by C. E. Murphy
I flung myself in front of Father, screaming, "No!", and the Beast growled, "Someone must pay."
"A rose isn't worth a life!"
The Beast lifted his bloody paw-like hand, roaring, "This is more than a rose!"
I pushed Father back and advanced furiously on the Beast. "He was protecting me, which he wouldn't have needed to do if you weren't being so terrifying over a stupid rose! You'll heal! The rosebush isn't harmed for having lost one bloom! But you will not slay my father over a rose, or steal away any of my family, or the villagers, or anyone else! I picked the rose! If you're so determined that someone has to stay to pay for it, then yes, I'll stay! And I'll make you regret it until your dying day!"
Father blurted, "Amber," in horror, and the Beast began to laugh, a deep, bitter sound that reverberated off the frozen ground and distant estate walls. "If you can bring about my dying day, I will welcome your presence here more profoundly than you will ever know. Go," he said more sharply to Father. "Be grateful that your daughter is as bold as she is lovely." He turned on a massive paw and clumped away through the garden, leaving us alone.
I hadn't realized, until he left, that the Beast's presence made the air feel heavier, like a storm was coming. No wonder: I'd hardly had time to. My shoulders slumped and I curled my hand around—around the rose, thorns prickling my palm again. I'd forgotten I even still held the cursed thing, and I began to cast it away, then thought again. If it was going to cause so much trouble, then at the very least I would keep it. Not for cuttings to make perfume from, not if I was to remain here—or maybe I would grow it, and make perfume anyway, just to be spiteful—but if not that, to press and dry, and that, too, would be for spite. So instead of throwing it away, I put it down in the snow carefully, where I could collect it later, and looked at the dots of blood rising from my palm.
They sparkled faintly, as if this place made something so mundane as bleeding a magical process, too. Wonderful: that would make my moon bloods a splendid experience, here. I sighed, curled my hand around the thorn-pricks, and turned to face my father, who had been ranting since the Beast's departure, and to whom I had not been listening. I didn't need to. I knew he would be speaking of the Beast's horrors and forbidding me to stay while also demanding to know how it was I had come to promise to stay, and, indeed, such was the content of his speech. When he finally fell silent, awaiting my explanations, I only said, "You should take Beauty and leave now, Father, before any more of the day is lost."
He said, "No," with such finality that I didn't bother arguing. I had very little doubt that one way or another, the Beast would see him on his way very soon, and I was grateful for a few more hours of human company. "What happened, Amber?"
"I picked a rose. Our host objected." My mild response amused me, and I began to laugh. Not a healthy, full laugh; that I knew. It was fed by fear and absurdity and the tingling pain in my hand, but it was laughter, and I was grateful for that, too. When it ran its course, I added, "He is the Beast of our forest, and threatened the villagers for feasting on the forest's beasts, if I didn't stay. Or the family. He threatened them too. So I'm staying."
"I'll stay!"
"You didn't pick the rose."
"I'm old, Amber. My life is near enough to over already. What does it matter if a Beast kills me?"
"It matters very much to me!" I glanced behind me at the Beast's dreadful footprints. "Besides, I don't think he's going to kill me. He had ample opportunity while I was cowering and screaming, and he seemed quite specific about taking villagers, or someone from the family, not killing them."
"So you intend to remain his prisoner here forever?"
I looked toward the palace and said, "There are worse prisons," hollowly. "Perhaps he'll let me go sometime. After the lifespan of a rose."
Father's voice dropped. "These roses are blooming in the dead of winter, Amber. How long do you think their lifespan is?"
I crouched to collect the flower that had started all the trouble, and gestured with it as I stood. "Well, I should be able to make some astonishing perfumes with it, if it lasts forever."
"Amber!"
"I'd better find some humor in it, Father, gallows or otherwise, or I'll go mad before you've even left the gates." I offered him a brief, determined smile. "Now let's go back to the castle so I can write a goodbye letter to the family for you to bring home."
I heard the shape of my name on his inhalation, the protestation he wanted to make, but somehow he held it back, for which I was grateful. Instead he offered me his arm. I tucked mine through it, and we walked in silence back to the palace that was now my prison.
The letter ought to have been difficult to write. Instead it came smoothly from my pen, a recitation of facts so peculiar that there seemed no profit in trying to explain them: either they would be accepted, or they would not. Father would back my story up, and Pearl, I knew, would believe me. I wondered again what might have happened if I had not gone with Father. A death, Pearl had said. Maybe none of this would even have transpired; perhaps something would have gone wrong in the city.
I didn't believe that, though. I thought he would have died in the storm, or perhaps worst of all, been rescued by the enchantment only to pick the wretched rose himself, as a gift for me, because he knew I liked them. I thought he would have died here, at the Beast's hands, for that transgression, and just imagining that version of events was worse than staying here myself.
Father and I walked down to the stables again together when I'd finished the letter. Beauty stood ready in her harness, already hitched to the wagon, but the wagon sat lower than it had when we'd arrived. I glanced through the tightly-drawn cover and let out a sharp laugh. "Father."
He paused in climbing to the driver's seat and looked into the wagon. "Mother of stars."
