Beast (19 page)

If you kill an animal at night, you must say, “I am
killing you as well as the one that matches you,” so that this animal will not reappear after its death.

If you slit the throat of a fowl, you must say, “In the name of the Merciful One,” before eating it.

You must never kill a hen or sheep at sunset.

You must never kill a white cock ever — it's an angel.

All the rules taught to me speak in my head, but they might as well not. I have killed so many animals, morning, noon, and night. Killed without rituals of any sort.

I remember the teachings of the religious
sheikh
who taught me the
Qur'an
day after day, week after week, month after month, until I was finally ready to discuss it with Mother and Father and the
imam,
the prayer leader.

I remember the pillars of my faith. The confession and declaration of faith. Ritualized prayer. Almsgiving. Fasting and contemplation during Ramadhan. Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina at least once in a lifetime. Good deeds. Protection of Islamic beliefs.

I declared my faith as a child. I made my pilgrimage as a young man. But since I've become lion, the rest of the pillars have crumbled. I pray, but not five times a day—and some days I don't pray at all. I haven't even attempted to observe Ramadhan, for when hunger comes upon me, it comes in a complete way, filling every part of me with need. There is no
room for contemplation. I cannot give alms to the poor. Indeed, I steal what I need. I do not perform good deeds. If there are members of Islam in this strange country, I cannot help protect their right to practice their beliefs.

I am lost.

Orasmyn is lost.

But, no. There are five basic principles of my faith. First, there is one Merciful One. Second, the prophet Muhammad is the last in the line of true prophets to present the Merciful One's message to man — a line of prophets that runs from Ibrahim on to Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Job and Moses and David and Solomon and Jesus and so many. Third, the body and soul are resurrected on Judgment Day. Fourth, your actions will be rewarded or punished by divine justice. Fifth, there were twelve spiritual leaders, successors to Muhammad, who interpreted the inner mysteries of the book of sacred laws, the
Shari'ah,
as well as the
Qur'an,
twelve
imamha
free of sin and chosen by the Merciful One through Muhammad.

I believe these principles. Whoever I am, wherever I go, whatever I do, I believe them. Somewhere inside me a soul clings to them.

I must hold fast to these beliefs.

Crack.

I don't move, yet my muscles tighten. Something walks in the forest. I breathe deep: the scent of deer. I
open my eyes and slowly turn my head. The fawn still has speckles. Her nose is thick black and shines wet. She's been drinking from the pond. Everything about her is sacrificial.

One lunge.

But the fawn runs to her startled mother.

I race after and bring down the fawn.

The doe leaps away without a backward glance.

I eat. This is my life. This. No amount of reciting principles of faith can change this. I run back to the castle, my stomach churning with so much food.

Belle is in the woods. She leans over a wild caper bush, picking them and dropping them into her skirt, that skirt that held the duck eggs just this morning. Her backside presents itself to me. Like the backside of a lioness.

The urge to mate renders me hot and savage. I stare at her, unmoving. This must pass. Please, Merciful One, stop me. Stop me or kill me.

Belle straightens up, turns, sees me. Her face goes pale.

My own face is smeared with the blood of the fawn. I know that —I didn't clean myself on purpose, just so I could show her this face.

Her eyes flash horror, and she doesn't even know it was a fawn—a baby.

I should tell her, I should tell her it was innocent — and tender and delicious. She should know that
whatever lives is meat to me. She should know.

This is how I eat, Belle, this is who I am.

But the ground is hard here and covered with brush—I cannot scratch out the words.

Or am I not only beast, but coward?

“Venez”—
come. Belle walks back, taking a path through the brambles that she has obviously cut just this morning. She pours the capers into a pile on the front step. Then she goes to the moat. “Please,” she says.

I come forward.

She dips the edge of her skirt in the moat. Then she puts her left hand on one side of my face, as though cupping it.

I tremble at her touch at last.

