The Wilful Eye

by Isobelle Carmody

  Belle struggled to appear unruffled. She had a nasty suspicion that he usually solved his problems by eating them.

  ‘Something to do with the rose stalk?’ she asked.

  He gave a snarling, strangled sort of bellow. Louder and louder – until finally human words came out in it.

  ‘Leave it be!’ he roared.

  Belle heaved an inward sigh of relief. She still didn’t understand, but she knew to leave well enough along.

  ‘Calm down, Mr Beast,’ she said. ‘I promise I won’t change a thing.’

  She rested a hand on the velvety fur of his paw. The tail-lashing stopped, the rage went out of him and his great ugly head hung down. For a while, he looked almost abject.

  Belle didn’t mention flowers for the table again.

  Every day the sun rose a little higher in the sky, until there was real warmth in its rays. Snow melted from branches and fell with sudden, startling whooshes and plops. On the ground, the snow shrank to irregular icy patches, and there were trickles of melt-water everywhere.

  Belle didn’t go into the forest, but explored the gardens of the chateau itself. Her favourite spot was a herb garden at the back, surrounded by a shrubbery of laurel and bay. She spent many afternoons on a stone bench there, enjoying the sharp-edged sunlight.

  After the explosion over the vase, she was more cautious about probing into things that mystified her. One day when she came back from the herb garden, the oval mirror of her dresser had disappeared, leaving only its plain wooden supports sticking up against the wall. She asked him about it over dinner.

  ‘Better for you,’ he growled.

  ‘Better how? How can I do my hair without a mirror?’

  He let out a warning rumble, and she decided to let the matter drop. He wasn’t quite so simple an animal as she had first assumed. Or at least, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with being an animal. She sensed a growing restiveness in his behaviour.

  One night she awoke to a sound in the corridor. He was padding back and forth on the other side of her bedroom door. Nearer and further, further and nearer. Sometimes the padding stopped for a few minutes, then started up again.

  For two hours she lay awake, listening. The door was locked, but what if he was spying through the keyhole? She drowsed off eventually, but couldn’t manage more than ten minutes of sleep at a time. Only at dawn did the padding cease.

  She didn’t question him about it over dinner, but the next night she wedged the chair under the doorknob and stuffed a handkerchief into the keyhole. The padding began again around the middle of the night, but she was more relaxed about it now. Over the following nights, the sound grew more and more familiar until it hardly kept her awake at all.

  Of course, he was a creature of the night who slept through the daylight hours. She stood outside his bedroom door and listened to that strange reverberation, midway between a purr and a snore. She even peeped through his keyhole, but could see nothing except the drawn curtains of a four-poster bed.

  In the end, curiosity got the better of her. What she couldn’t ask, she would find out for herself. She waited one day until after noon, then went upstairs to the door of his room. With infinite slow care, she turned the knob. Did he keep his door locked?

  She pushed gently and the door opened. Inch by inch, wider and wider. She saw a gold-flecked carpet and walls panelled in rich, dark wood. As well as the four-poster bed, there was a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a writing desk. A full-length cheval glass stood in the middle of the floor.

  Then she saw a second mirror, leaning against the wall. That was her mirror!

  She entered. The beast was asleep behind the curtains of the bed, and his deep rhythmical breathing filled the room. She stood before her mirror and smiled at herself in the glass. She would have liked to reclaim it for her dresser, but the beast would surely find out . . .

  She went to look at herself in the cheval glass. Strange! There was no reflection – or no single reflection. Instead, the glass showed a myriad of tiny images, all different. It was as though this mirror had cracked into a hundred separate fragments. She reached out a hand, but felt no cracks in the glass.

  However, her touch brought about a change, a dissolving swirl of colour. Suddenly there was a single reflection, a reflection of her . . .

  Belle gasped. The reflection was the wrong way round! Not her face, but her hair and back. It was a reflection from behind!

