The Nature of the Beast
Part Three
Dustdance – three years since revival
I have been woefully negligent in my notetaking of late. But in truth there is little new to document. I began this record to chronicle of Beast’s recovery, yet he has made no further progress. He is as graceful as any elf, and twice as strong. He has a large spoken vocabulary, though he is always sparing with his words. I have taught him how to read our glyphs, though he has little interest in either reading or writing. I trust him enough to let him roam outside the cave. Sometimes he tries his hand at hunting, and he will return with a rodent he has killed caught barehanded. Mostly he prefers to explore, to study the rocks, the plants, the many little animals. He keeps no drawings or notes – he stores all his knowledge in his head, like my great-grandfather Sun-Toucher. It is almost as if he wants to fill his head with new memories, to crowd out the old ones.
He still isn’t Yosha. He doesn’t want to be Yosha. That has been the hardest lesson to learn.
But I desire him all the same.
Sometimes I curse him too, for abandoning Yosha just as I did. You fool, I want to scream at him. You have the soul of one of the finest elves ever born on this world, yet you will not even honor his memory.
Sometimes I feel it is my just punishment, to have my soulbrother forever close, but not quite close enough. And I try to content myself with this cruel justice.
When we join, it is a special kind of agony. His body answers my touch without fail, but his mind remains locked away. And though his caresses sate all my physical senses, I can never quite shake this feeling of emptiness inside my heart.
The Sun Folk were not always skilled senders. In the days before the Palace reawakened, all but the eldest among them had lost the ability to touch another’s mind. Only in moments of Recognition could they feel the connection that we all now take for granted.
“What was it like?” I asked my grandmother once. “I mean: how could you get to know anyone? You must have been all like strangers to each other. How could you trust anyone?”
I should have known better than to ask her. She gave him some sentimental drivel she counted as wisdom. “Trust is a choice, Melati. We decide to trust those we love.”
“But how could you love the unknown?”
She tsked at that, as if it was a child’s question. “Nothing is ever truly known. Even in Recognition, there were parts of Scouter I could touch, but never truly understand. And besides, we all thought of sending as something for the ancient ones, like Savah. We valued the calm of our minds. I’ll admit, when we begin to learn to send again, it was quite disorienting. You of all elves should appreciate that.”
“What do you mean? Why me ‘of all elves?’”
She smiled, but even her blind father could have seen the flintiness in her expression. “You value your solitude. You hold everyone at bay, just as our lord does. As if you fear the touch of others might dirty you.”
I gave her a taste of my touch – a nice pain-sending between her eyes, just enough to make her ears ring. She knew better than to complain to Haken.
So I went to Longfeather and Drell instead, and asked them how they intended to teach their daughter how to send. She will turn four next moon-dance; she already knows as many words as Beast… she certainly uses more from day to day. I reasoned I could learn something from studying a child’s lessons.
The parents were less help than Grandmother, if that can be believed. “How will we teach her to send?” Longfeather repeated my question. “Oh, I imagine the same way we taught her to speak and to walk. Simply by doing so ourselves. Children learn by imitating their elders. We’ve been sending to her since she was still in the womb – long before she was able to understand. She’s been projecting little bursts of feelings since she was born. Now Drell and I often ask her questions in sending as well as speech. I imagine when she is ready she’ll send back.”
I turned to Drell. “You didn’t learn to send as a child, did you? I mean, the Go-Backs never really believed in it, did they? Because of that… chief of yours. She had no use for magic, did she? She forbade it.”
“Oh, not really,” Drell insisted. A lifetime in Oasis, and she still felt the need to defend her birth-tribe and its long-dead chief. “It wasn’t that she thought it useless – more that she thought it dangerous. Anything she couldn’t control was dangerous. But if you could prove you had some skill, and that you could follow orders, she could favor a magic-user.”
“But sending: how did you learn it?”
“Oh… the same way anyone does. Practice. We didn’t even try to learn to send until we were old enough to join the hunt. Silence, you understand. Our elders would just keep sending to us until we learned to hear them and answer back.”
So much for their help. As if I hadn’t been sending at Beast every day since I brought him to life. I pitch my thoughts to locksend to Yosha’s mind. I whisper in open sending, softly enough that only his mind could hear me. I have coaxed and massaged at his mind with my healing powers, until he turns away complaining of a headache. I tried everything I can, but still his mind refuses to open. It’s enough to make lose all hope.
