Druid's Moon

Chapter 3

Chapter 3The Beast stirred from a long sleep.

Hunger and thirst ruled his waking. He snuffled round the rocks surrounding his bed. A leftover bone from last night’s sheep poked out from the matted grass and hay. He crunched it with his back teeth and rose up on all fours. A shivering stretch of each back leg, and all trace of sleep was gone.

He bounded down the corridor, then slid to a halt at the first corner. Snout lifted to catch each breeze that drifted around the caverns, he scented for movement, for news.

The new smells—ink and metal—were still there. Faint and far above, but unmistakeable.

The Man part of him, suppressed while hunting and lost during sleep, flickered awake at the back of his mind. It had been over a month since he’d first isolated the scents, when the archaeologists arrived on the cliffside and cleared the cave’s entrance.

The Beast did not emerge from the cave, save only in the darkest night. Hidden from all eyes, except at the last, in the instant when he latched on to his prey. He hunted sheep and goats, and when the anger rose in him, threatened unwary hikers who’d lingered too long after sunset. The Man receded and faded, barely a memory. The Beast prowled at will, but returned each dawn with his prey, eager to please his mistress.

He crawled on through the caverns, stopping now and then to mark a stretch of wall as he neared the upper reaches. An image came to him of a long-ago story about a minotaur: turning and turning in endless labyrinths, never seeing daylight. The Beast squeezed past a long-disused alcove, scenting first and moving after. A sharp, powdery smell hit his nose an instant before he put his paw down on something cold and piercing. Metal dug into his fur and burnt his skin.

His first—beastly—instinct was to fling the offending article as far away as he could, but the Man part of him roused and objected. The rusty iron might be useful. He closed his paw around it and resumed his prowls in search of water.

Goaded now by the Man, he sought a pool other than the damp puddles he usually drank from. He emerged through a crack in the cliffside, searching for reflected moonlight or starlight. Anything that might show him his transformed face.

The earthy smell of sheep came across the meadow. He crouched, creeping stealthily forward. But the Man was still strong; he would not hunt yet, but watch. Two sheep stood by a pool, one with its head down, drinking.

The Beast ran straight at them. Startled, they turned tail, bleating as they scuppered. The Man stilled the Beast’s rage, forced him to stop, to look down into the pool.

He was all Beast on the outside, covered in dark grey fur, with padded paws and feet tipped with dangerous claws. His was not the sort of face that could ever again mingle among men. The snout and flaring nostrils, the twitching hairy ears, the long whiskers, none gave any indication that a man lurked within. A man aware enough to calculate the time that had passed: five years, seven months, and a day.

Smells assailed him on the wind. Seafoam, salt spray, and fear. Two hikers on the cliff top. He’d not descended so far into beasthood yet as to eat man’s flesh himself. But his mistress was waiting.

The Man sought control, wrenching the Beast’s gaze out over nothingness, over the sea.

Hunger growled deep in his belly. The Beast snuffed the air. The sheep had not gone far and watched him, warily.

Five years.

He raised his head and howled. The sheep scampered away. The scent of fear sharpened.

He dropped low, and the iron nail in his paw scratched at his fur.

Man and Beast moved as one, and drove the point of the nail into his paw as far as he could stand it. All thoughts focused on the pain, like lightning streaking down a metal pole, and as the Man concentrated, the Beast receded. The Man, more awake now than ever before, repeated in thought, over and over, the truths of his humanity.

“I am Frederick Elyan Cunnick, second son of the Baron of Lansladron. I was born on the twentieth of April. I was a twin. My brother died without honour and so, in my twenty-seventh year, I was taken by the witch of Cockerell. I was cursed into Beast form and given over to the service of the Mistress.”