She feels my tremble. Her eyes grow bright with unshed tears. I would try to understand why, but I'm beyond reason. Her heat comes through her palm. With her other hand she wipes my muzzle clean. Her breath is duck egg and parsley on top of her own private smell.

I breathe in as much of her as I can.

When she has finished, she sighs and stands tall. “I need oil for the lamp and olive oil for eating. What should we do?”

I admire the way she forces us past the moment.

I go inside to the library and pull open a drawer with my teeth. I carry back a valuable silver letter opener to Belle.

She takes it from my mouth, examines it, then looks at me, still as death.

Only now, as I see her stricken face, do I realize another possibility: The letter opener is sharp. If Belle wanted, if she dared, she could stab it through my eye, into my brain. I wait, not knowing whether I offer myself or not. My head is heavy; it wants to fall on the floor.

I have been here before. I offered myself to Father. But I backed away because I knew it would destroy him when he realized he'd killed his son. There is no reason to back away from Belle, though. I wait.

“Ah, I see.” She nods slowly. “But how does one get to town to sell this thing?”

So she won't kill me. And now I think of the guns in this house. Has Belle ever considered killing me? Does she believe I can't be killed? Or is such a thought anathema to her? Anger flares in me at her fundamental gentleness. No one should hold that much goodness.

“How?” she says again.

I force my attention to her question. Town is too far for Belle to walk there and back in one day. She'd have to stay overnight.

Would she ever come back?

She watches me. At last she says, “All right. We'll have to think about it. We'll find a way.”

I
watch the stars. Belle is in her room. Chou Chou whined in ours for a long time, then finally gave up and settled down on the blanket alone.

I roll in the dirt at the edges of the vegetable garden. I scratch the back of my head against a cornerstone of the castle. But nothing calms me. Nothing soothes.

The night is full of creatures. I hear them in the air, in the brush, under the ground.

Belle washed the blood from my whiskers. But the taste remains in my mouth.

I walk to the rose garden and flop down against the thorns. I close my eyes and wait for morning.

•  •  •

Belle opens the front door. She holds Chou Chou to her chest and croons. Then she sets him on the ground.

Chou Chou runs immediately to where I lie under the roses. But he doesn't jump on me. He waits. Almost with patience—a virtue I've never seen a trace of in him before.

I stretch.

Chou Chou's eyes brighten. He jumps on me in uncontained joy. The night all alone must have been very long for him.

We roll together in the dirt, me being careful not to squash him, him being swift to move out of harm's way.

“Mon Ami.”

I look up.

Belle still stands in the doorway. She must have been watching us this whole time. She puts the fingertips of both hands lightly to her lips. Everything about her is suspended.

I'm caught in her hesitation, disoriented. I walk to her and sit on my haunches, waiting, just as Chou Chou waited before me only moments ago.

At last she takes a deep breath. “I'd like to show you something.” She goes inside.

I follow.

Belle hurries up the stairs and comes down a moment later. In her hand is the Chinese book. “Do you prefer to read on the floor or the table?”

I lower myself to a crouch, hardly breathing.

Belle puts the Chinese book on the floor in front of me. Her eyes close for a moment. When she opens
them, her hands also open the cover of the book.

I read.

I am lost. What the beast wants of me, I cannot know. Papa said he promised there would be no deaths if I came. But his jaws reek of blood.

I close my mouth in shame. Belle sucks air between clenched teeth. I can feel her eyes watch me. I smell the sour taint of fear from her body.

Guilt makes lead of my heart. When Belle first came, I managed not to feel sorry for her, because she never complained of loneliness, never spoke of fear. But ever since she asked what happened to the woman whose frocks she wears, I've known what she hides. Yet I don't tell her to leave. I don't reveal that I lack the evil power her father told her I have. I don't tell her I'm not demonic.

The amount of courage it took for her to offer this book to my eyes holds me fast. I don't understand what made her change her mind. But I am grateful for such an enormous gift. I will strive to be worthy of it. I read, reverent.