I did finally make that overgrown pod-frog, though its call is nowhere as powerful as Beast’s. It was quite sickly and very ugly-looking, and Haken ordered me to keep it at my workshop. It suits me fine. The frog-thing died – its throat swelled with tumors not a month after I’d made it – but no one else needs to know that. Whenever Beast lets out a roar that echoes off rocks, I simply blame that dead frog.
Otherwise, my successes have been meager. The fan-tailed birds I made are utterly disappointing: they tend to die before they can breed, and even when they do, their eggs hatch into ordinary quail.
But I have been working – mostly at rockshaping. My workshop and its barrier wall have grown large enough to be glimpsed from the walls of Oasis. I’ve heard the elves are calling it Melati’s Spire. Reknown is a mixed blessing. I do enjoy watching my elders lower their eyes when I walk past. But the curious keep making forays out to my workshop, hoping to catch a glimpse of the next creature I will create. Thank the High Ones that all the Gliders are too well-bred to spy, but yesterday Beast spotted Tufts and Foxtail sneaking around. They tried to peek through the walls, but one good roar from Beast sent them running with their tails properly tucked under their rumps.
I wish I knew how he can make such a sound – loud and resonant as a mountain lion’s roar. I did nothing to tamper with his lungs or voice when I revived him, yet when he wants to, he can sound as frightening as the monsters of Wolfrider legends.
The echoes of his cry roused me from my daysleep, in the shade of a large overhang. I sat up in time to see Beast scampering down the rocks, all aglow with pride. “They ran!” He was panting for breath like a jackwolf. “They ran like… ravvits!”
“Good boy.” I patted the sleeping mat beside me. “Now tell me all about these ravvits.”
“Two elves! And a big cat. The maiden: she had dark skin – darker than ours. And her head – what happened to it? No hair anywhere! Even I have hair!” He twisted a lock around his finger to call my attention to it.
“Oh, that’s Tufts. Yes, she’s shaved the whole thing clean like an egg again. She does that every few years.”
“Why?”
“Boredom, I suppose.” I couldn’t help but laugh at his bewildered expressions. “It will grow back, Beast, don’t worry. Just like yours keeps getting shaggy no matter how many times I trim it. Who else? You said there were two elves.”
“Male. Red hair like… a thistle-top.” He tried to gesture, to conjure up the fullness of it. A fountain of hair, the color of rust.
“Foxtail. Although I think I will call him Thistletop the next time I see him, just to see his face.”
“They climbed on the cat – and it let them!”
“Tufts is a cat rider. You’ve see her before. But maybe you didn’t see her ride. No, she can’t do that with any cat,” I added, when I could see the way his thoughts were heading. “And no one can tame the mountain lions, don’t you even think of it.”
Beast looked sheepish. Then his thoughts darted off in another direction. “They lovemates?”
“Tufts and Foxtail? Oh, I’m sure he’s one of her lads. Tufts is what we call a ‘freetouch,’” I added snidely, but that did little to enlighten him. “It means she’s always looking for another body in her bed.”
He sounded shocked. “Why?”
“That’s boredom too, I suppose. Some folk like variety.”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You are not a… freetouch.”
His jealousy was quite endearing, artless as it was. “No, I’m a Beast-touch,” I told him. “You’re all I need in my bed.”
It’s true. Other lads continue to approach me, usually craven, perfumed crafters, the kind my grandmother prefers. I suspect she sends them after me; how typical of Leetah, to think a good lovemaking will cure all that ails a soul. As if a ravvit could satisfy me when I have a beast waiting at home.
I reject them all. Everyone thinks I am a new Savah, sworn to lived untouched since my true love has died. It’s a good tale, properly tragic and beautiful. Even Maleen is beginning to warm to me again, since it seems I am determined to martyr myself to Yosha’s memory. I wonder what they would think if they knew the truth. I wonder what Maleen would say if she knew I coupled nightly with the monster I had made of her son.
Sometimes I imagine telling her all this, just to see the look on her face. It amuses me far more than it should. I used to like Maleen. So many things died when Yosha did.
