The Beatryce Prophecy

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Parts 3-4

Part 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Book the Second”

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary

A boy named Jack Dory runs from the dark woods to the closest village, where he tells an old woman about the robbers who killed his parents in the woods. Though the woman is weary of the world’s evils, she finds herself sympathetic to Jack’s tale. She makes him repeat his name until he understands that “his parents were gone, dead, but that he himself still lived” (58).

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary

Four years later, when Jack is 12, the old woman dies. In those four years, Jack has made a name for himself in the village as someone with a profound memory and a gift for performance. Because of this, he “belonged to no one and was loved by all” (60), but despite this, he has frequent nightmares of the robber who killed his parents, on whom he wants to take revenge.

Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary

In Jack’s village, one of the king’s soldiers lies, feverish, at the inn. An angel of death visits him, and when the soldier begs for death, the angel refuses, saying the soldier has a chance for forgiveness if this chance is written down. The innkeeper’s wife sends for Jack to take a message to the monastery. The soldier tells Jack about the angel and how she promised forgiveness, to which Jack replies, “That’s a nice promise” (64).

Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary

When Jack arrives at the monastery, he is greeted by Beatryce and Answelica. Beatryce reveals herself as a girl and says she can write the soldier’s confession, but Jack doesn’t believe her, saying, “You’re naught but a girl, a girl without hair” (67). At this, Answelica headbutts Jack hard enough for him to see stars and collapse.

Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary

Beatryce doesn’t know why, but she likes and trusts Jack. As she, Answelica, and Jack head toward the monastery, Beatryce has the sudden feeling this has happened before, but she dismisses the feeling as impossible. Jack tells her about how his parents died, and “a strange, curled creature flashed through Beatryce’s mind” (72), making her stumble.

Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary

Against Edik’s protests, the monks decide this is the solution to the problem of keeping Beatryce among them, and they outfit her with supplies to take the soldier’s confession and then go on her way. Edik thinks of how his father left him at the monastery. He doesn’t understand how anyone could give up the people they love but recognizes that “again and again, the world insisted upon betrayals, goodbyes” (76).

Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary

Beatryce and Edik say a tearful goodbye, during which she promises to write the story of his mother’s mermaid hairbrush. On the way to the village, Jack does cartwheels, which makes Beatryce sure he pretends to be happy to cover his sorrow and fear. Taking hold of Answelica’s ear, Beatryce proclaims, “I am not afraid at all” (79).

Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary

Beatryce truly is afraid, even more so when she reaches the inn and feels the sense of death in the soldier’s room. Before Jack leaves, he whispers Beatryce’s name, which makes her feel better because “it was as if he were reminding her who she was” (82).

In the king’s throne room, the king reassures himself by repeating the prophecy, vague as it is, that said he would become king.

Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary

The darkness of the room reminds Beatryce of the emptiness inside her, but when she rests a hand on Answelica’s head, it helps chase the fear away. Outside, she hears Jack singing like a bird, and at the knowledge he’s nearby, “her heart flooded with light” (86). The light is snuffed out when the soldier begins to tell of all the killing he’s done, including three children (two boys and a girl). Beatryce starts to write the confession but sees the monster of light in her mind again, which threatens to drag her into darkness. Answelica gently butts Beatryce to keep her in the present, and instead of the man’s confession, Beatryce writes the first line of the mermaid story over and over again.

Part 2, Chapter 22 Summary

As Jack sits outside his hut, a soldier arrives in the village and asks Jack if a strange girl has sought shelter there. Jack says no, and as the soldier rides off to ask the rest of the village, Jack vows, “Never again will I sit idly by” (94).

Part 2, Chapter 23 Summary

Jack goes to the inn to retrieve Beatryce, finding her writing furiously while the soldier weeps uncontrollably. Jack helps Beatryce up, and in a daze, she tells him about the soldier’s sword under the bed. Jack retrieves it and remembers the robber who killed his parents, thinking, “A sword such as this would be a very useful thing to have” (97). The three rush from the soldier’s room, and Jack hears wings rustling behind them.

At the castle, the king’s counselor thinks about the questions he wants to ask Beatryce. He will patiently wait for answers, and in the meantime, “perhaps [he] will go and ask [her] mother a few questions, too” (99).

