3

Spring grew slowly into summer. I no longer needed a cloak on the long afternoon rides, and the daisies in the meadows grew up to Greatheart’s knees. I finished rereading the Iliad and started the Odyssey; I still loved Homer, but Cicero, whom I read in a spirit of penance, I liked no better than I had several years ago. I read the Bacchae and Medea over and over again so many times that I knew them by heart. I also found my way back to the great library at the end of the hall of paintings, and read the Browning that the Beast had recommended. On the whole I liked the poems, even if they were a little obscure in places. Emboldened, I tried The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but I had to give that up in a few pages, because I could make nothing of it. Then quite by accident, or at least it seemed so, I discovered a long shelf of wonderful stories and verses by a Sir Walter Scott; and I read a book called The Once and Future King twice, although I still liked Malory better. I stayed away from the hall of paintings. The castle, as usual, ordered itself to the convenience of my comings and goings, and the library was now regularly to be found down one short corridor and up a flight of stairs from my room.

After that day when I introduced the Beast and Greatheart to each other, the Beast occasionally joined us on our morning walks. At first Greatheart was uneasy, although he gave me no more trouble; but after a few weeks Greatheart was nearly as comfortable as I was in the Beast’s company. I let the big horse wander free, without halter or rope, as I had done at home; and I noticed that he kept me between himself and the Beast, and the Beast never offered to touch him.

Sometimes too the Beast would find me in the library, where I was sitting on my feet in a huge wing chair reading The Bride of Lammermoor or The Ring and the Book. Once he found me smiling foolishly over “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and asked me to read it aloud. I hesitated. I was sitting by the window, where my favorite chair had obligingly arranged itself, my elbow on the ivy-edged stone sill. The Beast turned away from me long enough to call a chair up to him, which was joined a moment later by a footstool with four ivory legs, bowed like the forelegs of a bulldog. He sat down and looked at me expectantly. There didn’t seem to be any opportunity for nervousness on my part, so I put my hesitations aside and read it. “Now it’s your turn,” I said, and passed the book to him.

He held it as if it were a butterfly for a moment, then leaned back and began to turn the pages—with dexterity, I noticed—and then made me laugh with his sly reading of “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of a tradition; most days after that we took turns reading to each other. Once after several weeks of a daily chapter of Bleak House, he did not come one day, and I missed him sadly. I scolded him for his neglect when I saw him at sunset that evening. He looked pleased and said, “Very well. I shan’t miss again.”

This brief exchange made me think, whether I would or no. I wondered that we didn’t tire of each other’s company; perhaps even more I wondered that I sought his. We saw each other several hours of every day; yet I at least always looked forwards to the next meeting, and his visits never seemed long. Part of it, I supposed, was that we were each other’s only alternative to solitude; but I could admit that this wasn’t all. I tried not to wonder too much, and to be grateful. This idyll was not at all what I had imagined during that last month at home with a red rose keeping secret silent watch over the parlour.

There were only two flaws in my enjoyment of this new life. The worst was my longing for home, for the sight of my family; and I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of them at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself. The other was that every evening after supper, when I stood up from the long table in the dining hall and prepared to go upstairs to my room, the Beast asked: “Beauty, will you marry me?” Every evening, I answered, “No,” and left the room at once. The first few weeks I looked over my shoulder as I hastened upstairs, fearing that he would be angry, and would follow me to put his question more forcefully. But he never did. The weeks passed, and with them my fear, which was replaced by friendship and even a timid affection. I came to dread that nightly question for quite a different reason. I did not like to refuse him the only thing he ever asked of me. My “No” grew no less certain, but I said it quietly and walked upstairs feeling as if I had just done something shameful. We had such good times together, and yet they always came to this, at every day’s final parting. I knew I was fond of him, but the thought of marrying him remained horrible.

After the Beast had told me, at the beginning of my stay, that I should not allow myself to be bullied by the invisible servants, and specifically by the bowls and platters that served me at dinner, I began to enjoy occasionally expressing a preference. That wonderful table would never have offered me the same dish twice; but while I reveled in the variety, I also sometimes demanded a repetition. There was a dark treacly spice cake that I liked very much, and asked for several times. Sometimes it burst into being like a small exploding star, several feet above my head, and settled magnificently to my plate; sometimes a small silver tray with a leg at each of five or six corners would leap up and hurry towards me from a point far down the table.

One evening near mid-summer I asked for my favorite cake again. The Beast sat, as usual, to my right as I headed the immense table. There was a wine-glass in front of him, and a bottle of white wine the color of moonlight we were sharing. After many weeks of my asking him if there wasn’t something he would eat or drink with me, he had admitted that he enjoyed a glass of wine now and then. Most nights after that he had at least a few sips of whatever I was drinking, although I noticed that he never touched his glass when I was looking at him.

