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The Women’s War

by Jenna Glass.................................................................................................. 5 Inspection: A Novel

by Josh Malerman........................................................................................ 33 The Near Witch

by V. E. Schwab.............................................................................................. 55 The Beast’s Heart: A Novel of Beauty and the Beast

by Leife Shallcross.......................................................................................69 All My Colors

by David Quantick........................................................................................ 93

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The Women’s War is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by Jenna Glass Map copyright © 2019 by David Lindroth, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Del Rey and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. libRaRy of congRess cataloging-in-publication Data

Names: Glass, Jenna, author.

Title: The women’s war / Jenna Glass.

Description: First edition. | New York : Del Rey, [2019] | Series: Women’s war Identifiers: LCCN 2018015835 | ISBN 9781984817204 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525481515 (ebook) Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3602.L288 Q44 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015835 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper randomhousebooks.com 246897531 First Edition Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno

CHAPTER ONE

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very year, when the long days of summer began their inevitable decline into fall, the winds in Aalwell changed direction.

Instead of skimming along the coast, they began to blow inland, carrying the scent of sea and salt over the low-lying lands at the base of the cliffs. Unfortunately, they also carried the scent of the harbor, of rotting fish, of soggy streets, of too many unwashed bodies.

The cliffs trapped most of the scent, confining all but the occasional foul whiff to the Harbor District. And this year when that wind change came, Alysoon Rai-Brynna reconsidered her decision to continue living in her late husband’s manor house rather than taking up residence in the royal palace above the cliffs. Her father had all but begged her to pack up her children and join him, but decades after he’d divorced her mother and made Alys and her brother technically illegitimate, she still hadn’t forgiven him. If the king wanted to spend time with his bastard daughter and his grandchildren, he could come down to the Terrace District; Alys would not go to him. Besides, the manor house was her home and had been

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for more than twenty years. She’d learned to live with the occasional foul whiff long ago.

On the most oppressive of autumn days, the gentry of the Terrace District either stayed inside their perfumed homes or flocked to the risers for a trip up to the Business District at the top of the cliffs. The merchants of the Business District loved oppressive autumn days above all others. Alys and her children had spent the last two days shopping, and if her eighteen-year-old daughter, Jinnell, had her way, they would spend a third. And probably a fourth. And a fifth. But Alysoon wasn’t about to let a few smelly breezes keep her from her weekly visit to the Abbey of the Unwanted, where her mother had resided since the divorce.

“But the Abbey will be intolerable!” Jinnell protested. “And you need some new gowns for winter now that you’re out of mourning.”

Alys suppressed a smile. She knew a disingenuous argument when she heard one, just as she knew the moment they reached the Business District, it wouldn’t be her own gowns they ended up shopping for.

“I do need new gowns,” Alys agreed, because it was true. Her winter wardrobe was almost two years out of date thanks to her year of official mourning. She doubted that her true mourning would ever end, but at least the grief was no longer quite so sharp as it had once been. “But I don’t need them today. And your grandmother is expecting me.”

Jinnell groaned dramatically as only a teenager could do. “Every time you visit the Abbey, people talk—and that’s not doing my marriage prospects any favors.”

Alys resisted the urge to roll her eyes. As long as the king was providing a generous dowry—over and above what Alysoon herself could offer from her husband’s estate—Jinnell’s marriage prospects were in no danger. As her daughter was well aware.

“I’ve been visiting the Abbey once a week since before you were born,” Alys said. “The damage is done, and I promise I’ll find you a nice goat farmer to settle down with. I’m sure we can find one

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under the age of sixty who will take you despite the disgrace I’ve brought down upon you.”

“Very amusing,” Jinnell said with a sour look on her usually sweet face. “I’ll die of boredom here. All my friends are shopping today.”

“You might try reading a book,” Alys suggested, receiving in response exactly the expression of disdain she expected. Alys had spent her whole life rebelling against the prevailing opinion that girls need not be educated beyond the basics required for managing a household, and jumped at every chance to read—especially if the subject matter was considered useless or inappropriate for females.

Her daughter, however, would never dream of cracking open a book unless it was forced upon her.

“As you wish,” Alys continued with a careless shrug. “I’m going to the Abbey, and if you’re worried about death by boredom, you can always come with me. Your grandmother would love to see you.”

Jinnell wrinkled her nose. “Maybe in a month or so when the winds change again.”

Alys wasn’t surprised by the answer, and while she did on occasion force both of her children to accompany her on these visits, Jinnell was right and today would be especially unpleasant, thanks to the wind.

Leaving her daughter to sulk and her son to catch up on some lessons he’d neglected, Alys headed to the coach-house, which housed her carriages, horses, and chevals. Her groom was currying Smoke, her late husband’s horse, when she entered the coachhouse. The poor creature was a shadow of his former self, his coat no longer gleaming, his head hanging in a habitual droop. Unlike Alys, Smoke had no friends and family to help ease the pain of loss and relieve the loneliness. Although Alys knew how to ride a horse, it was considered highly improper for a woman of her station to do so, and her son preferred his own horse to his father’s. Alysoon fed the horse a lump of sugar as an echo of grief stabbed through her and tightened her throat.

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“Which cheval would you like, my lady?” the groom asked.

Alysoon swallowed her grief and glanced over the row of inert chevals against one wall. “The black, I should think,” she said. It was the least lovely of the chevals, covered in plain black leather with no adornments, but it would show the dirt of the Harbor District the least.

The groom bowed, then moved to the chosen cheval. His eyes turned milky white as he opened his Mindseye and fed some Rho into the cheval, which promptly came to life and gave a very horselike snort and stamped one wood-and-leather leg. As if the crafter who’d made it thought someone might mistake it for a real horse despite its lifeless eyes or its complete lack of personality. Then again, it wasn’t temperamental or missing its master, as the real horses were.

The groom hitched the cheval to Alysoon’s smallest carriage as her coachman, Noble, emerged from the servants’ quarters in the rear of the coach-house.

“The Abbey, my lady?” he asked as he helped her into the carriage, but it wasn’t really a question, for he knew her routine by heart—as did the rest of her household.

Falcor, her master of the guard, arrived right on Noble’s heels.

He would sooner fall on his sword than allow Alys to leave the house unaccompanied. She had nothing against the men of her honor guard, but they were just one more reason she longed for the days when Sylnin was alive. As long as she’d had a husband to “look after” her, her father had allowed her to refuse the honor guard that was her due as a king’s daughter. But the day after Sylnin had passed, Falcor and his men had shown up on her doorstep and refused to leave. She frequently had to remind herself not to be unkind to the men who had no choice but to follow orders.

Alys allowed Falcor to climb onto the back of the coach without demur, having long ago resigned herself to the intrusion. Many women enjoyed more freedom when they became widows, but thanks to her royal lineage, Alys had less. She drew the sheers over the carriage’s windows.

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The carriage descended the three sets of terraces, then clattered through the crowded streets of the Harbor District, the cheval expertly dodging pedestrians and horse-drawn carts and pits in the road, passing fish markets and taverns and storehouses all teeming with noonday business. Alys’s cheval carriage was well-known along this route, and while the street merchants eyed it longingly, none tried to approach and offer her their wares. It was unseemly enough for a woman of her stature to set foot in the Harbor District. To make purchases there was unthinkable.

The carriage eventually wended its way to the half-moon-shaped Front Street, which ran from one end of the harbor clear to the other. A massive warship was docked at the naval base near the Citadel, its crew and a platoon of dock workers busily repairing and refitting it after its tour of duty. Several smaller warships were docked quietly nearby, and one was putting out to sea, most likely for patrol duty. Aaltah hadn’t seen true war since Alys was a child, and these days Aaltah’s navy mostly did battle with pirates and smugglers. But the Lord Commander of the Citadel made sure all soldiers and sailors were kept battle-ready, for the kingdoms and principalities of Seven Wells had a habit of war that stretched back to the very beginnings of recorded history.

Between the naval base and the dockyard at the other end of the harbor, the water was packed tight with a ragged flotilla. Here was where the commoners who weren’t rich enough to afford a home on land settled, with their rickety crafts of questionable seaworthiness. Whole families lived on tiny boats with open cabins, braving the weather for easy access to Aal, the primary element produced by Aaltah’s Well. Thanks to the Well, Aal was almost as plentiful here as Rho, the most common of all elements. Aal was the primary element in many spells associated with movement—including the spell that powered the cheval—and was thus one of the mainstays of Aaltah’s economy.

The flotilla was responsible for a good deal of the Harbor District’s stink, and it seemed that every year at this time, some city councilman would bring a proposal to the king to outlaw it. And

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every year, the king refused, because having so many commoners who could see Aal was convenient when a great deal of Aaltah’s economy relied on the export of Aal-infused magic items.

As the carriage made its way down Front Street to the Abbey at the far end of the harbor, Alys opened her Mindseye, secure in the knowledge that no one would see her doing it through the window sheers. Her physical vision blurred and became indistinct as the elements of magic came into crisp focus.

As with anywhere in the known world, the most immediately visible element was Rho—pure white globes the size of pebbles.

Every living thing was surrounded by sparkling motes of Rho, and the Well spilled thick clouds of it into the atmosphere. The secondmost common element this near the Well was, of course, Aal, which in Mindsight looked like a child’s glass marble in a mixture of white and cloudy blue. Mingled with the motes of Aal and Rho were countless other elements, forming a beautiful tapestry of colors that never failed to take her breath away. Alys reached out to touch a radiant royal blue mote with flecks of gold in it, and for the millionth time, she wished she’d been born a man so that the world of magic were open to her. Her son, Corlin, was just beginning his magical education as adolescence developed his Mindseye. Many times she had been tempted to crack open his primer, which he often left lying around after his lessons, but she had so far resisted the urge.

Reluctantly, Alys closed her Mindseye. It was her particular form of self-torture to gaze longingly at that which was forbidden to her.

Every time she opened her Mindseye, she told herself that this would be the last time, that she would not allow herself to be tempted yet again. But it was always a lie, and in the privacy of her home, with her husband gone and a locked door between herself and the rest of the household, she had occasionally been known to dabble. Very little, however. Forbidden to read spell compendiums and able to recognize and name only a handful of the myriad elements she could see, it was too dangerous for her to do any serious experimentation.

The Abbey walls loomed before her, twice again as tall as the

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nearest buildings. While the place was not technically a prison, no one had seen fit to inform its designers of the fact. Built of cold gray stone, with narrow windows and unlovely blocklike towers, it inspired a sense of foreboding in Alys’s heart every time she passed through its gates. It was a stark reminder of what would happen to her if she were ever caught “dabbling” in magic. Being the king’s daughter afforded her many freedoms that other women lacked, but that freedom had its limits.

Just past the Abbey’s walls lay the purpose of the Abbey’s existence: the Women’s Market. Stalls and booths were set up all along the courtyard’s perimeter, each manned by at least one red-robed abigail and selling the magic that only women could create. Love charms, minor healing potions, beauty enhancers, sex enhancers— and sex. This was called the Abbey of the Unwanted because it was filled with women no one wanted as wives. Women who were unchaste—or at least accused of being so. Women who were disobedient, who caused trouble, or who inconvenienced their husbands or fathers. Women like Alys’s mother, who had gotten in the way of her husband’s desire to marry another.

All were tainted beyond redemption in the eyes of society, and with that taint and the virtual imprisonment that resulted came the permission to practice magic. Polite society might frown upon women practicing magic, but that didn’t stop polite society from buying and using the magic created by these ruined women. Likewise, polite society might consider it inappropriate for a woman to have sexual relations with anyone but her husband, but that didn’t stop Aaltah’s men from buying the sexual favors of whichever young and pretty abigail caught their eye.

The stalls selling magic items were dwarfed by the pavilion at the far end of the courtyard, where the Abbey’s most desirable displayed themselves as merchandise, their long red robes put aside for tiny scraps of red fabric that covered the bare minimum of their bodies. Men mobbed the pavilion, placing bids on their favorites, competing with one another in bidding wars that sometimes devolved into brawls.

Once upon a time, Alys’s mother had been one of those women.

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Thirty years old when she was set aside, Brynna Rah-Malrye would have been considered too old to work the pavilion had she been any other woman. But a woman who had once been queen was too profitable a commodity to pass up, commanding a higher price than any three women combined. The thought that her father had allowed her mother to be so humiliated and abused lit a fire in Alys’s veins every time she entered the Abbey’s courtyard and saw the pavilion. He could shower her with gifts and affection until the day he died, and still she would never forgive him.

It was a time Brynna never spoke about with her daughter, and Alys was happy to keep the silence. She was also glad that when she’d visited her mother in the Abbey as a child, she hadn’t understood what those women in the pavilion were selling.

Now, after more than three decades as an abigail, Brynna was the abbess, the highest authority within the Abbey. Queen of the Unwanted Women, as it were. It was small comfort to the woman who’d once been the Queen of Aaltah.

Alys was expected, and her carriage was met by a young abigail whose face was marred by an enormous wine-colored stain over the pale gold skin of her right cheek and the bridge of her nose. The deep crimson robes emphasized the mark, and Alys noticed the girl stood at a slight angle to greet her, as if trying to keep that side of her face in shadow.

“The abbess is ready for you, my lady,” the girl said in a voice barely above a whisper, her body still canted as she dropped a curtsy.

Alys wanted to tell the poor child that the mark was not a cause for shame—or at least that it should not be—but doubted it would do much good. Odds were high the girl had been relegated to the Abbey precisely because her family had been ashamed of her appearance and deemed her unmarriageable. At least the stain meant she didn’t have to work the pavilion.

The shy abigail led Alys to the abbess’s office, within the Abbey’s highest tower. The room was large by the Abbey’s standards, and even relatively comfortable. Small windows on three walls provided more natural light than in other parts of the Abbey, and a candela-

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bra fitted with large luminants made the room even brighter. The luminants were an indulgence, which Alys had gifted to the Abbey so that her mother and the abigails did not have to live in gloom.

But while the abbess was in charge of the Abbey’s day-to-day working, she had to answer to the king and the king’s council—including the lord high treasurer, who’d declared Alys’s gift fully taxable.

Over Alys’s strenuous objections, the treasury had seized all the luminants but five, allowing the abbess to keep them as long as she used them only for herself as a personal gift from her daughter.

The cold stone floor was covered with a warm red rug that was growing threadbare in patches, and there was a cozy seating area with a ragtag collection of mismatched chairs situated before the fireplace. More evidence of the treasurer’s greed, allowing the women of the Abbey no more than the bare minimum of comfort while they debased themselves to fill the Crown’s coffers.

The abbess was sitting in one of those chairs, sipping from a steaming cup of tea, when Alys was shown in. She set the tea aside when Alys entered, rising slowly to her feet and mustering a wan smile as she held out her hands to her daughter.

Brynna Rah-Malrye had once been a stunning beauty, with perfectly smooth tawny skin, a cascade of raven-black curls, and deep brown eyes that radiated warmth. The Abbey—and time—had stolen much of that beauty. Stress and austere living had etched her face in lines and wrinkles, and her glorious hair, now iron-gray, was perpetually hidden under a red wimple. Even her eyes had lost their luster as cataracts encroached.

