Beauty by Sarah Pinborough

Author:Sarah Pinborough [Pinborough, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780575093089
Google: rabfHbhwr80C
Amazon: 1783291141
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

8

‘Some kind of terrible magic . . .’

They left the soldier where he lay, his throat ripped out and his eyes forever staring shocked and surprised at the greying sky, and moved quickly. The man might have been lying that there were others close by but dawn was breaking and soon the city would be alive again. It wouldn’t be long before the body was found.

The wolf immediately calmed after its swift attack, standing by the dead man and letting out a long sorrowful howl before padding to Rumplestiltskin’s side, its eyes fixed on Petra. The man patted the fierce beast’s head and then led the small group away. Petra was staring at the wolf, stunned, and the huntsman grabbed her arm and pulled her along. They had no choice now. He couldn’t take the huge wolf on – and nor did he want to. There was something almost noble about its grace and ferocity. Had Rumplestiltskin tamed it? It didn’t matter; the wolf had saved Petra, and he trusted animals more than men. Where the wolf went, he would follow.

Rumplestiltskin led them to a large oak tree and crouched to pull up a wooden hatch hidden beneath grass and leaves. ‘Get in,’ he hissed urgently. The wolf bounded through the dark hole first, and the rest followed. Only once they were sealed up in the dank earth did Rumplestiltskin take a torch from a slot on the rough wall, and light it. Ahead of them was a low tunnel, wooden struts here and there propping up the ceiling. It didn’t look overly safe to the huntsman, but he followed anyway, holding Petra’s hand in the gloom.

They walked, hunched over so far they might have been better off crawling, for several minutes, until the tunnel opened out into a man-made cave, with a door at the far end and a small hole in the ceiling that let in a shard of natural light from the surface several feet above them.

Rumplestiltskin had clearly tried to make it home and as well as two beds and piles of books there was a table holding a jug of wine, some fresh bread, cheese and a leg of roasted pork.

‘If you’re hungry, take something,’ he muttered, clearing some papers from a chair so Petra, still slightly winded from the weight of the wolf, could sit down. The wolf’s arrival and their subsequent flight had calmed him.

‘You dug this place out? Yourself?’ Petra asked, dabbing a piece of cloth over the cut on her neck to stem the blood.

‘We had nearly a hundred years.’ Rumplestiltskin put his knapsack down and sat on the bed. ‘Relatively, it didn’t take very long.’

‘We?’ the huntsman asked, and then just as the first ray of sunlight pierced through the narrow skylight, the wolf began to change.

His fur glittered a thousand colours and his yellow eyes widened as he whimpered. Myriad lights lifted from his coat and spun in a whirlwind around him until they were so bright the huntsman had to close his eyes.

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