Sophia, Princess Among Beasts Read online

  My mother’s words were cut off by a thundering crash. The cottage door swung open and a cold wind came rushing in, sputtering the fire and extinguishing the rushes. I saw dark, looming shapes at the threshold—the glint of firelight on metal—and then an axe spun through the air, lodging in a wooden chest behind us and shattering it.

  CHAPTER 21

  My mother leapt up, knocking over her chair. With one hand she drew a knife from her waistband and with another she shoved me toward a smaller rear door. “Sophia, run!” she screamed. “Run! They want your immortal soul!”

  “I won’t leave you!” I said, even as she was pushing me, putting her body between me and the intruders.

  Her green eyes were incandescent with fear. “Do what your mother says. I command it!”

  And so, like a good daughter, I obeyed her. Stumbling, horrified, I flung myself through the back door and hurtled away into the night.

  Blindly, I crashed through the underbrush. There was no path. Branches tore at my gown and blade-sharp thorns bloodied my face and hands. I couldn’t see where I was going and wouldn’t have known which direction to go even if I could. My only thought was to keep running.

  Behind me I heard guttural shouts and the metallic clang of long swords being unsheathed. My lungs burned and my breath came in gasps. I was weak with hunger, and I didn’t know how long I could keep going.

  I crossed a tiny, frigid stream, and then—unable to run anymore—I dropped to the ground and scuttled under the leaning trunk of a dead tree. I held myself motionless as the woods exploded around me. Soldiers were everywhere, bashing through thickets, their swords slicing leaf and vine, searching for their prey.

  Me.

  I couldn’t see their faces, but whether they were men or beasts made no difference—I would not let them catch me. I willed my ragged breathing to slow and edged deeper into hiding. My pursuers came ever closer, slashing their way through the forest, their footsteps shaking the ground. I hugged my knees and shut my eyes, making myself as small as possible.

  They crashed past me, vanishing in the thick trees.

  Their shouts faded, and the night grew quiet again. The air was knife-cold and still.

  I waited for a long time, until the pain in my cramped legs grew too great. Holding my breath, I shifted ever so slightly in my hiding spot. A twig snapped.

  I froze.

  I waited, breathless, as the darkness pressed against me like something malevolent and alive.

  Silence, still, except for the faint call of an owl somewhere off in the distance. I knew I was safe.

  But then a rough hand slammed over my mouth. My arms were yanked brutally behind my back as a soldier dragged me backward through the forest.

  I tried to bite my captor’s hand, but my teeth couldn’t pierce his calloused skin. Whoever or whatever he was, he only grunted as he heaved me, twisting and kicking, through the brush and fallen leaves.

  I was pulled out of the woods, away from my mother’s cottage and into the middle of another road, where a black carriage pulled by four wild-eyed horses stood waiting. My captor lifted me into the air, and though I struggled and writhed in his grip, I was no match for him. He threw me onto the floor like I was a sack of laundry. The door slammed shut, a whip cracked, and we charged forward.

  I clawed my way up to the seat and tried to look out the window. It was small and covered with iron bars—as if I were in a traveling prison cell. As I screamed and pounded on the walls, the horses raced deeper into the forest, and the trees arching over me seemed animate with menace.

  When we finally burst into the open, we galloped across a field of dead grasses, and then the ground rose up before us and we began to climb.

  The road grew rocky and so steep it seemed as if it ended in the sky itself. I didn’t know how the horses could keep their pace, but somehow they did. Soon we were high in black, barren mountains. There was nothing to see but rock and ice—it was a world so inhospitable that nothing could live here but a howling wind so cold it burned my lungs to breathe.

  I sank to the floor of the carriage, knowing that I could never find my way back. Fear made my breath come in quick, sharp pants. But worse than the fear was my grief. After longing for each other for almost two decades, my mother and I had met for mere moments. I hadn’t even told her of my father, hadn’t asked if he might be in this other world, too. I understood nothing but this: being torn away from her now was almost worse than never having seen her at all.

