Bryony and Roses Read online

  He dropped her hand dismissively as he said this last, but Bryony was more puzzled than ever, because he had given her fingers a final hard squeeze on the word gardener, and his golden eyes never left her own.

  “Um,” said Bryony. “Yes. I will?”

  The Beast had nodded and turned away, stalking back towards the house. The folds of his robe spread out around him like a shadow on the melting snow.

  “Hey,” said Holly, flapping her fingers in front of Bryony’s face. “Hey! Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

  Bryony started guiltily. Iris had stopped crying in the corner, so probably more time had passed than she thought. “Sorry. Woolgathering.”

  Holly threw her hands in the air. “I’m making more tea,” she said. “Clearly you’re not going to listen to anyone tonight, but maybe tomorrow you’ll be ready to hear reason. And in the meantime, there’ll be tea.”

  Bryony’s own cup had gone stone cold. She handed it over.

  Listen. House. Power. Gardener.

  Gardener? Really? How did that fit?

  Gardening may be my great joy, but I don’t delude myself that it’s that important in the grand scheme of things…and why it would be important to the Beast, I can’t imagine…

  There was something more at work here. And if Bryony was going to be drawn into it, she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The snow melted almost at once. When Bryony had led Fumblefoot to the barn, his hooves cut holes in the snow and struck mud underneath. By morning, those holes were twice as large and smaller holes had appeared everywhere, cutting the white blanket into lace.

  By noon, it was gone entirely.

  In the next few days, Bryony found herself thinking that the garden must know what was about to befall the gardener, because there had never been such a spring.

  The fine haze of green leaves at the base of old stems became foot-high thickets practically overnight. The asparagus-like stems of false indigo came up like a forest of spears, and clover rioted down the pathways. Bryony felt as if she barely had time to sow a row of seeds before she had to turn around and begin thinning the seedlings, as if they threw their second and third sets of leaves in the moments when her back was turned.

  The generosity of the garden humbled her. She could not shake the feeling that it was trying to take care of her, overflowing in every direction so that she had enough of everything to take with her. She lifted and divided and potted from dawn to dusk, begrudging every moment spent inside eating, or outside tending to the chickens.

  “It looks like you’re trying to take the whole thing with you,” said Holly, bringing out a cup of tea once more, four days after Bryony had come home.

  “Well,” said Bryony, chopping her spade through a ball of tightly wound roots, and prying the smaller half out of the ground. “Well. I suppose I am, a little.”

  “You’re going to miss the garden more than either of us,” said Holly, and that was a statement, not a question, which was good. Otherwise Bryony would have had to answer, and it would almost certainly have been a lie.

  “I’ll miss you very much,” she said instead, which was true.

  “Ah, but we’re only people, after all,” said Holly, amused. There was no censure in her voice. Holly understood things. And then, more seriously, “Bryony, you don’t have to go. If you stay here—whatever happens—we’ll deal with it. I’ll tie you to me with ropes, and if this Beast and his house comes for you, he’ll have to take us both.”

  “And leave Iris all alone?” asked Bryony, transferring the roots, with their accompanying green spikes, to a waiting piece of burlap. “She’ll be dead in a week.” Iris had spent the last few days alternating between claiming that if Bryony stayed home and inside the cottage, she would be fine, and a deep conviction that the Beast was going to eat Bryony and then possibly the rest of the town. That she was able to hold both positions several times a day without seeing any contradiction was no longer a surprise to her sisters.

  “She’ll go into town to Widow Grayson,” said Holly practically. “The Widow needs somebody to work the loom, now that her eyes are going, and she fancies Iris for that dim son of hers anyway.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay here,” said Bryony. “Iris’s fate would be far worse than mine. I just have to deal with an enchanted manor house and a somewhat sarcastic monster, not marry the Grayson boy.”

  Holly snorted. Bryony tied the burlap square around the roots of the plant, wet it down, and added it to a straggling row of similar burlap sacks.

