Beast (16 page)

The fox kit hides. My nose tells me he's under the bed. I drop the two eggs on the floor. They crack; goo oozes out.

I lie down and rest, my paws crossed, my chin on my paws.

The fox comes out slowly. He looks at me. He lifts his nose and sniffs hard. Then he slinks over to the eggs and laps them up.

I stand.

The fox runs under the bed.

I lick the floor clean, for my child will be here soon. I walk out of the room, down the staircase.

The fox follows at a distance. But when he comes to the stairs, he stops.

I remember how hard it was to learn to descend these stairs on all fours. His legs are short; he won't learn soon.

I go to the front step and count the pebbles. It's been precisely two weeks since the man was here. In the next week, that fox kit won't grow enough to learn how to get down the stairs. So I have plenty of time to tame him, befriend him.

A week.

If the man keeps his promise.

But he has to. He believes he bargained for the lives of his entire family. No one would turn his back on such a bargain — not with a beast who scratches words in the dirt.

He must keep his promise.

That night I enter a farmhouse as everyone sleeps. Crazy behavior, I know. But this farm grows almonds, and I want to offer my child almonds with her
honey. The trees are just in bloom, of course, but I'm sure the family has nuts from last season in their larder. And this is a fine farmhouse, made of stone, with the bedrooms upstairs. They won't hear me.

I come in through a window and cross a large room into a kitchen. The larder door is shut. I extend my claws and catch the bottom edge of the door and pull it open. Everything anyone could want fills the space: jugs of oil, dried meats, spices and onions hanging from the rafters, and so many nuts. I bite into a large sack of nuts and carry it to the window. With a swing of my head, I toss it outside. Then I jump out after it.

“Who's there?” comes a rough voice.

There's hardly any moon at all; he can't see me. I pick up the sack in my mouth and trot toward the woods.

“Thief!”

Bang!

I run.

Bang!

My whole backside stings. I run as fast as I can, all the way to the castle. I drop the nuts on the floor and go upstairs to the bedroom. I collapse with a groan.

After awhile, the little fox comes out. He sniffs at my backside.

I sit up.

He races back under the bed.

I bite at a painful spot. A lead pellet pops into my mouth. I drop it on the floor with a snarl. I bite another spot, get out another pellet. Then I stop and pant.

The fox comes out. He sniffs at the open wounds. He licks.

Two more spots hurt. I bite out another pellet easily, but the last one is deeper. I have to chew hard for it to come. Then I lie back while the fox licks and licks, until the blood stops.

I fall asleep on my side.

When I wake, the fox kit is curled between my forelegs. The creature has little instinct for natural enemies. I yawn and stretch. The fox runs under the bed.

I'm surprised to find that my backside hardly hurts at all. Nevertheless, I know I was lucky.

Men are dangerous.

I won't go inside any more homes.

Still, the most important thing of all is lacking: candles.

I perform the
wudhu
and say my prayers. Then I hunt down an old stoat, easy prey. I bring it back to the fox kit and we feed, side by side, him eating the innards, me eating the rest. I lick the floor clean.

For the next few days I wander, lurking near farmhouses and even at the edge of town. I am close to giving up, when I come across a farmhouse that has a
set of several beehives. Sure enough, out back of the farmhouse is a vat with a stick on either side and a string running between them over the vat. The vat sits on a stone oven. O Merciful One, maybe this is it. I lie in wait under bushes.

The farmer, his wife, and two sons work in the fields all day. A daughter stays home, keeping watch over three younger children. She sits in the shade and sews while they play. She plucks the feathers off guinea fowl. She cooks. She works all day, but never goes near the vat.

I snooze, counting on my nose and ears to wake me if there's a change. This new routine of going out more by day than night wears on me. But it's good to get used to it. After all, my child will have such a routine.

The rest of the family comes home noisily at dusk to eat.

I run back to the castle, killing two mice on the way. I drop one in front of the kit and swallow the other.