  She moved to the side and her hair and back disappeared out of the picture. Now the mirror showed her the chest of drawers, a corner of the four-poster bed – and the cheval glass itself! The reflection was coming from some other source.

  She experimented from different angles and finally worked it out. What she saw in the cheval glass was actually the view from her own oval mirror, leaning against the wall.

  A magic mirror, then. She had heard of them in fairytales, created by sorcerers to observe secretly from a distance. When her own mirror had been in her own room, the beast would have been able to watch her every move!

  Her first reaction was shock and outrage. Her second reaction was more forgiving; after all, he had shifted the mirror out of her room, so he must have chosen not to observe her anymore. A very honourable act for a beast . . .

  She turned and listened to the rhythm of his slumber. A mischievous impulse crept over her, to observe him secretly. She advanced to the side of the bed, found where the curtains overlapped and pulled them apart a fraction.

  He lay stretched out on top of the quilt, huge, leonine, magnificent. Even sprawling and splayed, his great limbs had a fluid, animal beauty. His crown of bony spikes dug into the pillow and his eyes were closed.

  Most glorious of all was his mane. Staring at that thick, soft, yellow-and-brown fur, she couldn’t help wanting to bury her face in it. Unconsciously, her hand crept out and she stroked a tuft of fur between her fingers.

  He snorted in his sleep and his breathing came faster. Belle withdrew her hand – too late. His eyes flew open and his amber gaze focused on the intruder.

  ‘Wha-a-at?’ A growl like thunder made the curtains billow.

  She thought fast. ‘I came looking for my mirror,’ she said.

  He sprang up on the bed, switching instantly from sleep to quivering alertness. Belle backed away, but he came after her through the curtains.

  ‘I don’t want it back,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Not all right.’ He stood towering over her. ‘You can never have it back. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve heard about magic mirrors.’

  ‘Your mirror is connected to my mirror.’ He swung a paw towards the cheval glass, which had gone back to its original state of a hundred tiny, separate images. ‘Every mirror in this house is connected to my mirror.’

  Keep him talking, thought Belle. ‘So all those little pictures are the views from different mirrors?’

  ‘Yes.’ He brushed one area of the cheval glass with his paw, and the colours swirled and enlarged to a single image. ‘The view from the mirror at the top of the staircase.’

  He brushed again, then again and again. ‘The mirror in the dining room. The mirror in the reading room. The mirror in the second bedroom. Fourth bedroom. Fifth bedroom.’

  Images came and went in the glass. Belle recognised some of the interiors; other rooms in the chateau she had never yet entered.

  ‘Wait! What’s that?’

  He paused. They were looking at a much less opulent interior, with rough painted walls and rugs on bare floorboards. To Belle, it was the most familiar place in the world. And those two figures . . .

  ‘That’s not inside the chateau.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s Delphie and Elise. In our parlour.’

  ‘Yes.’ His tone changed from stern to apologetic. ‘I should not have shown you that.’

  She peered at the wainscoting, the sideboard, the framed needlework on the wall that she had stitched herself. There were cobwebs in the cor
ners of the ceiling . . . obviously Delphie and Elise hadn’t taken over the housework in the absence of their younger sister. They were ensconced in the parlour’s two rocking chairs, leaning forward, rubbing their hands as if warming them.

  ‘Hello,’ said Belle, but of course there was no response.

  She turned to the beast. ‘I don’t understand. They’re sitting in front of the hearth, but there’s no mirror there.’

  ‘There is now.’

  ‘Why? How?’

  ‘The casket.’

  Belle’s mind flashed back to the small box decorated all over with miniature mirrors, the casket that her father had carried away from the chateau. One of those mirrors must be connected to this one . . .

  ‘My bride price,’ she murmured sadly.

  ‘Bride price?’ The beast shook his spiky crown. ‘There was no bride price.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think so. That’s what my father called it. He pretended you wanted to marry me.’