He kills me each night in my dreams. I would run away, but that would only hasten the end. For he would catch me, as he catches any
other animal. The only real choice is to kill myself. But God would never forgive that. And so I wait.

As do I, Belle. The
pari
trapped me, and I trapped you. Wretched choice. A prince should know how to make better choices. I turn the page and read.

I fill my days with learning the new skills of gardening. It isn't hard.

Waiting is hard.

Gardening is easy. Not even Adelaide and Felicie could complain if they saw what I have done.

I read, turning the pages with the tip of my tongue. I wish I could read faster, as I did in my old body. I am eager for the secrets in these words. It is as though a flower bud unfolds, petal by petal, before my eyes.

Sometimes a plan will come to me. A way to fool any man, and escape. Hope swells. Then I stop. I am forthright with him because he is a beast. How can you dissemble with a beast?

The words stab me. I want to shut this book and
run. But I cannot. I have to know more. I read while Belle scurries around the kitchen, cutting wolf meat left from yesterday. I read while Chou Chou jumps on me and nips my mane, begging to play more. I read and read.

After the initial pages of shock and despair, Belle writes of her family. Her father is a merchant, as I guessed. She has three brothers and two sisters. Belle is the youngest, because her mother died from a malady following childbirth. They were well-to-do, never wanting. All the children got an education, both in books and in manners. But a couple of years back, the family fell on hard times. Belle's father paid much for several shipments of exotic goods he planned to sell, then the ships were lost at sea. Goods from China and India and, yes, Persia, my Persia.

I look up at Belle. She's rubbing salt into a slab of the wolf meat.

I want to ask her for the list of the goods her father expected in those shipments. I want to hear the words of all the things that used to be familiar to me. To remember their feel and look and smell and taste. To be once again in the crowded bazaar, breathing the sweat of my fellow Persians. To work in the gardens with my friend Kiyumars. To share a meal with Mother and Father.

I grieve inside. My body rocks rhythmically on the
four pads of my paws. I want to scream. I want to scream or cry.

Belle works assiduously, pressing the heel of her hand into the tough meat, over and over. I rock to her rhythm now. The tense angle of her neck tells me she works to keep herself from thinking about me reading her words. How does Belle keep from screaming?

Gradually I calm down. The need to know more seizes me again.

Belle's written words tell of her father in debt, with no means to repay. The family let their servants go and managed from day to day. Her brothers took odd jobs. Belle took over the servants' tasks—cleaning, cooking, sewing, making fires. But her sisters refused to work, complaining that it would reduce their social standing.

Then her father got news that his ships had finally reached port—a southern port, to be sure, but at least the ships were safe. That's why he traveled all this way through largely unpopulated land, all the way from Paris; he couldn't wait for the ships to sail around the south of Spain, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and up to a northern port, closer to home. He had to go to them immediately.

But, though the ships had arrived, much of the cargo had been pirated away. What was left barely paid the crew's wages and the port duties. Belle's
father was riding home, a ruined man, when the sudden snowstorm made him lose his way.

The girls had asked him to bring gifts. After all, they expected him to return rich again. Belle's sisters asked for jewelry, fans, ostrich feathers, brocaded frocks, even a monkey.

Belle asked for a rose.

Why? I look up again. But Belle is gone. She and Chou Chou have deserted me. The slant of the sunbeams through the window tells me it's midday already. I hear the two of them near the dovecote.

I hold the questions in my mouth: Why, Belle? Why a rose? Were you in love, Belle? With whom? Do you love him still?

I could go outside and scratch my questions in the dirt. But I stay here, instead. If she has a true love, I don't want to know.

But true love or not, Belle's sisters and brothers treated her as a servant. Her father gave her no protection. She's no worse off here with me than there with them. Maybe she's even better off here.

I shake off this hateful guilt and read again.

Belle's father returned home and told of me. Her brothers said they'd come with guns and kill me. But her father said no one could kill a devil. If he didn't keep the bargain, they'd all perish.