Staleheat – three years since revival
Beast broke his right hand again. “What did you hit this time?” I demanded, as I contemplated his gnarled fingers, his bloody knuckles.
“Buck,” he murmured bashfully.
“Oh Beast!”
“He charged me!”
“And you didn’t think to get out of the way?”
“I thought: their meat tastes good.”
“Then you make yourself a spear or a club and you kill them properly.”
“I did kill him,” he insisted proudly. “I broke his neck! One hit, just like a lion.”
“And your hand. Your poor paw.” My pangs of sympathy were laced with guilt. I never had healed his right hand properly, the night I brought him back. The knobs of scarred bone on his knuckles made it look a far more imposing weapon than it really was. No wonder he seems to think he could take down large animals barehanded.
“If you insist on hunting, you’ll need a weapon,” I told him. “All we have here is a gutting knife, but I suppose you’re fast enough to wield it like a sword.”
“You make me one.”
“A blade? I’m no weaponsmith – have you ever seen me at a forge?”
He held out his maimed hand. “Just like a lion.”
I frowned. Surely he did not mean I should flesh-shape him. But when I hesitated too long, he shook his hand. “You said you could change it,” he insisted, with a hint of a child’s whine in his voice.
Flesh-shaping is painful work. Flesh isn’t rock – it fights the shaper’s designs. I flooded Beast’s bloodstream with magic to block his nerves, but still his muscles twitched in protest, and he clenched his teeth as if he was in agony. So I tricked his nerves into reading pain as pleasure, until he sagged against my shoulder, utterly drunk on sensation. Still, it was slow work. My usual tactics are to bludgeon and force the flesh to obey, but I had no wish to break bones and rend muscles. I had to learn gentleness.
By dawn we were both as spent as if we’d passed the night in heated joining. Beast’s right hand had grown a fraction in size, his wristbones thicker, his fingerbones longer, his nails hardened into claws. The skin had taken on a vaguely scaly texture, touch enough to withstand a blow that would split the flesh of an elf, but still soft enough to feel pleasing under my fingertips.
I ended up sleeping most of the day away. Once I recover my strength, I will start work on his forearm. A lion’s paw is no use without a strong arm to wield it.
Bonedry – three years since revival
I had visitors to my workshop yesterday. I was so deep in a trance – restringing the sinews of Beast’s right arm – that I didn’t hear the sendings until they were practically at my doorstep.
“Elves,” I told Beast as I broke off the treatment, leaving him with a wrenched elbow. “Asking to speak to me.”
“I’ll scare them off,” he offered, but I motioned him to wait on the pallet.
“No. It’s only Cholla.” Her heart was too frail to risk a fright, especially in the season’s heat. And besides, I’ve always been quite fond of her. “You know – my sire’s old friend. I’ve told you about her.”
He made a little face. He hates being reminded that I have a life beyond him.
I told him to stay hidden, and sweetened the order with another rush of soothing magic in his bloodstream. Then I made my way outside and returned the sending.
**Follow my thoughts. I’ll open the gate for you.**
At my touch, the hairline fissure in the rock wall opened wide enough to allow entry to the zwoot and its two riders. Klipspringer was the first one down, and he helped Cholla dismount, cradling her in his arms as if she were a baby bird. Normally, Cholla hates to be coddled – nothing will provoke her temper so much as the suggestion that she is any less fit than any other elf. Yet she’ll gladly play the invalid around her lifemate. I used to find it rather repugnantly affecting – like all of Leetah’s flirtatious airs. But I can better understand it now. Each lifemating has a dance all its own. This is theirs. Klipspringer was born to protect and nurture; he shows his love by doting on her, and she shows hers by permitting it.
“Melati!” Cholla exclaimed cheerfully, as if she were somewhat surprised to see me, as if her sendings hadn’t been rapping on my skull like a fist on a doorframe.
I smiled thinly in reply. “Hello, Auntie Cholla. What brings you out here? And at this time of day?”
“I need your help settling a wager I made with ’Springer. I say we haven’t seen you at Oasis for over a greater moon-dance, but he insists it’s only been two eights-of-days.”
“Subtle,” I said archly.