“You should try this,” I said, cutting the cake with a silver knife.

“Thank you,” said the Beast, “but as I have told you, I cannot wield knife and fork.”

“You don’t need to,” I said. “Here, stop that,” I said to the cake. I had cut a piece from the tray but when I laid the knife down it promptly sprang up again and was lifting the piece onto my plate. “I’ll do that.” I picked up the slice of cake and bit into it. “Like this,” I said to the Beast around a mouthful.

“Don’t tease me,” said the Beast. “I cannot. Besides, my—er—mouth isn’t set up for chewing.”

“Neither is Honey’s,” I said. I had told him about Melinda’s ugly mastiff. “And she will inhale cakes and pies and cookies by the hundredweight if they are left unguarded. This is really very good. Open your mouth.” I stood up, cake in hand, and walked around the corner of the table. The Beast looked at me warily. I felt like the mouse confronted by the lion in the fable, and grinned. “Come; it won’t hurt.”

“I—” began the Beast, and I pushed the morsel of cake between his teeth. I turned away and went back to my chair and busied myself cutting another piece without looking at him, remembering that he would not drink if I watched. After a moment I thought I heard him swallow. I gave him another minute, and looked up. There was the most extraordinary expression in his eyes. “Well?” I said briskly.

“Yes, it is good,” said the Beast.

“Then have a little more,” I said, and whisked around the table to stand by his chair again before he could say anything. He hesitated a moment, his eyes searching my face; then he opened his mouth obediently. After a minute he said dolefully, “It will probably disagree with me.”

“It will do nothing—” I began indignantly, and realized he was laughing silently at me. We both laughed aloud, till the table danced in sympathy, and as I put my head back I saw the chandelier turning on its chain, winking and tinkling its crystal pendants.

“Oh my,” I sighed at last. The teapot approached and poured me a cupful; tonight it was sweetened with orange peel, spiced with ginger. I drank in silence, enjoying the friendly warmth of tea and laughter. I set my cup down empty, and said: “It is time I went upstairs. What with one thing and another—Browning and Kipling, you know—I’m getting nowhere with Catullus.”

“Beauty, will you marry me?” said the Beast.

The world was as still as autumn after winter’s first snowfall, and as cold as three o’clock in the morning beside a deathbed. I pressed myself back in my chair and closed my eyes, my fingers clenching on the carved arms till the smooth scrolled edges pinched my skin. “No, Beast,” I said, without opening my eyes. “Please—I am—very fond of you. I wish you wouldn’t ask me this, for I cannot, cannot, marry you, and I don’t like telling you no, and no, and no, again and again.” I looked at him.

“I cannot help asking,” he said, and there was an undertone to his voice that frightened and saddened me. He made a brusque gesture, and the wine-bottle toppled under his arm. He turned and caught it in mid-air with a grace that seemed inhuman to my troubled senses. He paused, looking at the bottle as if it were the future, his head and back bent.

“You—you are very strong, aren’t you,” I whispered.

“Strong?” he said in a queer, detached voice that did not sound like his own. “Yes, I am strong.” He lingered on the last word as if he detested it. He straightened up in his chair and held the bottle at arm’s length. His hand tightened on the bottle, and it snapped and shattered, the shards cascading to the table and splintering against silver and gold, and falling to the floor.

“Oh, you have hurt yourself!” I cried, jumping up. His hand was still closed, and mixed with the pale wine stain spreading across the tablecloth like the battle-ranks of an advancing army, darker drops were welling up from the tender web of flesh between thumb and index finger and running down his wrist, and spotting the white lace; and dripping to the table between the dark clenched fingers.

He stood up, and I checked my vague impulse to go to him, and stood shivering by my chair. He opened his hand, and a few more bits of glass fell to the table. He turned the hand palm up and looked at it. “It is nothing,” he said. “Only that I am a fool.” He strode off down the long table without looking at me; a door opened in a gloomy corner, and he was gone.

After a moment I left the dining hall and went upstairs. My long stiff embroidered skirts seemed heavier than usual, the sleeves and shoulders more binding. There was no sign of the Beast.

My evening was ruined. I liked reading by an open fire, so my room arranged to be cool enough that a fire on the hearth was pleasant to sit beside. But tonight I couldn’t concentrate on Catullus, who seemed dull and petulant; I couldn’t find a comfortable position in my chair; even the fire seemed sullen and brooding. The first flaw in my happiness here, always the stronger of the two, struck me with particular force. I thought of my family. Richard and Mercy were over a year old by now; they were probably walking, and might have said their first words. They would have no recollection of the aunt who had left over four months ago. I could see Hope, smiling, playing with the babies, tickling their faces and bare feet with daisies. I thought of Ger, black to the elbows, with smudges on his face, holding a horse’s hoof balanced between his knees in his leather apron. I thought of Grace in the kitchen, her face delicately flushed with the heat, and a golden curl or two escaping from its net. Then I saw my father, whistling between his teeth, whittling a long pole so that the chips flew. My eyes filled with tears; but they didn’t spill over till I suddenly saw the house covered with roses, huge, beautiful roses of many colors; somehow that was the worst of all. I laid my face in my arms and sobbed.

