The Beast’s Heart

by Leife Shallcross

  I don’t know if the mirror showed me any more of their journey, for my own eyes stung and blurred at seeing her so miserable. My poor Isabeau! What had I done to her? She loved me – I knew she loved me, even if she could not bear to know it. And I knew her heart was breaking just like mine as that cursed cart bore her further and further from my reach.

  What joy could the future now hold? Whatever misery awaited me in this next eternity of loneliness was magnified a thousandfold by knowing Isabeau, too, was just as surely condemned to grief. I wondered how her father would be able to rejoice in her return to her family when he saw how unhappy she was. Perhaps when he was restored to health and he saw her continuing misery, he would let her come to me then?

  A cold that had nothing to do with my prolonged sojourn in the library settled in my stomach. I had no real notion how far Dufour’s farm was from the forest. Would my magic reach so far? What if, in some months’ time, Isabeau twisted her ring and nothing happened? What if the distance was too great?

  And then there were her dreams. The cold in my bowels deepened, solidified. She could see me in her dreams. She would see how miserable and hopeless I was. If she loved me, how could she bear that grief? I knew only too well how dearly her dreams had cost her last spring. Would each of us really be able to bear watching the other so unhappy?

  I hit the mantelpiece below the mirror so hard the trinkets upon it jumped and jangled. Then I turned around and walked back out of my study, fire, tea and comfortable chair forgotten.

  This time I left the house. Its empty hulk held nothing for me. On stepping out into that bleak, winter garden, some resolution crystallised within me, as though forming out of the frosty air. If Isabeau was going to watch over me in her dreams, I would give her as little to fret over as I could. I could not pretend to be carefree. But I would do my best to be calm, though my mind was crazed with grief; to eat, though the food turn to ashes in my mouth; to repair to my bed at night, though sleep may not come. I will not lie: the thought of ending my own life had occurred to me several times in the last few days. But now I knew about her dreams, it was not an option. I would choose to live another century in solitude before I put her through what her father had subjected her to the previous night. I could not do that to her.

  I went first to Isabeau’s rose garden. The one part of my garden entirely brought into existence by magic, it had also been the last part of my gardens to resist the returning seasons. Now, however, new snow frosted the edges of the beds and lay in cold drifts in the shadows where the weak sunshine had not found it out. Only the merest rags of petals still clung here and there to dry flower heads and the few leaves scattered among the brambles were yellow and ill-looking. This fabulous garden, once so full of nodding blooms, was now cold, wet and colourless.

  I walked slowly, clasping my cold paws behind my back to prevent them shaking, but I stopped when I saw the pavilion – a dim, unattractive place in this season. I could not help but picture her on our first meeting here. The sharp stab of sorrow accompanying this image was too much and I turned away. There was nothing left for me here in this garden but heartbreak.

  Back outside the grey stone walls of Isabeau’s rose garden, I turned towards the yew walk. An icy breeze dipped cold fingers beneath the collar of my coat and I shivered. I had not stayed long enough in my study to get truly warm. Where is my cloak? I wondered. But it did not appear and I had no inclination to insist.

  Part-way to the yew walk, I became conscious of something hovering at the edge of my vision. I turned and focussed my gaze upon a dark shape in the hedge that had not been there before. It was an archway. Low and looking in danger of becoming imminently overgrown, or perhaps, rather, as though the tangle of branches threatening to obscure it had only just this minute begun to withdraw from each other.

  There was something familiar about it, yet I could not recall ever having seen it before. There had been no hedge around the estate in my former life and I knew no breach had ever existed in it since it had come into being with the curse. I started towards it in confused fascination. For some reason I was certain it was not a way out of my ensorcelled realm. Where might it lead?

  It didn’t matter. It had appeared at this moment, when all hope had vanished from my heart. At the very least it offered me a certain refuge from rooms and gardens haunted by the absence of the woman I loved.

