Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Why me?” I asked. “Why did you choose me?”

  She sighed. “People don’t understand about magic. There are always certain limitations and proprieties: certain symbols which must be kept aligned; certain congruities we must observe. It was born of magic and could not live unless there was magic around it. It was born in truth, so the place we put it had to be named truly. It had to mature in a place where no ugliness is, and that was Westfaire. It could not have been set into just anyone or put just anywhere.”

  “Why didn’t you just let it be me there in Westfaire, sound asleep? That would have kept it safe for you.”

  She shook her head at me. “The rarer a thing is, the more assiduously it is sought. As magic grows rarer and rarer, the more intent the Dark Lord will become at seeking it out. Eventually, Westfaire will gleam like a beacon, the last repository of magic. Do you think he would ignore that? No. Westfaire was intended as misdirection, Beauty. Legerdemain. Even if he seeks it there, he will not find it. Mary Blossom is only a decoy. You were to have been in Chinanga.”

  “But I’m really here. And so is it.”

  “True. For a time, I was deeply dismayed at that, but Israfel assures me all is not lost. Your being here is considered to be perfectly natural. You came to see your mama. Why not? Elladine left you the means to visit her, or she thinks she did, and so long as she thinks so, so does everyone else. As for Westfaire, either they believe the curse has run its course or they know about Mary Blossom, but in either case, everything is explainable. We went to great lengths, Israfel and I, to keep everything around you as natural as possible. The use of magic leaves an aura, like a fire leaves smoke, so when we used magic, we seemed to do it openly, obviously. Anyone sniffing the smoke could see our innocent little fire and dismiss it as trivial. What was it, after all? A sleeping enchantment, a cloak, a pair of boots. Mere bagatelles. Even Elladine’s stay in Chinanga is explainable—she believes the Viceroy’s enchantments brought her there. No one suspects anything odd about you. No one knows except Israfel and the others in Baskarone. And I.”

  “Puck?”

  “No. He is my trusted friend and servant, but he doesn’t know. Even though he has done much running about on your behalf, he doesn’t know about it None of the Bogles know.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “We can still preserve that which must be preserved. If you will simply go on, as you are, pretending to be what you would have been had we never met. I have seen that your visit to Faery will end soon. You will go away from here, very naturally. You will be in the world, being yourself, and meantime, Israfel and I will be searching for some other place—something like Chinanga, only less boring.”

  I didn’t say yes, or no. After a time she reached out and took my hand. It felt like a mother’s hand, like Dame Blossom’s hand. I wasn’t sure I believed the business about my visit ending soon, but I chose not to remark upon it.

  “Mother doesn’t like me,” I said, needing her to say it wasn’t true.

  “That’s not entirely true,” she said. “Humans make myths about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. The myths are very strong. I have counted on them myself, but sometimes the two generations are simply not sympathetic. Especially when they resemble, let us say, the other side of the family.”

  It was true. Except around the eyes, I most resembled Father. I resembled him in other ways. Fleshiness. Corporeality. The thousand stinks and farts that flesh is heir to.

  “Can you go on?” she asked me gently.

  “Can you take it out?” I asked. “Can you put it somewhere else?”

  She shook her head. I already knew that. It had grown into me. I could feel its roots, down to my toes, down to my finger tips. So I told her I could go on. What else was there to do but go on?

  She patted me. She still felt like Dame Blossom.

  “I have this problem,” I said. And I told her about Thomas the Rhymer. “If I tell him, I am betraying the Faery folk.”

  She smiled as though she already knew all about it and said what Puck had said. “If you don’t tell him, you will betray them far worse.” Suddenly, inexplicably, she asked me, “What would you like to do? Right now?”

  “Go back to Westfaire,” I blurted. “Go back home and find Giles there and be with him.”

  She gave me a weary little smile. “Keep that thought in mind. I will, too. We’ll see how things work out. Until then, go on, Beauty. Just let things happen, as they will. Very naturally.”

  Puck and Fenoderee were waiting to take me back to Elladine’s palace.