For a little while we were both occupied in going through the wagon's contents, which were as generous—more generous—than the meals and clothes we'd been given since our arrival. There were books, stacks of them that beggared the few we'd bought in the city to replace those we'd lost in the fire. Prominent among the gift books was a copy of one we had been unable to find in the city: a compilation of geological and mythological information about the earth and stones. We children had all been named for rocks inside its pages, and as children, we girls had loved poring over the beautifully inked drawings that represented our namesakes. That small volume's loss had been one of the things we could hardly bear to think about, and our inability to find another copy had been quietly heartbreaking. To see it here amongst the Beast's gifts broke my heart again, in another way.
Beneath the books, well. Most of the fabric was practical: tightly woven linens and wools in varying weights, and mostly colors that would either dye well or wear well, showing little dirt. A little of it, though, was raw silk, for a few really fine dresses. Most of the coins were spendable: bits of nickel or copper, silver pennies and ingots of iron that could be spent or shaped. Some were gold, though, and only of any use to us in the city.
There was nothing practical about any of the jewels, but then, jewels were never meant for practical purposes. Some were small enough for trade, but one chest, when opened, revealed seven polished stones settled in a circle against black velvet. A rectangle of jet could only be seen against the velvet because of its shine; a round-cornered triangle of brick-red jasper threaded with white quartz looked shockingly decadent in comparison. A thick arrowhead of waxy pink flint, lined in white, completed the top half of the circle. Below them lay an opal the size and shape of a partridge's egg, a square of dark grey granite flecked with blue, and an heart-shaped garnet as large as my thumbnail.
In the midst of them, though, placed in the middle of the other six, lay a perfect tear-drop pearl four inches long. I couldn't bring myself to even touch it, my fingers hovering above the jewel. I was no witch, but I could feel the pearl's energy pressing toward my fingertips. Spreading my hands over the whole chest made both hands tingle, as if every stone in the
box was laden with enchantment.
I couldn't tell if Father was angry or afraid—perhaps both—when he said, "This Beast seems to know us very well. That pearl, though. Why such a treasure?"
I heard myself say, "Because Pearl is a witch," somewhat distantly as I gently closed the chest. Father flinched when I did, as if he'd been enchanted by the jewels, but then he heard what I'd said and shook off the enchantment for surprise.
"She is?"
"I think so. You'll have to ask her. But if she is, she'll be able to focus great magic through that pearl. He does know us very well. I suppose he would, if we've been living in his forest." I was obscurely, and absurdly, hurt that there had been no jewel for me. I'd cast my lot in with the Beast, but to have him divorce me from my family so thoroughly, so swiftly, made my heart ache with a too-fast beat. "Wait. Before you go, Father." I ran back into the palace to the parlor we'd been housed in, and collected the wretched rose that had started my troubles. I brought it back to him, tucking it into his coat. "If I'm going to be condemned for picking it, then the least it can do is start a new rose garden in my name. I think Flint will have the knack of caring for it."
"Amber," Father said in dismay. "I want nothing of the Beast's roses. Or any of the rest of this. I only want you to come home with me."
"We are not to get what we want, though, Father." I took a deep breath. "You had better go. If you don't go now I don't know if I can bear it."
"Then I won't go," he said ferociously, but somehow, within minutes, we had embraced and I stood alone at the head of the long driveway, watching the wagon grow smaller with distance.
"He'll be home before dark," the Beast rumbled from behind me, and I, with all the grace and poise of a startled child, shrieked and jolted away from him. When I turned, he stood a few feet away, a huge dark blot against the snow, but with evident surprise written across his horrible face. "I didn't mean to startle you. I thought you would like to know he would make it home safely and quickly, within an hour or two."
I did want to know that. I also did not at all want to be in any way grateful to the Beast. I stared at him with the anger of having been frightened and the fear of what came next, and the abrupt, overwhelming loneliness of abandonment, even if I'd accepted the path myself. Very suddenly I was on the verge of tears, which was worse than anything else.
The Beast stared back at me, and, apparently recognizing the disaster about to erupt, said, "Let me show you to your rooms." He turned swiftly, dropping to all fours as he did so, and paced away.
He had a tail. I hadn't noticed when he'd left the garden earlies, but he had a tail. A bear's tail, short and waggily and not at all in keeping with the general size and ferocity of him. Except it was, because bears, after all, were large and ferocious. But they were also round through the waist and hip, whereas the Beast narrowed more like a lion. I might have expected a longer, lashing tail, but not the stubbly little thing that stuck out from the back of his trousers.
I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, and followed the Beast and his ridiculous little tail back to the palace.
The palace doors swept open ahead of us, and closed again behind us with the dignity of enchantment. I remembered with a pang how I hadn't even seen Glover in the room as Father and I discussed what to do, the night we fled the city. Servants were already invisible to their masters; what real difference did it make if they were in fact invisible? "Are they real?"
The Beast understood my question, which was intriguing and uncomfortable all at once. "As real as you or I."