  I crossed the hoar-whitened lawn and stepped beneath the rustic portal. Immediately, I was plunged into a lightless gloom. This was no door through the hedge, but some sort of tunnel, its walls as tangled and impenetrable as the hedge itself. I forced my frozen feet onwards, my breath forming pale clouds before my face. My beast’s nose scented cold, and earth, and the faintest tang of magic. Not the same magic that pervaded the house, or even the forest. This was something older and wilder, filled with sadness and decay. Yet … I breathed in deeply, the chill searing my lungs. I ignored the shudders gripping me and concentrated on the magic. At its core was something pure and clear, like the peal of a bell, or the heat of a burning ember. Or—

  I stepped from the tunnel into an open space and came to a halt.

  Or the colour of a crimson rose.

  I had entered a churchyard. The churchyard of the small chapel that had stood just outside the grounds of my house, a lifetime ago. To one side I could see the church itself, barely more than crumbling stone walls now. Around me the hedge rose up, encircling the churchyard as surely as it encircled my estate.

  Before me, headstones reared like broken teeth through the unkempt, snow-dusted grass. The entire place was stark and colourless, save one leaning monument. I remembered that one. I did not remember the dark, thorny branches that tangled thickly over it, sprouting glossy leaves of deepest green and bloody blooms the colour of my broken heart.

  I stumbled forward and sank to my knees in front of it, reaching out to touch the fading words on the pitted stone.

  Marguerite de Serres.

  My grandmother.

  Why this, here, now? I wondered. What cruelty was this? To distract me from the loss of Isabeau by reminding me of the loss of the only other person I had ever truly loved?

  I stared at the headstone, caught in the embrace of the ancient rose. The vivid crimson blooms began to waver and blur as tears filled my eyes. My taloned paws curled into angry fists as bitter grief flooded my heart. Was I doomed, then, to such solitude? Condemned to nothing more than the unhappy contemplation of my lost loved ones for the remainder of my days?

  Isabeau. I did not want her to see me weeping in her dreams. I dragged the back of my paw across my eyes. ‘You have your grandmother’s eyes,’ the Fairy had said. I took a ragged breath. She had known her. That much I knew.

  It was here, by my grandmother’s grave, that I had first met the Fairy. Then, the grave had been fresh, the soil newly turned and my grief for my grandmother raw and terrible. I had been young, and angry, and feeling more alone than ever before in my short life.

  I had been standing, staring at the shallow heap of dirt that covered her, when someone stepped up beside me. I turned and saw an elderly woman. She was small and delicate in appearance and dressed in mourning weeds of considerable elegance. But she had not been among those who came to pay their respects at the funeral. I had no idea who she was.

  ‘So she is gone and all is at an end,’ she said to me, and I was surprised at the strength of the bitterness in this stranger’s voice. She was glaring fiercely at my grandmother’s grave.

  ‘All, madame?’ I asked, offended anyone dared intrude upon my grief. I was also affronted that she, whom I had never seen before in all my life, might think her sorrow for my grandmother was somehow greater than my own.

  ‘Oh, I will endure for eons, yet,’ she said grimly. ‘But my heart lies bleeding in that grave.’

  She turned her gaze upon me and I was struck by the piercing brilliance of her ancient eyes. I could see the tracks of tears upon her lined cheeks.

  ‘So, you are
the grandson,’ she pronounced. ‘I see she was right to be concerned.’

  ‘I do not understand you,’ I said coldly.

  ‘No,’ she agreed.

  I scowled at her, waiting for her to explain herself, but she looked away from me and back down at the grave. Her expression wavered and such a look of rage came over her face, I knew a moment of true fear. Without looking at me, she lifted a finger, as crooked and bent as old wood, and pointed at me.

  ‘His heart was rotten, but yours is frozen,’ she said. ‘It is as bad.’

  ‘Madame,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I cannot think what interest you should have in my heart.’

  ‘Between you, you very nearly broke the heart I treasured above all others,’ she said in a voice like a cold wind. ‘Marguerite wanted nothing else in life but to see you happy. Now she is gone from this world. Your blood is the only vestige of hers left in it. For that, I offer you this warning: mend your ways.’