Klipspringer shrugged good-naturedly. “She has all her brother’s tact, I’m afraid. But she is a very good cook.” He gestured to a covered basket slung from the zwoot’s saddle. “Will you accept a basket of fresh spice-rolls with my apologies?”
“I can feed myself, you know.”
“But Melati, dear, I’ve tasted your cooking,” Cholla shot back with a sweet smile.
“You worry too much about me. One day I’ll have to find a way to give you and Klipspringer a child of your own. Then you’ll have someone else to fuss over.”
Klipspringer’s face darkened slightly – I still can’t imagine why – but Cholla’s smile never wavered. “You could bless me with a litter of kitlings, Melati, and I’ll still be watching out for you.”
“Why? Because of Pool?”
“No, because of you. Great Sun, is it so strange that someone might love you for yourself?”
I flinched at that. I tried to school my face to be still, but from the way Cholla’s eyes grew wider still and the way Klipspringer diplomatically regarded the ground, I must have looked like I’d been pierced in the heart.
“I… I’d invite you in for something to drink,” I stammered out, trying to remember my courtesies. “You must be thirsty after the long ride. But m-my workshop is a mess. If you’d like, I can bring something out and we can sit in the shade–”
“No need to trouble yourself,” Cholla insisted.
“Actually, we came to ask you to dine with us tonight,” Klipspringer added.
“In Oasis? Oh, that’s thoughtful of you, but–”
“You and Cholla could ride together and I’ll walk.”
“–I have a lot of work to do here–”
A noise and a movement caught Cholla’s eye. She gasped, and I turned, terrified it was Beast. But it was just one of my fan-tailed quail. It pecked at the ground, then looked at the newcomers and cooed softly. Cholla sighed.
“I love that sound. We have a peacoo that likes to roost in the gardens just below our bedroom window. He calls to his mate at night… we always fall asleep to the sound.”
“I only wish I could get them to breed true,” I grumbled. “What good are peacoos if they only lay quail eggs?”
“They’re still quail, under all those new feathers you grew,” Klipspringer pointed out. “You changed their bodies, not their souls.”
“Well, I want to change their souls. I don’t want to have to make new peacoos from scratch every time!”
Cholla smiled. “The crafter’s lament. I know I’d love if my waterjars could breed. But art won’t make itself, I’m afraid.”
“You sound like Lord Haken. I told him – what about sunsets? They make themselves! You tease me, Auntie Cholla, but clay is a lifeless material. Flesh lives. So why shouldn’t my art become just as natural, just as self-renewing as sunsets?”
“Well, you’ve only been at it for a few years,” Klipspringer said. “Give it a mountain’s age…”
I did not bother to say: why should I have to wait that long? I knew they would just give me the indulgent looks that meant: you are so young still, you will learn patience in time, just as we did. Patience – it was simply a pretty way of accepting defeat. A way of enduring surrender. And why should I surrender, just because everyone before me had? Can no one see that I am something different?
I raged in silence, which Cholla misunderstood for weariness. “You’ve been working too hard,” she pronounced. “Come home with us. Have a nice supper and a good night’s sleep in your old bed. It’ll do you a world of good.”
I tried to think of a suitable excuse. But in truth, I was weary – weary of the lies, the evasions.
“We have missed you, Melati, believe it or not,” Klipspringer added. “And I can only imagine what stories you have to tell us.”
Oh, you have no idea, I wanted to laugh.
Cholla held out her hand. She hadn’t kept them covered on the ride out, and the sun had burned the top of her hand an angry red. It would surely itch and peel in another day. For all her years, she clearly hadn’t learned much common sense. I couldn’t help it. I took her hand in mine and healed the burn.
Cholla’s fingers tightened around mine. “Come back with us,” she repeated. “Elves aren’t meant to live alone.”
* * *
Cholla has redecorated her rooms. Tapestries in bright blues have repeated the old tawny ones I remembered. She said the color is all the rage in Oasis this year, and it’s all the fault of my peacoos.
We ate ravvit stew and sweetbread, and grilled rock-peppers – my childhood favorite. We shared a bottle of honeywine that was brewed when I was only a baby. I showed my thanks for the feast by listening attentively to all the latest news in Oasis, and never once glancing out of the window to see how high the moons had risen.