  CHAPTER 22

  It must have been hours later that I woke from a disturbed half sleep. I peered out the carriage window and saw that it was early morning, and we were traveling over a wide, misty plain. Through the haze I could see hundreds of tiny fires floating high above the ground.

  What kind of magic was this? My breath formed white clouds in front of my face, and I shook with cold. A moth-eaten fur lay on the bench beside me, and I wrapped it tight around my shoulders. It smelled musty and rank, but it provided some protection against the chill.

  As the carriage pressed onward, the fog bank parted, and I realized that the suspended fires were in fact torches, set at regular intervals along the top of a looming stone wall.

  With half-frozen fingers, I tried to open the carriage door again—first by pushing it, and then by kicking it as hard as I could. But it was locked from the outside and impervious to the blows of my feet. There was nothing I could do but watch and wait.

  As we approached a massive iron-barred gate in the wall, it heaved open with a shriek of metal. The horses clattered through the opening, and then the gate slammed down behind us.

  I pressed my face to the window’s bars, half expecting to see a great prison yard. But instead we were inside a walled village. It was much larger than the village near Bandon Castle, and it seemed much older, too. The houses on its outskirts were grand and imposing, but they looked long abandoned. Towering chimneys listed sideways, holes gaped in limestone walls, and dying ivy covered abandoned doorways. Even the wind seemed lonely. Haunted.

  Soon we came upon inhabited dwellings, though, and the horses began to slow. Smoke curled up from kitchen fires, and a flock of chickens, frightened by our approach, took to the air, squawking and flapping their white wings.

  “Hello,” I called out. “Hello? Can someone tell me where this is?”

  No one answered. But I kept on calling, my voice cracking with desperation. “Please, someone, answer. Someone please tell me what’s happening to me!”

  Then I smelled roasting meat, and my stomach—empty but for a few bites of bread—twisted in agony. All thoughts vanished except for these: Who was cooking something so delicious, and how could I immediately get some of it for myself? I still wore my pearl earrings, and I would have happily traded them for the humblest warm meal.

  As if to answer my question, an aproned figure carrying a large ladle stepped into the doorway of a nearby cottage. I gasped in horror.

  The thing was not human.

  CHAPTER 23

  It—she?—had the height and the soft roundness of Jeanette, but there the resemblance stopped. Her long, thin hair was a sickly orange hue, and her skin was leathery and golden. Instead of a nose, she had two nostril holes, like those of a snake. Her eyes were a cold, iridescent violet.

  The horses slowed still more, as if to give me a better look at this monstrosity. The beast snatched up a chicken that had been pecking about the yard. Then, holding the poor flapping thing by its throat, she glanced up at me. A hideous grin split her face. Her teeth were yellow and as sharp as daggers. Smiling, she snapped the chicken’s neck with a quick, deliberate motion. A few downy feathers sifted to the ground.

  I covered my mouth so as not to cry out. The whip cracked, and the horses trotted on.

  We came to the village square, which was ringed by small white buildings with moldering thatched roofs. It was market day, and the square was full of shoppers, vendors, and stalls. My mouth fell open in wonder. From alleys and lanes stre
amed hundreds of creatures, the likes of which I’d never imagined. Under a multicolored tent, a one-eyed, blue-skinned crone sold baskets of huge orange eggs. A bearded butcher with a lizard’s tail stood beneath hanging slabs of flesh, which slowly dripped blood into the dust. I saw something that looked like a giant bee, a wolf with a hawk’s face, and a monster with fat pink flesh and hideous black wings: part human, part vulture, and part pig.

  As the heavy carriage rumbled past, each creature turned toward it and stared, their hideous faces full of hate. Was this venom directed at me? I was a stranger and had done them no harm. Surely this was a nightmare!

  I pinched the skin on my forearm, but I did not wake up. Nothing changed.

  Except that then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a figure walking along the road. He had a human face. A familiar one.

  My breath caught in my throat, and I pressed my face against the bars covering the carriage window. I saw dark hair—a proud gait—

  Could it be? A cart pulled by some kind of horned donkey stopped in front of the figure, blocking my view. I craned my neck. Long limbs, a defiant jawline… no, it couldn’t be. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been deep in the bowels of Bandon Castle, sick, imprisoned, and waiting for death.