The fox kit chews with little growls. I remember the lion cubs. Will my little girl make noises when she eats? Children do that, often children do.

The next day I'm back under the bushes watching the farmer's daughter. She builds a fire in the pit oven under the vat. She ties several strings to the long string that runs between the two sticks high over the vat. Each of the little strings she adds is weighted
down with a stone that dangles at the bottom. She slips her fingers under the loops that hold the top string to the sticks and lifts it free. Then she lowers that top string so that all the dangling strings dip into the vat at once. She raises it again, and hot beeswax drips off each of the little strings. She dips again, then loops the top string in place over the two side sticks and goes inside for a while.

Intermittently throughout the day she dips the strings into the vat of hot wax, building up the layers. By afternoon a row of fat candles swing from the top string.

The younger children play inside and out all day. Finally, a point comes when all are inside. I spring out from the bushes, hook one loop of the top string over my bottom canine, hook the other loop over my other bottom canine, and trot off, with a necklace of candlesticks flopping against my chest.

At home I bite each candle free from the top string.

Tomorrow my child comes. One night to finish my preparations for her arrival, that's all.

And it takes all night to set out bowls with water from the moat and roses floating in them, bowls with bits of honey and almond, bowls with dirt and candlesticks in the center. I arrange them in a semicircle on the floor of the main room.

By dawn, I'm tired. But there's one thing left to do.
My child and her father won't come too early, I'm sure. They can't come while I'm gone. The Merciful One wouldn't allow my plans to be thwarted like that.

I race back to the farmhouse with the beehives out back and the vat of wax. The fire is already lit under the vat. A shotgun is propped against the side of the oven. No candles will be stolen today.

But candles aren't what I'm after.

I run across the farmyard and take a burning stick. I carry it from the end that is just barely warm, walking slowly, so that the fire won't burn out. The family is eating and talking. Soon the farmer and his wife and sons will go out the door. I'm walking too slowly. But every time I break into a trot, the fire wavers and threatens to extinguish.

The voices grow louder.

I trot to the first tree and hide behind it as the people come out of the house. They warn the girl to stay near the vat once the new candles she's going to make today grow thick enough to be of value. The farmer makes her hold the gun a moment.

A curl of smoke goes up from the burning stick in my mouth. O Merciful One, let them not notice.

At last they leave, and the girl goes inside. One small child stays outside, though.

I have to risk it. I walk slowly to the next tree. The child didn't see me. I walk to the next. Then the next.
And now I'm in the woods. I walk slowly, stopping every time the flame weakens.

Finally, I'm home. The fireplace is crowded with the twigs I gathered last night. Beside the fireplace is a stack of branches and logs. I place my burning stick in the middle of the twigs. Flame leaps from twig to twig. I feed it small branches and finally a log.

I need that fire, though the sun has already taken morning chill away from the stone floor of the castle. I need it to light the candles when she comes.

The fox kit cries from upstairs, a mewling sound that he's developed to call me. Foolish little thing.

I lie in the center of the room and sleep.

D
aylight fades, yet the man has not returned. I pace around the bowls on the floor.

The fox cries for me.

I go outside and catch a mouse and bring it to him. But I don't stay beside him as he eats. I have no patience.

I go downstairs and pace again.

A wind comes up, soft at first, then sighing and moaning. Chill returns to the castle.

It's dark now. Would the man come in the dark?

The wind whips around the corners of the castle. Everything creeks.

I count the pebbles again. Twenty-one. It's three weeks. He swore to return within three weeks.

I close all the windows on the first floors. Then I take one candle in my mouth and light it from the fireplace. I use it to light all the others. I replant the
first candle into its bowl of dirt. The room seems sealed, remote from the rest of the world. The candles are lonely lights. The roses in the water have opened so fully that the closed air grows rapidly heavy with their perfume.

Let her come. Please.