Part 2 Analysis

These chapters jumpstart the quest portion of the novel, which calls to fairy tales and adventure stories. Though Beatryce has no memories of her past, she knows that it is not in her nature to sit and wait. Thus, when Jack arrives with the request from the soldier, she goes, marking her as a protagonist. By contrast, Jack has made it his nature to sit and wait, having put his life on hold until he is able to exact revenge on the robber who killed his parents. Retrieving a monk to take the soldier’s final confession is another in a long line of jobs that the villagers give to Jack because of his unique skill set. This time, however, the job ends with Jack moving on because he sees a kindred spirit in Beatryce. She needs him, and though he doesn’t know it yet, he needs her, and together, they form the beginning of the traveling party common in quest stories.

Jack Dory is another character with darkness in his past, and his journey toward overcoming that darkness also supports Coping with Trauma and Being True to Oneself. Where Beatryce represses her traumatic memories because she isn’t yet strong enough to deal with them, Jack holds on to his memories and lets them fuel him. His desire to avenge his parents is a large part of who he is, something he doesn’t realize until he’s face-to-face with the robber in Chapter 45. Though he doesn’t intentionally forget what happened, he does choose not to think about it, as shown by his dogged determination to remain cheerful and unaffected. Jack and Beatryce trigger one another’s memories and emotions. The glowing creature that appears in Beatryce’s mind when Jack talks about his parents is a visual manifestation of her trauma. Hearing about death makes it impossible for her to repress her memories completely, but instead of remembering what happened, she is left disoriented by her mind still trying to forget. Similarly, Beatryce’s fear of the soldier and the darkness forces Jack to see her as someone who needs help, much as his parents did. Four years ago, he ran when his mother told him to run, but with that weighing on his conscience, he refuses to run now, which is why he goes back for Beatryce and remains at her side. His conscious choice to do so begins his journey to being true to who he is while also foregrounding the theme of Destiny Is a Choice.

In Chapter 19, Beatryce grabs hold of Answelica’s ear before declaring she isn’t afraid, which calls awareness to the significance of this gesture. Since Edik found Beatryce in the stables, she has clutched at Answelica’s ear during times of darkness and fear, and in Chapter 5, Beatryce thinks of Answelica’s ear as a lifeline—something tangible she can hold on to in the midst of so much loss. The goat’s ear is a security blanket because it is the one constant Beatryce has in her world and the first thing she was able to hold on to after she escaped with her life. In the earlier chapters, Beatryce uses Answelica’s ear liberally, reaching for it whenever the slightest thing triggers the memories of her trauma. When the memories are later unveiled, Answelica’s ear becomes a necessity as Beatryce works through the truth of what happened and what she must now do to counter it. When Beatryce is captured, she is deprived of Answelica’s ear, and this forces her to truly work through any traumatic emotions she still has. Without her security blanket in reach, she has nothing to rely on but herself, leaving her with two options—to become stronger or crumble. Since she is unwilling to crumble because people need her, she finds her inner strength, reinforcing the idea of Being True to Oneself. Following Beatryce’s progression shows the importance of security blankets but also how they can become an unhealthy coping mechanism if overused.

The soldier introduced in Chapter 15 represents how Beatryce cannot predict the world or make it conform to her emotional state. Beatryce volunteers to take the soldier’s confession because she wants a new opportunity. From the moment she arrives in his room, however, she feels the negative energy around him, which foreshadows the realization that he killed her brothers and nearly took her life, too. Other than a vague sense of unease, Beatryce has no way of knowing who the soldier is or her connection to him in this chapter. It’s only when he begins to confess that Beatryce’s subconscious mind makes the connections, and this shows how Coping with Trauma is the best way to prepare oneself for the world. By staying cooped up at the monastery, Beatryce could have avoided this interaction and continued to ignore her past, but this would have only worked until Chapter 27 when another soldier goes to the monastery. The world goes on without care for her individual troubles. Since she cannot predict when something will trigger her or avoid all possible triggering situations, it is unrealistic to expect that the world will take her, individually, into account at every turn. Thus, as Beatryce and the other characters of the novel learn to do, the best course of action is to cope with trauma as much as possible and be prepared for trauma to be triggered when one least expects it.