I woke up the next morning still tired; a headache pricked behind my eyes, and the fresh sunlight pouring through my window like a golden gift looked flat and sour. The mood refused to lift. I ate, and walked in the gardens, and read, and talked to the Beast, and galloped Greatheart through the green meadows; but the picture of a small dun-colored house, covered with hundreds of climbing roses, drummed in my head and let me see nothing else.

At supper I was silent, as I had been for most of the day. The Beast had asked me several times if I was unwell, if there was something troubling me; I had put him off each time with a few brusque or impertinent words. Each time he looked away and forbore to press me. I felt guilty for the way I treated him; but how could I tell him what was hurting me? I had agreed to come and live in his castle to save my father’s life, and I must abide by my promise. The Beast’s subsequent kindness to me led me to hope that one day he might set me free; but I did not think I could rightfully ask. At least not yet, after only four months. But I longed so much to see my family that I could only remember to hold to my promise; I could not always do it cheerfully.

I was staring into my teacup when the Beast asked me once more: “Beauty. Please. Tell me what is wrong. Perhaps I can help.”

I looked up, irritated, my mouth open to tell him to leave me alone—please: But something in his expression stopped me. I flushed, ashamed of myself, and looked down again.

“Beauty,” repeated the Beast.

“I—I miss my family,” I muttered.

The Beast leaned back in his chair and there was a pause. “You would leave me then?” he said; and the hopelessness in his voice shook me even from the depths of my self-pity. I remembered for the first time since my home-sickness had seized me the night before that he had no family to wish for. “It is rather lonesome here sometimes,” he had said at our first meeting; and I had been able to pity him then, before I had learned to like him. My friendship was worth little if I could forget it, and him, so quickly.

“I would be very sorry never to see you anymore,” I said. “But you have been so kind to me that I have—I have occasionally wondered perhaps if—perhaps if after some term is completed, that you would—might let me go. I would still wish to remain your friend.” He was silent, and I went falteringly on: “I know it is too soon yet—I have only been here a few months. I know I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It is very ungrateful of me—and dishonourable,” I said miserably. “I didn’t want to say anything—I wasn’t going to—but you kept asking what was wrong—and I miss them so very much,” and I caught myself up on a sob.

“I cannot let you go,” said the Beast. I looked at him. “Beauty, I’m sorry.” He seemed about to say something more, but I gave him no time.

“Cannot?” I breathed. There was something interminable in that short word. I stood up and backed a few steps away from the table. The Beast sat, with his right hand on the table, the white bandage on it almost covered by the waves of lace. He looked at me; I could not see his eyes; the world was turning a shimmering, dancing grey, like the inside of a snowflake. I blinked, and a voice I did not recognize as my own said: “Never let me go? Not ever? I will spend my entire life here—and never see anyone again?” And I thought: My life? He has been here two centuries. What is my life span likely to be here? The castle was a prison: The door would not open. “Dear God,” I cried, “the door won’t open. Let me out, let me out!” I raised my fists to pound on silent wooden panels that I seemed to see loom up in front of me, and then I knew no more.

I returned to consciousness slowly and piecemeal. For the first few minutes I had no idea where I was; at first I supposed that I was at home, in bed. But that could not be; the pillow under my cheek was soft and slightly furry—velvet, I thought drowsily. Velvet. We have no velvet at home—except what the Beast sent in Father’s saddlebags. The Beast. Of course. I was in the castle. I had been here for several months. Then I remembered, still dimly, that very recently I had been terribly unhappy; but I did not remember why. How could I be unhappy here? I thought. I have everything I want, and the Beast is very kind to me. A stray thought, less substantial than a wisp of smoke, suggested, The Beast loves me; but it dissolved immediately and I forgot about it. Just now I was very comfortable, and I did not want to move. I rubbed my cheek a little against the warm velvet. There was a curious odour to it; it reminded me of forests, of pine sap and moss and springwater, only with a wilder tang beneath it.

My memory began to return. I had been unhappy because I was home-sick. The Beast had said that he could not let me go home. Then I must have fainted. It occurred to me that the velvet my face rested on was heaving and subsiding gently, like someone breathing; and my fingers were wrapped around something that felt very much like the front of a coat. There was a weight across my shoulders that might have been an arm. I was leaning against the whatever-it-was, half sitting up. I turned my head a few inches, and caught a glimpse of lace, and beneath it a white bandage on a dark hand; and the rest of my mind and memory returned with a shock like a snowstorm through a window blown suddenly open.