And I've forgotten my prayers. How can I expect the Merciful One to remember me if I forget Him? I go outside to the moat and perform the
wudhu.
Then I pray.

I hear horse hooves.

This is not the way prayers work. Only children believe that the Merciful One gives gifts directly after prayers. My ears play tricks.

Still, the sound persists. A horse comes snorting through the brambles. A single horse.

Panic strikes. I lope inside and up the stairs.

I hear them talking, calling to each other over the wind, but the words are so hard to catch.

“I can't, Papa.” The high voice of the child is stronger than I expected. It rings clear.

A man answers. I know his voice. It is imprinted in my brain forever. He says something about death, something about roses.

“I'm afraid.” She cries. “Hold me.”

They talk more quietly now. I cannot make out what they say.

The horse gallops away. Were his hoofbeats as
heavy as before? Does he still carry two riders?

I don't dare go downstairs. I won't hasten the end of the shimmering hope that carried me through the past three weeks. I stand at the balustrade, overlooking the front door. The dark of night hides me. The fox kit looks out from behind me. I growl low, and he races back into the bedroom.

There is no noise whatsoever. They have gone. Together. My head is heavy with sadness I have nowhere to pour.

She appears in the open doorway, tall.

A woman.

I lift my head forward.

She steps inside, right foot first, like a Persian bride. Her head is wrapped in a scarf, properly. She stands, looking down.

Her breath comes so lightly, I see no trace of life in her. Is this a vision?

Nothing moves.

Abruptly she turns and, with one swift, decisive pull, she closes the door behind her.

She walks silently forward into the semicircle of candles, kneels over a bowl, and puts her nose to the roses. The small flame dances in the gleam of tears on her cheeks. Her hand emerges from the folds of her skirts, one fine chiseled hand hovering above a bowl of nuts like a hummingbird.

She picks up an almond, dips it in honey, and pulls down her scarf just enough to put the nut in her mouth.

I think of the Greek myth of Persephone, the girl Hades stole to be his wife in the Underworld. She ate six pomegranate seeds, and thus sealed her fate: She had to live with Hades six months of every year — one month for each seed. Does this woman think she's come to marry the King of the Underworld? Is that almond in her mouth a symbol of resignation to a hideous fate? And now I remember Persephone's downfall in the first place: She wandered away from her friends to smell the sweet narcissus. The young woman before me asked for roses. She smells them now. I feel her heart; she believes she is doomed.

She walks the arc of the bowls.

Now she walks under my very feet, O Merciful One, just like a Persian bride. A groom waits on the upper floor as his bride passes under his feet in their new home. Am I a groom? Have I become the monster Hades?

And now I realize the woman has come empty-handed. She carries no baggage. Absolutely nothing.

My tongue dries with the wind of death.

The woman goes from room to room without a word. Then she returns to the chapel, where she stays for a long time. I cannot see her in there; I cannot
know if she stands or kneels or bows. If she cries or slaps her forehead on the stone floor or simply talks inside her heart with God.

She comes back to the semicircle of candles. She blows out each one, but the last. She carries the bowl with the last burning candle and comes to the foot of the stairs. She looks up.

The candle illuminates her eyes. What color they are, I may never know, but they are deep and wide. She stares blindly into the dark beyond the little circle of light cast by her candle. She dares to take a step.

I retreat into my bedroom, pushing the door shut.

All the other doors upstairs are closed but one — the one to the room I've prepared for her.

I listen as she comes upstairs, walks the hall into her room, and closes her door.

She's here. My child. My woman.

I
can't sleep. Instead, I spend most of the night in prayer.

By the time my woman wakes, it's full morning. I've already killed a hare, built up the fire, and put fresh roses in the bowls. Sunshine streams in through the open windows.

She comes downstairs, and I leap out the window, to watch from my hiding place.

Her head is bare; her face, naked.

I see the tiny pulse in her slender neck, I hear her soft breath, I smell the parts of her hidden under her frock. She is doelike.