Alys took her mother’s gnarled hands and gave them a squeeze.

Ordinarily, the abbess’s dull eyes came to life when Alys visited, reminding her of the vibrant woman she’d once known. Today, the abbess managed a smile, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes, and Alys could see the tension written on her face in bold print.

“Mama, what’s wrong?” Alys asked as the two women hugged.

“Nothing, my child,” the abbess said, though she held the embrace for longer than usual.

Alys shook her head and peered into her mother’s face. She was

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not imagining those shadows under her mother’s eyes or the sharp crease between her brows.

The door squeaked as the young abigail closed it, and Alys could hear the soft shuffle of the girl’s footsteps as she retreated. She watched the door and waited until she could no longer hear footsteps before turning to her mother once more.

“What is it?” she demanded.

Her mother gave her another wan smile and gestured toward one of the chairs. “Please sit. And have some tea.”

Alys sat on the very edge of the chair but didn’t even glance at the tea set. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

The abbess slowly resumed her seat, the slight tightening around the corners of her eyes telling Alys that her arthritis was giving her trouble again. There were potions that could ease her symptoms, but they were pricey imports and beyond the Abbey’s meager budget. Alys didn’t like to think of her mother as an old woman, but the abbess was sixty-two, and today she looked more like eighty.

“There is truly nothing wrong, my child,” the abbess said. “I am fine.”

“But—” The abbess held up her hand to interrupt Alys’s protest. “I am fine, all is well, but I have something important I must speak to you about.” She sighed and shook her head. “I have struggled to figure out how to start.”

Alys smoothed her skirts just so her hands would have something to do. All was clearly not well, no matter what her mother said. But her mother never spoke without thinking long and hard about her words, and there was no use getting impatient with her.

Even if patience was a trait Alys herself lacked.

The abbess sighed heavily, and a corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile. “I must apologize in advance for the incomplete information I am about to give you. I know you will have questions, and most of them I will not be able to answer.”

Alys almost groaned at that, holding back the sound with an effort. Her mother spouted off cryptic, nearly unintelligible warnings

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and advice all the time, and never seemed to notice or care that Alys didn’t understand. If she was apologizing in advance, this was going to be far worse than usual.

Alys must have made a face, because her mother chuckled, the sadness momentarily lifting. “Yes, I know I often say things you don’t understand. You’re just going to have to trust me when I say it’s for a good reason.”

Alys arched a brow. “You mean other than because you enjoy tormenting me?”

“Well, there’s that, too.” Unexpectedly, she reached out and squeezed Alys’s hand. “I can never adequately convey how much it’s meant to me that you’ve continued to visit me all these years.”

Alys shook that off. “I don’t understand how anyone can just pretend you don’t exist.” As the king did. As Alys’s brother did. As all her mother’s old friends did.

Her mother shrugged. “It’s the custom, and most people don’t have the courage to defy custom.”

Alys would hardly label her own defiance as courage. Everyone knew she was the king’s favorite—if only because she alone withheld her affection. And the king’s favorite could flout some of the most rigid customs without undue hardship. Of course her father wouldn’t be around forever, and her relationship with his heir—her half-brother, Delnamal—was nowhere near as cordial. He had more than once promised to bring her to heel when he became king.

“You’re my mother,” Alys said simply. “You will always be my mother, no matter what happens.”

“Yes, and that may well cause you some . . . difficulties in the days to come.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something is going to happen tonight. Something . . . momentous. Something that will change the world in ways I can’t entirely foresee.”

Alys’s stomach knotted, and her chest felt tight. Her mother was not prone to hyperbole—much the opposite, in fact—and if she said something world-changing was going to happen, she meant it

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literally. “What is it?” Alys asked, her voice coming out high and breathless.

“I can’t tell you.”

Alys let out a sound between a sigh and a growl, bunching her skirts up in her fists to keep from grabbing her mother by the shoulders and giving her a good shake. “You can’t do that! You can’t tell me something momentous is going to happen and refuse to tell me what!”

“Of course I can,” her mother responded with an incongruous half-smile. “I’m a seer. It’s what we do.”

Alys had never been able to determine whether her mother could genuinely foresee the future or whether she meant that in a more figurative manner. There were rumors of spells that allowed women to see the future, but conventional wisdom labeled those rumors false. Alys was not so sure. “Mama—” “There’s a reason I can’t tell you, Alysoon. Trust me.”

Alys jumped up from her chair and started pacing before the unlit fireplace, unable to contain the angry energy that coursed through her blood.

She loved her mother, she really did. But did she trust her? Even before her mother had been banished to the Abbey, she’d had a hard streak in her, a level of brutal practicality that Alys could never match. Life in the Abbey had certainly not softened her, and though she was not unkind, she was not especially kind, either. It was all too easy to imagine the reason she “couldn’t” tell Alys what was going to happen was that she knew Alys would not like it.

“It makes no sense to give me a vague and ominous warning when you have no intention of explaining,” Alys snapped.

The abbess pushed to her feet once more, drawing herself up to her full height and putting on her sternest, most repressive expression. “You’ll understand soon enough, and throwing a tantrum won’t aid your cause.”

“I don’t have a cause,” Alys said petulantly, but she knew continuing the argument was pointless. Her mother was an immovable object when she wanted to be.

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The abbess reached into the folds of her crimson robes and pulled out a small book bound in blood-red leather and stamped with gold leaf. Some of the gold leaf had been worn off, as if from too much handling, and the spine was cracked almost to the point of coming apart. She held the book out to Alys, who took it from her and frowned at it.

Heart of My Heart, the title declared, and Alys’s lip curled in distaste. She’d known at once from the red binding that it was a book meant for women, but the title declared it was some kind of romantic drivel, with which Alys had no patience. She quickly thumbed through the pages, just to confirm her initial impression, and saw it was even worse than she’d thought—not just a love story, but love poems. She tried to hand the book back to her mother, but the abbess didn’t take it.

“It’s for you,” her mother said.

Alys rolled her eyes. “I might read love poems if someone held a sword to my throat and threatened me with death, but there’s no guarantee.” She was much more apt to read about adventures on the high seas, or accounts of great battles, or biographies of kings past. Anything that wasn’t considered appropriate reading material for a woman, she found intensely intriguing.

The abbess smiled with genuine humor. “Alysoon, my child, I have known you for quite a long time, and I’m not expecting you to develop a sudden passion for love poetry.”

Alys frowned and peered more closely at the book, scanning through a few lines on a random page. It was definitely love poetry, of just the treacly sweet flavor that set her teeth on edge. She couldn’t see her mother reading it, much less herself. And yet the book was worn and clearly well-loved.

“I don’t understand.”

“But you will. After tonight’s events, feed three motes of Rho into the book and you will see why I’ve given it to you.”

Her mother was telling her to use magic? All Alys’s life, her mother had warned her to keep her Mindseye firmly closed, to resist the temptation to explore. To the point that Alys could practi-

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cally recite the lectures word for word. (Which, come to think of it, she had, though Jinnell was so painfully proper by nature it had never seemed necessary.)

What had changed?

Alys opened her Mindseye, sure it was safe here in the abbess’s closed office. She expected to see the book teeming with elements, all bound together in some complex spell that required only Rho to complete it. Instead, what she saw was . . . a plain book of love poetry. Perhaps not surprising, as paper was considered nearly useless as a spell vessel, but feeding Rho into an ordinary book would have no effect whatsoever.

Alys looked at her mother, just to make sure her Mindseye hadn’t suddenly gone blind, and there was indeed a halo of Rho surrounding the older woman. The luminants in the candelabra were filled with some red-orange element Alys didn’t recognize, and the air in the room was swimming with motes like dust in the sunlight. Either the book was filled with elements beyond Alys’s ability to see, or it was exactly what it looked like.

“I can’t see any elements in it,” Alys said, closing her Mindseye so she could see her mother’s face more clearly.

“That’s rather the point, my child. No one looking at it would have any reason to suspect it isn’t exactly what it appears.”

Alys shivered. “Why?” she asked, knowing full well she would not get an answer. At least not a satisfactory one. “Why don’t you want anyone to know it’s a magic item?”

“That’s another question you will learn the answer to before the sun next rises.”

Alys was tempted to throw the book to the floor and stomp on it. Of all the mysterious and frustrating conversations she’d ever had with her mother, this was by far the worst.

“Would it kill you to give me a straight, clear answer?”

“No, but it might change things that must not be changed.

What will happen tonight will be difficult for a great many people— especially for you—but it is for the greater good, and I can’t risk altering what I’ve foreseen.”

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Alys sank back down into the chair, her anger draining as dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. What was going to happen tonight?

Her mother laid the back of her hand against Alys’s cheek, a comforting gesture that did nothing to soothe the turmoil that roiled within her.

“I love you very much,” her mother said, and there was a catch in her voice that made Alys’s eyes sting with tears. “Never doubt that.”

Alys looked up at her mother’s face, shivering to see and hear so many unguarded emotions from a woman so determinedly stoic.

“Is something going to happen to you tonight?” Because in light of all the ominous warnings, the sadness in her mother’s eyes suddenly looked very like a goodbye.

The abbess didn’t answer. But perhaps her silence was an answer in and of itself.

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CHAPTER TWO

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adeen Rai-Brynna awoke with a start, shocked she’d managed to fall asleep at all, if only for a few minutes. A glance out her narrow window showed the moon high in the sky.

The time had come, Nadeen realized with a potent mixture of excitement and terror, hope and dread.

The bed creaked as, beside her, Kamlee stirred sleepily, missing her warmth. She held her breath, hoping she hadn’t made a tragic mistake by letting him spend the night. He ordinarily slept like the dead, and she’d been sure she could slip out without waking him.

Fully aware that she was taking an unacceptable risk by spending the night with her forbidden lover, Nadeen had done it anyway. If she woke him and he somehow interfered . . . But she couldn’t face what she had to do tonight without showing him one more time how much she loved him. It was all she could do not to dive back under the covers and snuggle up to the man who’d made the last few years of her life the happiest she’d ever known. Her mother, the

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abbess, would be livid if she knew, would pile on the shame and guilt until Nadeen staggered under the weight of it.

Nadeen let out a slow, shuddering breath as she slid out of the bed. A moonbeam provided just enough light for her to find her robes and pull them on. How she wanted to light a candle so she could look at Kamlee’s face one last time, but that might make this night even harder.

She hesitated in the doorway, dizzy and disbelieving, her mind repeating the sentence the time has come in an endless, echoing loop. A part of her had never truly believed this was going to happen, had been sure something would stop them. Surely the Wellspring would rise up to prevent their assault on its very essence.

Maybe someone would wonder at the coincidence that both the abbess and her daughter conceived and bore children in the Abbey, despite the easy access to contraceptive potions that were almost always effective. Or maybe Vondeen, Nadeen’s daughter, would lose her virginity before they had a chance to perform the ritual.

Such was not uncommon in the Abbey, where a pretty girl was expected to begin working the pavilion the moment she became a woman. But of course the abbess had planned for that and declared they would perform the ritual on the night Vondeen shed her first woman’s blood. Tonight.

Tears stung Nadeen’s eyes as she made her way through the Abbey’s dark and silent halls toward the abbess’s office. Vondeen was only fourteen years old, and Nadeen had never known a kinder, purer soul. It was her sacred duty as a mother to protect her daughter, and in that most vital of all women’s duties, she was about to fail.

Both the abbess and Vondeen were already present when Nadeen entered the office, which was brightly lit with luminants. She had blinked the tears out of her eyes before stepping inside, but they welled again the moment she caught sight of her daughter, with the pale skin and green-gray eyes she’d inherited from her Nandel-born father. Today, the girl had donned her red abigail’s robes for the first time, but she looked to Nadeen like a child play-

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ing dress-up. Certainly too young to give her life, even for a great cause. It was all Nadeen could do not to burst into sobs.

Vondeen leapt from her chair and hurried to embrace her.

“It’s all right, Mama,” the girl said, hugging her tight. “I’m ready, and I’m not afraid.”

Nadeen hugged her daughter back fiercely, not sure she could bear to let go. The spell they were set to cast tonight had been generations in the making, built by a succession of gifted abbesses who’d seen what no one else had seen—and who’d had the courage to act on it. It was well known that magical aptitude ran in certain families. In the Abbeys, it was similarly well known that the rarer feminine gift of foresight also ran in families, though only women who inherited that gift from both sides of their families could use it.

And so the abbesses of Aaltah had set about manipulating bloodlines based on what they saw, strengthening and concentrating the abilities they needed. A love potion slipped into a client’s drink. A contraceptive potion withheld. A marriage falsely predicted to be unfruitful when the bloodlines were analyzed . . . The fate of the world rested on these small acts of feminine defiance.

Brynna Rah-Malrye had completed the process by bearing Nadeen and breeding her with that repulsive Nandel princeling to produce Vondeen. Generations had labored to produce these three women—the virgin, the mother, and the crone—who were the only ones who could complete this epic spell.

There was no turning back, no matter how high the cost or how much it hurt.

The abbess joined in the embrace, hugging her daughter and her granddaughter. “I hope you know I love you both,” the abbess whispered.

“I love you, too,” Vondeen said with no hesitation.

Nadeen’s throat tightened to the point she couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe. She respected her mother a great deal, but respect was not the same as love. How could she love a woman who’d brought her into this world only because she was needed for this spell? How could she love a woman who’d ordered her into a

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known rapist’s bed and even ordered her to conceive by him, shaming Nadeen into not taking the contraceptive potion that all women in the Abbey drank when they were working the pavilion?

No, Nadeen couldn’t truthfully say she loved her mother, and she had a hard time believing her mother loved anyone at all. Even her first daughter, Alysoon, who was conceived and born out of love, was now but a tool for the abbess’s use. Nadeen had never met her half-sister—she suspected Alysoon didn’t even know she existed—and wondered if the woman had any idea how her life was about to change, what her mother planned to put her through.

The abbess rubbed Nadeen’s back as if comforting a small child.

“I don’t expect you to say it back, daughter.”

“Mama loves you, Gran,” Vondeen said. “Even if she doesn’t know it.”

That brought a hiccup of near laughter from Nadeen’s throat.

Vondeen always saw the best in people despite Nadeen’s efforts to warn her how dangerous—and disappointing—that could be. Despite knowing she’d been bred to fulfill a purpose, like a horse. It was unthinkable that Nadeen could allow this precious girl to be sacrificed.

“I can’t do it!” she said, twisting out of the shared embrace. The tears she’d been fighting so hard to hold off refused to be denied, and her whole body shook as she backed away.

She expected a rebuke and a lecture about her responsibilities from her mother, but instead it was Vondeen who stepped forward and took hold of her shoulders in a firm grip.

“You have to, Mama,” the girl said. Her voice was calm and steady, her eyes showing no hint of fear or doubt. “We were born to change the world. It’s our purpose, and it’s noble, and it’s worth any sacrifice.”

