Beauty

by Robin McKinley

  I picked up a twig from the forest floor and threw it absently into the wagon. I didn’t know what he meant by “it” and I would have died rather than ask him. “Okay,” I said. And then as I took hold of Greatheart’s bridle I added, “Thanks,” over my shoulder, since I knew he was trying to be helpful.

  Hope gave birth to twins ten months after the wedding, in May. The girl was born first; Hope named her Mercy, after our sister who had died, although I privately thought that our family already had more than enough virtues personified. The little boy was named Richard, for Ger’s father. Mercy was a healthy, happy baby from the beginning, and she was born with golden curls and blue eyes that would look straight at a face bending over her. Richard was puny, bald, and shriveled-looking, didn’t eat well, and cried steadily for the first six months; then perhaps he began to feel ashamed of himself, for he cried only at intervals, grew plump and rosy, and produced some reddish-brown hair.

  It was in late September that a pedlar from the south came into town and asked at the Griffin if they knew of a man named Woodhouse, or of another, older man named Huston, who used to live in the city. Melinda, after looking him over and asking his business, brought him along to us; and he gave Father a letter with a wax seal.

  The letter was from a man named Frewen, whom Father had known and trusted. He was another merchantman who owned several ships, and lived in the city near our old house. He was writing now to say that one of Father’s missing ships was returning to port after all: It had been sighted and spoken by one of Frewen’s own captains, whose veracity his master would vouch for. Frewen could not say exactly when the ship might reach home; but he hoped to be able to do his old friend Huston the service of holding it for him until he could send word or come himself to dispose of it. He was welcome to stay at Frewen’s house while he transacted his business.

  Father read the letter aloud to us sitting around the parlour fire after dinner, and a grim silence fell after he was finished. Grace sat as if frozen; if it hadn’t been for the firelight she would have been white as milk, her hands clenched into fists in her lap, twisting her apron. Even the babies were quiet; I held Mercy, who looked up at me with big eyes.

  “I’ll have to go,” said Father. Robbie Tucker was an almost tangible presence in the room. “Tom Bradley should be stopping by here any day now; I can go south with them.”

  And so it was. Tom arrived a week later, and declared himself delighted to have Father’s company all the way south to the city again. The letter had cast a pall over all of us that the fine clear autumn weather and the babies’ high spirits did nothing to dispel; and it closed down as tightly as a shroud when Father had gone. The worst of it was watching Grace turn cold and white and anxious again, seeing in her a helpless, despairing sort of excitement that she could not quite suppress.

  Father told us not to look for him before the spring, when traveling would be easier. But it was a cold night in late March, with the snow nearly a foot thick on the ground after a sudden blizzard, when the front door was thrown open and Father stood on the threshold. Ger strode forwards and caught him in his arms as he staggered, and then half carried him to a seat near the fire. As he sank down with a sigh we all noticed that in his hand he held a rose: a great scarlet rose, bigger than any we had seen before, in full and perfect bloom. “Here, Beauty,” he said to me, and held it out. I took it, my hand trembling a little, and stood gazing at it. I had never seen such a lovely thing.

  When Father had set out last autumn he had asked us girls if there was anything he could bring us from the city. No, we said: Our only wish is that you should come home to us soon and safely.

  “Oh, come now, children,” he said. “Pretty girls want pretty things: What little trinkets do you secretly think about?” We looked at one another, not sure what we should say; and then Hope laughed a little and kissed him and said, “Oh, bring us ropes of pearls and rubies and emeralds, because we haven’t a thing to wear the next time we visit the King and Queen.” We all laughed then, Father too, but I thought his eyes looked hurt; so a little later I said to him, “Father, there is something you can bring me—I’d love to plant some roses here, around the house. If you could buy some seeds that are not too dear, in a few years we’ll have a garden that will be the envy of all Blue Hill.” He smiled and promised that he would try.

  I remembered this now, five months later, the snowcold stem against my fingers. We stood like a Christmas tableau, focused on the huge nodding rose in my hand, snow dripping softly off its crimson petals; then a blast from the still-open door shook us, as it seemed, from sleep. Grace said, “I’ll put some water in a cup for it,” and went to the kitchen. As I went to close the door, I saw a laden horse standing forlorn in the snow; it raised its head and pricked its ears at me. I hadn’t bothered to think that Father must have traveled with some kit besides a scarlet rose. I handed the rose to Grace and said, “I’ll see to the horse.” Ger followed me, and it happened that I needed his assistance, because the saddle-bags were full and very heavy.

  When we returned, Father was sipping some hastily warmed cider, and the silence still lay as thick as the snow outside. Ger and I dumped the leather satchels into a corner near the door, and all but forgot them. As we took our places again by the fire, Hope knelt down in front of Father and put her hands in his lap; and when he looked at her, she said gently: “What has happened since you left us, Father?”

  He shook his head. “There’s too much to tell it all now. I am tired, and must sleep,” and we noticed how old and frail he looked, and his eyes were heavy and sunken. He looked up at Grace: “I am sorry, child, but it was not the Raven.” Grace bowed her head. “It was the Merlyn; she hadn’t been drowned after all.” He fell silent again for several minutes, while the firelight chased shadows across his weary face. “I’ve brought back a little money, and a few things; not much.” Ger and I caught each other giving the full saddle-bags puzzled looks; but we said nothing.