I gasped, half a shriek, let go the velvet folds I was clutching, and pushed myself violently away. I found myself kneeling at the opposite end of a small cushioned sofa. This was the first time I saw him clumsy. He stood up and took a few stumbling steps backwards; he held out his hands and looked at me as though I hated him. “You fainted,” he said; his voice was a rough whisper. “I caught you before you reached the floor. You—you might have hurt yourself. I only wanted to lay you down somewhere that you could be comfortable.” I stared at him, still kneeling, with my fingernails biting into the sofa cushions. I couldn’t look away from him, but I did not recognize what I saw. “You—you clung to me,” he said, and there was a vast depth of pleading in his voice.

I wouldn’t listen. Something inside me snapped; I put my hands over my ears, half-fell off the couch, and ran; he moved out of my way as if I were a cannon-ball or a madwoman. A door opened in front of me and I bolted through it. I had to pause to look around me; this was the great front hall. He had carried me from the dining room to the huge drawing room opposite it. I picked up my skirts and ran upstairs to my room as if Charon himself had left his river to fetch me away.

I passed another bad night, pulling my bed to pieces, unable to sleep. When I did doze, I dreamed uneasily, and several times I saw the arrogant, handsome young man of the last portrait in the gallery by the library. He seemed to look through me, and mock me; except for the last time he appeared, when he was very much older, with grey in his hair, and lines of wisdom and sympathy drawn on his handsome face; and he looked at me sorrowfully, but said no word. I rose shortly before dawn, when the black rectangle of my window began to turn grey, and I could see the leading around the individual panes. I wrapped myself in a quilted dressing gown, a bright blue and crimson that did nothing for my bleak brown mood, and sat on the window seat to watch the sun rise. The pillows and blankets rearranged themselves in a subdued fashion, and only when I wasn’t looking at them. I felt deserted—the breeze that attended me had left after putting me to bed the night before, and did not return to keep me company during my early vigil. Often before when I had had restless nights, it would fuss around me with cups of warm milk sweetened with honey, and lap robes, if I still insisted on getting up.

But my head was clear, strangely clear, for two nights of sleeplessness and emotional upheaval; in fact I felt more clear-headed than I could ever recall feeling before. Light-headed is more likely, I told myself severely. It’s an ill wind, though: I seem to have been cured of the worst of my home-sickness, for the moment anyway. That will probably turn out to be an illusion though, too. I’m just numb with exhaustion. Exhaustion? Shock. Shock? Well, why? What is so inherently awful about being carried to a sofa?

I had avoided touching him, or letting him touch me. At first I had eluded him from fear; but when fear departed, elusiveness remained, and developed into habit. Habit bulwarked by something else; I could not say what. The obvious answer, because he was a Beast, didn’t seem to be the right one. I considered this I did not get very far; but I thought I knew what Persephone must have felt after she ate those pomegranate seeds; and was then surprised by a sudden rush of sympathy for the dour King of Hell.

That curious feeling of clear-headedness increased with the light. Grey gave way to pink, and then to deep flushed rose edged with gold; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I could see the morning star shining like hope from the bottom of Pandora’s box. I opened a section of the window and a little wind slipped inside to play with my rumpled hair and tickle me back into the beginnings of a good mood.

Then I heard the voices. There was a rustling about them, like too many stiff satin petticoats, and I looked around in surprise, half-expecting to see someone. “Oh dear, oh dear,” said the melancholy voice. “Just look at that bed. I’m sure she hasn’t had a wink of sleep all night. Here now”—more sharply—“what are you about? Pull yourselves together immediately!” The bedclothes started scrambling over one another, and the bed-curtains quivered anxiously.

“Don’t be too hard on them,” said the practical voice mildly. “They’ve had a rough night too.”

“We all have,” said the first voice. “Oh yes indeed. And look at her sitting beside that open window, with her robe all open at the neck, and nothing but a bit of lace for a nightgown! She’ll catch her death!” I guiltily put a hand to my collar. “And her hair! Good heavens. Has she been standing on her head?”

The voices—these were the voices I had heard several times, just before I had drifted into sleep or just after; I had never decided which. They were my invisible maidservants, my friendly breeze, the voices of plain common sense in this magic-ridden castle. They whisked around now, finding hot water in a fold in the air, putting it in a basin, laying towels beside it. Breakfast was laid out—“It is early, but she will certainly feel better after she has eaten”—and all the while they talked, discussing me: “How pale and pinched she looks! Tonight we must be sure she rests properly”; and the coming day, and my wardrobe, and the difficulties of getting the food decently cooked and the floors decently waxed, and so on.