How could a fourteen-year-old girl be so ready to sacrifice her own life for the greater good? Just like her daughter, Nadeen had been raised knowing her destiny, but when she’d been fourteen, she had resisted that destiny with every bone in her body. With more than half her life still ahead of her, she’d cried that it wasn’t enough

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and had gone so far as to try to flee the Abbey and her fate. She’d been caught before she’d set foot outside the gate, and soundly beaten for her efforts. Not yet abbess, her mother had begged for leniency, and Nadeen knew the beating could have been far worse.

How could Nadeen’s daughter be such a pillar of serenity and fearlessness when Nadeen herself was made of fear and pain and doubt?

She was weak. Selfish. Unworthy.

Still the abbess said nothing, made no attempt to soothe Nadeen’s terror nor even remind her of her duty. Nadeen didn’t look at her mother, couldn’t bear to see the look of stern disapproval, maybe even contempt, as she proved herself too cowardly to fulfill her life’s purpose. She shuddered, her knees going weak, and sank to the floor. Vondeen, still holding her shoulders, sank with her, until both women were kneeling on the threadbare rug.

Nadeen buried her face in her hands as undignified sobs rose from her chest. She was a liar and a fraud along with all her other faults. It wasn’t Vondeen’s life she was so desperate to save: it was her own. Even after a lifetime of preparation, she wasn’t ready to die for their cause, and a wave of humiliation broke over her and nearly drowned her.

She felt Vondeen move closer, drape her arm over her back as the girl whispered soothing words and crooned like a mother with a crying child. Completing the humiliation.

Nadeen felt as if she were being torn in two. Half of her was the sobbing, terrified woman who cowered on the floor and required her fourteen-year-old daughter to offer comfort and aid. The other was the avenger of women who’d been bound since birth to a cause she believed in with all her heart and to which she had pledged her life.

But it was so much easier to give one’s life to a hypothetical future, especially one that might never exist. Certainly the sacrifice had never seemed real to Nadeen. Even a few hours ago when she’d taken Kamlee to her bed in what was meant to be a final farewell, some part of her had never truly believed she wouldn’t return to her lover’s arms.

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“Please, Mama,” she heard her daughter whisper into her ear.

“We have to do this. You promised me I would never have to sell my body in the pavilion, and that is exactly what I shall have to do if we don’t cast this spell. I will be just one more unwanted woman in this world with no higher purpose to lend me the strength to endure. Surely that’s not what you want for me.”

Nadeen sucked in a great gasp of air. She hadn’t for a moment considered what the consequences of her refusal would be, had thought only about the continuation of her own life and Vondeen’s. But Vondeen was too beautiful to escape the pavilion, where she would sell herself day after day, night after night, for the Abbey’s coffers, lying with any man who bid for her, no matter how cruel or venal or sickening. All so that the Abbey could turn over the lion’s share of its profits to the Crown while its women lived in near poverty.

Nadeen knew exactly how dreadful it was to work the pavilion, how degrading and painful and soul-crushing. She’d survived nearly fifteen years of it herself before she’d become too old to bring a good price, and on those nights when she’d suffered the most repulsive of her clients, she’d retreated to a place where she could dream of fulfilling her destiny, a place where all her suffering was worth it.

Vondeen would not have that same shield if Nadeen couldn’t find the courage to do what she must. How much worse would the humiliation and pain be when she knew she’d suffered it for no purpose, that she’d been lied to and betrayed by the woman who’d brought her into this world and promised her an important place in it?

Nadeen drew in another deep breath, pushing down the fear that had escaped the containment she’d built inside her chest. She was still racked with tremors, her nose stuffed and her eyes swollen, but she stiffened her spine and sat up straighter, looking into her daughter’s eyes. Eyes that still showed no fear, only steely determination. Eyes that would show fury and pain, contempt and betrayal, if Nadeen let her fear win. She swallowed hard, willing that fear to

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drain away, or at least to go back into hiding where she could ignore it and move forward.

“What I want for you,” she said in a voice hoarse and raspy with tears, “is a long and happy life.”

“But that’s not something within my reach,” Vondeen answered swiftly. “It’s beyond the reach of most women in this world, beyond their hopes, even. But we can change that for them.”

Vondeen’s eyes glowed with something uncomfortably close to fanaticism, but Nadeen supposed that was to be expected, given the girl’s upbringing. Privately, Nadeen wasn’t so sure their spell would have as positive an effect on the lives of women as Vondeen hoped.

Not for the current generation, at least. But for the youngest girls and for girls born in the future, when the spell had had time to settle and the worst of the shock had worn off, the world would be better. Of that, Nadeen had no doubt.

Nadeen wiped her eyes and cheeks with the back of her hand, then dried her hand on her robes. One more shuddering breath, and she felt nearly like herself again. She gathered Vondeen into her arms for one last hug, then finally glanced up at her own mother, who hadn’t spoken a word.

To Nadeen’s surprise, the abbess’s back was turned as she bent forward and gripped the back of a chair with white-knuckled hands.

When she finally turned to face her daughter and granddaughter once more, there was a suspicious shine in her eyes, though her face looked composed, the expression an obvious mask over her emotions. Nadeen was oddly comforted to know her mother was not as unaffected as she pretended to be.

The abbess nodded briskly. “It is time,” she said, then knelt on the floor with a wince of arthritic pain and pulled back one corner of the rug, revealing the flagstones beneath. The abbess’s eyes went white, and she touched one of the stones, feeding Rho into it to trigger its spell. The stone rose into the air and slipped to the side, opening a twice-hidden compartment—hidden to the physical senses by the camouflaging stone and hidden to Mindsight by a secrecy spell so strong only a handful of people had the skill to see past it.

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Inside the compartment lay a stemmed cup of hammered copper crusted with a hodgepodge of gems, some precious, some semiprecious. For nearly a century, each successive abbess had added those gems, each filled to capacity with elements—some exceedingly rare—from all across Seven Wells. Those elements, bound together, formed the makings of a spell more powerful than any yet imagined. It needed but one more element to be triggered—an element only these three women could produce.

The abbess lifted the cup gently from its compartment, setting it on the floor and drawing out the three daggers that were stored with it. Nadeen and Vondeen watched the abbess’s slow, deliberate movements with a combination of terror and resolve. Their hands had come together, fingers gripping one another, sharing their love and courage.

The abbess placed the daggers in a triangle around the cup, taking a position behind one and waiting for Nadeen and Vondeen to join her. Nadeen found she was shaking, not sure how she would find the courage when the moment of truth arrived. Vondeen offered her an encouraging, courageous smile, then let go of her hand and went to kneel behind a second dagger. Not trusting herself to stand, Nadine shuffled into her own position on her knees.

In Mindsight, the cup was nearly blinding to look at, elements of all colors and sizes writhing and roiling within it. Most of them were feminine elements, though some were visible only to the most powerful women in the world. But some were masculine as well, elements that no woman should be able to see. Elements that Brynna, Nadeen, and Vondeen could see only because they had all been bred for the purpose.

Each woman reached for a dagger. The abbess brushed back the sleeve of her robes, revealing her wrinkled, age-spotted arm with its mapping of deep blue veins. With a steady hand, she placed the tip of the dagger against her skin, about halfway up her forearm. Then she slashed quickly downward to the wrist, laying open her flesh and letting loose a river of blood.

It was done with no hesitation, and only a slight tightening at

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the corners of her eyes indicated that it had hurt. She held out her bleeding arm, letting her blood splash into the waiting vessel. At first, Mindsight revealed only Rho, the element of life, in that blood. But as the blood continued to pour out unchecked, a new element shimmered into existence.

Kai. The death element. Elusive, powerful, and visible only to men of the noble houses—and to these three women.

Kai motes were unmistakable—crystalline in structure, whereas other elements were spherical. Their form and coloration were unique to the individual who produced them. Brynna’s Kai was glossy black in color with three distinct crystals jutting out like teeth.

Fear escaped its captivity once more, and Nadeen’s hand shook as she pushed up her own sleeve. The abbess had closed her eyes, whether because she couldn’t bear to watch or because she was losing consciousness, Nadeen didn’t know.

Nadeen bit down hard on her lip, hoping to distract herself with that little pain as she held her arm out over the vessel and lifted the dagger. I’m doing this for all the women and girls who will come after me, she reminded herself. She made the cut swiftly, giving herself no time to think. Her shaking hand made a mess of it, creating a jagged wound instead of her mother’s neat slice, but the blood flowed freely, rushing to enter the vessel. She dropped the knife and almost knocked over the vessel, but the deed was done, and there was no turning back now. She whimpered when she saw her own Kai appear, proving that her cut was true and would take her life. Her Kai was a deep, heart’s-blood red. She reached out with her trembling hand and nudged her Kai toward her mother’s. The two motes fit together perfectly, creating a mostly smooth red and black crystal with one jagged gap.

Nadeen sobbed freely and without shame as her daughter calmly slashed her own wrist and held it over the vessel. Somehow, although they hadn’t planned it that way, the three women ended up holding one another’s hands as they bled their lives into the vessel, willing the spell it contained to rise up and spread over all the world.

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Vondeen’s Kai appeared. Pure white like Rho, Vondeen’s Kai slid easily into the space left between Nadeen’s and Brynna’s. The three Kai motes now formed one large, multicolored crystal, which Vondeen nudged into the spell vessel. The crystal drew the trapped elements out of the vessel, binding and combining with them, the power of the spell’s birth causing the copper to melt to a steaming pool.

One by one, the women’s grips faltered, dizziness overtaking them as the strength drained from their bodies with their blood.

And the spell they had completed rose up from the pool of molten metal and cracked gems and sank into the earth, making its way down to the Wellspring, the source of all magic. And changing everything.

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Inspection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by Josh Malerman All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Del Rey and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Hardback ISBN 978-1-5247-9699-0 Ebook ISBN 978-1-5247-9700-3 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper randomhousebooks.com 246897531 First Edition Title-page and part-title-page images: copyright © iStock.com /AGrigorjeva Book design by Victoria Wong

INSPECTION JOSH MALERMAN

d DEL REY

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PART ONE

THE ALPHABET BOYS

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Good Morning at the Parenthood!

N

o boy had ever failed an Inspection.

For this, J felt no anxiety as the steel door creaked open before him, as the faces of the Parenthood looked out, as the Inspectors stood against the far wall, each with a hand on the magnifying glasses hooked to their belts. J had done this every morning of his life, every morning he could remember, and, despite Q’s theories on likelihoods and probabilities (his idea that eventually someone must fail in order to justify a lifetime of Inspections), J felt no doubt, no dread, no fear.

“Enter, J,” Collins called. Collins, the stuffiest, oldest, burliest Inspector of all. The man smelled of old textbooks. His belly hung so far over his belt D joked he kept an Alphabet Boy hidden in there. That’s where we come from, D had said. But all the Alphabet Boys knew they came from the Orchard, having grown on the Living Trees.

“Come on, then,” Collins said. It was a wonder any words at all made it through the man’s bushy brown mustache.

J knew the Inspector did not speak for himself.

D.A.D. must’ve given the signal it was time to begin.

To the snickers of L, D, and Q behind him, J entered and removed his pajamas, folding them and placing them in a neat pile upon the steel end table by the Check-Up room door. As the door was closing behind J, D called, “Shoulda showered, J!” And J pointed at him, the Alphabet Boys’ gesture that meant, You’re a

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jerk, brother.

The door locked into place, his clothes nicely piled, J stepped to the pair of rubber footprints on the cold steel floor. Winter was close, arriving perhaps as soon as tomorrow. And while J enjoyed the Effigy Meet as much as his brothers, he liked to keep the cold outside. The Check-Up room was as frigid as any he knew in the Turret.

“Turn,” Inspector Collins said. He and Jeffrey observed from a distance, always the first step of the morning’s Inspection. The dogs breathed heavy behind the glass door beyond the men. J turned to his left. He heard the leather of D.A.D.’s red jacket stretching. The man, as of yet out of sight, must have crossed his arms or sat back in his chair.

Winter outside the Turret could be brutal. Some years were worse than others. J, nearing his thirteenth birthday along with his twenty-three brothers, had experienced twelve winters. And with each one, Professor Gulch warned the boys about depression. The sense of loneliness that came from being stuck inside a ten-story tower, when the Orchard and the Yard froze over, when even the pines looked too cold to survive.

Hysteria, J thought. He shook his head, trying to roll the idea out his ear. It was a word he didn’t like anywhere inside his head.

As if the four syllables had the same properties as Rotts and Moldus, Vees and Placasores. The very diseases the Inspectors searched him for now.

“Turn.”

Collins again. His gruff voice part and parcel of the Check-Up room. Like the sound of clacking dishes in the cafeteria. Or the choral voices of his brothers in the Body Hall.

“Cold,” J said, turning his back to the Inspectors, facing now the locked door.

It was often chilly in the Check-Up room; unseen breezes, as if the solid-steel walls were only an illusion, and the distorted reflections unstable drawing on the wind. J imagined a slit somewhere, a

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crack in those walls, allowing pre-winter inside. It was similar, J thought, to the veterinarian’s office in Lawrence Luxley’s book Dogs and Dog Days. The brilliant leisure writer had described the poor animals’ reactions so well: Unwelcoming, cold, it was as though Doctor Grand had intentionally made it so, so that the dogs understood the severity of their visits. And still, despite the inhospitable environs, the dogs understood that the room was good for them. That their lives depended on these regular visits. Some of them were even able to suppress their basest instincts . . . the ones that told them to run.

J had memorized all of Lawrence Luxley’s books. Many of the Alphabet Boys had.

“Turn.”

J did as he was told. Always had. The routine of the Inspections was as ingrained in his being as chewing before swallowing.

And with this third turn, he faced D.A.D. A thrill ran through him, as it always had, twelve years running, to see D.A.D. for the first time in the day.

The bright-red jacket and pants were like a warm fire in the cold Check-Up room. Or the sun coming up. “Did you sleep well, J?” D.A.D.’s voice. Always direct, always athletic. J wasn’t the only Alphabet Boy who equated the man’s voice with strength. Comfort. Security. Knowledge.

“I actually did not,” J said, his twelve-year-old voice an octave deeper than it was only a year ago. “I dreamt something terrible.”

“Is that right?” D.A.D.’s hazel eyes shone above his black beard, his black hair, too. J had black hair. Just like his D.A.D. “I’m intrigued. Tell me all about it.”

“Turn,” Collins said. And J turned to face the Inspectors and the dogs all over again.

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No longer facing D.A.D., the color red like a nosebleed out of the corner of his eye now, J recounted his unconscious struggle.

He’d been lost in a Yard four hundred times the size of the one he enjoyed every day. He described the horror of not being able to find his way back to the Turret.

“Lost?” D.A.D. echoed. The obvious interest in his voice was as clear to J as the subtle sound of his leather gloves folding around his pencil.

Yes, J told him, yes, he’d felt lost in the dream. He’d somehow strayed too far from the Turret and the Parenthood within. He couldn’t remember how exactly—the actual pines framing the Yard in were not present in this dream. But he was certainly very anxious to get back. He could hear his floor mates Q, D, and L calling from a distance but could not see the orange bricks of the tower.