  Grace had set the rose, now standing in a tall pottery cup of water, on the mantelpiece above the parlour fire. Father looked up at it, and all our eyes were drawn after his. “Do you like it, Beauty, child?” he said. “Yes, indeed, Father,” I said, wondering; “I have never seen its like.”

  He said, as if in a trance, staring at the flower: “Little you know what so simple a thing has cost me”; and as he finished speaking, a petal fell from the rose, although it was unharmed and blooming. The petal turned in the air as it fell, as if it were so feather-light that the warm eddies of air from the fire could lift it; and the firelight seemed to gild it. But it struck the floor with an audible clink, like a dropped coin. Ger bent down and picked it up: It was a bright yellow color. He took it between his fingers, and with a little effort bent it slightly. “It’s gold,” he said quietly.

  Father stood up as if his back hurt him. “Not now,” he said in response to our awed faces. “Tomorrow I will tell you all my story. Will you help me upstairs?” he said to Grace; and the rest of us looked after them when they had gone. Hope banked the fire, and we went our ways to bed. The saddle-bags lay untouched where Ger and I had set them; he gave them hardly a glance as he barred the door.

  I dreamed that the stream from the enchanted wood turned to liquid gold, and its voice as it ran over the rocks was as soft as silk; and a great red griffin wheeled over our meadow, shadowing the house with its wings.

  Part Two

  1

  Father was still asleep when the rest of us ate a silent breakfast and started the day’s work. After I’d finished eating I went into the parlour to look at the rose again: It was still there—I hadn’t dreamed that, at least. The golden petal lay on the mantelpiece where Ger had set it the night before; it teetered gently on its curved base when I looked closely at it, but that must have been a draft in the room. The rose had opened no wider; it was as though it had been frozen at the moment of its most perfect beauty. Looking at it—its perfume filled the whole room—I found it easy to belive that t
his rose would never fade and die. I went out the front door and shut it softly behind me, feeling that I had just emerged from a magician’s cave.

  Ger had a skittery colt to shoe that day, and I had promised to help him; so I kept watch through the stable window, as I groomed the horses for the arrival of the colt with its owner. I worked hastily, since I had two horses to finish in the time I usually spent on one; but something about the horse Father had ridden gave me pause. On its rump, near the root of the tail, were five small, round white spots, like saddle- or harness-marks, but nowhere that any harness might wear them. Four were arranged in a curved line, and the fifth was a little space away from the other four, and at a lower angle: like the four fingertips and thumb of a hand. It would have had to be a very big hand, because my fingers, when I tried it, did not begin to reach. As I laid my hand flat on the horse’s croup, the animal shivered under the touch and threw its head up nervously. I saw the white of its eye flash as it looked back at me; and it seemed to be in such real fear—it had been quiet and well-mannered till then—that I spent several minutes soothing it.

  The skittish colt arrived a little before midmorning, and I spent a couple of hours hanging on to its headstall and humming tunes in its ear, or holding up the foot diagonal to the one Ger was working on so that it would have too much to do maintaining its balance to cause more trouble.

  Father emerged from the house a little before noon, and stood on the front step breathing the air and looking around him as if he had been gone a decade instead of a few months, or as it he were treasuring up the scene against future hardship. As I watched him walk towards the shop I thought that he had recovered remarkably well after only one night’s rest; and as he came close enough for me to see him clearly the change seemed more than remarkable. I was distracted from the colt, who promptly lunged forwards; Ger yelled, “Here, hold on now!” and dropped the foot he had picked up. When I glanced guiltily back at him I saw him first notice my father, and the bewilderment I had just felt showed clear on his face.

  Father had not just recovered from a tiring journey; he seemed to have lost fifteen or twenty years from his age. Deep lines on his face had been smoothed out, and the squint he had developed as his sight began to fail him was gone, and his gaze was sharp and clear. Even his white hair looked thicker, and he walked with the suppleness of a much younger man.

  He smiled at us as though he noticed nothing strange in our staring, and said, “Forgive me for disturbing you. I hope you don’t mind if I spend my first day home just wandering around and getting in my family’s way; I promise you I will be back to work tomorrow.” We of course assured him he was free to do just as he liked, and he walked out again. There was a pause, while the colt flicked his ears back and forth and suspected us of inventing new atrocities to wreak upon him. “He looks very well, doesn’t he?” I said at last, timidly. Ger nodded, picked up a now-cold horseshoe in the tongs, and put it back in the fire. As we watched the iron turn rosy, he said, “I wonder what’s in those saddle-bags?” The mystery was not alluded to again. We finished the colt, and I took him, stepping high in his new shoes and flinging the fast-melting snow around him so that he could shy and dance at the shadows, to the stable and tied him up to await his master’s return.