  “Why are you so determined to go?” asked Holly. “Truly?”

  Bryony wiped her dirt-streaked hands on her trousers and sat down next to Holly. Her sister had brought out another cup of tea, and she gulped it gratefully, even when it burned her tongue.

  “Do you remember the city?” she asked finally, when it became obvious that Holly was not going to be put off.

  “Mmmm,” said Holly, who remembered it the way that a soldier remembers a great and terrible defeat.

  “When we’d lost…when Father had lost…well. You know.” Bryony laced her fingers around her knee and leaned back. The sun was warm, and she could hear the rustle of leaves as the pea plants investigated the side of the house. “When everything was sold, and all we had left was a cottage so far away that nobody wanted it… I stopped feeling miserable. It was like I’d come out the other side. I remember this kind of crazy exhilaration as we left the city.”

  “Because we were finally leaving?” asked Holly, the teacup forgotten halfway to her mouth.

  “A little. But more…” Bryony spread her arms. “If that could happen to us, if we could be rich and then suddenly have nothing—if life could change that much, overnight—then anything could happen. Birds could turn into fish. The sun could rise at midnight. I could learn to fly. The world was obviously wilder and stranger than anyone knew. And there was nothing left to lose. Nobody could take anything from us, because we didn’t have anything left to take. I felt invincible.”

  “Hmmm,” said Holly. She remembered the teacup and drained it. “I think I understand. When we left the city, on that rattletrap wagon, I remember thinking, ‘Thank God, it doesn’t matter anymore that I’m not pretty, at least nobody’s going to pretend that I’m beautiful just because I’m rich.’” She wrinkled her nose. “When I realized that, I started laughing, because it was such a relief, and Iris thought I was crying and started up herself, and I couldn’t explain without sounding completely mad.”

  “Oh, well, Iris,” said Bryony. She remembered when their creditors had come to cart the furniture away, including the marble-topped vanity in her bedroom, and she had thought, No one will try to smother me in paint again, trying to interest some poor nobleman in a short and rather plain merchant’s daughter. It had been a different feeling, but close enough that she thought Holly probably understood.

  Holly stood up and brushed dirt from the seat of her pants. (Both she and Bryony wore trousers around the farm simply because it was easier, although Iris said it was barbaric and wore long skirts even when feeding the chickens.) “You can’t distract me, you know. What does our questionable mental state leaving the city have to do with your Beast?”

  “He’s not my Beast,” said Bryony, nettled. “And it’s the same feeling, you know? I feel like anything could happen. And I might be able to fly.”

  Her sister raked her hands through her hair and blew her breath out, sounding a bit like Fumblefoot when he was exasperated. “Well. If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is.” She gave Bryony’s shoulders a brief, fierce squeeze, which reminded Bryony oddly of the Beast’s grip on her fingers. “It seems like you need to do this, so I won’t stop you. And I’ll try to keep Iris from driving you mad.”

  “Thank you,” said Bryony gratefully.

  Holly surveyed the line of burlap sacks and the green riot of the garden. “Just be careful. And come back to us as you can.”
/>   On the morning of the seventh day, Bryony loaded up Fumblefoot, said goodbye to her sisters, and went into the woods.

  Despite what she had told Holly, her heart sank with every step of Fumblefoot’s jarring stride. She had gathered her bundles up in the gloomy pre-dawn light, and the last sight of her garden made her throat tighten. Even plants that usually stayed dormant until well into May were thrusting up green shoots to bid her goodbye.

  Only the roses, clawing across the fence and the side of the barn, stayed sullenly quiet, as if they now begrudged even the few reddish-brown leaves that they had unfurled. That was fine. Bryony was suspicious of roses now, and would have rooted them out if she hadn’t thought that it would involve copious amounts of blood and swearing.