He couldn’t make out the iron spires that framed the roof’s ledge like a lonely bottom row of teeth. Teeth J and the other Alphabet Boys had looked through many nights, having found the nerve to sneak up to the roof. Nor could he see the tallest of the spires, the single iron tooth that pointed to the sky like a fang. Gone were the finite acres of the Yard, the expanse of green lawn between himself and the Turret. So were the reflections in the many elongated windows of the many floors. In their stead was endless green grass.

And fog.

“Well, winter is upon us,” D.A.D. said. His voice was control.

Always. Direction. Solution. Order. “Couldn’t even see the fang, hmm? No sign of the Parenthood at all. No sign of home.”

J thought of the yellow door on the roof, visible all the way from the Yard below. He thought of the solid orange bricks and how, on a summer day, the Turret resembled a sunrise.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, looking to the silent faces of the Inspectors, who quietly fingered the magnifying glasses at their belts. J understood now, as a twelve-year-old boy, something he hadn’t at eleven: The Inspections didn’t begin when the Inspectors used their glasses. It began the second you walked through the

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door.

“You must have been so scared,” D.A.D. continued. His voice was fatherhood. Administration. Always. “But, tell me, did you eventually find the Turret before waking?”

J was quiet a moment. He scratched at his right elbow with his left hand. He yawned a second time.

Hysteria, he thought again. He actually made fists, as if to knock the thought out of his head. Professor Gulch taught psychology and often stressed the many ways a boy’s mind might turn on itself: mania, attention deficit, persecution, dissociation from reality, depression, and hysteria. For J, it had all sounded like distant impossibilities. Conditions to be studied for the purpose of study alone. Certainly J wasn’t afraid of one day experiencing theses states of mind himself. Yet here he was . . . twelve years old . . . and how else could he explain the new, unknown feelings he’d been having of late? What would Gulch call the sense of isolation, of being incomplete, when he looked out across the Yard, toward the entrance to the many rows of the Orchard? To where the Living Trees grew?

The boy recalled his childhood as though through a glass with residue of milk upon it. Unable to answer the simple question: Where do I come from?

Another Lawrence Luxley line. A real zinger, as Q would say.

But no, J thought, there in the Check-Up room. He wasn’t trying to answer that question at all. No boy had ever determined which of the cherry trees in the Orchard were the ones they had grown on. And as far as J knew, they were fine with that.

Weren’t they?

“No,” J finally said. “I never found my way home.” He heard the pencil against paper again, could easily imagine D.A.D.’s bright science eyes reading the words he wrote.

Like all the Alphabet Boys, J felt honored whenever D.A.D. noted what he said.

“And when you woke?” D.A.D. said. He didn’t need to finish

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his sentence. It was clear what he was asking for.

“I thought it was real. I thought I was still out there. Like I’d woken in the Yard, on my bed. I looked up, must have seen the ceiling, but I mistook it for more of that fog. It took me a minute to understand I was just in my bedroom.” He paused. Imagined D.A.D. stroking his black beard with a gloved hand. “This all happened moments ago, of course, as the call for Inspection woke me.”

“Of course,” D.A.D. said. “Now tell me,” he began, and J knew the question he was about to be asked, before D.A.D. asked it. “Do you have a theory on what prompted this dream?”

While J had experienced a wide range of emotions in this room before, he wasn’t prepared for the one he felt then.

Fear.

And where had it come from? Surely he knew this question was coming. Had he not had time to prepare for it? Was that it? Or was it something Q would call “deeper”?

Of course J knew the right answer to D.A.D.’s question. But for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel like telling the truth.

The shock of this realization didn’t strike him as hard as the one that immediately followed: a sense that he had decided to lie before entering this room and had simply not told himself about it.

Why? Why lie?

Because, just prior to going to bed the night before, long after his studies were done, J had seen someone crouched behind Mister Tree, the lone willow that denoted the end of the Yard and the beginning of the Orchard. It was a figure, he believed. Perhaps it was the way certain branches reached down to the forest floor as others united across it, but in J’s mind’s eye, the sight he’d seen was a person.

Crouched.

By Mister Tree.

At the time, J thought it was A or Z. He couldn’t say why.

And maybe that was good enough reason to lie, J told himself.

D.A.D. and the Inspectors would think he was crazy for suggesting

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such a thing!

A dead brother hiding behind a tree at night.

As if!

He looked from Jeffrey to Collins and thought maybe the two Inspectors could detect the hidden story. Jeffrey adjusted his cap.

Collins the gold sash that ran from over his shoulder to his waist. J looked to their belts, as if that glass could penetrate his very skin, could determine the purity of his heart. Even the shepherds started breathing heavy, and one, Max, tilted his head to the side, the way dogs do when they hear a curious sound.

Hysteria. J didn’t want to sound crazy. He didn’t want to be crazy. It was branches and shadows and nothing more. Surely.

Yet, lying was a betrayal of sorts. J knew that. Perhaps, as kids, he and D had fibbed about who spilled the cherry juice on the hall carpet. Maybe once or twice, as a toddler, he’d shaken his head no when asked if he had gone to the bathroom in his pants. But these brief (and harmless, J believed, despite what lying could lead to) fabrications were easily washed clean with a single slap of that redleathered hand. D.A.D. was very good at getting the real story out of his boys, as if he owned unseen shovels that always dug for the truth.

“J?” J thought of Lawrence Luxley’s book about soldiers, Great Horses. Thought about one soldier in particular, a general named Sam. Sam, Q had pointed out, dressed much like the Inspectors did.

A gray wool uniform that always looked too warm, no matter that the temperature seemed to gradually lower during an Inspection. A gray kepi. A gold sash and a brown belt. Black boots. All throughout Great Horses, Sam felt a similar feeling to the one J had now: Sam had information he wasn’t sure he should tell his troops. Luxley did a masterful job of highlighting this, a near twenty-page interior monologue where Sam weighed lying and lies and the right and wrong time to use them. In the end, he’d determined that no time was a good one and that his troops deserved to know the

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truth, even if it hurt them. But J read something deeper into that monologue than simply the merits of honesty: General Sam was scared. Not scared in the way the Parenthood had lovingly taught the Alphabet Boys to be afraid—that is, of themselves and what they were capable of doing to themselves if they did not adhere to the laws of the Turret. But rather . . . scared for himself.

“Why?’ he asked out loud. Both Inspectors tilted their heads like the dog had just done.

“What’s that?” D.A.D. asked.

Again, Professor Gulch’s lectures on psychology rose up like birds in J’s suddenly troubled mind.

Sam, J knew, was torn. J felt the same way, exposed beneath the bright fluorescent lights of the Check-Up room. After all, the harsh illumination showed every crevasse in the faces of the Inspectors, lines that told the boys how old these men truly were even if the sun in the Yard could not. And the reverse held true for the boys.

Their youth was never as obvious as when they removed their pajamas and folded them in a pile on the end table by the door. A boy could see much more of his body in here than when he was in the shower . . . revelations that often alarmed him. Holding out his arm, looking down at his belly, lifting a knee, a boy could almost make out the very tunnel-and-bridge system of veins and arteries traveling beneath his skin. A pimple, normal in the hall light, could be Placasores in the Check-Up room. The light hairs on the arms looked sewn into the skin. Knuckles and toes resembled old weathered leather. Belly buttons looked like holes. Fingernails like dead wood.

And sometimes J felt like he could see even more than the unflattering details of his body. Sometimes it felt like he could see motivations in the Check-Up room, fast fleeting glimpses of the truth, whatever that might be.

“J,” D.A.D. repeated. His voice was impatience. As loving as he was to his twenty-four boys, D.A.D. was without question the most impatient man within the Turret walls. “Come now. Out with it.

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You have a theory for what prompted this dream.”

J recoiled at the sudden volume of his voice, as if the man had silently transported across the cold floor, his lips less than an inch from J’s ear. “Tell me.”

It was true; J indeed had a theory for D.A.D. It’s what the Alphabet Boys were raised to do.

Think.

But J was thinking of A or Z, impossibly mobile, crouched and unmoving.

Tell him, J thought. But a deeper voice argued. One that sounded like it belonged to a wise brother.

A dead one?

“I’m thinking,” J said. “I want to articulate this the right way.”

He should’ve woken Q last night is what he should have done.

He’d considered doing it, of course. The boys on Floor 8 had long crept into one another’s rooms when a particularly powerful storm came through. Or a nightmare of equal measure. J had knocked on Q’s door as recently as a month ago, feeling sick and hoping Q had some soup remaining from dinner. But last night, despite wanting confirmation, he remained by his large window overlooking the Yard, a window almost as wide as the wall. He knew Q would have something intelligent to say, would perhaps even be able to prove the form as an unfortunate combination of branches, leaves, and moonlight. Because it was probable that what J had seen was no more than a combination of inert, non-sentient pieces. And yet . . .

J felt knowledge coming from those woods.

J felt life. Or something like it.

Felt like you were being watched is what it was.

“I think it’s because of the coming floor shift,” J said. “I’ve grown up with D and L and Q. To be moved, in the shuffle . . . I don’t know. I agree that it’s a good thing for the Parenthood to do, to promote fresh experiences, to forge new bonds, but it’s also a little . . .”

J felt cold leather upon his shoulder.

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“A little like being lost?” D.A.D. asked. Gently, D.A.D. turned J to face him. The bulb hung directly over the man’s head, and parts of his face were obscured by shadow. J thought how D.A.D.’s entire face looked to be covered in hair, as if the shadows cast were actually his beard growing, rising up to his shining eyes, climbing higher yet to his thick, fur-like pompadour.

“Yes.” J swallowed. “A lot like being lost.” He glanced past D.A.D., to the notepaper upon the steel desk. There was a lot of activity on the page. Many notes.

The Inspection begins, J thought again, the moment you walk through the door.

D.A.D. did not nod. He did not smile. He simply stared. It felt, to J, as if the man were using those shovels indeed, searching J’s mind for a better dream-prompt than the coming floor shift.

Then D.A.D.’s face changed, a little bit. Both eyes squinted and the right side of his mouth lifted. Just enough to suggest warmth.

“I get it,” D.A.D. said. “And I’m sure I’ll run into more stories like yours today, as we make our morning Inspections.” He did not pat J on the shoulder and then walk back to his desk. He did not say anything else on the topic at all. Instead, he remained, staring.

“I’ve just had a wonderful idea,” he said. “How about if I manufacture a means by which you can tell me your thoughts, your feelings, directly. Something we can share, just you and I. A notebook perhaps. You take notes and . . . deliver them to me. Why, we could be pen pals in that way.”

There was never a feeling so bright as being singled out by D.A.D. “That would be . . . really nice,” J said.

“It would, yes. Excellent.”

Yet, as D.A.D. continued to stare, continued to study, the usual list of horrifying diseases crossed J’s mind. The reason, the boys had long been told, for the Inspections in the first place.

Vees. Rotts. Placasores.

Was D.A.D. looking for these? And could he spot them in J’s

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eyes? Could he spot them in a notebook, too?

“Gentlemen,” D.A.D. said. He snapped his gloved fingers. A sound that was almost as familiar as the word Inspection itself, as it came shrill through the floor’s one steel-meshed speaker in the hall.

Collins and Jeffrey removed their magnifying glasses and advanced. D.A.D. retreated, but not all the way to his desk. J, turning back to face the Inspectors, could feel D.A.D. crowding him still, standing close behind with his arms crossed, his leather gloves gripping the sleeves of his red jacket. Both Collins and Jeffrey looked to D.A.D. with the same expression J imagined himself to be wearing. A tick past confusion. A few ticks shy of fear.

D.A.D. had never watched an Inspection from so close.

Why this one?

Hysteria, J thought, and decided it was the last time he was going to think it. It was only Mister Tree’s low-hanging branches.

Natural as cherries in the Orchard. And a dead brother crouching at midnight was . . . was . . . hysterical.

No. He was hiding nothing because there was nothing to hide.

“Go on,” D.A.D. said, his voice like flowing water over J’s shoulder. That water became a wave, and in that wave J imagined a figure crouched behind Mister Tree. “I want to make sure J understands that, in light of his bad dream, he is in the care of the Parenthood and that the Parenthood will always be here to protect him. By way of Inspection.” The Inspectors held their magnifying glasses up to J’s naked body. D.A.D. continued to talk. Close. Too close. “I want you to know, J, that if something like what happened in your dream should ever occur in waking life . . . impossible as that scenario is . . . you needn’t worry about finding your way back to the Turret.”

“Lift,” Collins said. J lifted both arms and the Inspectors brought the magnifying glasses to his armpits.

“If ever you stray so far, J, my J,” D.A.D. said, “the Parenthood will find you.”

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THE BURT REPORT: NOVEMBER 1, 2019 To Be Read upon Waking

I’ll cut right to it: If it’s order Richard cherishes most in what he himself has dubbed “the Delicate Years,” then this is simply not the time to shuffle the boys’ bedrooms. The simple take is this: Richard’s right—at age twelve the boys are treading very close to experiencing a degree of sexuality unparalleled thus far in their lives. It’s a phase that each of us adults knows well. And do we remember how vivid everything became a year or two past twelve? How frightening and exciting at once? Most important, how emotional?

(NOTE: Richard, I realize you loathe when I address you directly in my reports, but I cannot underscore this point enough: You must try to recall your own blossoming, for there is nothing quite as potent as male sexuality in bloom. Now multiply that by 24.) I would not be surprised to discover, reading today’s Inspection reports, that many of the boys are already expressing anxiety with the shuffle. Some might express anger. Some might even lie. My rationale for including the latter is not to instill fear into Richard and it is certainly not with a mind to belittle him, but rather . . . I think it’s true. Teenagers lie because teenagers aren’t yet aware that their warring emotions are natural. The Alphabet Boys are knocking on teenage’s door. And in an environment like the Parenthood, they don’t even have the example, usually set a year or two prior . . . by girls.

One of the many difficulties in keeping the knowledge of the existence of women from them. But, admittedly, one we have been prepared for.

Now, Richard’s logic for instituting the room shuffle at this time is sound. Rather than wander the halls of the Parenthood confused and restless, the boys might blame their growing anxiety on the

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move itself, therefore supplying them with an easily avoided focal point, by which they can carry on with their studies as Richard contends they will. This logic makes sense, yes, but only stands as a placeholder and eventually will fade out. And when the uneasiness with the shuffle does fade out . . . what then will the boys blame their sudden emotions on? I know Richard well enough to believe he has a second distraction planned . . . and a third . . . and what must be an entire deck of cards, already arranged, to be flipped, out into the light, new worries, new concerns, until the boys become visibly comfortable with the fresh feelings within them.

The Inspection reports will reveal when that day comes. These are the Delicate Years, indeed.

