened the Bible.
An inked family tree sprawled over the blank flyleaves. Curls of hair sewn into the parchment came away in Caroline’s hands, and she quickly shut the cover. They had belonged to dead children, she was certain of it, and the thought made her skin crawl.
She turned her attention, instead, to the notebooks.
Charlie only drew in black pen, so his illustrations were stark and strange.
But what skill her brother possessed! A single line evoked a bird, a tree, a sultry smile beneath a bonnet brim.
Caroline recognized pieces of the boardinghouse: the mantelpiece in the parlor, the sweep of the banister, the view of the back garden from his bedroom window.
The sketches drew stranger and more confident with each page she turned.
Here was a cat with an arched spine, here a raven, a dog.
Here disembodied parts: hands clenched and open, mouths and noses without faces.
And here…She inhaled. Here was she, Caroline. At nine with her face turned up to the sky, tongue out to catch the rain. At twelve, with mud on her skirt. At fourteen, sitting in the grass, an open book on her lap.
The final page was a single portrait.
Caroline stood three-quarters to the viewer, as though looking over her shoulder to make sure they followed.
Behind her rose the woods that encircled Audley House, the woods Charlie had been running toward in the hazy blue light of her dream.
It was an honest portrait—her chin too pointed, her cheekbones too sharp—but in capturing the truth of her Charlie had captured a bit of her soul, too.
There was a fierceness about this Caroline, a wildness, as though she had just stepped from the dark line of trees behind her, the expression on her face a breathless mixture of sadness and hope.
Caroline traced a fingertip over the strokes her brother’s pen had made and missed him so keenly her chest ached.
The second book was more of the same. More sketches of Caroline, walking, reading, speaking, her mouth half-open. Portraits of the Full Moon’s inhabitants: Mrs. Easton, Mr. O’Riley, Pierre Toussaint. Rab. Rab grinning, Rab frowning, Rab laughing.
And then a new face appeared. A woman’s face.
Her hair was light, judging from the paucity of shading, her eyes wide and slanting. Her cheeks were full, her nose upturned at the tip.
It was Mary Jane.