  There was a time in Faery after that, neither long nor short, but of considerable importance, during which I learned to do enchantments and spells. Mama taught me how to weave magical garments and how to lay geas on swords or jewels to make them fit for questing. There is a good deal of questing in Faery, as a pastime. This one or that one will be enchanted into forgetting who he or she is, and will then be sent off after a sword or a grail or some other marvel. Or they’ll do the same thing to humans and follow along, watching it as though it were a movie. According to Mama, nine-tenths of King Arthur was questing and the other tenth was politics.

  Mab taught me the magic of trees and caverns and clearings in the forest. She taught me the dwindling spell, by which things may be made tiny, and the Great Spell of Bran, by which giants may be conjured up. Even Oberon, once or twice, taught me something of spell-casting, mostly matters of bewilderment. Oberon is very strong in bewilderment.

  He also invited me to his couch, quite openly, making an honor of it, though not demanding an immediate response, for which I was thankful.

  Mama was quite excited about that, not least at the thought of my possibly bearing Oberon’s child. I did not want to bear anyone’s child.

  “It wouldn’t be private, would it,” I half-laughed to hide my embarrassment. If I had imagined myself talking to my mama about anything in the world, it would not have been this. I could not have imagined her urging me to let Oberon … or cooperate with Oberon … or even enjoy with Oberon….

  “Private?” she asked. “If you didn’t want anyone to watch, you could say so. I don’t suppose anyone would care.”

  I sat beside him at dinner. He sniffed at me, my breasts, my armpits. He laid his head in my lap and smelled me through my skirts, almost as a dog does. If I had encouraged him even slightly, he would have thrust his nose into my crotch. I moved away, pretending not to notice. This sounds foolish, doesn’t it, pretending not to notice. And yet, the others behaved in such very strange ways that it was not as noticeable as it sounds. Still, Israfel would not have behaved so. Perhaps that is part of what Thomas meant, when he said they were diminished from former times.

  Later, I said to Mama, “I’m not like you! My body isn’t made the way yours is. He’d be disgusted. Either that or he’d have to lose his memory as you did with Papa.”

  “He would not lose his memory,” she said stiffly. “Not here, not in Faery. And the fact that your body is more fleshy, more earthy, that it has smells of animal fecundity, only adds to his interest.”

  I had been wrong about there being no perversions in Faery. Their perversion was to lust after human bodies, with all their stinks and scattish contiguities.

  “Will I offend him greatly if I ask for time to get used to Faery first,” I asked, the only excuse I could think of at the moment. “Will you explain to him about things like … like …”

  She snorted, making it plain she thought me a fool, but she told Oberon something that put him off without angering him. I caught him watching me every now and again with a lustful little sparkle in his eyes.

  In truth, my body was in rebellion. I felt constantly weak and tired. I could cast the feeling aside by a little concentration, but I often found myself simply sitting, doing nothing, not wanting to move. It was unlikely that lovemaking would have been even tolerable, and I certainly didn’t feel in the least lustful. The people of the Sidhe often went about virtually
unclothed. Their bodies were fair and glorious to see, but I felt no prurience or desire, though their couplings and uncouplings were very casual. Sometimes they seemed like showoffy children, staring around to see if someone was watching, more concerned with being seen than with what they were doing. I remembered Roland Mirabeau, wondering if I had caught his disease of sexual ennui, but he had at least adored little girls and I didn’t seem to adore any of the Sidhe. There was nothing in the smell of them to move me. They smelled like leaves, like moss, like clear seawater, like glass.

  One night I found myself walking near Thomas the Rhymer. There was no one else about, so I told him we had been to his true love, Janet, and had arranged for her to save him. He was to have his right hand gloved and his left hand bare when he rode on All Hallow’s eve. “Cap cocked up and hair long,” I instructed him. “That’s what she’ll be expecting.”

  “You saw her?” he breathed.

  “Only in the dark,” I said. In truth, I had not seen her well, though she had seemed older than I had expected. Thomas did not stay to chat. Hope lit his face as he left me there, and I stayed, watching the night until the others woke.