  It was after supper that Father finally told his story. We were all sitting around the fire in the front room, trying a little too hard to look peaceful and busy, when Father looked up from his study of the flames: He was the only unoccupied one among us, and the only one who seemed to feel no tension. He smiled around at us, and said: “You have been very patient, and I thank you. I will try to tell you my story now, though the end of it will seem very strange to you.” His smile faded. “It seems very strange to me, now, too, as I sit warm and safe among my family.” He paused a long time, and the sorrow we had seen in him the night before closed around him again. The rich smell of the rose was almost visible; I fancied it lent a rosy edge to the shadows cast by the firelight. Then Father began the story.

  There was pitifully little to tell about his business in the city, he said. The trip south was easy, lasting about seven weeks. He had gone straight to his friend’s house upon arrival in town. Frewen had been pleased to see him, and had treated him very well; but despite the man’s and his family’s kindness, he felt, and he knew he looked, out of place. He had forgotten how to live in the city. The ship had arrived about a week before he had, and its cargo was being held in one of Frewen’s warehouses. It would have seemed a very small cargo to him in the days of his prosperity; but with Frewen’s help he sold it for a good profit and was able to pay the captain and crew what was owed them, and have a bit left over. The captain, a man named Brothers, was shocked at the change in his master’s estate, and was eager to set sail again—the Merlyn needed no more than the usual repairs any ten-year-old wooden ship would need after five years at sea—and try and begin to recoup their losses; but Father had demurred. He told Brothers that it was too tall a hill for him to begin to climb again at his age, and while his new life was not so grand as the old had been, still it was a good life, and his family was together.

  “It’s a curious thing,” he said to us musingly; “after the first wrench of having to walk through the town that I had been used to driving in behind a coachman and four, I found I little minded the change. I seem to have developed a taste for country living. I hope I have not been unfair to you, children.”

  I saw Hope, who was not in Father’s line of vision, look down at her slim hands, which were red and rough with work; but she smiled, if a little wryly, and said nothing.

  The Merlyn was still a sound ship, if not so large and splendid as the ones they were building now, and he set out looking for a buyer for her. He was lucky, and found a purchaser almost immediately, a young captain who sailed for Frewen, who was ready to invest in a small ship of his own. Father had been in town for about a month at that point, and began to think of returning home. He could find out nothing of the White Raven, nor of the other ships whose whereabouts had been uncertain and “presumed lost” when we left the city over two years ago. He did hear that ten of the crewmen from the Stalwart and the Windfleet had arrived home, only about six months ago; and one of the survivors was the third mate who had brought us the story of the little fleet’s disaster.

  The money he had from the sale of the Merlyn made him think of buying a horse and risking the trip north. It had been an easy winter so far, and he was more and more restless, lingering without purpose in the city, eating at Frewen’s table and trespassing on his hospitality, when he knew he did not belong. At last he went to Tom Black’s stable; and Tom welcomed him and sold him a plain-looking, dependable horse that would be good for the trip, and also be able to earn its keep in Blue Hill. Tom asked after Greatheart, and was very interested, and not at all offended, to hear about the horse’s fame as a puller. “I told her he’d do what she told him,” he said in a satisfied tone. “Say hello to your family for me, especially the two new little ones.”

  Father set out only a few days later. He made good time; in less than five weeks he saw smudges of smoke from the chimneys in Goose Landing above familiar hills. That night stormclouds rolled up, and in the morning it began to snow. He had stayed the night at the Dancing Cat in the Landing, and set off across country soon after dawn. He was sure he couldn’t go wrong between there and Blue Hill. He was anxious to get home, and the road would take him some miles out of his way.

  The blizzard blew up around him without warning. One minute snow was falling gently over a familiar horizon; the next he was wrapped so closely around in windborne white that he could make out the shape of his horse’s ears only with difficulty. They went on now because they could not stop, but they were lost at once.

  His horse began to stumble over the ground, as if the footing had suddenly become much rougher. The snow covered everything. He let his mount pick its way as best it could, trying to shield his own face from the sharpslivered wind. He did not know
how long he had been traveling when he felt the wind lessen; he dropped his arm and looked around him. The snow was falling only softly now, almost caressingly, clinging to twig-tips, sliding on heaped branches. He was lost in a forest; all he could see in any direction was tall dark trees; overhead he saw nothing but their entangling branches.

  In a little while they came to a track. It wasn’t much of a track, being narrow and now deep with snow, presenting itself only as a smooth ribbon of white, a slightly sunken ribbon running curiously straight between holes and hummocks and black tree trunks, straight as if it had been planned and built. A trail of any recognizable sort is a welcome thing to a man lost in a forest. He guided his tired horse to it, and it seemed to take heart, raising its head and picking its feet up a little higher as it waded through the snow.

  The track widened and became what might have been a carriage-road, if there had been any reason to drive a carriage through the lonesome forests around Blue Hill. It ended, at last, before a hedge, a great, spiky, hollygrown hedge, twice as tall as a man on horseback, extending away on both sides till it was lost in the darkness beneath the trees. In the hedge, at the end of the road, was a gate, of a dull silver color. He dismounted and knocked, and halloed, but without much hope; the heavy silence told him there was no one near. In despair, he put his hand to the latch, which fell away from his touch, and the gates swung silently open. He was uneasy, but he was also tired; and the horse was exhausted and could not go much farther. He remounted and went in.