Perhaps it was the wine, but I found I did genuinely enjoy hearing all the gossip – the beddings, the squabblings, the latest petty rivalries between farmers and crafters, between riders of wolf and cat.
I was entranced by the way Cholla and Klipspringer interacted; how they finished each others’ phrases, how they shared a hundred different subtle glances and gestures that spoke a language all their own. Their bond was something I had never troubled to notice before. It was a perfect harmony, utterly unconscious, as natural as breathing. Even Haken and Chani did not have this sort of easy intimacy.
The peacoo Cholla had mentioned did indeed start cooing for its mate. I thought of Beast, back at the cave, sulking because I told him his elbow would have to wait, that I would not return until the next morning.
“You look like you’re studying us,” Cholla teased.
“How old were you when you became lifemates?” The question burst from my lips, startling me.
Cholla laughed. “Oh… you know, I can’t quite remember. Young. About your age, I think. ’Springer?”
“About that,” he agreed.
“Is that when you shared souls?” It was unconscionably rude to ask such a thing so bluntly, to elves who had become all but strangers to me. But they did not seem offended. They exchanged a somewhat guilty smile and nodded.
“My mother did not approve,” Cholla said. “She thought me much too impulsive.”
“But how did she know?”
She shrugged. “How do you know when someone you love Recognizes?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone Recognize.”
“You can tell,” Klipspringer explained, with a hint of a blush rising to his tanned cheeks. I suppose he didn’t expect to have to explain the facts of life to a grown maiden. “When you share your soul with someone… it changes you, in countless little ways. You can try to hide it from the tribe, but those close to you – your parents, your dearest friends… they can almost smell something different about you. You’re not quite the same person you were the day before.”
I shuddered at the thought. Not the same person… the arrow hit too close to my own fears.
“Oh, now you’ve put her off it forever,” Cholla chided gently. “Lots of elves fear losing themselves in another’s soul. I think that’s why so many would rather wait for Recognition to make the choice for them. But really, you don’t lose who you were – at least, no more than you lost who you were yesterday when you woke up this morning. Still… it’s not something to rush into. We’re not High Ones, after all – we can’t share ourselves with everyone who passes by and be none the worse for it! Mother thought we should have waited.”
“Why didn’ t you?”
“I was never good at waiting. I suppose it’s what comes of never quite knowing how much time I might have.”
I frowned. She couldn’t mean her heart. To hear Grandmother tell it, Cholla had grown up with the entire tribe hovered over her shoulder, waiting to cocoon her and summon Leetah at the first sign of trouble.
But Cholla went on. “You know, everyone likes to forget it now that so many years have passed. But when I was born, Leetah would not lay odds that I’d live through my first flood-and-flower. By the time I was eight, I’d had my heart restarted and reshaped so many times, I thought of it as a limp washrag. And by the time I was grown, I had already decided: I would not run to death… but High Ones curse it, I would run! Everyone wanted me to sit safely in the corner, within reach of a Preserver. But I had enough stillness. I would live, I would burn, and if I burned up, then so be it.” She looked up at her lifemate. “And if I only had a human’s lifespan, then I would share every moment of those short years with my beloved.”
Klipsringer appeared almost bashful under Cholla’s heated gaze. “I never feared you’d burn up – I wouldn’t have allowed it,” he said, sounding for a moment just like his father Door. Then he smiled gently, and all I could see was the warmth of his Wolfrider blood. “But when you know something in your bones, waiting won’t change anything.”
I marveled at the love between them. I thought how lucky Cholla was, despite her poor health, to have grown up knowing such utter and complete devotion from such a noble elf. And then I remembered with a start that I had had the very same luck, but I had thrown it away.
“Melati?” Cholla looked back at me. “Oh, High Ones…”
I can’t remember how I started to cry. I only remember that before I knew it, I was bawling – raw-voiced and runny-nosed, sobbing on Cholla’s shoulder, moaning Yosha’s name as she held me like a baby.
I don’t know how long I wept, I only know both elves showed me the greatest kindness. They let me cry myself to exhaustion on a pallet of cushions. They didn’t object when I begged them not to send for Haken or Chani. They left me to drift in a stupor of grief, and when I came to again, they brought me a warm blanket and a hot cup of thistle-tea.
