“What nonsense!” said Ayama, hoping the trembling of her voice did not betray her. “Of course that’s not how the story ends.”
It was not nonsense. The story ended just as the beast had said, at least every time Ayama had heard it told. Still, she could admit that it had always left her feeling a bit melancholy and dissatisfied, as if a false note had been played. But what ending might appease the beast? Because Ayama had been hushed so often, she had become a very good listener, and she remembered the one rule of the thorn wood. The story needed an ending that was true.
Ayama collected her thoughts, then gathered up the thread of the tale and let it unspool anew.
“It’s true that the boy drank sun from the white ash ladle,” she said. “And, yes, it’s true that he no longer required a herd of cattle for his breakfast or a lake to wash it down. He did indeed marry the doctor’s pretty daughter and worked each day to till his fields. But despite all this, the boy found he was still unhappy. You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled—not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it as the boy did.”
Only when she finished did Ayama realize that, in fumbling for the truth, she’d spoken of her own sadness, but it was too late to call the words back.
The monster was quiet for a long time. Then he rose, his bushy black tail brushing the ground as he turned his back on Ayama and said, “I will leave your herds in peace. Go now and do not return.”
And because the wood demanded truth, she knew his vow was good.
Ayama could scarcely believe her luck. She leapt to her feet and hurried from the glade, but as she bent to pick up her axe and her copper cup, the beast said, “Wait.”
He was little more than a shape in the dark now, and she could make him out only by the red gleam of his eyes and the glow of the carved ridges on his horns.
“Take a sprig of quince blossoms with you and make sure not to drop it as you pass through the wild lands.”
Ayama did not stop to question his command, but plucked a slender branch and ran back along the stream. She did not slow until she had pushed her way through the cruel thorns of the thicket and felt the sun on her face once more.
Back across the wild lands Ayama walked, the blossoms tucked safely in her apron, and yet the hot sands did not seem to touch her feet and the sun did not burn her shoulders. She did not have to squint against the bright sky. When at last she reached her valley, she whooped with joy.
At the sight of her striding into the town, people unbolted their doors and threw open their shutters and ran down the street for—as Ayama could see from their faces—none of them had expected her to survive.
Immediately they peppered her with questions, but when she tried to answer, the townspeople pinched her arms and shouted that she was a liar.
“An enchanted wood in the wild lands?” scoffed one man. “What rubbish!”
“She never went to find the beast at all,” accused another. “She spent the afternoon napping in the shade of a screwbean tree.”
But Ayama remembered the quince and took the sprig from her apron pocket. The flowers were fresh and unwilted, their white petals still damp with dew and tinged with pink. The blossoms glowed like a constellation in her hand. When the townspeople looked upon them, they could taste the tart flavor of quince on their tongues; they could feel the soothing touch of shade falling over their skin. These were no ordinary flowers. Now the people listened as Ayama stood with the sprig clasped in her fist and told them of the beast’s promise, and when she had finished, they led her all the way to the palace, murmuring in wonder, forgetting that the girl they now looked upon with awe still had the marks of their pinching fingers on her arms.
The king gazed down from his throne with cold eyes when Ayama spoke of the beast’s vow, but he could not deny the magic of the quince that bloomed sweet and strange in Ayama’s hands, its petals only now beginning to turn red.
“Such a marvel!” said the king’s handsome human son, smiling brightly. “And what a brave girl to attempt such a task. Her pockets shall be weighted with jewels and all shall sing songs of her courage.”
Ayama returned his smile, for it was impossible not to bloom in the prince’s sunny regard. But what she really wanted was a glass of water.
The queen took the flowers from Ayama, eyes sparkling with what might have been tears. “You must do as you promised,” she told her husband.
So the king called for three chests of gold and thirty bolts of silk to be brought to Ayama’s family.
That night, Ayama’s parents rejoiced, and Kima kissed her sister’s cheeks, while Ma Zil looked on, wearing a smug expression as she chewed her jurda.
Ayama saw that no one had cleaned the grate, that the clothes had gone unwashed, and the pots had not even been stacked for washing but still sat upon the stove, crusted with food. She thought of the gentle quiet of the thorn wood and sighed as she lay down upon the hearth. When she woke the next morning, she was not at all sure she hadn’t dreamed the whole thing. It was only when she looked at her arms and saw the nicks and cuts the thorns had left upon her skin that she knew all she had seen in the wood beyond the wild lands was real.
The monster kept to his word and the herds were left untouched by anything but weather. The king returned to his failing war, the people worked their land and traded in the market, and soon remembered their old complaints as their taxes mounted and their sons and brothers were buried at the front. But then one terrible morning, Nemila Eed woke to find her jurda fields destroyed, all her crops uprooted and left to wither in the sun. The same was true of her neighbors’ properties to the north and south. There were strange tracks leading into the dust of the wild lands.
The people clamored for the king to set things right, and some even whispered that the queen should be put to death for birthing such a monster to torment them so. Again, the king called for a messenger, and this time he promised lands carved from his own best estate as reward.