Ash:
I could feel the rip, like an umbilical cord being sliced with a knife, as Driscoll embarked on his escape. As expected, the curse forced every dark emotion to the surface—revenge, hatred, guilt—and yet tonight, they were mysteriously quelled as I listened to the Legend. I studied Maddie’s face—rapt with the story, the tale of my fall from grace, my exile in this backwoods town. I found myself surprised that she didn’t see what a horrid creature I truly was. Some other emotion seemed to emanate from her.
But I couldn’t tell whether it was empathy or pity.
Meanwhile, the story coiled about us, rich as music, all the notes in just the right order, all the chords dissonant and minor, as they should be.
Driscoll’s car pulled onto the highway. He was running away. The grandson of the Great Murdering Beast was trying to escape.
Maddie glanced at me.
In the story Lily had just run into the library, had seen the men coming back into the room. My wife then lost her true disguise in the panic, unable to remember what skin she’d been wearing—it had happened to me before, I knew what a dreadful experience it could be.
To be exposed. To be vulnerable.
Driscoll’s car roared, eager to tame the wild road. The forest rose and fell away; one hill after another rolled ever onward. Moon and sky. Black and white. The serpentine road buckled and skipped, as if alive. A thin layer of sweat beaded Professor Driscoll’s forehead as he struggled to make sense of the curving black ribbon that tried to throw him off. He tried to hide his thoughts from the Beast. But it wasn’t working.
Just like Lily hadn’t been able to hide from the net that caught her.
Like I couldn’t hide now from the gaze that Tucker cast at me, eyes tender, almost weeping. He looked so much like the boy who had lured Lily back at the train station, so many years ago.
Ever since the beginning of the curse, Driscoll and his family had been the cattle on the Beast’s thousand hills.
I had been the Beast.
Driscoll could feel my presence now—though far away—probing his mind. Searching. Watching to see which way the car turned, how fast he was going. His fingers clamped the steering wheel, knuckles white.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore Driscoll’s frantic heartbeat. In the Legend I had just entered the Driscoll mansion. Too late to save her.
Day and night. Good and evil.
Moon in the heavens, full and commanding.
Driscoll pushed the gas pedal to the floor. He was near the edge of Ticonderoga Falls now, pressing against the silver woven net that spread like gossamer magic, created from my flesh and blood, from the wound in my side that would never heal, from the broken heart that would never mend—
Maddie stared at me, tears in her eyes. Listening. Heart thundering.
Maybe my heart could mend.
If I could only let go of the past.
Driscoll’s car tore through the invisible barrier, borne into freedom in an instant, in that moment when I contemplated the possibility of falling in love again.
“No!” Joe stopped telling the story, he cried out.
I smiled. Joe knew what was happening and it was already too late to stop it.
Moon spinning overhead, hypnotic and impulsive. Driscoll fleeing down the mountainside like a dog with the backyard gate left open. Me suddenly crumpling to the floor, unable to speak, unable to move, just like the night Lily had died, wound in my side that matched hers. We had been so in love, so linked in soul and flesh, that the wound that killed her had almost killed me too.
And now a sound like the world being destroyed was rocketing overhead. It began somewhere deep in the valley, then traveled through the village, rushing toward the top of the mountain. An unbearable ripping sound surged through Ticonderoga Falls.
On the floor, I curled in agony, my wound made fresh again, my blood spilling in a red-black pool.
Chapter 71
Fabric of Reality
Maddie:
The room spun with enchantment and magic, then the Legend ended abruptly. It felt as if I’d been startled awake and, all around me, a dream was dissipating. The image of Lily’s death faded, along with it the image of Ash flying to the rooftop and casting a curse on all of Ticonderoga Falls; the sparkles that had been hanging in the air faded, and the century-old vista that I had been staring into—the Victorian landscape of the nineteenth century—disappeared. In its stead I saw the bungalow living room, Tucker in a corner chair, and Samwise still curled before the fire. Just then Joe Wimbledon scrambled to his feet.
“No!” he cried out. “You can’t let Driscoll go.”
A horrific noise, almost like the world itself was being pulled apart, screeched overhead and rumbled beneath my feet. It even vibrated on my skin. I reached out to pull Tucker into my arms, shielding him in case the ceiling began to crumble down.