  Time went by, and suddenly one morning Oberon announced that evening would be All Hallows Eve and we would ride to the Dark One to pay him his teind. There was a flutter of excitement at that. Mab gave Oberon an angry look, which he pretended not to see. Thomas shivered. I could see it across the room. Elladine stared at Oberon until he turned to her and smiled. So. So and So. It had all been arranged. Someone was going to be very angry if Janet was waiting at Miles Cross.

  I can recall almost nothing that happened during the day. Along toward evening a group of us walked in a grove we sometimes frequented. At its center is the Pool of Delights, crossed by a carved stone bridge, over the rail of which the people of Faery are wont to peer, admiring their reflections in the water. I remember looking down at myself, smiling up at myself. My hair was twined up in a net of sapphires, and the thin muslin of my dress was embroidered with blue flowers. The face which smiled up at me was very beautiful, and I smiled at my own reflection, not happily, but in appreciation. Mama’s face, no less lovely, was beside mine. It is the only thing I can remember happening, all day.

  We rode out at evening. As we went from Faery into the world, the sky lightened and turned to rose and salmon and violet. The air suddenly smelled alive. There were sounds of things living and dying all around us. We went down the road, and people, seeing us pass by, crossed themselves and dipped their heads. Oh, we were glorious to see, like smoke, like mist, like visions of glory, the horses like the waves of the sea.

  We went through Miles Village and toward Ercle’s Down. A mile from the village was the crossroad, with a large cross set up at its center. The fairy host rode by, not seeing the woman huddled there until she came running toward us to throw her arms around Thomas’s legs, pulling him from his horse.

  “Thomas, True Thomas,” she cried. “I’ll never let you go!” She was a middle-aged woman, with gray in her hair. Thomas, suddenly no longer young, looked as surprised as anyone else.

  Janet could not have said anything more guaranteed to make Mab angry. Thereafter Janet embraced a dragon, a worm, a snake, a spider, a giant many-armed thing from the sea. She held bears and tigers and man-eating lions. She held dogs and hogs and eagles which tore at her eyes. Held them all, crying the while, “I’ll never let you, never let you go,” the muscles in her arms knotted as though forever and the ugly tears raining from her eyes.

  Too much time went by. Oberon cried like a hawk, pointing at the sky. There was a line of gold along it, the night going fast. “Come,” he cried. “We must ride.” And they fled away, leaving only Janet to struggle with the monsters in her arms. Janet and me. I looked down to see Puck holding the bridle of my horse to keep him from galloping after.

  “Get down, my girl,” he cried, “for it will not take them long to find you gone.”

  “I should be with them,” I said stupidly. “Mama will miss me.”

  “And who will they use as a teind with Thomas gone?” Puck asked. “You, Beauty, be your mama ever so fair and ever so wise, and even fond of you a little, still they’ll use you rather than one of them. Carabosse never intended you should ride farther than this. Carabosse sent us, and Carabosse says to go home.”

  I was sensible for the first time of how foolish I had been to come on this ride. “How will I get away? My cloak, my boots are back in Faery.”

  “They are here,” said Fenoderee, holding them up for me to see. He pulled me down, slapped the horse on its rump to send it galloping after the others, and then shoved the boots on my feet and my shoes in my pocket. “They do not know you are involved in this. Better they do not know.”

  “Ah, Puck, thank you,” I started to say, not really knowing whether thanks were due.

  “Go, Beauty,” he said. “We’ll meet again,” and he turned me about, whispering to my boots, “Take this lady home.”

  Then was the familiar whirlwind, and I was gone and so were they.

  22

  I stood beside the rose-mound of Westfaire. Tottered, I should say, suddenly dizzy, as though something in my head had gone awry. Embarrassment, I supposed, at the prospect of meeting Edward once more. And little Elladine. She would be two, or perhaps even three by now. She would not know I was her mother, of course. She would think the wet nurse was her mother or, if she had been weaned, the nursemaid. I thought of my daughter as I had seen her last, asleep in her cradle beside the fire, her dark hair bubbling over the pillow, like black water in torrent, already long enough to reach her shoulders. A pretty child. Not one a mother should have fled from.