But if I’m going to admonish Richard for his use of distractions in what must be a futile effort in the end, I must be able to contribute to the conversation. I must be able to provide an alternate solution to how we, the Parenthood, deal with this sexual revolution (make no mistake, Richard; there will be a revolution waging in each and every one of our boys. Bloodshed on their own private battlefields). Here, then, are my five solutions: 1) Encourage the boys further in the arts. Of course we cannot reveal to them the nature of procreation. That’s fine; as the Constitution of the Parenthood clearly states, we are not in the business of creating biologists, and while genius can wear many coats, the Alphabet Boys are being raised to become the world’s greatest engineers, scientists, and mathematicians. ARTICLE ONE of the CONSTITUTION OF THE PARENTHOOD: GENIUS IS DISTRACTED BY THE OPPOSITE SEX. Richard’s entire experiment balances upon this initial article, the fountainhead of the Parenthood at large. So while other boys their age, or a couple of years older, spend two-thirds of their waking life attempting to court women (and/or simply impress them), the Alphabet Boys will be working three times as hard on the aforementioned subjects.

And yet . . . there must be an outlet. The arts could provide this. I do not think the leisure books penned by Lawrence Luxley are

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capable of satisfying this need. The arts, good arts, encouraging arts, can act as a more refined placeholder, a bucket, if you will, to catch the boys’ wayward sexuality as it comes pouring out their ears and eyes. Make no mistake, the boys will be changing, in paramount ways, to degrees not experienced in the Parenthood thus far.

X is a fine artist. G has shown signs. To me, Voices is simply not enough. As magnificent as that choir has become.

Painting an abstract picture, singing a non sequitur song . . . these may placate the unfathomable, focal-pointless feelings they will experience.

As always, more to come on this at a later date.

2) Attempt to influence their dreams. Subliminal hints throughout the Parenthood might cause the boys to dream of specific things, calming things, visions and images that could take the place of a sexuality they intentionally (on our part) know nothing about.

I’ll provide one example (but we can certainly discuss this in a much bigger way in person): Hang color photos of rolling hills or desert landscapes outside the door of the bedroom belonging to the most popular boy on each floor of the Turret. That is to say: Whichever room the boys have a tendency to congregate in most often, hang a landscape that resembles something of a naked body. Perhaps this tiny gift (on our part) will assuage (momentarily) the growing need each of them will be experiencing.

As is the case with all these posits: More on this at a later date.

3) Encourage the boys to increase their athletic endeavors. We do this already, but perhaps not to the degree we will need to. It is well understood (and well documented, of course) that Richard would prefer the boys to spend no more than 10 percent of their days in physical pursuit, but the Delicate Years not only announce the coming of an emotional deluge; the boys will need a physical outlet. Why not order a new athletic decree: ONE LAP OF THE CHERRY ORCHARD, which constitutes a 3.1-mile experience, the exact distance of the fabled 5K, which boys their age are no doubt running in other parts of the world. If this idea doesn’t suit

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Richard’s tastes, then I suggest purchasing treadmills and installing them in each of the boys’ bedrooms; who knows at what time of night they’ll feel the need to burn off some steam. My professional guess is ANY. ANY time of night. And any time of day.

4) Limit the physical portion of the Inspection and increase the emotional query. As I’ve stated above, the boys have much to gain through addressing the abstract feelings they will be (already are!) experiencing, and whether they make complete sense of their “new selves” doesn’t matter. As we adults already know: There is no such thing as “knowing yourself,” not wholly, but the attempts to do so along the way certainly ease the pain.

5) Reconsider Article Sixteen of the Constitution of the Parenthood in which Richard (forcibly, this is true) included the rule that states that, under no circumstances, no matter how trying the Delicate Years prove to be, will the Alphabet Boys undergo any form of castration. And yet . . . we’ve already lost A and Z to much more gruesome ends. Might it be time to consider removing the sexuality Richard so dreads is coming? NOTE: It’s a year or two away. Plan now.

In summation, Richard and the Parenthood would be well served to either nurture the coming barrage of sexuality through abstraction or to (pardon) nip it off at the bud. It is my professional opinion that a series of distractions (i.e., the floor shift) will only compress the issue, increasing the boys’ curiosity, their thirst for answers, until their behavior resembles nothing like we’ve seen before, or until they break the cardinal rules of the Parenthood and all of Richard’s dalliance and jurisprudence is lost.

Genius may be distracted by the opposite sex, but sexuality itself is not so easily distracted.

(Thank you for your time, Richard, and I look forward to speaking with you directly when next we meet in the Glasgow Tunnel.)

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1

It starts with a crack, a sputter, and a spark. The match hisses to life.

“Please,” comes the small voice behind me.

“It’s late, Wren,” I say. The fire chews on the wooden stem in my hand. I touch the match to each of the three candles gathered on the low chest by the window.

“It’s time for bed.”

With the candles all lit, I shake the match and the flame dies, leaving a trail of smoke that curls up against the darkened glass.

Everything seems different at night. Defined. Beyond the window, the world is full of shadows, all pressed together in harsh relief, somehow sharper than they ever were in daylight.

Sounds seem sharper, too, at night. A whistle. A crack. A child’s whisper.

“Just one more,” she pleads, hugging the covers close. I sigh, my back to my little sister, and run my fingers over the tops of the books stacked beside the candles. I feel myself bending.

“It can be a very short one,” she says.

My hand rests against an old green book as the wind hums against the house.

“All right.” I cannot deny my sister anything, it seems. “Just one,” I add, turning back to the bed.

Wren sighs happily against her pillow, and I slip down beside her.

The candles paint pictures of light on the walls of our room. I take a deep breath.

“The wind on the moors is a tricky thing,” I begin, and Wren’s small body sinks deeper into the bed. I imagine she is listening more to the highs and lows of my

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voice than the words themselves. We both know the words by heart anyway—I from my father, and Wren from me.

“Of every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village, the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast it into any shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to seem a thing of weight and breath and bone.

“The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived,” I say with a quiet smile, the way my father always did, because this is where the story starts.

“Long, long ago, the Near Witch lived in a small house on the farthest edge of the village, and she used to sing the hills to sleep.”

Wren pulls the covers up.

“She was very old and very young, depending on which way she turned her head, for no one knows the age of witches. The moor streams were her blood and the moor grass was her skin, and her smile was kind and sharp at once, like the moon in the black, black night…”

I hardly ever get to the end of the story. Soon enough Wren is a pile of blankets and quiet breath, shifting in her heavy dreams beside me. The three candles are still burning on the chest, leaning into one another, dripping and pooling on the wood.

Wren is afraid of the dark. I used to leave the candles lit all night, but she falls asleep so fast, and if she does wake, she often finds her way, eyes closed, into our mother’s room. Now I tend to stay up until she’s drifted off, and then blow the

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candles out. No need to waste them, or set the house on fire. I slide from the bed, my bare feet settling on the old wood floor.

When I reach the candles, my eyes wander down to the puddles of wax, dotted with tiny fingerprints where Wren likes to stand on her tiptoes and draw patterns in the pools while the wax is warm. I brush my own fingers over them absently, when something, a sliver of movement, draws my eyes up to the window. There’s nothing there. Outside, the night is still and streaked with silver threads of light, and the wind is breathing against the glass, a wobbling hum that causes the old wooden frame to groan.

My fingertips drift up from the wax to the windowsill, feeling the wind through the walls of our house. It’s getting stronger.

When I was small, the wind sang me lullabies. Lilting, humming, high-pitched things, filling the space around me so that even when all seemed quiet, it wasn’t. This is a wind I have lived with.

But tonight it’s different. As if there’s a new thread of music woven in, lower and sadder than the rest. Our house sits at the northern edge of the village of Near, and beyond the weathered glass the moor rolls away like a spool of fabric: hill after hill of wild grass, dotted by rocks, and a rare river or two. There is no end in sight, and the world seems painted in black and white, crisp and still. A few trees jut out of the earth amid the rocks and weeds, but even in this wind it is all strangely static. But I’d swear I saw— Again something moves.

This time my eyes are keen enough to catch it. At the edge of our yard, the invisible line where the village ends and the moor picks up, a shape moves against the painted night. A shadow twitches and steps forward, catching a slice of moonlight.

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I squint, pressing my hands against the cool glass. The shape is a body, but drawn too thin, like the wind is pulling at it, tugging slivers away. The moonlight cuts across the front of the form, over fabric and skin, a throat, a jaw, a cheekbone.

There are no strangers in the town of Near. I have seen every face a thousand times. But not this one.

The figure just stands there, looking out to the side. And yet, he is not all there. There is something in the way the cool blue-white moon lights his face that makes me think I could brush my fingers right through it. His form is smudged at the edges, blurring into the night on either side, as if he’s moving very fast, but it must be the weathered glass, because he’s not moving at all. He is just standing there, looking at nothing.

The candles flicker beside me, and on the moor, the wind picks up and the stranger’s body seems to ripple, fade. Before I know it, I am pressing myself against the window, reaching for the latch to throw it open, to speak, to call the form back, when he moves. He turns his face toward the house and the window, and toward me.

I catch my breath as the stranger’s eyes find mine. Eyes as dark as river stones and yet somehow shining, soaking up moonlight. Eyes that widen a fraction as they meet my own. A single, long, unblinking look. And then in an instant the stranger seems to break apart, a sharp gust of wind tears through, and the shutters slam closed against the glass.

The sound wakes Wren, who mumbles and peels her half-sleeping form from between the sheets, stumbling through the moonlit room. She doesn’t even see me standing at the window, staring at the wooden slats that have blotted out the stranger and the moor. I hear her pad across the threshold, slide open our mother’s door, and

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disappear within. The room is suddenly quiet. I pry the window open, the wood protesting as it drags against itself, and throw the shutters back.

The stranger is gone.

I feel like there should be a mark in the air where he was wiped away. But there is no trace. No matter how much I stare, there is nothing but trees, and rocks, and rolling hills.

I stare out at this empty landscape, and it seems impossible that I saw him, saw anyone. After all, there are no strangers in the town of Near. There haven’t been since long ago, before I was born, before the house was built, before the Council …And he didn’t even seem real, didn’t seem there. I rub my eyes, and realize I’ve been holding my breath.

I use the air to blow the candles out.

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2

“Lexi.”

The light creeps in between the sheets. I pull the blankets up, try to recreate the darkness, and find my mind wandering to the night before, to shadowed forms on the moonlit moor.

“Lexi,” my mother’s voice calls again, this time penetrating the cocoon of blankets. It burrows in beside me along with the morning light. The night-washed memory seems to bleed away.

From my nest I hear the thudding of feet on wood, followed by an airborne pause. I brace myself, staying perfectly still as the body catapults itself onto the bed.

Small fingers tap the blankets covering me.

“Lexi,” says a new voice, a higher-pitched version of my mother’s. “Get up now.” Still I feign sleep. “Lexi?”

I shoot my arms out, reaching through the linens for my sister, trapping her in a blanketed hug.

“Got you!” I call. Wren lets out a playful little cry. She wriggles free and I wrestle the blankets off. My dark hair nests around my face. I can feel it, the climbing tendrils already unruly, as Wren sits at the edge of the bed and laughs in her chirping way. Her hair is blond and stock straight. It never leaves the sides of her face, never shifts from her shoulders. I bury my fingers in it, try to mess it up, but she only laughs and shakes her head, and the hair settles, perfect and smooth again.

These are our morning rituals.

Wren hops off and wanders into the kitchen. I’m up and heading to the chest to fetch some clothes, when my eyes flick to the window, examining the glass and the

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morning beyond. The moor, with its tangled grass and scattered rocks, looks so soft and open, laid out in the light of day. It is a different world in the gray morning. I can’t help but wonder if what I saw last night was just a dream. If he was just a dream.

I touch my fingers to the glass to test the warmth of the day. It is the farthest edge of summer, that brief time where the days can be pleasant, even warm, or crisp and cold. The glass is cool, but my fingertips make only small halos of steam. I pull away.

I do my best to uncoil my hair from my forehead, and wrestle it back into a plait.

“Lexi!” my mother calls again. The bread must be ready.

I pull on a long simple dress, cinching the waist. What I wouldn’t give for pants. I’m fairly certain my father would have fallen for my mother if she wore britches and a hunting hat, even once she’d reached sixteen, marrying age. My age.

Marrying age, I scoff, eyeing a pair of girlish slippers despairingly. They’re pale green, thin-soled, and they make a very poor substitute for my father’s old leather boots.

I stare at my bare feet, marked by the miles they’ve walked across the rough moor. I’d rather stay here and deliver my mother’s bread, rather grow old and crooked like Magda and Dreska Thorne, than be bound up in skirts and slippers and married off to a village boy. I slide the slippers on.

I’m dressed, but can’t shake the feeling I’m missing something. I turn to the small wooden table by my bed and exhale, eyes finding my father’s knife sheathed on its dark leather strap, the handle worn from his grip. I like to place my narrow fingers in the impressions. It’s like I can feel his hand in mine. I used to wear it every day,

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until Otto’s glares got heavy enough, and even then I’d sometimes chance it. I must be feeling bold today, because my fingers close around the knife, and the weight of it feels good. I slip it around my waist like a belt, the guarded blade against my lower back, and feel safe again. Clothed.

“Lexi, come on!” my mother calls, and I wonder what on earth the hurry could be, since the morning loaves will cool before I ever reach the purchasers, but then a second voice reaches me through the walls, a low, tense muttering that tangles with my mother’s higher tone. Otto. The smell of slightly burned bread greets me as I enter the kitchen.

“Good morning,” I say, meeting the two pairs of eyes, one pale and tired, but unblinking, the other dark and furrowed. My uncle’s eyes are so much like my father’s—the same rich brown, framed by dark lashes—but where my father’s were always dancing, Otto’s are fenced by lines, always still. He hunches forward, his broad shoulders draped over his coffee.

I cross the room and kiss my mother’s cheek.

“About time,” says my uncle. Wren skips in behind me and throws her arms around his waist. He softens a fraction, running his hand lightly over her hair, and then she’s gone, a slip of fabric through the doorway. Otto turns his attention back to me, as if waiting for an answer, an explanation.

“What’s the rush?” I ask as my mother’s eyes flick to my waist and the leather strap against my dress, but she says nothing, only turns and glides over to the oven.

My mother’s feet rarely touch the ground. She’s not beautiful or charming, except in that way all mothers are to their daughters, but she just flows.

These, too, are morning rituals. My mother’s kiss. Otto’s appearance in our kitchen, regular enough that he could leave his shadow here. His stern eyes as he

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gives me a sweeping look, snagging on my father’s knife. I wait for him to comment on it, but he doesn’t.

“You’re here early, Otto,” I say, taking a slice of warm bread and a mug.

“Not early enough,” he says. “The whole town’s up and talking by now.”

“And why is that?” I ask, pouring tea from a kettle beside the hearth.

My mother turns to us, flour painted across her hands. “We need to go into town.”

“There’s a stranger,” Otto grunts into his cup. “Came through last night.”

I fumble the kettle, nearly scalding my hands.

“A stranger?” I ask, steadying the pot. So it wasn’t a dream or a phantom.

There was someone there.

“I want to know what he’s doing here,” adds my uncle.

