The Curse of the Beta のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

The cliff above the island is a bare shoulder of rock at the end of the headland where the gulls nest and the grass gives up, and there is a path up to it from the shore that only the shepherds and the children use. Clara went up it in the last of the light with her shawl blowing and I came behind her with a lantern I did not light, because I did not want the village to see a light on the cliff that night.She stopped at the top. The sea was below us and the island was below that, black and flat with the water going round it, and the moon was not up yet but the sky over the water was a pale green grey and there was enough light to see by."Where is the moon?" she said."Not up for an hour. It is near the full but it will not rise for a while.""Then we have an hour." She turned round. "Sit down. I want to say the whole of it before it comes."I sat down on the grass with my back against a rock. She did not sit. She stood at the edge of the cliff with her arms folded and looked out at

We did not go to the schoolhouse and we did not go up to the pack house. We went down to the shore where Nina was waiting with her bag and her lantern, and I sat down on a rock and rolled my sleeve up and showed her the arm in the lantern light.It had got worse. The grey threads had gone past the shoulder now and were creeping across my chest in fine lines like frost on a window, and the cut itself was open and weeping and the skin round it had gone the color of old ash. Nina looked at it for a long time without saying anything. Then she said, "The silver is in your blood now and it has been in your blood for eight days and it is not going to come out on its own. If we do nothing, you will lose the arm first and then the chest and then the whole of you, and it will take about a month.""And if we do something?""Then we find out whether the book was right." She took the blue bottle out of her bag and set it on the rock beside her. "This is the first stage. It is silver drawn out with

I went down to the schoolhouse with the keys in my hand and the taste of the empty grave still in my mouth.Clara had the door open before I knocked. She had her sleeves rolled and her hair pinned and there was a pot on the stove and a pile of slates on the desk, and she looked at my face and said, "What happened?"I told her. I told her about Agnes and the keys and the coffin and the shroud and the penny, and about Andrew and the three men on the cliff and the man called Colin who was not called Colin anymore, and while I talked she sat down at her desk very slowly and did not interrupt once.When I had finished she said, "Your mother hid Colin in her loft.""Yes.""And Colin was on the cliff the night the old Alpha died. And Colin is Rook's father's Beta. And Rook came to this village in the spring with a cup and a mark on his hand and a story about a school inspector." She looked at the wall. "Elias, my grandfather was a boatman called Andrew. My father's father. The man who took h

Agnes came to the schoolhouse at four with a basket on her arm and her white braid over her shoulder and her mouth set in a line that meant she had made up her mind about something on the way down the hill.Nina came with her. Thomas came last with his hat in his hand and his silver hair wet from the rain that had started up, and Bram came in behind him and shut the door and stood with his back to it. Clara put the deed on the desk and unfolded it, and I stood by the window with the grey rain coming down on the green and watched the five of them sit down in a schoolroom full of children's slates."Read it," I said.Clara read it. She read the front in the old tongue and then she turned it over and read the back in the common speech, and when she had finished she put it down and said, "That is what my grandfather wrote. That is what he stole and what he kept and what he sent his son to bring back to this village. And this is what he took off the dead Alpha's hand."She put the ring on

The hall was full by the time the bell had rung twice.It was the old bell in the yard, the iron one on the post that is only rung for a challenge or a death, and Bram rang it because Marcus told him to. The pack came up from the kilns and the boats and the shore with their hands still wet and their coats half on, and they filled the long room and stood along the walls and at the back and in the doorway, and the Gamma took his place at the end of the bench and Thomas stood by the hearth with his hat in his hands. The Council messenger Oliver stood at the side of the dais with his leather case and his long grey face, and Rook was not there.Marcus stood on the dais in front of the chair.He looked like a man who had been ill for a long time and had decided to stop pretending. His copper red hair was tied back and his coat was on and his hands were steady on the arms of the chair, and when he spoke his voice carried to the back of the hall."There is a thing I have to say to this pack,"