  I opened my mouth to make an angry retort, but before my eyes, she seemed to crumple. A moment later, a raven burst up into noisy flight from where she had been standing and I was alone.

  A new draught of cold air recalled me to the present. It tore petals from one of the crimson roses and scattered them over the ragged grass. I looked at where my grandmother’s name was inscribed on the old stone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grand-mère,’ I said brokenly. ‘I wish you could have met Isabeau.’

  I did wish it. I could picture each of them so clearly in my mind, I felt as though if I were to look over my shoulder, I would see them standing behind me. I bowed my head in sorrow. I was alone. My grandmother was dead and the closest I could come to Isabeau now was through my mirror and her dreams.

  I imagined Isabeau seeing me visit this sad place in those dreams. She would worry about me. I was now so cold my jaws had locked together. Perhaps I should return to the house. I tried to stand and a wave of dizziness swept over me. Alarmed, I reached out to steady myself on my grandmother’s gravestone. ‘No …’ I muttered to myself. I did not want Isabeau to see me in this weakened state. I wanted her to see me trying to be well. Our exhortation to each other: ‘Be well.’

  I leaned on the cold stone, waiting for the spell to pass – the result, surely, of too little food and rest and too much grief over the last few days. A great tremor passed over me. And the cold, I thought. I am so cold.

  I gathered my strength, thinking of my chair with its rug in my study, or the chair before the fire in the entrance hall. Even that would do as somewhere to rest my weary body, while I warmed myself and ate something. I would be well, and I would wait for Isabeau to come home. I may not be happy in her absence, but – I gave a snort of bitter laughter – I did not think I had ever been happy in my life before she came.

  Bracing myself against the stone, I stood. It seemed a much harder thing to do than I remembered. But I was on my feet again. I took one careful step and then another towards the gap in the hedge and the path back out of the cemetery. Behind me, there was a sudden screech and I lurched around. A huge raven soared into the churchyard. Its violent wings beat up a small tempest of snow and rose petals and inky, flying feathers. My head reeled. A rushing in my ears rose up, my vision blackened and I fell away into nothingness.

  Chapter XLII

  I have no idea whether I lay there, asleep or unconscious, for an hour or a day. But eventually something roused me from my stupor. It was a voice, a cry, insinuating itself between myself and oblivion. For a moment my heart lifted, thinking Isabeau had somehow returned. Then I remembered: she had left the cottage to be with her family. I was so tired, my very bones weary. My heart was conjuring ghosts from memories. It had been a raven and nothing more.

  I let myself sink back towards the comforting dark enveloping me. But the cry came again, louder and more insistent.

  ‘Let me in!’

  I tried to move, but I could not. My limbs were heavy with cold. There was a violent rustling. I tried again and flexed the claws of my right hand. There was the sound of branches breaking.

  ‘Beast!’

  That voice!

  A moment later there were swift footsteps and something landed beside me and a warm weight fell across my chest.

  ‘Beast!’

  Isabeau’s voice was urgent with some passionate grief. She was shaking me, dragging my head and shoulders into her arms. She murmured brokenly to herself and, as I struggled to open my eyes, her words began to filter through to my dull brain.

  ‘Dear Beast, don’t die! Don’t die!’

  I forced my eyelids apart enough to make sure she was really there.

  Through my frozen lashes I could see her pale, pointed face leaning over me. I tried to move my hairy paw to touch her hand, but my limbs seemed frozen solid.

  ‘Isabeau,’ I managed to whisper.

  ‘Beast?’ she cried in a low voice. She snatched up my paw, pressing it to her cheek. Like magic, a wave of warmth washed down my hand and spread through the rest of my body. ‘Are you alive? Please be alive, Beast! If you live I’ll never leave again, I promise. I’ll stay with you forever, I’ll marry you, Beast, only don’t die. I love you!’

  Several things happened all at once.

  First, with her words I experienced a moment of disbelief. Then came the joy. I thought my heart would burst as colours and stars bloomed before my eyes.

