Free Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen

curse. The curse that hadn’t touched her, or so her father had said.
    She turned and scrabbled at the door, flinging it open so she could run out into the cold air, with the cackle of Nanna’s laughter and the echoing raven caws following her.

 
    7
    IN CAPTIVITY
    MORNING CAME filtering into Sarah’s room , creeping in on fog-feet. She woke into a silence that was thick and muffled, as if the whole castle was enveloped in cloud. Even the light was hazy. She stretched, working out the cramps in her legs and back.
    Last night she’d run back here because there was nowhere else to go. It all seemed distant and broken, like the last traces of a nightmare already slipping away. Sarah was still wearing the jeans and sweatshirt she’d changed into before dinner. She had both arms wrapped around her stuffed animals, and their faces were sodden with her tears.
    She looked down. Her muddy sneakers were laced on her feet, and she’d left smears of red mud all over the blanket.
    â€œUgh,” Sarah said, shoving her companions to one side. Her eyes were puffy and tight. Not surprising, since she’d sobbed herself to sleep. “You are making an awful habit of bursting into tears over everything,” she told herself sternly, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She made herself uncurl and hobble over to the bowl of icy water. The candles had burned out in the night, leaving smears of greasy dark wax in the hollows of the glass lanterns. Someone had come and left a bundle of fresh white candles on her desk. They were tied together with rough brown cord. Nanna .
    There were no servants, her grandmother had told her. And that could only mean that her grandmother had been in here last night while Sarah slept. A shudder traveled down her body. Just the thought that the creepy old woman had been sneaking through her room while she was dreaming was horrifying enough, but there was that … thing.
    That thing—the beast—in the cage. It couldn’t really be her grandfather. There was no curse, no magic. In the light of day, such a thing seemed impossible. The raven was trained to talk. Or there were speakers and microphones set up all around the castle. Even here in her room.
    The realization was dizzying. She was completely alone with a madwoman. And her father was the one who had left her there. Sarah cupped water in her palms and splashed it on her face. The cold made her gasp, but it was a good, fierce kind of shock, like being slapped back to reality.
    If there were microphones and speakers in the room, there could be cameras too. There would be electricity—despite the candle lanterns. It was like she was on a deranged film set. And whatever Nanna said about how she had no servants, it was a lie. There were people helping her grandmother—people who set all this up, made the food. Someone had to have designed the beast costume and worn it. Or maybe it was some kind of robotics …
    Why would anyone do all this just to terrify her? Sarah rubbed her hands over her face. How is this not more insane than believing in magic?
    There were two truths, but they couldn’t both be true at the same time.
    â€œI don’t know what I believe,” Sarah said fiercely into her hands. I don’t know what’s real.
    She lowered her hands and held on to the desk, almost as if it was the only thing that could stop her spinning off the face of the earth. They’re both impossible. Or improbable.
    Not for the first time in her life, Sarah wished that her parents had agreed to buy her a cell phone. It had always felt to her like she was the only one in her class who didn’t have one, but her parents had been adamant that they hadn’t needed cell phones when they were children and she would survive just fine without one. Hah. So much for that.
    Sarah looked around the room. Okay. No phone. And nowhere to charge it even if I did have one. And probably no