Given that he was an eight foot tall Beast in an enchanted castle, and I was the sister of a witch, I thought it wiser not to consider that definition of reality any farther. The Beast led me up the right side of the sweeping stairway, and only a small distance down the corridor before pausing at a door, and opening it. "Your rooms."
Considering what little I'd seen of the rest of the palace, I expected the space I entered to be sumptuous. Nor was I disappointed: the door opened on a sitting room with a fire already crackling in its hearth. Woven rugs lay beneath animal furs to keep the floor's chill well away from the feet, and there were all the accoutrements one might expect in a civilized sitting space: liquor sideboards, tables, comfortable chairs, all done in rosewoods and golden fabrics. Beyond that, through another doorway, I caught a glimpse of the bedroom, replete with a canopied bed and windows that let sunlight spill generously across the floor. All well and good; I would look to it in a moment. But something in the sitting room had caught my eye. I crossed to a six-shelf bookcase filled to overflowing, and said, under my breath, "Maybe this won't be so bad."
"You like to read," the Beast said as I took a familiar title down. I nodded, turning through the pages, and he said, "There is a library."
I turned, surprised, the book still in hand. "You mean, more than this?"
"Considerably more."
I put the book down. "Can I see?"
The Beast gave me a look that, had it come from Pearl, I would have called pedantic, and I muttered, "May I see," rather than wait to discover I had traded a beautiful literalist of a sister for a dreadful literalist of a Beast.
A sound emanated from his chest, and after a moment I judged it a chuckle. I felt my mouth pinch into sourness, and the Beast's chuckle became a laugh that reverberated in my bones. "This way," he said, and I followed him in a dudgeon warped with rueful amusement. He was a monster keeping me against my will, but, his initial rage at my picking the rose having passed, he seemed a rather reasonable captor. I was not, at the moment, either afraid or resentful: the prospect of a library and an enchanted castle were intriguing enough to allow me to pretend that this was nothing more than a temporary adventure to be embraced. The reality would settle in soon enough.
We went up another set of stairs, back across the corridor above the foyer, and a little more deeply into the hall than my room had been. The Beast opened a door on the opposite side of the hall from mine, and I stepped onto a balcony overlooking three open floors in one of the round-fronted rooms facing the front gardens.
Bookshelves and reading nooks lined the walls of each floor, heavily carpeted balconies, like the one I stood on, growing larger as they approached the distant ground floor. I glanced up at a glass domed roof, and smiled at the effect: from here, the architecture made it seem as though we were nestled in an enormous egg, its shell made of books. I drew my hand along the satin-smooth balcony rail as I walked around it, a foolish smile on my face. Almost halfway around, part of the floor dropped into a bannistered stairway that led down to the next level. I followed it down, and then the next one down again, making half-circles of the library until I reached the ground floor and walked to its middle to look up at the egg-shaped balconies. The Beast paced a little way behind me on all fours, not rising to his—hind feet, I supposed—until we reached the bottom floor. "The top balcony, just below the dome, is an iris. It can be closed, and the dome becomes an ideal spot for star-gazing."
"Doesn't your breath steam it up?"
The Beast chuckled again, that deep sound more like a growl. "I suppose it should, but no."
Magic, I thought, but didn't say. I did say, "I didn't know there were so many books in all the world."
"You are educated." That was a question, though he didn't phrase it as one. I dropped my chin in a scant nod, still gazing upward, and the Beast went on, "You know, perhaps, that over the centuries, much knowledge has been lost. Libraries have been deliberately burned or otherwise sacked."
My lip curled. "Yes."
"This library seems to have…saved…those books. Copied them, or stolen them before ruin took them, or…something of that nature. I've found books here that are referenced by other books, more modern books, as lost to time. I think it's possible that every piece of deliberately preserved writing is stored here, somewhere."
I turned to him, astonished. "Scholars from all over the world would die to come here."
"As it turns out," th
e Beast said, "people prefer to kill than to die for something, and I am a Beast."
I stood with that a moment, absorbing it and all of its implications, before turning away. The Beast stepped back. "If you're hungry, ask the servants. Otherwise, if you care to join me for dinner, they'll let you know when it's ready, and bring you to the dining hall."
He left, and I had to watch from the corner of my eye so I could judge the moment, just as he crossed the threshold, to call, "Do I have a choice?"
He hesitated, a massive paw on the door and his head turned a little toward me, although he made no effort to meet my eye. "You always have a choice."
I neither read nor ate, but spent a few hours wandering the library. Books tended to return to the shelves after lying fallow a few minutes, if I'd taken them down to examine. After several iterations of that, I cleared my throat. "You don't have to do that, you know. I'll clean up after myself. I mean, if you want to, go ahead, but don't feel obliged."
I felt a hum in the air, as if an urgent discussion took place just out of earshot. Then the most recent book I'd taken down rose from the table I'd put it on, and settled itself firmly back into place on the shelves. I laughed. "All right. Thank you."
The air hummed again, and I went about my business a while longer before climbing into the dome through a staircase built neatly into the shelves. Gold-painted lead joined the windows, each of which were a tremendous arching triangle of glass that ran from floor to roof. They warped a little near the bottoms, showing their age, but the clarity at eye-height and above astonished me.