  ‘He lied. I bought you for a price, with no conditions. I would never make a false promise of marriage.’

  Belle looked at him: the simple grandeur of his stance, the unblinking gaze of his amber eyes. He had none of the guile of human beings – of merchants – of her father. Certainly, he was a very honourable beast.

  ‘I don’t suppose you would,’ she said.

  She turned back to the mirror, and the depths of her father’s betrayal struck her with full force again. Delphie and Elise looked so smug and happy, they were all so cosy and comfortable in their own home. Whereas she had been lied to, sold and sacrificed for their benefit.

  It hurt like the twist of a knife in her belly, until she could hardly hold herself upright.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ growled the beast.

  But she felt humiliated before him, knowing that he could see how contemptibly she’d been treated.

  ‘I don’t want your pity,’ she cried, and ran from the room as the tears sprang into her eyes.

  All afternoon, Belle paced up and down in the herb garden at the back of the chateau. The snow had melted from paths and plots, birds chirped in the shrubbery, everything announced the approach of spring. But not in Belle’s heart. She felt bitter and shrivelled up inside.

  Gradually, though, she grew more tranquil. The warmth went out of the air as the sun sank in the sky. Still she kept walking up and down, back and forth, round and round.

  Then the beast appeared. She was startled to see him in daylight. Thinking of him as a creature of the night, she had assumed that he’d gone back to sleep in his four-poster bed. It was also the first time she’d ever seen him outside the rooms of the chateau.

  ‘Be-lle,’ he said in his faltering, lingering way. In spite of his improved powers of speech, he had never quite got his jaws and tongue around that particular word.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  She wanted to appear relaxed, so she moved across to sit on the stone bench. The beast came up and stood before her. His tail lashed the ground, yet he didn’t seem angry. Tense, perhaps, and very, very solemn . . .

  He went down on one knee – except that, as a four-legged animal, he couldn’t kneel like a human being. He ended up in a kind of crouch. Belle couldn’t work out what he was doing at all.

  ‘Be-lle.’ His voice was so low it was almost a purr. ‘I ask for your hand in marriage.’

  She goggled. ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to be my wife.’

  He was utterly serious. Belle fought down the nervous giggle that threatened to burst from her throat.

  ‘You’re only asking because my father cheated me,’ she said. ‘You’re trying to make it up to me.’

  ‘No. No. I ask because I respect and admire you. I am . . . fond of you. You have become very dear to me.’

  She didn’t know what to say. Her father hadn’t cheated her only by his talk of marriage, he had also told Belle that her husband-to-be was a prince – and a human being! Still, she didn’t want to hurt the beast’s feelings.

  ‘I don’t think any priest would marry us,’ she said. ‘We don’t exactly fit the standard view of man and wife.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he rumbled. ‘But I do have power and wealth. Power and wealth make many things possible. I can find a priest to marry us.’

  ‘Well, perhaps, but . . .’

  ‘All of this will be yours.’ He swung an encompas- sing paw. ‘My chateau, my lands, my treasures, everything I have inherited. Any luxury you can imagine you can have.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Belle murmured.

  ‘A life beyond your wildest dreams. Beyond your family’s wildest dreams. You can triumph over them and their betrayal.’

  Belle shook her head. ‘There has to be love, Mr Beast.’

  ‘You don’t love me? But you like to talk to me. Don’t you enjoy my company?’

  ‘Yes. I do enjoy your company. I’m very fond of you too. But not the kind of love to get married on.’

  ‘Don’t you think you could learn to love me?’

  ‘We’re not the same.’ How could she explain it? He was waiting for her to say more, but there was no more to say. He was a magnificent animal, but he was still an animal. Two different species. ‘We’re just not the same.’

  ‘We could grow closer over time,’ he insisted.

  Why wouldn’t he understand? Two different species don’t grow closer over time, she wanted to say. But she changed to a gentler form of words.