  There had also been her sisters. Iris, with many tears, had pressed a dozen pouches on her, each one embroidered with a flower. “For s-s-seeds,” gulped Iris. Bryony was absurdly touched. Apparently, while Bryony had slept, her sister had been awake, huddled by the fire, embroidering flowers. It was a more practical gift than she would have imagined Iris to be capable of.

  Holly had waited until Iris had turned away, and then slipped a package into her hand.

  “Keep it on your thigh,” she muttered in Bryony’s ear. “You can cut a slit in your skirts for it. If the Beast goes for you, make me proud.”

  Bryony had begun laughing, despite the gravity of the situation, despite Iris sobbing quietly on the doorstep, as much at the dangerous glint in Holly’s eyes as at the fact that her sister had just given her a dagger.

  Gont the blacksmith must have made it. It resembled one of the long knives the hunters carried, but lighter, with a hilt made for someone with smaller hands. You could gut a deer or a man with it, if you were so inclined. Bryony suspected that she was not so inclined, but then again, perhaps she’d simply never had the opportunity. Life had so far presented her with very few people to gut.

  Possibly that was about to change.

  She would have wondered how on earth her sister could afford it, but the blacksmith’s interest in Holly was well known, and Bryony was fairly sure that interest was returned.

  Well. At least she need not worry about how her sisters would be taken care of while she was gone. And since the knife made Holly feel better, Bryony carefully strapped it to her thigh, although she suspected that if she tried to pull it on the Beast, she would slice her own leg open and probably bleed to death.

  Yeah, that’ll show him.

  She was a great deal more comfortable with her pruning shears, which were wickedly sharp and had a curved blade that could give someone a serious poking or chop their finger off, assuming that they were obliging enough to hold their finger out and allowed it to be so chopped. You had to saw a bit going through the tougher branches, presumably fingers wouldn’t be any easier…

  Fumblefoot stumbled and poked her reproachfully with his nose. He had so many plants and twigs and burlap-wrapped stalks tied to his back that he looked like a small hillside. They were not terribly heavy, although a pot full of damp soil could weigh a great deal more than one would think, but they were bulky and awkward, so Bryony had chosen to lead Fumblefoot instead of riding.

  The Beast had assured her that it would be easy to find the house again. “Go into the woods,” he said, “and the path will appear.”

  Perhaps he had been wrong, or perhaps the path had simply not expected her to get such an early start on the day. It was nearly an hour before the trees opened up, and Bryony found her feet on the path that ran beside the stone wall.

  The Beast was waiting for her, on the other side of the gate.

  He was more alarming than she had remembered, or perhaps Bryony had softened the less human edges in her memory. She had not recalled that his tusks were so large, or his eyes so yellow.

  I’ve made my bed. Time to lie in it, I suppose.

  His eyebrows rose when he saw Fumblefoot plod into view.

  “Bones of the moon!” he said. “What is all of that?”

  “You told me to bring what I needed to garden,” said Bryony defensively. “That’s plants. By definition.”

  “I was thinking of seeds,” said the Beast, opening the gate. “And… I don’t know. Trowels. Shears. Perhaps a shovel.”

  “You can’t tell me that there is no shovel in this place,” said Bryony. “Everyone has a shovel. Except we only have the one, and I didn’t want to take it, because my sisters will need it.”

  “The house can probably come up with a shovel.” The Beast took a few steps back, but Fumblefoot flatly refused to walk through the gate. Bryony sighed and began unloading him, setting the bundles and pots inside the wall.

  “I did bring seeds,” she admitted. “But some of these plants are my friends. I wasn’t going to just leave them.” She ruffled her fingers through the lavender.

  “Oh good,” said the Beast dryly. “Here I was afraid that I had kidnapped a sane person by mistake.”

  “If you are going to kidnap travelers, you will simply have to take what you can get,” snapped Bryony. “If I don’t meet your standards, I’d be happy to return home.”

  Which was true this morning, although it hadn’t been completely true for several days prior. If the Beast sent her home, Bryony suspected that the mystery would nag at her until the day she died.