  Though Carabosse had said that mothers and daughters might not be sympathetic. “Particularly if the child resembles … the other side of the family.”

  Well yes, but she was not a devil. Merely a child who resembled her actual father in some respects. Now she would be walking and talking, but her speech would be the speech of Wellingford. She could not possibly sound like Jaybee.

  With these thoughts I calmed myself as I stood beside the shepherd’s well, leaning against it almost, pulling myself up straight with an unaccustomed ache, looking myself over to see if I was well enough dressed to go straight to Wellingford. I picked at a fold of my gown, stared at it in confusion, caught in dream, nightmare, pulling the fabric through my hands….

  Aside from my cloak and the seven-league boots, I was dressed in rags. Scarcely one thread held to another. I put hands to my head in confusion, only to feel oily tangles and squirming locks. I had seen myself in the Pool of Delights only this afternoon, with my hair swept up in a net of sapphires and my dress of fine muslin, embroidered all over with flowers. How had I come to be dressed like this? And my hair so filthy? It stank. It smelled of smoke and grease and less acceptable things. My fingers found small hard specks caught in the coils: nits!

  Shock held me motionless for a long, calculating moment. Hush, I told myself. Figure it out later. You are only filthy, after all. Filth can be washed away. Hair can be washed and the eggs of lice combed out. You have other clothes to wear. Hush now and do what needs doing. Comforted by decision, though not greatly, I tottered down toward the lakeside. Making myself look decent would necessitate getting into Westfaire, which meant a trip through the water gate. When I arrived at the water, I did not bother to strip. The rags I was wearing could be thrown away once I was inside, I bundled the cloak and boots atop my head. The water was cold. I thought it must be winter, then reassured myself that there were flowers growing in the woods and the trees were in leaf. Still, the water was very cold and very deep and harder to move against than when last I had come this way.

  Inside the water gate the steps were taller, too, and more deeply covered with moss. Everything was more difficult than when I had last been there. The stairs to the attic seemed endless, but I had to go there to get a dress. On my way back to the kitchen I stopped in Aunt Love’s room to snatch
up a looking glass and the fine toothed comb made of tortoise shell she had used on me when, as a child, I had picked up lice from my acquaintances in the stables. The bath place was next to the kitchens, a small, stone-floored room with a stone-curbed well in the corner, a great wooden tub, and over the hearth a huge hanging kettle with a copper to bail the water in and out. Except for Papa, my aunts, and I, who had had tubs brought to our rooms for occasional use, everyone at Westfaire had bathed in this room, sometimes half a dozen of them at once. There was a similar arrangement at Wellingford, though I had never been able to use it when I was being Havoc the miller’s son for fear of being found out. Once I was Edward’s wife, there had been no need. I had had my own tub again, filled and emptied by sweating servant girls. At least, I assume they sweated for I did by the time I had filled the huge kettle from the well.

  I lit the fire, already laid, tied the belt of my cloak around my neck to keep from falling asleep, took off the cloak itself, and sat down to comb my hair while the water heated. The tangles were deep. The comb pulled and the tangles caught in the teeth. I pulled the wad of hair out and threw it into the fire, combing again. The next time I threw the hair toward the fire, a draft caught it and blew it back at me. Gray hair. Not wheat straw, not silver, but gray.

  The looking glass lay face down on the table. I polished it with the rags of my sleeve. An old face looked back at me. No … no, not an old face. Just not a young face. A thirty-fiveish, fortyish face. Not old for the twentieth, but old for the fourteenth, when people did not live so long. There were tiny lines around the eyes, not deep ones, but they were there. There were more lines on my forehead, between my brows, furrows, as though I had often thought deeply, worrying over something. Most of my hair was still gold, but at either temple the gray swept upward in silver wings around a face thin as a chicken’s breastbone.