“I know words won’t help,” Cholla said at length. “But believe me when I say: there is no shame in grief. You’ve been so strong since Yosha left us. You don’t need to be.”
“I do,” I hiccuped. “I… can’t tell you why!”
She patted my knee. **I wish I had fought harder for you, little one.**
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
I spent the night on their cushions. At dawn I returned home to the cave. I did not even say good morning to Haken or Chani. I doubted they’d even mind; they had grown so used to my comings and goings.
I’ve brooded over what Cholla said all day. I wish I had fought harder… against whom? Pool? Haken? My own cursed fate?
It could have been me and Yosha sitting at a table, ladling out food to a guest and making dove-eyes at each other all night. In five, six thousand years, we could have been the ones clucking our tongues at the foolishness of youth.
I found Beast still asleep, lying on his side and cradling his right elbow against his chest. I sat for the longest time, just watching him breath, noting all the many complex actions required for such a simple task. Coordination of nerves and muscles, commands issued in bolts of living skyfire and executed in tireless flesh. I looked down at his half-shaped arm. The elbow was still misaligned, but the muscles of the forearm had grown thicker, longer, better suited to hefting the weapon I’d made of his hand. Tendons flexed under scaled skin. I followed the movement down to his hand, saw his claw-fingers curling in spasms. He was dreaming.
My mind reached for his instinctively. I had spied on Yosha’s dreams all the time. There was nothing so amusing as reaching into his sleep and twisting the landscape of his dream, until he realized I was there and woke himself up. We’d made a game of it, seeing how quickly he could sense my presence, how long I could hover unseen. He’d tried to do the same to me when I slept, but he could never find a way into my mind.
I’d always kept him locked out.
**Yosha…** I sent. Beast’s eyelids fluttered. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at me with a sleepy smile.
“Mel…” he murmured.
**Yosha…**
Cholla’s words rang in my head. I should have fought harder for you…
**Open for me.** I commanded. **You are Yosha, and I am Melati. We are one! Let me in!**
His mind was encased in a fortress of rock. But I was a rockshaper. I could force my way in. I could make him hear me.
**Obey me! Open!**
The body struggled. I placed my hands on the skull to focus my mind. His thoughts were a blaze of sparks, chaotic and primal. I could feel them burning me. I pressed deeper. I could take the pain. I would suffer anything to crack this dull shell open, and reveal the soul within. I could almost see the way...
“NO!” Beast broke away. His claws raked my shoulder as he pushed me away. I staggered to my feet as he struggled upright on the pallet. He pressed his claw-tipped hand to his forehead, hising in pain. Fresh blood ran from his nose.
“Oh High Ones…” I murmured. “Beast – I’m sorry!”
He turned and looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Rage: there was no other word for it. He glared at me as if he wanted to kill me.
“This pain again?”
“Let me help you–”
I reached for him, he slapped my hand away.
“I know this pain: you were looking for him!”
“Beast–”
“Tell me I’m wrong!”
I couldn’t. I can never lie to him.
“Why, why? You have me now! So why do you look for him? Am I not enough?”
My silence was the only answer I dared to give.
I expected anger: tears and wordless shouts and stamped feet, perhaps even a broken lamp. I was used to seeing him take his frustration out on the world. What I did not expect was the hand I had shaped for him closing tight around my neck, his thumb pressing against my windpipe as he dragged me clear across the room.
“Why?” he roared. “Why, why, why?” he shook me with each word, his fingers clenching ever tighter until I saw spots. I could have defended myself. I could have sent pain into every nerves in his body. I could have made the muscles of his fingers spasm and release me. But I didn’t. I didn’t even think of it. I just let him shake me like a rag doll.
He shoved me hard against the nearest wall. He pined my back to the rock, and he brought his face close to mine. I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see his expression of hatred.
“I love you!” he howled. “I give you everything! And you take and take and want more! Want him. Why? Why is he so special?”
“He… is my soul…” I choked out. “And yours.”
He released me abruptly. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath.
Beast paced restlessly before me, clenching his fists. “He’s not!” he challenged. “He’s not me. I am me! I am Beast. This body is mine – he’s can’t have it back!”
“He’s inside you,” I insisted. “He’s trying to get out. I know it. I look in your eyes and I swear, I can see him in there. If I could just reach that part of you–” I reached for him, but he shrank back.