  Second, there was an almighty crash as though something vast and brittle had shattered spectacularly, and for the briefest instant I thought it had to do with the explosion of colour across my vision, but Isabeau cried out in fear and I knew she heard it too.

  Thirdly, my entire body was suddenly suffused with a brilliant white-gold light, so intense I felt myself burning up within it, and although I fought to stay and tell Isabeau I loved her too and that I was hers body and soul, it overwhelmed me and in one terrible, rending flash, everything I was tore apart and scattered to the fading stars.

  When I came to myself again, it could only have been moments later, because I still lay with my head in Isabeau’s lap. However, everything seemed subtly different. I was still light-headed, but instead of heaviness pervading my limbs, I now felt somehow weightless. Isabeau had found me in a garden just beginning to slide under winter’s rule, the ground hard and crusted with frost. Yet I opened my eyes on melting snow and mud, and a golden gleam in the air that had not been there before. Then I lifted my eyes to Isabeau’s face and the happiness that had warmed my whole body a moment ago faded abruptly, leaving a sinking coldness in my belly. She was staring at me, wide-eyed in horror, the hand that had held mine so recently now pulled away in shock.

  She had not meant it. She could not pledge herself to a beast.

  ‘You!’ she gasped.

  My throat was so thick with sadness I could barely speak, yet I managed to say, ‘Isabeau, I released you—’

  But she interrupted me, her voice shaking with panic. ‘Where is my Beast? Where is he?’

  ‘Isabeau—’ I reached up to her and froze.

  Stretched out towards her was a human hand.

  It seemed as alien as if I had suddenly sprouted wings or scales, yet almost familiar. I flexed it and the fingers moved. I brought it back close to my face and stared at it – clean square nails in place of gleaming claws, no more hair than an ordinary man.

  ‘Isabeau,’ I said again in wonder and noticed my voice, lighter and without the animal growl, ‘you broke the spell!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded. She still stared at me fearfully, with tear tracks down her face.

  ‘I am – I was – the Beast.’ I couldn’t help but keep looking first at her, then at my hands. ‘I never thought the spell would end.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Isabeau, looking as though she was on the verge of tears and doing her best not to succumb. The mud was becoming progressively worse. I hauled myself up and offered her my hand. (Hand!) She allowed me to help her to stand, but she was shaking, her grey eyes sti
ll wide with shock. Her lips moved as though she was trying to form words, but no sound came from them.

  ‘I was a man once before, but I was enchanted – cursed,’ I said. My limbs were trembling and I had to reach out to steady myself against a nearby headstone. I could not tear my eyes from her beautiful face, still pale with distress. I wanted to touch her, to reach out to her, but all the old uncertainty came rushing back as I stared at her shocked expression.

  ‘It may take some time to explain,’ I said desperately. ‘Please, Isabeau, you may not feel you know me at all, and you may want to take back the things you said to me just now—’ She opened her mouth to say something, but I ploughed on. ‘We are both of us tired and weary. Just please promise me you won’t make up your mind about anything just yet. Wait until we have had a chance to talk.’

  Isabeau shook her head.

  ‘Beast,’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘I know you. You are the man in the painting. When I think of you, half the time I think of you with this face.’

  She stepped closer to me and reached up to touch my jaw. My head whirled and the world tilted. I gripped the headstone more tightly as she leaned back to take a better look at me. I stood motionless, hardly daring to breathe, as she ran her fingertips over the unshaven skin of my cheek.

  ‘I’ve done this a hundred times in my dreams,’ she whispered so quietly I wondered if she realised she had spoken aloud. Then she looked into my eyes and said, ‘No wonder the picture disturbed you, Julien.’

  Hearing her say my name was a new kind of magic and for a moment there was nothing in the world but Isabeau’s grey eyes. She stood so close to me, her hand cupping my jaw, her face turned up to mine. It would be so easy to …

  ‘Your eyes,’ she said, ‘you always have your eyes.’