Rose Red backed away hastily. “Nothin’ you need to see. You’d probably eat it anyway.”
She moved on down the row of bushes as her goat stayed put, poking her nose into the tangled branches. Beana’s yellow eyes narrowed, and she stamped a back hoof. “Rosie!” she bleated. “What did you see?”
“Nothin’, Beana,” Rose Red repeated without turning to the goat. Her arms were full by now, and she would need to put the stems in water soon if she hoped to keep them alive long enough for her master to see. “You’re goin’ to have to go back to your pen now.”
“I don’t want to go back to the pen.”
“I’m sorry, but I cain’t take you inside with me. Not so long as you insist on bein’ . . . you know . . . a goat.”
Beana blinked slowly. “And what else would I be, dear girl?”
Rose Red did not answer. Many things had changed for her during those five years with the Dragon, even more in the months following his departure. Everything she had known was gone. The man she called father was dead. Her home was destroyed beyond recall. Hen’s teeth, her goat wasn’t even a goat!
And dreams came to life and walked in the real world as living, fire-breathing nightmares.
Sometimes she did not think any of the events in her recent life could possibly have happened. The rest of the time, she simply pretended they had not. Best to focus on the tasks at hand. She must serve her master. And she must stay out of everyone else’s sight as much as possible. Because they all believed it was she who brought the Dragon upon Southlands.
In a way, perhaps she had.
Rose Red sighed as she led the goat back to her pen, where other goats raised lazy eyes and bleated disinterested greetings.
“What was that heavy sound for?” Beana demanded.
Rose Red sighed again. “Sometimes I wish . . .”
“Yes?”
“Sometimes I wish we could go back to the way things were. To the mountain. We were lonely, sure. But we were happier then, weren’t we? With old Dad to care for, and our cottage to keep, and no one to . . . to . . .”
She could not finish her thought. How could she bear to say it? No one to look at her like she was a monster slavering to eat their children. No one to startle in fright whenever she entered the room. No one to whisper about her when she’d gone.
She tugged at her veil, adjusting it so that it would not slip off, pulling out stray rose thorns and dropping them to the dirt. Beana’s gaze was fixed upon her, and she did not like to meet it. She knew exactly what her goat was about to say.
“We can go back, Rosie.”
Rose Red shook her head.
“We can,” said the goat. “Your master will provide for our journey. He’s said so before. He won’t keep you here against your will. We can go back to the mountain. It was foolish to have let him talk us into returning in the first place. Have we really done him any good?”
Rose Red did not answer. She plucked thorns from the long stems, rubbing her hand over the smooth bumps left behind.
“He’s more distant than ever, hardly the boy you once knew,” the goat persisted. “You rarely see him, and when you do, you rarely speak. He’s not your responsibility, sweet child. He never was. And it was wrong of him to place such a burden on you, asking you to come back to the lowlands. It’s dangerous here.”
Beana stopped herself. To continue would be to say too much. There were some dangers it was best to keep the girl unaware of.
To the goat’s disappointment, Rose Red said nothing but opened the pen gate and ushered her pet inside. “Rosie?” said Beana as Rose Red closed and fixed the latch.
“I cain’t leave him, Beana,” said Rose Red. “He needs me. He came back and found me because he needs me. I know it’s foolish to say it, even to think it but . . . but, Beana, I’m the only friend my master has. Though he rules the whole kingdom, he needs me still.” She bowed her head, gazing at the bundle of green under her arm. “Yet there’s little enough I can do for him.”
The goat watched as the girl made her way back through the gardens to the Eldest’s House. She felt helpless, and for a moment she cursed the shaggy coat and hooves she wore. “It’s tearing her up,” she muttered as she lost sight of the girl. “This marriage of the prince’s. It’s tearing her to pieces inside. Light of Lumé above, I wish we’d never met him!”
A shadow passed over the sun.
Beana shivered and looked up, squinting. That was no cloud. Perhaps a bird. But it must have been a large one, an eagle even, to make that shadow.
A moment later, she thought she caught a familiar scent on the wind. A scent of poison and of anger. But it vanished, and she told herself it was nothing more than the remnants of the Dragon’s work.
After all, Beana had bigger things to worry about.