  My fingers curled around the bars. “Raphael! Raphael, is that you?” His back was to me now. “It’s Sophia, your Queen! I’m trapped! Help me, please!”

  But the boy thrust his shoulders back and walked on.

  I sank back into my seat. I’d imagined him, hadn’t I? It couldn’t have been Raphael. Surely he was a corpse by now, and Gattis would be preparing the pyre on which to burn his plague-marked flesh. It was ludicrous to think that he could be here.

  And yet I was here. I’d had the Seep, too.

  If this was life after life—if I had died and somehow arrived in this village of monsters—then might he be facing a similar fate?

  The carriage shook as a huge, wormlike creature passed by too close, trailing a stench of rotting meat, and my stomach twisted in revulsion. I kicked at the carriage door until my heels were bruised. I stopped then, but not because of the pain: I stopped because I realized that I was likely safer inside my cage than out, amidst a teeming crowd of beasts.

  Up ahead a gate loomed; we were coming to the far edge of the nightmare town. I closed my eyes and prayed.

  I prayed that I wasn’t actually dead. That this whole world was nothing but a fever dream. That any moment now I would open my eyes to the walls of my own bedroom, my body covered with the Seep’s blisters. A little more time, a little more pain, and my heart would finally stop. There would be nothing, forever more. And that would be a relief.

  CHAPTER 24

  When I opened my eyes again, we were back on an open plain. The driver shouted and the horses picked up their pace.

  I pulled the ratty fur closer around my shoulders and huddled in the corner of the carriage. It didn’t matter what I’d prayed—I knew this wasn’t a dream. I wondered how many miles I’d traveled since I first awoke to the mournful tolling of the Bells of Death.

  Since I saw my mother.

  Maybe dying didn’t mean heaven, or obliviousness, or anything I’d ever imagined. Maybe death meant spending eternity on a journey I couldn’t understand, a journey for which there would be no rest and no arrival.

  I was kicking futilely at the carriage door again when one of the horses let out a high, bright whinny, and I recognized the sound that our own mounts used to make when they approached Bandon stables after a long and grueling ride. Whatever lay ahead, the carriage horse recognized it.

  Once again, I strained to peer out the tiny window. I saw low gray hills to my left, a barren salt marsh to my right. In the distance, a castle rose from swirls of mist, its dark, jagged form piercing the clouds like a cluster of knives. Its myriad towers, rising high over looming battlements, glittered as if made of obsidian, and flags the color of dried blood hung limp in the dead, salt-smelling air.

  I prayed it was not our destination, though I knew with dread that it was.

  Then came a shattering crash from above. The carriage shook, and once again I was thrown to the floor. A shrieking, bird-like cry, unlike anything I’d ever heard before, pierced my eardrums. I scrambled up to see what had hit us. A large shadow passed over the dusty ground, and I saw some kind of giant feathered creature, its wings black like a vulture’s but three times larger, swing into the sky, bank, and then swoop back down, deadly talons extended. As it neared the carriage, I gasped. It was not a bird at all. It was a harpy, like the ones in my book, with a hag’s face and a madwoman’s scream.

  “Treasure, treasure,” she shrilled from the sky, “soft flesh and warm blood!”

  Her green hair streamed out behind her as she swooped past. Two others joined her, and they circled above the carriage, all crying out. “Treasure, treasure!” and “Break open the egg!”

  The carriage roof shuddered and cracked as one of them landed on top of it. The harpy began to claw at the wood, and dust and splinters rained down on my hair. All the while, the others urged her on.

  “Yes, sister! Break it open and let us feast! I smell tender flesh and salty blood!”

  I screamed and hit the carriage ceiling with my fists, but a harpy doesn’t startle like a robin. The carriage had begun to swerve under her attack, and I shouted for the drivers to hurry. As always, they ignored me. The horses shied and bucked; the carriage lurched.