I sat amazed, listening. At first I thought that I must be asleep and dreaming, in spite of the cold clean touch of the dawn; that would also explain the odd sense of preternatural clear-headedness—I might dream anything.

But the sun rose, and I washed my face and hands and ate breakfast, while the voices went on and I listened. The clink of plate and fork and teacup, and the taste of the food, decided me. I was awake; something else had happened to me in this castle where anything might happen. I wondered what else I might find that I could hear or see that had been hidden from me until now.

I almost said aloud: “I can hear you”—but I stopped myself. Perhaps if I pretended continued deafness I would learn what they had meant, when I had caught bits of their conversation—for I was now sure I had heard them—in the weeks past: “You know it’s impossible.” “It was made to be impossible.” After breakfast, when they brought me a walking dress—did I catch the shimmer of something almost visible out of the corners of my eyes, as they blew around me?—I did say, aloud, “I missed you last night.”

“Oh dear, she missed us, I knew she would, we’ve always been here before. But we couldn’t leave him; I haven’t seen him in such a temper since—oh, years and years. I’m always afraid he may do himself a mischief when he’s in that state—not that she has anything to fear—but we’ve always stood by him in such moods, it seems safer, we don’t really help anything but our presence is a distraction, I think, and anything is better than nothing at all.”

“It is very difficult for him. Much more so than for us.”

“Well, of course”—indignantly. “We’re almost—volunteers; and invisibility isn’t really so bad once you’re accustomed to not seeing yourself around, you know….”

“Yes, I know,” the other voice said drily.

“It is certainly a good thing that that magician took himself off directly after he’d finished his nasty business here, or he would have been murdered. Nights like this past remind me of it. Although I never have understood why killing a magician like that—fiend—yes, fiend—should be counted as murder; after all, he’s not even human.”

“Now, Lydia. That sort of talk will get you nowhere—and he would be angry if he heard you. If he knows better, surely we should.”

“Oh, Bessie, I know, it’s very wrong of me, but I sometimes—I just can’t help it.” The voice sounded near tears. “This can’t possibly work.”

“You may think what you like of course,” the other voice said briskly, “but I shan’t give up. And neither will he.”

“No,” said the melancholy voice, but in a tone so woebegone as to suggest that determination was only another aspect of the problem.

A faint jingly noise like a laugh. “She’s a good girl, and bright enough. She’ll figure it out in the end.”

“The end is a very long time off,” Lydia said gloomily.

“All the more reason to be hopeful; there’s plenty of time. And she’s stronger than she knows—even if she understands nothing of it. You’ve seen the birds? They come to the garden now—and you know that that was expressly forbidden. Nothing—not even butterflies, not even birds. But we have birds now.”

“That’s true,” Lydia said wistfully.

“Well then,” said Bessie, as if the argument was won. “Now then, come along; there’s a lot to be done before lunch.” Invisible fingers patted my hair and shoulders, and the breeze whirled up and was gone.

All this made no sense to me at all. A magician? Well, if ever there was a place that was obviously under a spell, this was it. And the Beast—he must be the “he” they talked so much about. He must be under a spell too. He had said once, “I have not always been as you see me now.” And they said that I was “bright enough”: Were there clues, then, that I was supposed to be picking up, arranging into a pattern? Oh dear. I didn’t know anything about magic, and spells, and things; such branches of learning were considered a little less than respectable by everyone I knew—nor very intellectually rewarding, so I had felt little interest in them. Surely that wasn’t the method I was supposed to be looking for. But what else was there? I felt very stupid, notwithstanding Bessie’s—stubborn, it seemed to me—faith that everything would work out in the end.

I tackled something more readily accessible: “He” had been in a temper last night.

Sudden dismay clutched my stomach, and my breakfast somersaulted. Was he very angry with me then?” … Not that she has anything to fear…” Lydia had said. Dismay and my breakfast subsided, but I was still worried; I didn’t like the idea of his being angry with me—perhaps I had treated him badly last night. Perhaps I should apologize. What if he was so angry that I didn’t see him today? I felt lonely at once, and ashamed of myself.

I took the peacock-tin that held birdseed to the window. I leaned outside and whistled, scattering some seed on the sill as I did so. Butterflies and birds were forbidden; I was stronger than I knew, although I didn’t know why. I sighed. I certainly didn’t know why.