  ‘I don’t believe you can love me either,’ she told him. ‘You may think you do, but it’s not possible. Not real human love, not real human passion. Be honest with yourself. You can’t feel it.’

  ‘I . . .’ His jaws twisted, and he couldn’t bring out the words. If he had been going to say I love you, there was a blockage in his windpipe. Or lower down.

  He thumped at his chest. Belle saw with alarm that the claws had come out between the pads of his paws.

  ‘Don’t!’ she cried. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . I . . .’ he tried again, but the obstacle remained. He was rocking from side to side. His eyes had closed, his teeth were grinding together, and his whole face was a grimace of pain. He backed away, still in a crouch, panting heavily.

  Then, with a supreme effort, he rose upright. He seemed to be fighting his own body, at war with his own muscles and bones.

  ‘I accept your decision.’ He managed to bring out the words. ‘You have rejected me.’

  He dropped his great ugly head in a kind of bow. When he came up, his eyes were open again.

  ‘A good decision,’ he said. ‘Be-lle.’

  He turned, and half-stalked, half-stumbled out of the herb garden. Belle resisted the impulse to go after him. Now was not the moment to display too much affection.

  She wondered if things would ever be the same between them again. He had been trying to act honourably, and she had hurt his feelings. She hadn’t wanted to, but she had. The thought of losing his friendship was infinitely depressing. An endless future of silent dinnertimes!

  She became aware of a rustling in the shrubbery. More than a rustling – a violent agitation. Leaves were shaking, branches were tossing. Surely that couldn’t be birds?

  She jumped up and went to investigate. The crisscross paths of the herb garden turned into a single path through the shrubbery, and the agitation came from a particular clump of bushes beside the path. She looked in under the foliage, and there he was. The beast – in throes of agony!

  He must have collapsed and rolled off under the bushes. Spasm after spasm contorted his body. Flailing out with his claws, he had gouged great furrows in the earth. Yet his jaws were clamped tight shut, even in his suffering. He was obviously determined not to cry out or reveal himself.

  Belle felt responsible, although she didn’t understand the extremity of his reaction. She dropped down on all fours and crept in under the bushes.

  ‘What is it?’

  He kept beatin
g and tearing at his chest, as though his pain had its centre there. She came closer, risking injury from his flailing claws.

  ‘Is it your heart?’

  Still no answer. Had he even heard? She chose her moment and reached out to touch his paw. The contact of hand on paw quietened his spasms.

  He turned his head and opened his eyes. Suddenly limp and slack, he was a pitiful sight. His amber gaze was cloudy and unfocused, his magnificent fur was dull, and his tail lay flat to the ground like a dead thing.

  She could have wept at the expression in his eyes. He was like an animal that can only suffer silently and alone. But he could speak and he wasn’t alone.

  ‘Is it your heart?’ she asked again.

  ‘Yes. No. You wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I don’t have a heart.’

  ‘Of course you do. You couldn’t live without a heart.’

  ‘I have my animal heart. Not a human heart.’

  ‘Why do you need a human heart?’

  ‘A human heart for human feelings.’

  Belle thought about it. ‘Feelings for me?’

  ‘I have no heart to hold my love. My feelings have nowhere to go. They don’t belong in my animal heart.’

  This was the strangest conversation that Belle had ever had. ‘So your body is at war with your feelings?’

  ‘Yes. I think I’m dying.’

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  The beast groaned and shuddered as another paroxysm went through him. Belle held on to his paw, gripping tighter.

  ‘I used to have one,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A human heart.’

  ‘But that’s . . .’

  ‘I had a human heart until I traded it away.’

  Belle’s head was spinning, but the word ‘traded’ caught her attention.

  ‘What do you mean? Tell me everything. Everything.’

  Riding, riding, riding. Belle straddled the beast’s back as he raced with long loping strides through the night. Her hair flew out, her cheeks stung, her eyes blinked tears. The speed of their motion drove cold air into her nose and mouth and lungs.