“He’s still here?” I ask, struggling to keep the curiosity from flooding my voice. I take a sip of tea, burning my mouth. Otto offers a curt nod and drains his cup, and before I can bite my tongue, the questions bubble up.

“Where did he come from? Has anyone spoken to him?” I ask. “Where is he now?”

“Enough, Lexi.” Otto’s words cut through the warmth in the kitchen. “It’s all rumors right now. Too many voices chattering at once.” He’s changing before my eyes, straightening, shifting from my uncle into the village Protector, as if the title has its own mass and weight. “I don’t yet know for certain who the stranger is or where he’s from or who’s offered him shelter,” he adds. “But I mean to find out.”

So someone has offered him shelter. I bite my lip to swallow the smile. I bet I know who’s hiding the stranger. What I want to know is why. I gulp my too-hot tea, suffering the heat of it all the way down to my stomach, eager to escape. I want to see

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if I’m right. And if I am, I want to get there before my uncle. Otto pushes himself up from the table.

“You go on ahead,” I say, mustering an innocent smile.

Otto lets out a rough laugh. “I don’t think so. Not today.”

My face falls. “Why not?” I ask.

Otto’s brow lowers over his eyes. “I know what you want, Lexi. You want to go hunt for him yourself. I won’t have it.”

“What can I say? I am my father’s daughter.”

Otto nods grimly. “That much is clear as glass. Now go get ready. We’re all going into the village.”

I lift an eyebrow. “Am I not ready?”

Otto leans across the table slowly. His dark eyes bear down on mine as if he can bully me with a glance. But his looks are not as strong as my mother’s or my own, and they do not say nearly as many things. I stare calmly back, waiting for the last act of our morning rituals.

“Take that knife off. You look like a fool.”

I ignore him, finish my toast, and turn to my mother. “I’ll be in the yard when you two are ready.” Otto’s voice fills the space behind me as I leave. “ You should teach her properly, Amelia,” he mutters.

“Your brother saw fit to teach her his trade,” replies my mother, wrapping loaves of bread.

“It’s not right, Amelia, for a girl, and certainly not one her age, to be out and about with boys’ things. Don’t think I haven’t seen the boots. As bad as walking around barefoot. Has she been in town taking lessons? Helena Drake can stitch and cook and tend…” I can see him running his fingers through his dark hair, then

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immediately over his beard, tugging his face the way he always does when he’s frustrated. Not right. Not proper.

I’ve just begun to tune them out when Wren appears in the yard out of nowhere. She really is like a bird. Flying off at a blink. Alighting at another. Good thing she’s loud, or else her sudden appearances would be frightening.

“Where are we going?” she chirps, wrapping her arms around my waist.

“Into the village.”

“What for?” She lets go of my dress and leans back to peer up at me.

“To sell you,” I say, trying to keep a straight face. “Or maybe just to give you away.”

My smile cracks.

Wren frowns. “I don’t think that’s why.”

I sigh. The child may look like a bundle of light and joy, but she doesn’t scare nearly as easily as a five-year-old should. She looks up, past my head, and so do I. The clouds overhead are clustering, coming together the way they do each day. Like a pilgrimage—that’s the way my father put it. I slip free of my sister and turn away, toward Otto’s house, and beyond it, hidden by hills, the village. I want to get there as soon as possible and see if my hunch about the stranger is correct.

“Let’s go,” calls my uncle, my mother in tow. Otto eyes the knife at my waist one last time, but only grumbles and sets off down the path. I smile and follow.

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01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30S 31N

ACE Published by Berkley An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

Copyright Š 2018 by Leife Shallcross Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture.

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ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. ISBN: 9780440001775 An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.

First Edition: February 2019 Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Cover art by [TK] Cover design by [TK] Book design by Tiffany Estreicher This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Beast’s Heart Leife Shallcross ***This excerpt is from an advance, uncorrected proof***

A ce N e w Y or k

Copyright © 2018 by Leife Shallcross

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Ch a pt e r I

~

Enchantments and dreams: I suspect they are made of the

same stuff. They each beguile the mind and confuse the senses with wonder and strangeness so all that was familiar becomes freakish, and the most bizarre of things intimate and natural.

For the longest time after the curse fell, I did not know if I was a beast who dreamed of being a man, or a man who dreamed he was a beast.

There are moments I recall with clarity from that dark stretch of years in which I lost myself. In remembering them, though, the real is indistinguishable from the phantasm. My initial flight in abject terror from my home is as sharp and shapeless as a shard of glass. I know it happened. Everything since has unfolded from it. The details, though, are the stuff of nightmares.

I have tried to string my memories together to make some sense of those years. But living under such an enchantment is akin to being trapped in the grip of a restless slumber, fighting toward wakefulness and finding only dreams locked within dreams.

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The first moment I felt as though I were awake, in all those years, was the first time I saw Isabeau, standing in a fall of golden light, hesitating on my doorstep in her poor, patched gown. The sun flooded in, spilling across the flagstones and lighting up the very air around her. It was too bright for me. Her radiance dazzled my sleep-blighted eyes and I crept away to hide.

Everything before that has faded into shadow, or taken on the livid shimmer of a half-remembered delusion. The decades I spent haunting the wild, wild forests my fair lands had become, terrifying people and savaging any livestock foolish enough to stray within its bounds; the starvation years that inevitably followed, as the forest emptied of all living creatures save vermin and the occasional watchful raven; the shatteringly lonely term of my imprisonment in the home I eventually returned to when my misery finally crushed my rage and I remembered what I once had been.

If it was a living nightmare that took me into the forest, it was most certainly a dream that brought me out of it, and back to my ancestral home.

Since I had forgotten myself, my dreams had been wild, primal things, a reflection of the savagery that filled my days.

But, as the skin sunk deeper into the hollows between my ribs and my empty belly cleaved to my spine, I lost even the strength to run and hunt in my imagination. Now, each night found me limping through the endless, empty forest in my mind, searching and searching. I had no clear idea of what it was I searched for, except that, unlike during my waking hours, it was not food.

My memories of those bitter dreams are of hunting through dark, shadowy trees for something hidden in the heart of the forest; something I feared to discover, but I feared more I would never find, and would be lost to me forever.

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One grim night, as I was nearing the end of my strength, I fell asleep upon a bed of pine needles, curled against the rain soaking through the branches above. At once my mind found itself slinking between the measureless ranks of phantom trees.

As I dragged my paws forward, I saw ahead a glimmer of moonlight. I lifted my weary head. The moon never pierced the canopy of this unending nightmare.

As I looked, the pale gleam began to move. I followed. I was so far behind, and so weak and sore of foot, it was all I could do to keep the errant moonbeam in sight. But eventually, I began to draw closer and I could see I was following a woman. She was dressed in the most exquisite finery, such as would not be out of place at the royal court, and she moved as lightly through the trees as if she were stepping across a dance floor. Her pale skirts were long and trailing, and shone in the gloom. She wore a tall, old-fashioned, horned headdress, from which a gossamer veil floated, dissolving behind her into drifting motes of silver light that sunk away into the dark soil of the forest path. She was a vision so rich and rare, I could not help but follow along behind.

I soon realized we were walking upon a road that wound through the forest. It was ancient and much degraded, its cobbles displaced by roots and covered by moss. Indeed, parts of it were in danger of being entirely reclaimed by the creeping wood.

Eventually she stopped ahead of me. I came as close as I dared. She was standing before a ruined gate. It had once been very grand indeed, but now ivy twisted through its rusted ironwork, and the stone columns supporting it were crumbling and broken. I did not like to look at the gate; to do so made me feel miserable and afraid. So instead, I looked at her.

Now I had come upon her, I saw her dress was not, as I had thought, a sumptuous court gown of satin and brocade. Up

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close, I could see it was constructed of clotted cobweb and the velvet wings of dead moths. It was not embroidered with pearls and diamonds, but decorated with the tiny bones of small animals and glittering with spiders’ eyes. The veil was no veil, but a drifting cloud of tiny insects glimmering with their own milky iridescence. I hunched down, my hackles rising in fear, and she turned to look at me.

I could not see her expression, but her eyes gleamed in the darkness, green as a cat’s. Terrified, I hid my face.

When I looked again, the gate was open and she was some distance away from me, walking between the cracked columns.

I did not want to put my paws through that gate, but as my eyes followed her, my gaze fell upon the dark, jagged shape of a ruined building far ahead. Something about its lightless, misshapen hulk called to me and I crept forward.

I lost sight of the woman for some minutes, then, as I slunk along the overgrown path, I spied her again. She was no longer ahead of me, but walking far away, to the side of the ruin ahead.

I hesitated, unsure if I should follow her, or my growing compulsion to see what lay amid the broken walls. By the light of the ghostly glimmer she cast about herself, I saw her walk beneath an archway in a tall hedge. I could see nothing but trees beyond.

My heart quailed. What could lie through that portal, but the forest? I did not want to go back there. I turned away from the fading smudge of light and started again toward the shattered building looming distantly against the night sky.

The path twisted to and fro among strange, dark shapes vastly different to any forest tree I had seen, and yet eerily familiar. With every step I took, a sense of creeping unease grew in my breast. Then the path made another twist and before me lay the ruined chateau I had seen from the gate.

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Within its roofless, crumbling walls, burning brands illuminated a scene of the basest debauchery. Bodies writhed and danced and crawled around the figure of a man, who stood among them, his shirt open and his hair wild. In his hand he held a bottle glinting amber in the firelight. His eyes shone with a mad light, and his face was gray with the ravages of illness.

Pain lanced through my heart.

I knew him. I hated him. The anger I thought had died erupted into incandescence within me and I sprang forward, snarling.

But my claws and teeth met with nothing. I crashed heavily upon the stone floor and lay, writhing and alone, amid the cold, dark ruin of the house in which I had been raised.

Memories came flooding back. A confused and bitter cacophony, with rage and hatred at its heart. I threw back my head to howl, but the sound that came out was a human scream.

I jerked awake.

I was in the forest. My hairy paws scrabbled in the sodden mulch as I heaved myself upright.

Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

I was still a broken, starving beast—but I remembered now.

I remembered what I had been, and how I had been transformed.

I remembered the Fairy’s cold, green eyes. Let all who look upon you see the nature of the heart beating in your breast, was the curse she had laid upon me. And only now, with my arrogance crushed and my rage exhausted, could I begin to see the truth of her words.

But what good was any of it now? I was alone and close to death.

I hung my head. At my feet, a pale, wet rock glistened in the darkness. It was a curious, regular shape. Not far from it lay another, so similar as to be identical. I looked around. A short

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distance away, the rain had washed a film of dirt and mulch from the ragged edge of a ruined, cobbled road. My hackles rose as fear gripped me.

Was I still dreaming? I was so sure I was awake.

I stepped forward, sniffing. There was an odd tang in the air.

It took me a few moments to place the scent. Magic. I don’t know how I knew it, but I realized now the scent had pervaded the forest as long as I had lived in it. Until now, however, the magic had been old and settled. This was fresh and new.

With sudden clarity, I knew I was not dreaming. The road was real, and I knew where it would take me, if I chose to follow it.

I could, of course, choose not to. I could slink away into the forest and ignore it. Without a doubt, that would have spelled my death. I did not feel ready to take the path. I did not feel ready to return. But with death as the alternative, my formless fears were no longer of any consequence.

Not knowing what else to do, I stepped onto the path and began to follow it home.

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Ch a pt e r I I

~

My return was a bleak event. The gates were rusted open, the

gardens overgrown and tangled. As I came to the chateau I saw crumbled walls and broken windows and exposed beams like shattered ribs where the roof had fallen in. The elements, the animals and insects had all found their way inside. The furniture, fine tapestries and luxurious carpets were rotting away.

Expensive baubles had been scattered and broken and the colors of valuable paintings washed away by rain. If I had not known, I would never have recognized my beautiful home. But I knew now. The moment I put my hairy paws through the gates, I knew it all again.

That night I crept into the entrance hall, through the drifts of decaying leaves and piles of rubble. My arrival disturbed a veritable horde of verminous beetles, black and glittering, that fled at my approach, scuttling away into cracks in the broken stonework. I lay down before the fireplace. I could not light a fire, but I had my accursed fur. Weary and sorrowful beyond belief, I followed the example of the dogs I had owned, many

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years before, and laid my great, shaggy head upon my paws and fell asleep.

When I awoke—seemingly but a moment after I had closed my

eyes—it had all changed.

It was the fire that woke me. The instant I felt its glow on my flank and heard the quick snap of wood, I was roused. At the sight of the flames dancing brightly in the grate, I sprang violently back, hurtling into a chair. I knocked it over, scrambled up and backed away. The chair was upholstered in wine-colored velvet and familiar to me. It had been a favorite station by the fire once, long ago. Warily I looked about and saw my hall as I remembered it. But to my beast’s nostrils, the air stank of magic, recently invoked.

As I stared around myself, a movement caught my eye. An earwig crawled over the velvet brocade arm of the fallen chair and disappeared. Then, before my eyes, the chair righted itself and moved back into place. I had been a beast for many years and had only just remembered myself. For longer than I had lived as a man I had let wild instinct govern me, and it governed me still.

I fled. The great doors were shut fast, so I bolted up the grand staircase, only to be halted at the halfway landing. Here was an elaborate Venetian mirror; taller than a man, it dominated the landing where the staircase branched. The sight of myself in this mirror brought me up hard. I was frozen. I could not run. Not from myself.

I was no pretty creature. Not built like a wolf or a bear or a lion; yet, a little of each. I had the lion’s mane—a mass of dark, dark hair growing about my face and neck and over my shoulders. I was massive, my paws armed with long, sharp talons I

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could never sheathe, and crowning my head were a pair of gnarled and twisted horns. But my eyes—oh, my eyes! They were unchanged; as blue and human as the day the curse had been laid. No wonder people ran in terror from me. To recognize my eyes and know the horror and corruption I had become—how they must have feared me.

Now my own eyes held me. I stared into them, they stared into me. Around them, instead of a nobleman with elegantly clipped hair and clothes of velvet and satin, was a beast with tangled, matted fur and slavering jaws, groveling on all four feet.

After the first shocked moment of realization, such despair and anger surged within my monstrous breast that, snarling, I hurled myself at the mirror.

I met the cold, implacable glass with such force it cracked in two. I fell back. What I saw only enraged me further. My hackles rose. Each half now reflected back to me my image. Two sets of shocked, blue eyes now stared at me from within the broken frame. I gave a roar and threw myself forward again, one thought in my brain: No mirrors. I will not abide any mirrors.

Again and again I attacked that great slab of mocking, silvered glass. Each time it cracked, a new set of glaring, human eyes would be there, staring out from the abomination of my face. I tore at it with my claws and blindly pounded my horns against its surface. Shards of glass began to fall around me, smashing apart on the marble floor. Finally, the entire thing shattered, cascading to the floor in a thousand fragments. I stood on my four feet, swaying with exhaustion, surveying the destruction I had wrought. It was enough. Nowhere could I see a sliver large enough to show me what I had become.