  The Beast raised his hands in surrender. “I yield, I yield. You are a perfectly acceptable…err…victim. I apologize for having questioned you.”

  Bryony was not quite sure how to reply to this, so she changed the subject. “I need to send Fumblefoot back to my sisters.”

  The Beast eyed the pony with frank disbelief. “I question what crime your sisters could have committed to deserve him.”

  “Look,” said Bryony, annoyed, “he may not be very impressive, but he can pull a cart if you’re patient with him, and he’s very good-natured, which is more than I can say for some people. And his previous owner had beaten him half to death trying to get him up a hill and Holly jumped on his back—the owner, not Fumblefoot—and nearly beat him half to death, and I gave him all the money we’d made that season for the poor bea—creature—and also promised him that Holly would leave him alone, and we had to live on potatoes for two weeks because of it, so he’s ours now, okay?”

  There was a brief silence. Bryony petted Fumblefoot’s nose fiercely and told herself that she wouldn’t look at the Beast. She hadn’t meant to say the bit about the potatoes.

  “Um,” said the Beast. “I see. I had no idea. I, er, apologize. If you’ve unloaded him, then I’ll send him back.”

  “Thank you,” said Bryony. She checked to make sure that there was nothing to catch on any twigs or branches, and carefully looped the reins up out of the way. He was still wearing the saddlebags, but they were empty now. She checked the snaps to make sure they were all closed and wouldn’t flap, then checked them again, because she was stalling.

  “Be good, Fumblefoot,” she told him finally, rubbing her sleeve against his cheek. “Be good for Holly.” Fumblefoot lipped at her fingers and gazed up at her with a mild brown eye.

  She stepped back. The Beast waited a moment longer, then moved up to the gate. The pony stamped a hoof and glared.

  “Go home, Fumblefoot, and find your way safely,” said the Beast, and laid an open-handed slap on the pony’s rump.

  Affronted, Fumblefoot broke into a trot down the roadway. His gaits were never very reliable, but Bryony didn’t hear him stumble as he trotted away and out of sight.

  “That should bring him safely home,” said the Beast. “Unless a more powerful magic intervenes, and that’s really quite unlikely. Very few powerful magics are concerned with ponies.”

  Bryony turned away and pretended to busy herself with the stack of pots. Her eyes were burning. It felt like her last link with home had just trotted away out of sight.

  This isn’t permanent. You’ll find a way to escape, or the Beast will let you go when you’ve done whatever it is that he wanted
you for. It’s not forever.

  “May I show you to your rooms?” asked the Beast, picking up the satchel that contained her few non-gardening-related possessions. “Do your plants need—err—immediate attention?”

  He is trying to be polite. He may be a monster, but he is trying.

  It made Bryony feel a little better. She straightened up and blinked a few times, fiercely, until the burning went away. “They’ll keep until tomorrow. You will have to show me where I can dig my beds.”

  The Beast made a sweeping gesture with one arm. Now that the snow had melted, Bryony could see that the manor grounds on either side of the boxwood hedge were exactly as one would expect. Rolling lawn and gravel paths, as far as the eye can see… A second fountain reared off to the east, surrounded by shrubs clipped into aggressively geometric shapes.

  “Anywhere,” said the Beast. “Wherever it pleases you.”

  Oh dear, thought Bryony with dismay, eyeing the military precision of the grounds. My garden is going to look very strange out in all that. She tried to imagine the purple spires of meadow sage and the exuberance of lamb’s ear. It will be very untidy.

  Well, let it be untidy. The groundskeepers and I will figure something out…

  Aloud she said “I will have to talk to your groundskeepers.”

  “There are none,” said the Beast.

  “What?” Bryony turned in a slow circle, waving a hand toward the boxwood. “Who keeps everything trimmed and pruned and mowed and—how? Places like this take a whole army of caretakers.” She did not add, “And you could grow enough vegetables to feed a village with all that wasted labor,” but she thought it.