Little dark shadows crossed my face, and then I felt tiny feet on my head, and a sparrow perched on my outstretched hand. “Here, come down from there,” I said, gently dislodging the chaffinch sitting on my head. We discussed the weather and the possibility of rain in chirps and blinks, and I tried to lure a robin to take seed from my hand, but he only cocked his head and looked at me. No birds were allowed. Maybe these weren’t real birds at all, but figments invented by the castle, or by the Beast, because I’d wanted birds. They looked real; the prick of their tiny claws was real. There were never very many of them—whatever that meant. And it was true, too, that recently I had heard birdsongs sometimes when I was out riding Greatheart. Maybe the spell was weakening? Maybe I wouldn’t have to do anything heroic after all.

I had been sitting with the birds perhaps ten minutes when I began to feel uneasy. Uneasy was perhaps too strong a word. It was like trying to catch the echo of a sound so faint I wasn’t sure it existed. Something existed that was niggling at the edge of my consciousness. I turned my head this way and that, seeking some plainer hint. No; it wasn’t so much like a sound as like a teasing whiff of something, something that reminded me of forests, of pine sap and springwater, but with a wilder tang beneath it. The birds were still pecking unconcernedly around my fingers, along the sill.

“Beast,” I called. “You’re here—somewhere. I can feel it. Or something.” I shook my head. There was a brief vision, behind my eyes, of him gathering himself together to materialize out of my sight, around a corner of the castle, before he walked around it in normal fashion and came to stand beneath my window. The birds flew away as soon as he had appeared—before he walked around the corner, and I could see him. “Good morning, Beauty,” he said.

“Something’s happened to me,” I said like a child seeking reassurance. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve felt peculiar all morning. How did I know you were near?”

He was silent.

“You know something of it,” I said still listening to my new sixth sense.

“I can see that your new clarity of perception will create difficulties for me,” he said lightly.

My room was on the second storey, over a very tall first storey, so I was looking down more than twenty feet to the top of his head. He had not looked up at me since he had wished me good morning. The grey in his hair seemed to reproach me for not being cleverer in understanding the spell that was laid on him, in not being of any use to him. Today he was wearing dark-red velvet, the color of sunset and roses, and cream-colored lace.

“Beast,” I said gently. “I—want to apologize for my behaviour last night. It was very rude of me. I know you were only trying to help.”

He looked up then, but I was too far away, even leaning down over the sill with my elbows on the edge and my hands dangling, to read any expression on that dark face. He looked down again, and there was a pause. “Thank you,” he said at last. “It’s not necessary, but—well—thank you.”

I sat farther out on the window ledge, spraying him with birdseed as he stood below. “Oh—er, sorry,” I said. His face split into a white smile, and he said, “Aren’t you coming for your walk in the garden? The sun is getting high,” and he brushed cracked corn and sunflower seeds from his shoulders.

“Of course,” I said, and slid back into my room, and was downstairs and outside in the courtyard, running towards the stable, in a moment. I let Greatheart out, and he roamed on ahead of us like an oversized dog, while the Beast and I walked behind. When the horse had found a meadow to his taste and was settled down to some serious grazing, I sat down on a low porphyry wall and looked at the Beast, who avoided my gaze.

“You know something about what’s happened to me,” I said, “and I want to know what it is.”

“I don’t know exactly,” said the Beast, looking at Greatheart. “I have some idea of it.”

I curled my feet up beside me on the wall. The Beast was still standing, hands in pockets, half turned away from me. “Well?” I said. “What’s your idea?”

“I’m afraid you won’t like it, you see,” said the Beast apologetically. He sat down at last, but kept his eyes on the horse.

“Well?” I said again.

The Beast sighed. “How shall I explain? You look at this world—my world, here, as you looked at your old world, your family’s world. This is to be expected; it was the only world, and the only way of seeing, that you knew. Well; it’s different here. Some things go by different rules. Some of them are easy—for example, there is always fruit on the trees in the garden, the flowers never fade, you are waited on by invisible servants.” With a little tremor of laughter in his voice he added: “And many of the books in the library don’t exist. But there are many things here that your old habits and skills have left you unprepared for.” He paused. “I wondered, before you came, how you’d react—if you came. Well, I can’t blame you; you were tricked into coming here. You have no reason to trust me.”

I started to say something, in spite of not wanting to interrupt him for fear that he would not continue; but he shook his head at me and said, “Wait. No, I know, you’ve gotten used to the way I look, as much as anyone can, and my company amuses you, and you’re grateful that your imprisonment here isn’t as direful as you were anticipating—being served for dinner with an apple in your mouth, or a windowless dungeon far underground, or whatever.” I blushed and looked down at my hands. “I’ve never liked Faerie Queen,” he added irrelevantly. “It gives so many things a bad name.

“But I don’t blame you,” he continued. “As I said, you have no reason to trust me, and excellent reason not to. And in not trusting me, you trust nothing here that you cannot perceive on your old terms. You refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything that is too unusual. You don’t see it, you don’t hear it—for you it doesn’t exist.” He frowned thoughtfully. “From what you’ve told me, a little strangeness leaked through to you, your first night here, when you looked out your window. It frightened you—I quite understand this; it used to frighten me too—and you’ve avoided seeing anything else since.”

