“I cain’t come stay with you! I ain’t fit for that!”
“You can be my servant,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m sure you’d be good at it. You can sweep and clean, and who’s to complain if I want to hire a chambermaid? It will all be perfectly appropriate, I promise you, and then I can keep an eye on you.” He warmed to this idea, and his voice was eager, despite the resistance he read all over her rigid body. “It would be a new start for you, Rosie. A new life. Look, you’ve got to get away from this place and—”
She shook her head violently. “Beana won’t let me leave the mountain.”
“Iubdan’s beard!” Leo barked. “She’s a goat ! You are going to die up here.”
“I cain’t leave. He . . . she . . . they won’t let me.”
“There is no one to stop you,” Leo said. “No one, you understand? Beana is a goat. Who else can tell you what to do?”
“The monster,” she whispered.
“No!” said Leo. “I told you, there is no monster, and I know it! I’ll protect you; I won’t let anyone hurt you. You’re not . . .” He didn’t finish but gnashed his teeth and drew a deep breath as he tried to compose his thoughts. “There’s nothing to keep you here, Rosie. Nothing but your own fears. Now, listen, I am leaving in just two weeks, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to return. I can’t just abandon you up here, knowing they’ll drive you out the moment you enter town, knowing they’ll leave you to starve in the forest.” He stepped forward, putting out his hands to her, though he dared not touch her. “Rosie, please. Let me help.”
He stood there with his hands in empty air, talking to no one.
Leo sighed and bowed his head. She was gone. Perhaps she had never been there, and he had dreamt it all out of his loneliness? The moonlight can play strange tricks on a fellow’s eyes, and he was tired. Very tired. The wind was cold on his neck, and Leo shivered as he left the graveyard and made his way back across the lawn. At the kitchen door he paused a moment and looked back out into the half-lit landscape, up to the forests above.
“Think about it, Rose Red,” he whispered. “That’s all I ask.”
5
SHE HAD NEVER FELT so trapped before. Not once, in all her years hiding away from the world, secluded and outcast, had Rose Red felt such a horrible sense of imprisonment. It ate at her for the next two weeks, like a cancer becoming ever more unbearable.
You had better not leave me, princess.
It was all in her mind, of course. Dreams couldn’t hurt her. But they could plague her day and night . . . and what if they were to come true?
She sat in the top of the grandfather tree, looking out across the sweep of her mountains, down to the tablelands far below. They looked so big. They looked so foreign. They looked like freedom.
“I cain’t go,” she whispered to herself.
I will make him pay.
“What if Leo were to suffer for helpin’ me? Folks up here are scared of me; why should folks down there be any different? I cain’t go with him. I cain’t!”
Stay with me, princess.
“Or can I?”
Stay with me.
She clung to the high branches, swaying there above the world. And the voice in her head spoke with such venom, it was almost real. Rose Red closed her eyes and forced her mind to quiet, driving away all thoughts except the smell of the forest, the bite of the mountain wind through her rags and veils, the feel of sap running through her grasp. The dream voice slowly faded from her mind, and calm descended. Rose Red found herself able to climb down the tree, though her limbs trembled. Lack of food made her weaker every day.
Beana met her at the base of the tree, her yellow eyes full of worry. “You shouldn’t climb up there, Rosie girl,” she said. “One of these days you—”
“We’re goin’, Beana,” Rose Red said.
“What? Going where?”
“We’re leavin’ the mountain.”
Rose Red set off through the trees without a backward glance even when Beana’s “Baaaah!” rattled the air behind her. Her shoulders were set and her pace was firm as she began the descent to Hill House. She could only hope she wasn’t too late, that Leo hadn’t changed his mind.
Princess, stop!
“Rose Red, stop!”
She wouldn’t. If she did, she might never start again. But the goat trotted around in front of her, bleating and tearing at the earth with her sharp hooves. “What are you thinking, girl? I’ve told you countless times, you can’t leave the mountain!”
“I’ve got to, Beana.” The goat tried to block her path, but Rose Red pushed past her through the underbrush. Branches tore at her clothing as though the forest itself would restrain her if it could. “I’ve got to get away!”
“Get away to where?” Beana was nearly frantic. Rose Red had never heard her voice tremble so. But she kept on her way as fast as she could in her weakness, afraid her resolve would falter.