  CRASH! The harpy had launched itself at the carriage again, and now her sharp, dirty talons had pierced the roof like needles. I cowered on the floor, afraid she’d pluck me up like a worm from the ground.

  But then came another bloodcurdling shriek, and I felt the harpy lift off from the roof. Scrambling back up to the window, I saw her burst into the gray sky, howling, an arrow sticking out from her flank and drops of blood falling into the dust like black rain.

  “That will teach you manners,” yelled a great deep voice, as the harpies wheeled away, their terrible cries fading.

  A centaur, not twenty feet from the carriage, dropped his bow and turned toward me.

  “My apologies. They are a most unsavory welcoming committee,” he said in a voice like thunder. His human torso was thickly muscled, but the body beneath it was that of a stallion. His hooves pawed the ground and his tail slashed the air.

  “Who are you? Where am I being taken?” My voice was hoarse with fear, but his was the first friendly face I’d seen since my mother’s.

  “You’ll find out soon enough, girl,” he said, and then he galloped away, his hooves kicking up clouds of dust.

  The carriage started up again, and we continued on our way toward the castle, rising out of its rocky promontory.

  Let the carriage roll on forever, I thought, never mind the threat of the harpies. I didn’t want to know who lived in that dark place.

  We slowed as we approached. I saw no way in: no bridge, no gate, and no footpath up the sheer cliffs. But as we drew nearer, I could see, against the black of the rocks, an even deeper blackness. It was the mouth of a cave, a hundred feet tall and arched like a cathedral.

  As I held my breath in horror, hundreds of misshapen, mongrel creatures streamed out of that black opening. They wore servants’ livery—tunics of black wool with a small silver scythe embroidered at the shoulder—and they swarmed the carriage, tugging on its door. The sounds coming from their mouths were not like any language I’d ever heard—a cacophony of grunts and hisses and clicks.

  A creature with a human body and a bat’s head succeeded in wrenching open the door, and I cowered in the far corner of the cursed carriage. But dozens of paws and hands and hooves were grabbing at me, pulling me out of the carriage and into the cold, briny air.

  “Don’t touch me! Leave me alone!” I shrieked, but they merely muttered and growled in response as they tugged at my arms, urging me toward the mouth of the cave.

  Struggle though I might, I was forced into the cave. Darkness s
urrounded me, as close and as horrifying as all these teeming beasts, and just as palpable. As I felt the press of claws on my cheek, I wondered if I was about to die again.

  CHAPTER 25

  But then the claws fell away, and there was nothing but cold blackness. Everywhere around me, creatures whispered and churned, seething like rats on a refuse heap and prodding me deeper into the cave. I was too afraid to scream.

  Then, suddenly, the beasts stopped in a tight cluster, their stinking flesh pressed against me. I felt something slithery on my shoulder and I jerked away, colliding with cold, slimy skin. I gasped and righted myself.

  The floor beneath us shuddered and heaved. I heard the creaking of great chains. And then we all began to rise.

  The platform we were on creaked up slowly, lurching, like a giant tray hoisted by a huge, drunken servant. A scuffle broke out near me, and I heard a bellow of panic, and a moment later, the sound of a body landing on hard stone. I held myself as still as possible, praying I was not near the platform’s edge.

  Still, we were lifted in utter darkness. I heard the screams of at least two more falling beasts.

  As we rose, the air grew less dank. And then we came up, through the floor, into the biggest hall I’d ever seen. Candles glowed all around, their light nearly blinding after the darkness of the cave. As I blinked, eyes watering, I saw long, empty tables, tapestries depicting gruesome battles, and a jewel-encrusted throne at the far end of the hall.

  “What is this place?” I whispered.

  The beast nearest me offered a sort of growl and flicked its brow, as if I should have known the answer.

  We did not stop but kept on rising, hauled upward to the high ceiling and then past it. Finally the platform ground to a halt in a long, dark castle hallway, and a wave of beasts pushed me forward onto solid ground. To my left was a large, elaborately decorated door, its facade carved with roses whose blooms were larger than my head and whose sharp wooden thorns dwarfed my parrying dagger. I felt grotesque paws pushing me toward it.