What little strength I had left now deserted me. I collapsed, exhausted from my frenzy and torn and bleeding from my work.

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*

* *

When I awoke the next morning, I was sprawled upon the bed I had used when I was human. The room was hung with cobwebs and thick with dust, but the dirt and tangles had been combed from my fur, the insidious splinters of glass removed and my gashes dressed and bound.

On a chest at the foot of the bed was a tray upon which sat a most unappetizing breakfast. Stale bread, withered fruit and a thin, greasy gruel. Still, I was hungry enough to eat anything. A tarnished spoon lay beside the food: a utensil I had no hope of being able to use. In bitter humiliation I ate by thrusting my blunt nose into the middle of the meal, tearing at the bread and gulping down the gruel as though I were a dog.

The very act of eating exhausted me, but the room was so cold and drear, I could not bear to stay. I slunk out the door and down the corridor, back toward the entrance hall in search of the fire that had roused me last night. Despite the ministrations of whoever had tended my wounds, I hurt all over. A deep cut on one of my hind feet reopened, leaking blood through the linen bandage and leaving a trail of crimson paw prints across the bare stone. At the great staircase I stopped, wary of subjecting my lacerated paws to the gauntlet of broken glass I had created in my distemper. But I could not see even the tiniest glittering fragment amid the ruins of the rotting carpet and dead leaves clogging the stairs. The only remaining evidence of the existence of the great glass was its ghostly outline on the wall.

I limped cautiously down the stairs, sniffing at the air, trying to catch the scent of whoever had cared for me last night and left me food this morning. I had no coherent thoughts in my head as to what I would do when I met them, just an instinctive

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yearning for warmth and more food. All I could smell, however, were the myriad, musty odors of decay underpinned by the nowfamiliar tang of newly awakened magic. I breathed deeper. I could not even detect the smell of wood smoke. As I reached the bottom of the staircase, the reason for this strange absence became apparent: the hearth was empty. Not just cold, but utterly bare. No charred remains of last night’s fire; not even the telltale, ashy coating of a hearth swept clean. Indeed, the soot stains in the fireplace were so faded it looked as though it had not been used for years. There was nothing here but cold stone and mildew.

Not far away was a pile of weathered sticks and disintegrating fabric. I crept forward and sniffed at it: woodworm and the faintest vestige of mouse. A few stray strands of horsehair quivered in a draft. My chair. Or, more correctly, the remains of it.

The skin across my shoulders prickled with unease. Did I dream the fire and the chair? I was so sure I had not. I nosed around the floor and found one of my own bloodied paw prints. How could I have possibly dreamed up broken glass that cut me?

A new scent reached me, the merest thread of warmth in the vast, gray chill of the abandoned chateau. I turned to follow it.

I padded lamely up the stairs, along halls, until I came to a long, empty gallery. It was so desolate I did not immediately realize where I was. Shutters had fallen away from a series of large windows that showed countless gaps where the panes had cracked and shattered. Part of the roof had collapsed and, beneath the rubble that had descended from the breach, the floor was sagging dangerously. It was not until I saw the splintered frames, torn canvases and warped boards still adorning the decrepit walls that I recognized this was the gallery in which had hung portraits of my family, dating back many generations. I had little

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care for these ruined heirlooms now. I was exhausted and in pain and entirely focussed on tracking the tiny point of heat I had detected. The scent of it was not wood smoke, but something else that spoke of warmth and light and comfort; something I had known in another life. Memory tugged at my brain like a snarl in my fur, but I could not place it. I picked my way along the gallery beneath my obliterated ancestry, following the enigmatic trace. At last I saw a tiny winking light.

Of course. Candle wax.

Visions of tall tapers burning in silvered candelabra washed through my brain; of people and dinners and dancing and church, and all the things candles meant to me once upon a time.

Instinctively I looked all around for the person who must have placed the single, jewel-like light, twinkling in a glass upon a shelf. There was no one about.

Then I saw it.

Amid all the destruction wrought by time and neglect, one portrait remained untouched. It hung above the candle, the rich gilt of its frame intact and reflecting ruddy glints. It was a portrait of a woman of middle years in a russet brocade gown with a starched ruff, smiling gently, if a little sadly, down upon me.

One hand rested upon a ruby droplet depending from a strand of pearls about her neck, the other clasped a posy of wild flowers in her lap; white daisies, red carnations, forget-me-nots, celandine and purple fritillaries. The strength left my legs and I sank to the floor, staring up her. Every line of her kind face was intimately familiar. My heart broke open and memories spilled through me, sweet and piercing.

Grand-mère.

A miserable whine rose in my throat. Why must I see her now? I’d never felt my wretchedness more keenly. She was the

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only mother I had known, for mine had died when I was very small. She had understood all too well the failings of her son, my father; it was her life’s sorrow. She had doted upon me, perhaps hoping I might choose a better path. But look at me now, I thought, bitterness stopping my breath as though I had swallowed thorns.

I dragged myself up, too ashamed to remain here under the benediction of her painted gaze. But as I took a faltering step I heard the ghost of her voice again. Chéri, you must be the best man you know how to be. I stumbled. She had said this to me so often in the last years of her life, always with a gentle touch and a smile, trusting me to choose the right path and not lose myself to the course of corruption chosen by my father. I hung my head, staring at my bandaged, bleeding paws.

I am not a man.

Yet someone had cared for me. Had left me food. And however pitiful that meal had been, it had been a human meal. I twisted to stare back at the candle. Someone else was here in this ruined chateau and whoever it was knew me for being more than just a beast. Perhaps they could help me . . . I limped off in search of my mysterious benefactor.

I found no one.

It’s true; I was ill and injured and could move but slowly. It would not have been a difficult task to avoid me. Even so, if there had been someone to find, eventually I must have discovered some sign of them. But there was no one. I searched for days.

Weeks, even. Every night I returned to my dreary room and every morning a meal was waiting for me beside the bed. Sometimes there was even a meager fire burning in the hearth, or in the hearth of the entrance hall. At long last I came to the uncomfortable realization I was entirely alone and that whatever

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food or fire or light appeared in this desolate place was a result of the magic that seemed to have sunk indelibly into the very walls. There was no one to help me. If there was to be any change in my pitiable condition, I would need to work it myself.

The morning after this epiphany, as I was finishing my paltry meal, a basin of steaming water appeared on a table nearby.

I cannot describe how wholly disconcerting this was. It simply materialized out of nothing. I flung myself away from it, snarling. When it did nothing more remarkable than send up gentle curls of scented steam, I gathered my courage to investigate it.

Circling the table upon which it stood, I recalled the way my fireside chair had picked itself up after I knocked it over the night I arrived. Indeed, the water smelled of chamomile and pine and the faintest whiff of magic. I knew what it was for. I remembered it from my previous life. It was as though, now I had accepted any change in my situation was mine to make, the magic inhabiting this place was offering me a challenge.

I could only reach it by standing on my hind legs and my only means of cleaning my face was to submerge it in the water and shake it about. By this method I ended up with half of the basin’s contents up my nose and the other half down my front.

Still, most beasts will wash themselves with their own tongue, and I had done it with a bowl of hot water. An unfamiliar feeling of warmth gathered in my chest. It caught me by surprise when at last I recognized the foreign sensation for what it was. Pride, I realized wonderingly. I honestly could not have said when I last did something I felt proud of. This was such a simple thing, it seemed ridiculous. But it certainly wasn’t the last simple thing to challenge me.

Thus began the process by which I learned anew how to be a man. At the start, it was almost as miserable as the existence I

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had just escaped. Many, many times I tore outside and threw my body at the iron gates, trying to force them open so I could run back into the forest and be a beast once more. It seemed, however, that having accepted the house’s hospitality in my darkest hour, I would not be permitted to return to oblivion.

The house was not the crumbling ruin I had first encountered on my return, but it was little better. It was rank with neglect and inhabited by every pestilential creature imaginable.

The strange forces that had cared for me and brought me food on my return were erratic. One day I might find a feast awaiting me in the entrance hall, another I would be served nothing but rancid cheese and spoiled meat. There were occasions when I did not eat for several days together. Even so, with the relics of my old life constantly before me, I began to try to reclaim what dregs of it I could.

And it seemed to me the magic now pervading my house rewarded my efforts toward this impossible goal.

Over time, the rooms I used most improved and became comfortable. The invisible servants inhabiting my house became more reliable. I found it easier to pretend I was a man. I would shake off the drowsiness that dogged me and walk around on two legs. I would dress in a fine linen shirt and velvet doublet and dine at the table.

It was not easy. Eating with any appearance of civility was ever difficult; that never changed. Always I had to allow the magic to help me dress, or the velvet doublets I wore became torn and the fine linen ruffles at my wrists frayed and unraveled.

I found it almost impossible to draw on my own boots, even after my hind feet grew more human in shape. Yet it was of immediate concern to me that, in every possible respect, I appear as noble as I had been born. I knew all the conventions of civil-

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ity; they had been ingrained in me as I grew. I had practiced them in empty pride, a mere exercise of righteousness. But now, in absolute solitude, I made them the mark of my humanity.

Progress was achingly slow and each milestone I achieved was a thing to be treasured. It took years before I could walk unaided down the grand staircase on my hind legs, and many more hours of effort before I could do it easily. And, of course, some conquests cost me more than simple physical exertion.

There was the day, before ever I thought to stagger about on two legs like a parody of a lady’s lap dog begging for treats, when I wandered into the room that had once been my study. It was a decrepit mess. Not wholly derelict, perhaps, but close. The curtains over the windows hung in rotten rags, mildew bloomed across the walls and the books piled upon the desk had swollen with damp and burst their spines. Several had come apart entirely and spilled their pages across the floor. I looked down at the water-spotted piece of paper at my feet . . . and discovered I could read.

Why should I have been so surprised? It was something I would not have thought twice about in my previous life. But here I was creeping about on four paws, my body clothed in nothing but coarse fur, looking down at words scrawled across a page and reading. I think that was the first time I knew for certain I was no mere beast. I stood there, transfixed by those faded words, trembling with the import of this revelation. I could read!

What beast can read?

The onslaught of grief this presaged, as I realized anew what had been done to me, was difficult to weather. I finally understood what was lost to me and what must lie ahead. But, even so, after that, the study became a favorite haunt of mine. Even before I could sit in an armchair, I would sprawl on that thread-

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bare hearth rug, a book open beneath my animal paws, my phantom servants turning the pages as I found refuge from my unbearable existence in the words and knowledge of other men and women that those precious volumes contained.

Another incident stands out in my mind. On this occasion I was prowling through the upstairs portion of my house, shambling along on two legs as elegantly as any bear, when I passed a gallery that had once been used by the men of my family as a sort of salle d’armes. Every other time I passed it, it had been a shell of its former self, reduced to warped floorboards and dampstreaked walls. But on this day the door was open and through it I glimpsed an apparent mirage: the room, set up as it always had been, as neat and tidy and impeccably maintained as if my fencing-master had only just that moment stepped out to run some errand.

What was this? Why this room? Why now? The hallway I stood in was as rank and neglected as ever. But inside the gallery . . .

There were the leather dummies, set at one end of the room, presided over by a wooden manikin with one outthrust arm surmounted by a battered saber. There were the hooks upon which hung thick leather jerkins and a heavy canvas jacket. There was the rack of shining weapons, some among them intimately familiar. I crept forward, hardly daring to breathe, feeling as though I were trespassing on forbidden ground. Why should this disconcert me so? I shook my head to clear the anxious buzzing in my ears.

My heartbeat was racing itself, tripping against my ribs.

The art of fencing. Surely the mark of a civilized man. I had known how to handle a blade. I had been very good at it. I had learned and practiced and honed my skill in this very room. Was this a sign? If I took up my sword and proved my skill, would I likewise prove my manhood? Would I be free of this stooping,

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hulking, hateful form? I edged closer to the rack of steel. There.

That one! My own saber rested there, gleaming.

I reached out one beastly paw and wrapped it around the hilt, lifting it from its wooden rest. At once I was assailed by memories, rushing through me as though a river had suddenly burst through the walls and was carrying me away. My nostrils filled with the remembered stink of blood and smoke and burning steel. For a moment it seemed my paws and blade were drenched in scarlet. Screams of pain and cries of “Beast!” echoed in my ears. Memories of a wall of spears and flaming torches rising up before me sent me stumbling to my knees. I lost my grip on my blade and it clattered to the floor.

Slowly the darkness obscuring my vision began to clear and I could see the whitewashed walls of the salle d’armes again. I gasped in clean, untainted air.

“I am not a beast,” I croaked in protest, the sting of tears rising to blot out the room anew.

“Not a beast,” I said again.

And then I heard it.

Not the suffocating silence that usually filled these lonely halls, but the words I had spoken to break it. Words. No inarticulate whine or anguished howl, but human speech. My first words in a century, or perhaps more. If I had not already been on my knees, I probably would have fallen then.

It was this, more than anything else, that taught me to keep striving to regain those things I had thought lost. To keep trying to walk upright, though I felt as though I were performing a foolish trick for an unresponsive audience. To do what I could to regain my skill in fencing, though at the start my ungainly paws could barely grasp the hilt. To take up what other pursuits I remembered from my life before, though my clumsiness made

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me grind my teeth and my solitude mocked me at every turn.

And to read aloud a little, every day, so that my voice might strengthen and lose its beastly growl, and I might hear something to break that frozen silence.

Still, there were times when I raged about the house, or ran to the rooftops to howl curses at the night-time skies with their cold stars. For, as I tried vainly to regain my humanity, I began to feel, more and more keenly with each passing year, each day and hour, the one basic need that makes every person truly human.

My invisible servants were by no means physical beings.

They did as I bid them, but aside from that, talking to them was like talking to the wind. There were no replies. I could still feel the forest around me, and no one ever came into it now. Even though I no longer haunted its shadowy ways and mysterious groves, the miasma of my anger remained. I had passed into myth, but the taboo persisted.

My sorrow was loneliness. My craving was for human company. Often I pondered the bitter irony of my situation. Before, I had been a man locked in a constant struggle with the monster within. But the Fairy had torn me open; exposed my most shameful secret to the world and ensured I would only ever be recognized for what I had tried to hide.

Despite this, when the chance came to see and speak to another human being, I grasped it without thinking twice.

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All My Colors Print edition ISBN: 9781785658570 E-book edition ISBN: 9781785658587 Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP www.titanbooks.com First edition: April 2019 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental. Š 2019 David Quantick No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States.

ONE It was a Saturday night in March of 1979 in DeKalb, Illinois, and Todd Milstead was being an asshole. Not that Todd Milstead wasn’t being an asshole every night of the week, but this particular night he was giving free rein to his inner dickhead. All the pointers had been in place from the off: there was booze, there were other writers present (although “writers” was pushing it), and Todd’s wife Janis had made the dinner and taken the coats, so Todd reckoned everyone there was on his turf as well as his dime (although Janis’ money from her late dad—who also gave them the house—had paid for the dinner).