“How? Your think-talk?”
“Oh Beast, if only you could understand what it’s like. It’s so much more than talking without sound. It’s… it’s what makes us elves.”
“THEN WHAT AM I?”
I hung my head. “You’re… the best I could do. I’m so sorry. I was too proud, too impatient. I brought you back too soon. I fixed your body but I left your mind broken.”
“You think I am broken? Why? Because I am different? Is a fox a broken lion?”
“If only I could make you remember who you were–”
“You would kill who I am! If Yosha lives, then Beast dies!”
“Don’t say that.”
“You say our souls are our thoughts, our feelings. But you want his thoughts in my head – his feelings! His memories – what about mine? If he comes back, where do I go?”
I tried to cover my ears; I didn’t want to hear his cruel logic. He wouldn’t let me. He seized my wrists and hauled me to my feet. I twisted my face away from his, unable to meet his furious gaze. With a snarl, he seized a handful of my hair and forced me to look at him. He pulled my head back, exposing my throat, and at that moment I was certain he meant to kill me. Just as I was certain I would let him. It was only what I deserved.
“Would you kill me to have Yosha back?” he demanded. When I did not answer, he yanked harder on my hair until my scalp burned with pain. “Would you?”
“Beast, please don’t ask me–”
He released my hair, only to seize both my hands and press my palms to his temples. “Choose! Beast or Yosha – choose!” His face contorted in pain as I hesitated. “Do it!”
I could do it, I realized. I could turn his mind to clay, and resculpt it as I saw fit. I could make a second attempt at rebuilding the elfin part of the brain I had so foolishly neglected before. It would wipe Beast’s memories completely; I would have to teach him all over again. But he could make new memories, and with everything I had learned over the last three years, surely I was better able to guide him back into consciousness.
I might still not bring Yosha back entirely. I might even destroy what remained of his memories too. But there was a chance, however small… that I might finally repair his broken mind. He might be able to send again. And then I could share everything I knew of him, and the soul I had once rejected would slowly reassemble itself. And we could Recognize as we’d been meant to – and I could take him back to Oasis and admit everything and we could have a proper life together – we could have everything we’d lost restored to us – it would be as if the last six years had never happened…
As if Beast had never existed.
He was right: he couldn’t possibly regain all of Yosha’s thoughts and memories and still remain the elf called Beast. Even if I succeeded in restoring my soulbrother completely – and that was far from a certain outcome – I would lose this broken lad I had come to love. Beast, who danced in the rain and wept for dead birds, who could spent all night counting the stars overhead. Beast, who I had guided from helpless infant to hunter and lovemate. How could I kill him?
But how could I abandon the hope of seeing Yosha again?
I tried to pull my hands from his head. I didn’t want this choice. Beast would not relent. “Do it!” he begged again. He was shaking with terror and heartbreak. “Do it! Please!”
“I can’t! I can’t lose you! I love you, Beast!” I couldn’t send to prove my sincerity; I could only scream the words out and beg, “Please, please believe me! I loved Yosha – I always will. But I love you too. And if getting him back means giving you up – then I choose you!”
I was weeping hysterically. My legs could no longer support me; my hands slid down to frame his face. “I choose Beast!” I cried through the tears, and I meant it. Suddenly everything was clear. There was no choice to fear; I had already made it. “Yosha was my soulbrother, but you are my lifemate!”
He stared at me, his eyes fierce, his face utterly unreadable. I felt my knees buckling. He didn’t trust me, I thought. He would turn from me now, and I would lose him at the very moment of learning how much I loved him. My head grew too heavy to hold up. “Say you believe me,” I pleaded, as my gaze dropped to the floor. “Please, Beast…”
He released me and I felt myself swooning. But before I could fall, he reached around me and his claws closed around the back of my neck. He hauled me back upright as he yanked my chin up, and his mouth came down hard on mine.
If our first joining had been without grace, then this time was without mercy. His claws tore my skin; my magic burned his nerves. It was an act of loathing as much a love – a deep disgust of our own frailties, a desire to destroy and begin anew. He took me as if he meant to make me forget Yosha ever existed. I took him as if I meant to force a Recognition of flesh alone.