“I—I haven’t meant to,” I said, distressed at this picture of myself.

“Not consciously, perhaps; but you have resisted me with all your strength—as any sane person would, when confronted with a creature like me.” He paused again. “You know, the first drop of hope I tasted was that day I first showed you the library—when you were confronted with the works of Browning, and of Kipling, and you saw them. You might not have; you might have seen only Aeschylus and Caesar and Spenser, and authors you could have known in your old world.” He went on as if talking to himself: “Later I realized that this was only a reflection of your love and trust for books; it had nothing to do with me, or with my castle and its other wonders. And the birds came to you; that seemed a hopeful sign. But they came because of the strength of your longing for your old home. But perhaps it was a beginning nonetheless.”

He was silent for so long that I thought he would say no more, and I began to consider what sort of question to put to him next. But there was a strange quality to my sight that distracted me—a new depth or roundness, which seemed to vary depending on what I was looking at. Greatheart looked as he always had, large and dapplegrey and patient and lovable. But the grass he waded through caught the sunlight strangely, and seemed to move softly in response to something other than wind. When I looked up, the forest’s black edge shivered and ran like ink on wet paper. It reminded me of the spidery quaking shadows I had seen from my window on my first night in the castle; but there was no dread to what I was, or wasn’t, seeing now. This is silly, I thought; I don’t suppose you really see the sort of thing he’s talking about. What’s wrong with my eyes? I found myself blinking and frowning if I looked steadily at the Beast, too; it wasn’t that he looked any less huge or less dark or less hairy, but there was some difference. And how do I know whether I should see the sort of thing he’s talking about or not? There was something wrong, that first night. There’s something wrong now.

“Last night,” he began again at last, “when you fainted, you were helpless, for good or ill. I carried you to a couch in the next room, I was going to call your servants, and leave you alone. But when I tried to set you down, you murmured in your sleep, and held on to my coat with both hands.” He stood up, took a few paces away from me, a few paces back. “For a few minutes you were content—even happy—that I held you in my arms. Then you remembered, and ran away in panic. But it’s those few minutes of sympathy, I think, that caused whatever change you’re noticing now.”

“Am I always going to know when you’re nearby now?” I said, a little wistfully.

“I don’t know. I should think it likely. I always know where you are, near or far. Is that all it is—that you were aware of me when you couldn’t see me?”

I shook my head. “No. My vision is funny. My color sense is confused somehow. And you look funny.”

“Mmm,” he said. “I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you. As I told you at our first meeting, you have nothing to fear. Would you like to go back now?”

I nodded assent and we turned and walked slowly back towards the castle. Greatheart tore up a few last hasty mouthfuls and followed. I had a great deal to ponder, and did not speak; nor did the Beast say anything.

The rest of the day passed as my days usually did. I did not again mention my new strange sense of things, and by the end of the afternoon the new crystalline quality to the air, the way the flower petals shaded off into some color I couldn’t quite put a name to, and the way I was hearing things that weren’t strictly sounds had, by and large, ceased to disturb me. That evening’s sunset was the most magnificent that I had ever seen; I was stunned and enthralled by its heedless beauty and remained staring at the sky till the last shreds of dim pink had blown away, and the first stars were lit and hung in their appointed places. I turned away at last. “I’m sorry,” I said to the Beast, who stood a little behind me. “I’ve never seen such a sunset. It—it took my breath away.”

“I understand,” he replied.

I went upstairs to dress for dinner, still bemused by what I had just observed, and found an airy, gauzy bit of lace and silver ribbons draped across the bed and gleaming in its own pale light. A corner of the skirt lifted briefly as I entered, as though a hand had begun to raise it and then changed its mind.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said in disgust, recalled from my visionary musings with a bump. “We’ve been through all this dozens of times before. I won’t wear anything like this. Take it away.” The dress was lifted by the shoulders till it hung like a small star in my chamber, and for all my certainty that I would not wear it, I did look at it a little longingly. It was very beautiful; more so, it seemed to me, than any of the other wonderful clothes my high-fashion-minded breeze had tried to put on me.

“Well?” I said sharply. “What are you waiting for?”

“This is going to be difficult,” said Lydia’s voice. If I hadn’t been accustomed, until that day, to not hearing them, their present silence would have seemed ominous to me. Even the satin petticoats were subdued. I was suddenly uneasy, wondering what they had planned for me. The dress was wafted over to lie negligently across an open wardrobe door, and I was assisted out of my riding clothes. I was still shaking my hair loose from its net when there was a moment of confusion, like being caught in a cloud or a cobweb, and I emerged from it pushing my wild hair off my face and found that they had disobediently wrapped me in the shimmering bit of nothing I had ordered back into the closet.

