Chapter 6 Corabeth
Six
Corabeth
Corabeth was pulled into darkness, her feet barely touching the floor.
The walls passed with such speed she didn’t have a chance to notice any details.
For a brief second, her feet lifted into the air, and one by one they started hitting stone steps as she was pulled down a staircase.
The whole time, a firm hand held the back of her neck, almost lifting her into the air.
Her heart raced relentlessly, her thoughts tumbled over themselves. To her surprise, some tiny, primal part of her still grasped for survival.
Corabeth was suddenly tossed forward with such force, she almost lost her footing. She remained standing only due to the cold, rough wall she crashed into. Behind her came a cold, metallic clunk.
As she looked back, metal glinted in the darkness. Iron bars from floor to ceiling. Corabeth had been tossed into a dungeon. Beyond those bars stood the great shadow of the Beast.
“You never should have come here,” it said, its voice deep and gravely.
It took a step back, blending seamlessly into the shadows.
Chest heaving, Corabeth stood and waited for a moment that dragged on too long.
Only when the bang of a door shutting echoed through the dungeon did she realize that the Beast had left her alone.
The only light in the dungeon trickled through the narrow, barred windows high above her head.
Silver moonlight glinted off the metal and the cold, damp stone surfaces.
In one corner was a worn hay mattress with a threadbare and frayed blanket.
In the other sat an empty bucket. For waste, Corabeth guessed and grimaced.
Her shaky steps took her across the uneven stone floor to the bars. The metal was cold and smooth under her touch as she gripped them and shook. Only once was enough to tell her she wasn’t going anywhere.
With a sigh, she sank onto the mattress and pulled the blanket over her shoulders, considering the downward spiral her life had gone down in a matter of hours.
When she was pressed against the rough wall of a house, Ely’s fumbling hands all over her, she had thought this was the worst thing that had happened to her.
When the whole village accused her, shunned her, scorned her, she had sunk even lower.
When she had kneeled before her burning home, everything she had in this world turning to ash, she truly felt herself hit the bottom and shatter into ten thousand pieces.
Now? Now she was stuck in the dungeon of the Beast.
Tears prickled her eyes as she squeezed them shut, leaning her head back against the wall. She didn’t want to cry anymore. She wanted to be done with all of this, but the horrors just kept coming. Like giant waves crashing overhead and dragging her further to sea without a moment of reprieve.
Surely, she would die here, forgotten and abandoned by the Beast. By her village. The blanket was barely enough to keep her warm. Come colder weather, she would freeze. Drift off into a peaceful sleep. Like mother, like daughter. That was if hunger or thirst didn’t come first. Perhaps a disease…
Corabeth listed off different ways she could die and dozed off from pure exhaustion that went deeper than the physical kind.
When she startled awake again, she was still sitting on the mattress that rustled with every move, head against the wall.
But she was also aware of another presence. Like a barely perceivable static.
She strained her eyes, but all she was met with were shadows.
“Hello?” Corabeth called out into the darkness, her voice rough.
The reply was a low rumble. A dog giving a warning growl.
“Why did you follow me?” asked the Shadowbeast slowly, as if words came hard for it. It was sitting outside the bars, in the opposite corner from Corabeth.
For a moment, she didn’t know what to say. Her first instinct was to lie. Tell the Beast that she got lost in the woods and stumbled upon the manor. But for what?
“I wanted to die,” she admitted instead. “You are Death, are you not?”
A cold chuckle. It made the hairs on Corabeth’s arms stand up. “I am not Death. Merely the bringer of it.”
“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked and felt her throat close up. She had not imagined that she would have to bargain with death. It was something that was supposed to come easily. Instead, she had to fight for it like everything else in her life.
“You should go home,” the Beast said, its tone bored.
“I have no home,” she replied. The reminder stung like a slap across her face.
“Back to your people then,” the Beast didn’t relent.
“They are not my people,” Corabeth said as her cheeks flushed. “That village could burn to the ground and I would be happy to strike the match.”
For the first time, Corabeth sensed some movement in the shadows across from her, felt them lean a little closer.
“That was your home? The one that burned?” the Shadowbeast asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“They’re just things. You’ll get them back,” it said. There was no comfort in his voice.
“The world is set up in a way that makes sure I won’t,” Corabeth said. “If I go back, my only option is to sell myself into servitude. And I will not do that. Not to those people. I would rather die. I wanted to die.”
The Beast was still for a moment before it stretched impossibly tall. There was a clatter, and something metallic fell to the floor before her. She fumbled around in the darkness that had only deepened, the moonlight nearly extinguished. Something cold touched her fingers, and she grabbed for it.
“A key? To the cell?” she asked, frowning.
“Mmm,” rumbled the Beast. A confirmation.
“But why?” Corabeth asked. She strained her eyes to peer at the shadow, desperate to see any features of the Beast, but was met with a solid wall of black.
“The bars aren’t there to keep you in,” the Beast said. The words came easier now, as if it had remembered how to speak. “They were to keep me out.”
The Shadowbeast started to slip along the wall, back in the direction of the stairs.
Corabeth scrambled to her feet, shrugged the blanket from her shoulders, and dashed for the bars. She clung desperately to the cold metal.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” she called after the retreating shadow.
The Beast halted momentarily.
“In my experience, those who ask for death rarely deserve it,” it said over its shoulder and continued moving.
This time, when it moved, Corabeth could hear quiet steps.
When it made it to the end of the hallway and up the stone stairs, the door did not fall shut behind it.
Instead, the silence felt like an invitation.