So, Saturday night at the Milsteads’. Janis, in her best dress and her hair done nicely because even when there was no point, Janis made the effort. And Todd, looking like a youngish Peter Fonda, with a strong manly chin and twinkling masculine eyes and hair just the daring side of long, smoking a lot of cigarettes—he’d wanted a pipe, but 9

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Janis kept laughing whenever Todd affected a stout briar and if there was one thing Todd couldn’t abide, it was being laughed at—and holding a big tumbler of Scotch, because he liked the feel of the heavy square glass and because Scotch was a real drink.

And that was Saturday night at the Milsteads’; Janis bringing in the bowls and the plates and Todd holding forth.

On Kissinger, on Farrah Fawcett-Majors, on Superman, on Carter, and on books. Always on books. The men who called themselves writers and met at Todd’s on a Saturday night were a mixed bunch in the way the people crammed into an elevator that is plunging ten floors into a basement are a mixed bunch. They had one thing ostensibly in common— the writing, the being trapped in a falling elevator—but what they really had in common was that they were a totally disparate bunch of losers all screaming, “Get me out of this elevator!” And nobody was listening. Especially not Todd.

Todd never listened. Somebody—Joe Hines, one of the people trapped in Todd’s elevator—once said that the only way you could get Todd to listen would be if you taught a mirror to talk, and even then, Todd’s reflection wouldn’t be able to get a word in because Todd would be lecturing it on the best way to be a reflection.

Not that Joe ever said this to Todd. Nobody ever said anything to Todd. As another one of the gang, Mike Firenti, said, you went to Todd’s for the booze and food and not the monologue, but the monologue was the price of admission.

None of Todd’s friends, if friends was the word, had enough money to indulge in blowouts of their own.

Joe’s normal experience of a Saturday night was two beers 10

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in front of the TV and a desultory jack-off, while Mike’s was slightly better in that he could go to his sister’s and drink his brother-in-law’s beer while his brother-in-law talked about ice hockey, a game Mike didn’t even know existed until his sister got engaged. Billy Cairns was worse off. Billy had nearly been something in the 1960s: he’d had some stories printed in a science-fiction magazine, and he’d started a novel, but then the mag went bust and the novel got lost somehow and Billy started drinking. Billy spent his nights in front of the TV staring at reruns of Star Trek and sometimes his breath smelled of cat food. Saturday night at Todd’s was better than Saturday night not at Todd’s. There was food, and booze, and Janis, who looked great in a mail order catalogue dress, and sometimes there was even, when Todd was feeling indulgent or had just passed out from booze, conversation.

And sometimes there was Sara Hotchkiss. Sara Hotchkiss was married to Terry Hotchkiss. Terry managed a supermarket outside town, and the times he attended Todd’s parties his contributions were minimal. This was because Terry liked to talk about the supermarket to the exclusion of all else, and on occasion had been known to get heated about marrows.

For this reason and others, Sara generally arranged for Terry to drop her off outside the Milsteads’ house and collect her later, an arrangement which suited nearly everyone. (Sara didn’t come to Todd’s gatherings every week, because Terry liked her to entertain his suppliers when they came over for dinner and because she had a feeling that Janis didn’t like her. She’d be at the Milsteads’, and Janis would pass her the dip, and she’d look at Janis and know that Janis knew, and feel contempt for Janis for not smashing her face into the 11

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dip, and contempt for herself for not smashing her own face into the dip. But Janis never said anything and Sara never said anything and it was pretty good dip.)

So, it was a Saturday night in March of 1979 in DeKalb, Illinois, and ‘Heart Of Glass’ by Blondie was number one in America, and Terry Hotchkiss was entertaining clients, so it was just Joe, Mike, and Billy Cairns, and Janis. And Todd Milstead, who was being an asshole.

“Bullshit!” Todd shouted. “Bullshit!”

Janis moved his glass to a side table. Todd reached down and picked it up again. “That is such bullshit!” he said before swigging the whiskey down in one sloppy gulp. He put the glass down, making a visible dent in the table.

“All I said,” protested Joe Hines, “was that Mailer’s day is over.”

“Over?” mocked Todd, whose knowledge of Norman Mailer was overshadowed by his fondness for any aggressive writer who liked boxing and his own penis. “Mailer’s never had his day. His day hasn’t even begun!”

“It’s been years since Mailer wrote anything decent,” said Mike. “That piece in America magazine…”

Todd Milstead actually sneered. It was a real Victorian sneer, the kind that went best with a pair of carelessly twisted mustachios. Todd’s sneer said, I am going to demolish you for that opinion. It also said, because for once I know what I’m talking about.

“Norman Mailer has been an American institution for so long that he’s starting to come over like another kind of American institution,” said Todd with his head tilted back and his eyes half shut.

“Oh shit, he’s quoting. I love it when he does this,” said 12

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Joe, omitting the second part of his thought, which was: “to someone else.”

“Said institution being the electric chair,” intoned Todd, “into which some of us would rather be strapped than endure another line of Mailer’s unfortunately deathless prose…”

He stopped. “Is that the piece you mean?”

“I guess so,” said Mike. “But that’s not the part I mean.

I was referring to the quote from Mailer himself where he says—” “Writing books is the nearest men come to childbirth—that quote?” said Todd. “I am the embodiment of the American novel—that quote? Tell me which one you mean. Because,” and Todd tapped his forehead, “I got ’em all in here.”

Janis, returning to collect some cigarette-butt-filled plates, made a mental note. If Todd was starting to boast about his powers of memory, that meant the evening was either going to wind down or get nasty. Not that the two were connected— although Todd Milstead’s tendency to use his eidetic memory as a weapon could be a fight starter—but when Todd started boasting, he also started getting personal. She removed the more fragile glasses from the room.

“I can’t remember ’em all like you can,” said Mike.

“Yeah, Todd,” said Joe. “You have to give us mere mortals some leeway here.”

Todd, like all egoists, was incapable of extracting irony from anything that resembled praise. He got up and nodded.

“Time for a piss,” he said. “Mailer!” he added scornfully, and left the room.

There was some silence. The three men drank their decent whiskey.

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“You know,” said Billy. “This morning I saw the strangest thing.”

The others waited. It was a bad idea to interrupt Billy’s stories, because it only made them longer and because he was so good at doing it himself.

“Or was it Tuesday?” said Billy.

“Jesus, Billy,” muttered Mike. “What are they putting in cat food these days?”

“Anyway,” said Billy, “I was in the store when this woman comes in. About thirty, thirty-five, kind of attractive though, blonde hair, and she says to Jimmy, he owns the store, nice man, sometimes lets me use the bathroom…”

“Billy,” said Joe, a warning note in his voice as Todd returned, his pants spotted with piss.

“Okay,” Billy said. “She says to Jimmy, I’d like to buy a hacksaw. How big, says Jimmy, and the woman says, I don’t know, just big enough to get this off. And she holds up her finger. Third finger, left hand, the wedding ring finger.”

“What?” said Joe. “She wanted to cut off her wedding ring?”

Todd came back in and sat down with a thud.

“No,” said Billy. “That’s what Jimmy said. But there’s no ring there. She says, I want to cut off the finger. In case I’m ever stupid enough to get married again. No ring finger, she says, no ring. No ring, no wedding.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Mike.

“I was there,” said Billy. “Jimmy told her he couldn’t be of assistance, but it happened. I was there.”

“Billy,” Todd suddenly said. “Billy, tell the truth.”

“I was there,” Billy protested. He cast an involuntary 14

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glance at his whiskey. “I was there,” he repeated.

Joe and Mike looked uncomfortable. It wasn’t nice to be baited, but baiting Billy… there were unspoken rules about that. Nothing personal was one rule. And it looked like Todd was about to break it. “ʼFess up now, Billy,” said Todd. He said it gently and that was worse.

“I was there,” Billy repeated. “Jimmy was behind the counter and the woman came in and I was at the counter too and it happened.” He was close to tears now. “You can ask Jimmy if you like.”

He stopped. For a moment, there was doubt on his face, the look of a man who fears that nothing he says can be corroborated.

“I don’t need to ask Jimmy,” said Todd. “I just need to open a book.”

He sat back and looked at Joe and Mike. They didn’t respond.

“Oh, come on!” he said. “The woman who goes into a store and asks for a hacksaw to cut off her ring finger?”

“That’s what Billy said,” Joe said cautiously.

“She wants to cut off her ring finger to make sure she won’t get married again?” said Todd. “None of that sounds familiar to you?”

“No,” said Mike.

“Nor me,” Joe said. Billy said nothing. He was biting his lip.

“It’s fucking famous!” shouted Todd. “It’s the opening scene! The first paragraph!”

He looked at their blank faces. Janis came in from the 15

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kitchen, as she always did when the real shouting started.

“Oh my God,” Todd said shrilly. “None of you knows what I’m talking about, do you? You haven’t the foggiest fucking idea.”

“We should continue this another time,” said Joe, who felt he’d had enough. It was difficult listening to Todd like this when you had some idea what he was talking about.

This was worse, because it was incomprehensible as well as unpleasant. “Mike, can you give Billy a ride, you’re nearest.”

Todd stood up. He tilted his head back.

“Hesitantly, the store clerk repeated to the woman what he thought he’d heard her say. ‘You want to buy a handsaw so you can cut off your ring finger?’ he said. ‘That’s right,’ said the woman, and what scared the clerk was how calm she sounded. ‘I can’t do that, ma’am,’ said the clerk and, because he was a fair man, he added, ‘And what’s more, I’m going to telephone to all the other stores around here to alert them concerning your attempted purchase.’”

Todd ceased reciting. He looked at the blank faces staring back at him.

“Jesus,” he said. “You call yourselves writers.”

He turned to Janis.

“You know it, don’t you?”

Janis, startled to be asked her opinion, stammered out a no.

“Right. Okay. Not one of you has read, or heard of, All My Colors.”

“All my what?” said Mike, emboldened by the room’s general ignorance.

Todd turned to him. “All My Colors, Mike. All My Colors.

By Jake Turner.”

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More blank looks.

“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t heard of Jake fucking Turner,” said Todd, his voice a weird mixture of sarcasm, contempt, and genuine bewilderment. “I mean, Joe, Mike, sure, your knowledge of literary history is woeful, but Billy…”

Billy looked up, fearfully.

“Jake Turner, Billy. He was a Kerouac junkie just like you, am I right?”

“I don’t know of him,” said Billy.

“Christ,” said Todd. “Jake Turner!”

He addressed the room.

“All My Colors, Whitney Press, 1966. It was in the New York Times top ten list for two years. And not one of you has heard of it.”

Todd sighed. He’d done enough for art and literature for one evening. And he was tired. Tired of being the smartest guy in the room. Tired of being surrounded by the ignorant.

“Get out,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.

Janis hurried everyone to the door, and no one lingered.

“You think I was too hard on them?” said Todd as he brushed his teeth at the bathroom mirror.

Janis was trying to unzip her own dress because if Todd did it, he’d break it.

“You’re always too hard on them,” she said. Todd heard it as praise.

“Maybe,” he said. “But tonight, goddammit, that was classic. I mean, I expect you not to know it — you’re all magazines and coffee table books—” 17

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Janis, who always had a three-deep pile of library books by her bed, said nothing.

“But those guys… No wonder everything they write turns out shit.”

Janis managed to slip out of the dress without tearing it.

“How’s your book coming on?” she asked mildly.

Todd, immune to even the strongest sarcasm, frowned. It was a frown designed to invite sympathy and, even though it never achieved its purpose, Todd retained the habit.

“Oh, Jesus, it’s hard,” he said. “Sometimes the words flow like a tidal wave, and sometimes it’s like God turned the stopcock off at the wall.”

In fact, he thought to himself as Janis carefully replaced the catalog dress on its hanger, most times it’s like that.

“I’m going to sleep in the spare room tonight,” said Janis.

“Early start tomorrow.”

Todd nodded absently, unaware that Janis was trying to spare herself a night of him snoring, shouting in his sleep and whacking her in the face with a flailing arm. In fact, he was barely aware that Janis had left the bathroom.

Not for the first time, Todd Milstead was thinking about a book.

Janis woke up. A thumping noise was coming from downstairs. A repetitive, low thumping noise, like someone banging shot glasses onto a wooden table or—and for a moment an almost hopeful vision filled her mind—like someone repeatedly shoving her husband’s face against a door. She got up, found a long and heavy flashlight under the bed, and, putting on a dressing-gown, went downstairs.

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The door to Todd’s study was open (he called it a study, but as all he ever did was read Penthouse in it, Janis thought of it as his jerk-off room) and the light was on. Janis approached it, trying not to be scared. As she did so, she could hear swearing.

“Motherfucker!”

It was Todd. She relaxed from the relief, but now she found that she was angry. He knew she was up early the next day. And here he was, up in the middle of the night, making an awful racket. Janis was very tired and suddenly it all seemed too much.

She went into the jerk-off room. Todd was standing by his bookcase. The house was full of bookcases, but this was Todd’s special bookcase, where he kept the Good Stuff.

Todd even called it the Good Stuff, like it was fine liquor and all Janis’s dumb paperbacks (he never used the word in front of Janis, but then he didn’t have to: she knew) were rotgut. Rotbrain, she found herself thinking as she stood in Todd’s study, watching Todd attack his own bookcase.

Now she could see the cause of the noise that had woken her: Todd was pulling books out and throwing them at the desk—thud! thud!—like a maniac.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Todd whirled around. “You startled me,” he said accusingly.

“You woke me,” she countered. “Todd, it’s two in the morning.”

“Now we’re a clock,” said Todd, which Janis thought made little sense. “I know what time it is, Janis.”

“Go back to bed,” she said. “You’ve got—” 19

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Janis couldn’t for the life of her think what it was that Todd had to do the next morning. Pull his pud until lunch, no doubt.

“Stuff,” she said. “Todd, it’s too late for this.”

“What do you mean, it’s too late?” he slurred, and Janis realized that Todd had started drinking again after she’d gone to bed. She was very tired. Bone tired and brain tired.

“Todd, I asked you once already,” she said. “What are you doing?”

Todd thudded a few more books at the desk. Janis saw a second edition Bellow crease and fall to the carpet.

“I’m looking for that fucking book,” he said.

“What—” said Janis. Then she realized. “That book.”

“Yeah, that book,” said Todd. “I figured it out. You jerks.”

He sniffed. Oh great, Janis thought, he found some coke.

Cocaine was hard to find in their small town, but Todd could be quite determined when it came to himself and his needs, as he was now proving.

“What do you mean, you figured it out?” Janis sat down. She would rather have lain down, but the floor was stiff with literature.

“You all got together,” said Todd. “One of you had an idea, to torment old Todd. Pretend you never heard of All My Colors or Jake Turner. So, you got Billy to tell that story—although knowing Billy, the poor ass probably thinks it really did happen—for bait, and then you all pretended you didn’t know the book. Messing with my mind.”

“I have never heard of that book,” said Janis. “Honestly, Todd. Now please stop and go to bed. You’re— you’re tipsy, and somehow you think this thing is real. It’s not real, Todd.”

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