“What are you doing?” I said, surprised and angry. “I won’t wear this. Take it off.” My hands searched for laces to untie, or buttons, but I could find nothing; it fitted me as if it had been sewn on—perhaps it had. “No, no,” I said. “What is this? I said no.” Shoes appeared on my feet; the golden heels were set with diamond chips, and bracelets of opals and pearls began to grow up my arms. “Stop it,” I said, really angry now. My hair twisted up, and I reached up and pulled a diamond pin out of it till it tumbled down around my shoulders and back; the pin I threw on the floor. My hair cascading down around me startled me as I realized that it was brushing bare skin. “Good heavens,” I said, shocked, looking down; there was hardly enough bodice to deserve the name. Sapphires and rubies appeared on my fingers. I pulled them off and sent them to join the diamond hair-pin. “You shan’t get away with this,” I said between my teeth, and kicked off the shoes. I hesitated to rip the dress off; I didn’t like to damage it, angry as I was, and again I tried to find a way out of it. “This is a dress for a princess,” I said to the listening air. “Why must you be so silly?”

“Well, you are a princess,” said Lydia, and she sounded as if she were panting a little. Bessie said: “I suppose we must start somewhere, but this is very discouraging.” “Why is she so stubborn?” asked Lydia, plaintively. “It’s a beautiful dress.”

“I don’t know,” replied Bessie, and I felt a quick surge of their determination, and this angered me even more.

“It is a beautiful dress,” I said wildly, as my hair wound up again and the pin flew back to its place, and the shoes, and the rings to theirs; “And that’s why I won’t wear it; if you put a peacock’s tail on a sparrow, he’s still a brown little, wretched little, drab little sparrow,” and as a net of moonbeams settled around my shoulders and a glittering pendant curled lovingly around my neck, I sat down in the middle of the floor and burst into tears. “All right, I don’t seem to be able to stop you,” I said between sobs, “but I will not leave the room.” I wept myself to silence and then sat, still on the floor, with my abundant skirts anyway around and under me, staring into the fire. I took the pendant off, not in any hope that it would stay off, but just to see what it was: It was a golden griffin, wings spread and big ruby eyes shining, about twice the size of the ring I wore every day and kept beside my bed at night. For some reason it made my tears flow again. My face must have been a mess, but the tears left no stain where they dropped onto the princess’s dress. I meekly refastened the griffin around my neck, and it settled comfortably into the hollow of my throat.

I knew he was there, standing uncertainly before my door, several minutes before he said, tentatively: “Beauty? Is something wrong?” I was usually changed and downstairs again in less than half the time I had spent sitting on the floor tonight.

“They’re forcing me to wear a dress I don’t like,” I said sulkily, from the floor. “I mean, it won’t come off.”

“Forcing you? Why?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea!” I shouted, and pulled off a few bracelets and hurled them at the fireplace. They half-turned and threw themselves back at me, and over my wrists.

“That’s very odd,” he said through the door. After a pause, he added, “What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t like it,” I said sullenly.

“Er—may I see?”

“Of course not!” I shouted again. “If I didn’t mind your seeing it, why am I staying in my room? Who else is there to see me?”

“You care how I see you?” he said; his voice was muffled by the door, and I could be sure of only the astonishment.

“Well, I won’t wear it,” I said, avoiding the question.

There was a pause and then a roar that made me cower down where I sat and clap my hands over my ears; but I realized in a moment that it wasn’t the sort of roar I could protect myself from that way. I couldn’t catch the words. Whatever it was, I found myself hauled to my feet and tumbled in several directions at once; and when I emerged again, breathless, the fairy dress was gone. So, my sixth sense told me, were Lydia and Bessie. I was wearing a dress of an indeterminate color somewhere between beige and grey; the only decoration was a white yoke, and plain white cuffs on the long straight sleeves. The high round collar reached nearly to my chin. I laughed, and went over to open the door. As I moved, I felt something around my neck; I put my hand up. It was the griffin.

I opened the door, and the Beast looked at me gravely. “I fear that they are angry with you,” he said.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” I said cheerfully. “What did you say to them? Whatever it was, it nearly deafened me. If deafened is the word.”

“Did you hear that? I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “It produced the desired result.”

“Shall we go down then?” he said. He turned, and waved me towards the staircase.

I looked at him a moment. “Aren’t you going to offer me your arm?” I said.

There was a silence, while we stared at one another, as if every candle, every tile in the mosaic floor and colored thread in the tapestries, had caught its breath and was holding it as it watched. The Beast walked the few paces back to me, turned, and offered me his arm. I laid my hand on it, and we walked downstairs.