Hunted(53)
The secret door led to another stair, and as Yeva transposed her mental image of the castle as seen from the ridge above the valley onto the corridors she’d begun to learn, she thought they must be ascending into one of the thick round turrets. The Beast climbed the stair ahead of her, always just vanishing around the curve of the wall as she glimpsed him, but she saw enough to discover that he was climbing the staircase on two legs, not four, and her heart began to slam against her rib cage. Though the joints of his legs were all wrong, and his tail still swept after him, and his fur still caught the lantern light, to see him walking like a man caused all her questions to surge up again until she almost forgot the lost library below.
The stair led to another door, and this time the Beast stopped. He dropped back down onto all fours as Yeva approached, and he paused. His eyes flicked back over his shoulder at her, and she saw indecision written there, recognized his hesitation as clearly as she would’ve on one of her sister’s faces. Then he gave himself a shake and reached out with one paw toward the latch.
She’d never quite seen how he managed many of the things he did—though it’d become quite obvious that no one else lived in the castle and that the Beast must have cooked her food while she was in the cell, lit her lanterns, locked and unlocked her chains. No beast with only paws and teeth could do such things, and Yeva had to admit the role that magic played in every aspect of the Beast’s existence. Perhaps he merely did it with a wave of his paw, the same way he simply walked on top of the snow as if it were solid ground, or turned his own scent off like a tap to hide himself from nature.
But this time, as she watched, he changed. His paw seemed to shimmer before her eyes, rippling like hot air escaping a door into a frosty morning. Her eyes ached with the need to look away, but she forced herself to watch, ordering herself not to miss it this time. The furry toes lengthened, the claws shortening, the whole wrist joint shifting up. It was not a hand, nor a paw, but something in between. And it held a key.
He unlocked the door deftly, and the key vanished somewhere about his person. By the time he put his hand back down it was a paw again, and he glanced back at her as if nothing strange had taken place. “Come,” he said again, more gently this time.
She followed him into the room.
The room was round and held four windows, shuttered tightly against the winter outside. The ceiling above was peaked, supported by wooden crossbeams that had been repaired and replaced over the years, each one stained a slightly different shade by time. Like the one below the castle, this room was obviously lived in. Unlike that one, however, the furnishings here were not cobbled together from whatever bits and pieces were least destroyed throughout the castle’s many rooms—here they were of a kind. A low daybed divan stretched along one wall below a shuttered window, bordered on each side by matching end tables. Odds and ends scattered their surfaces: a rabbit’s skull hung with beads and feathers; a tiny box inlaid with mother-of-pearl; a small stone figurine of a knight such as a child might play with, worn shiny with use. Rugs of thick blue shag covered the floor, and the hearth at the far side of the room glowed with fresh coals.
The Beast turned to a wardrobe that stood near the divan, and sank bank on his haunches so he could reach with both paws to open the wardrobe doors. The air shimmered again, but this time it was easier to watch as he shifted enough to grasp at the door handles. She expected to see what one normally finds inside a wardrobe: cloaks, dresses, shoes, hatboxes—or else, she supposed, tunics and leggings, if the masculine decor spoke to the room’s original occupant.
Instead the wardrobe was full of books.
Unlike those in the library below, the leather of these spines was bright with color, showing the original dyes, and their titles were stamped deep. Though the gold and silver leaf was worn from some of them, others she could read. Still others were written in languages she had never seen before.
She felt her breath leave her, and before she knew what she was doing, she came up beside the Beast so she could lift the lantern higher and scan the collection. There were maybe thirty or forty of them—nothing to how many were in the ruined library—but these had been cared for, protected and preserved against the years. And though they showed wear, cracked spines and corners rubbed such that the dye had faded, it was the kind of wear from use, the wear her own family’s books had shown before they sold them. These books were read, many times. These books were loved.
The Beast shifted at her side, his fur brushing her arm and making her shiver. He was warm, warmer even than the coals in the hearth.
Yeva’s mind spun. The spines that she could read bore the names of old knights’ tales, the cataloging of magical creatures, adventures in distant lands she’d never heard of. No dry scholar’s texts—all stories.
“You . . .” Yeva was so taken by surprise that she found it difficult to speak. “You—you saved these?”
The Beast’s eyes slid from the contents of the wardrobe to Yeva’s face, then back again. “Someone else used to live here,” he said finally. “It was he who rescued these from the damp.”
Yeva tore her eyes from the books so she could study the Beast’s profile. When she looked again at the room she saw details she hadn’t noticed before. The shag carpet lying before the fire was worn more than the others, flattened and thickened with fine pale-gray hairs, the same color as those coating the Beast’s underbelly. The inside of the door was grooved with scratches, such as might be left by someone with claws before he remembered how to use a latch.