Perhaps I did. Afterwards, we lay battered and spent, reveling in the pain as much as the pleasure. And when I gazed into his eyes, I swore I could see something I hadn’t before. Perhaps I simply hadn’t wanted to. I had always focused too much on the scar between his eyes, on the way the color of those eye changed with the light. But I saw it now: a light glowing from within, the spark of a soul much older than three years. A familiar soul, shaped and stretched by death and rebirth, but still recognizable.
At least I think that’s what I saw.
That’s what I choose to see.
Rainsign – three years since revival
Grandmother said trust is a choice. I trust that I’ve done the right thing. I trust that Yosha still walks beside me, only in another form. I trust that despite what Beast believes, something of the soul endures beyond thought, beyond memory. Klipspringer said my peacoos still have the souls of quails. I find that thought comforting now.
I still call him “Yosha” by accident now and then. Not aloud, but in thought, and sometimes in sendings no one living can hear. I am trying to cure myself of the habit. I tell myself the Wolfriders change their names when it suits them, and he is half-Wolfrider, after all. It doesn’t matter in the end what he calls himself. He is my lifemate.
Bloomtide – four years since revival
I’ve finished the arm at last. Curse all these interruptions. Now his skin from shoulder to fingertip has become a impenetrable hide, the color of dried blood. The knobs of bone on his elbow and shoulder have become deadly defensive spikes. His clawed hand now has muscle-power behind it to fell a buck or a lion with a single slash, or a bone-shattering clout.
Beast loves his new toy. He plays at being hunter every day. I hardly need to bring any food in from Oasis now; he finds the meat, I only need prepare it. He likes my cooking.
Yesterday he ran across the Pride again. But he has learned how to be stealthy now. He passed within sight of them and they never noticed.
“I think I can find a way to bring you to Oasis, you know,” I offered, after he told me the whole story. “If you want.”
He shook his head. “They will want him back.”
“I could make them understand. As I do, now.”
He shrugged. “Don’t need them. I have you.” He smiled Yosha’s Cricket-grin. “You are all I need.”
I won’t push him. If one day he changes his mind… I will find a way to make the others understand. I will stand tall beside him and defend every choice I’ve made since the day I revived him. I won’t let a single elf call him a mistake – and if Pool or Grandmother dare to speak of “fixing” my perfect Beast, I will shatter their minds myself before I will let them lay their hands on him.
But until then, he can remain my secret.
Bonedry – ten years since revival
Success! One of my peacoo eggs hatched into a quail with peacoo-blue feathers. It’s not a perfect copy, but it’s a start. In time, if I breed shapechanged to shapechanged, my creatures could become self-renewing.
Tonight Beast asked me if I thought I could make him a friend for hunting. I think he wants to ride a tuftcat like his mother does.
Rainsign – twenty-six years since revival
Rainsign, but no rain. Game is scarce this year – the hunters are riding by our workshop regularly. It’s only a matter of time until they discover Beast. I am beginning to think we should move somewhere more remote.
The peacoo flock is doing well, despite the drought. Another clutch of eggs hatched into perfect miniatures of their parents.
[record ends]
[new record begins at secondary site]
Bonedry – fifty-two years since revival
After so many false starts, it’s nice to have a proper home again. This new cave is very satisfactory. There are hot springs and mineral flows – Beast calls them the Cinder Pools.
At a ten day journey from Oasis, it’s unlikely to see visitors, and the fire under the ground makes the rock extra malleable. The distance means Beast and I must spend more time apart. I do not intend to give up my entire life in Oasis, and Beast does not expect me to. He has enough to amuse himself now, during my absences. He knows I always come back.
Staleheat – eighty years since revival
Beast asked for new feet for his birthday. He wants to be able to climb the rocks barefoot, and to walk over the salt flats without fear of burns. I told him we could discuss it, but that I wouldn’t be doing anything rash. Still, the possibilities intrigue me...
[Partial entry – heavily eroded, date unknown]
He’s been spotted again….
[So] far I have persuaded everyone he is merely another fleshshaped creature. But… [the] ravvits will always spin their… tales…
[They’re] calling him the Master of the Shapechanged…
… how I laughed when I heard…
[mineral deposits cover further entries. End of record]
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts