by C. E. Murphy
True sunrise wakened me a few hours later. I felt lighter than I had in weeks, buoyed by having spoken with Pearl and Father. I wasn't sure, if I reflected on it, that I believed rescue was at hand, though certainly Pearl would orchestrate it if she could. My exile simply seemed less onerous, with the prospect of talking to and even seeing my family every month. It wasn't the same as feeling their warm embraces, but neither was I so alone anymore.
Strangely enough, that fact made me feel more sociable, even if the only soul I had to socialize with was the Beast. I ate a breakfast of toast and jam, foregoing the bacon as an act of willpower that I immediately questioned. The servants appeared to question it as well, as a small plate of bacon waited for me on a windowsill outside my room when I left it. I said, "Well, if you insist," and took the plate with me as I went in search of the Beast.
He haunted none of the spots I might expect him to: the dining hall, its parlor, the library, even the garden, which still squelched with standing water and mud, were abandoned. I knew where his rooms were, but was reluctant to go to them, not because I thought I would be unwelcome. No, I was afraid if I went beyond the main hall, the palace would guide me away from my intended destination and pull me into one of its stories, and I was not quite prepared to face another intimate history lesson.
The Beast was Irindala's son, the prince of our realm. I knew his name. I shied away from that knowledge, hardly even letting myself remember it. I'd asked him his name once, and he had accepted Beast in its stead. It seemed a trespass to go beyond that, even if he had since confessed—in effect if not in actuality—to what his name was. To pull myself away from those thoughts, I let myself into the other round-faced hall, the ballroom whose basic form echoed the library's. I hardly expected to find the Beast there, but it was the only other place in the palace that I was willing to go that I hadn't yet looked in.
Sunlight poured in through the enormous windows and reflected off the golden parquet floors, brightening the room far more than the library with its carpets and shelves could ever manage. A crystal chandelier hung far above me, singing gently as the door's opening and closing pushed a faint breeze through the hall. I stood beneath it, smiling upward at the rainbows it cast, and tried to imagine this room full of music and flirtation and laughter.
I should not have: I knew it almost as soon as the fancy touched me. Memory snatched at me, memory that was not my own. The room filled with indistinct figures, beautifully dressed; music played as if from a distance, a ghostly remove that made its tune lighter and sweeter than any I'd ever heard. I was swept into the steps of a dance, moving with comfortable confidence as I smiled at my partners. I was hardly anyone, a courtier with a pretty dress and an excellent bosom, and no one could tell me any different. But I could charm, and I could flirt, and I wasn't surprised when, between dances, a slim and handsome young man crossed the floor toward me.
Other men might have to work their way through the crowd. For this youth, the crowd parted just a little, just enough, and did it without conscious effort or awareness: the prerogative of royalty. He stopped before me, offering a hand and unleashing a devastating smile that begot a breathless laugh from me as I took his hand. He drew me close, pulling me into the dance, and I could hardly do more than gaze up at him in half-stunned admiration. He favored his mother in beauty, though he had the broad nose I'd seen in paintings of the long-dead king, and he wore his tightly curling black hair cropped close to his scalp the way his father had. But he had Irindala's wide bright smile, played up against sepia skin darker than hers, and a jaw meant for sculpting. His hands were soft and, I saw, stained with ink: a scholar prince rather than a warrior. But then, he was young, and Irindala hadn't gone to war until she was in her twenties. He smiled again, and I smiled in return, lost in his dark eyes.
The music changed, gaining in tempo, until it became something I had never heard before. The prince's smile faded as his concentration increased: trying not to step on my skirt or my feet, trying not to crush me as he kept pace with the dance. Then even concentration faltered, becoming alarm, though it seemed only he shared that concern: my heart flew with excitement, my breath coming in laughs and joy filling me as we tangled more tightly together. He tried to break away and couldn't, though my grip hardly seemed strong enough to keep him. Faster and faster we whirled, until the part of me that didn't belong in that story spun loose and I began to fear, though the pretty girl I embodied still laughed and thrilled with delight. Nor could I loosen my hold on the prince: we spun together, increasingly out of control, our breath burning in our bodies and sickness rising from the relentless twirling, the impossible pace. My feet began to hurt and tears started to leak from my eyes, but the woman who had started the dance loved every moment of it.
I came to a sudden, shocking stop, and the memory ripped away in a whirlwind of fear.
"Amber." The Beast was there, his massive paw at my waist, holding me. Catching me. Stopping me. My heart lurched in surprise and gratitude and something else that left my stomach hollow. I put my hand on his chest to steady myself and found, to my surprise, that I was trembling. I put my forehead against his chest—well, his ribs; he stood much too tall for me to reach his chest, really—and he sank to his haunches, lowering himself until he merely loomed over me, rather than towered. He put his other hand against my hair, the barest touch of reassurance. For all of his size, I felt reassured, not trapped, and stood there, drawing tremulous breaths and noticing his musky scent, until my shaking stopped.
"What was that," I finally whispered, and felt his massive head shake above mine.
"Dancing," he said. "Dancing is rarely safe in faery tales. Are you all right?"
"No." I shook my head, fingers coiled in the heavy mane that fell down his chest. "No. That was…was it trying to kill me, Beast?"
"To subsume you, I think. It's still searching for a place you can belong. But if I hadn't come…" He shook his head again. "You were careening around the room. There's not much in it to hurt yourself on, but in time you would have managed anyway."
I stepped back a little, looking up at him. Up: even settled on his haunches he was taller than I, if not by much. "How did you know to find me?"
He lifted my amber necklace off my breast with the tip of one careful claw. "I told you it has a protective charm. I felt it struggling to keep you safe, and came to help."
I closed my hand over the necklace, and over his fingers as well. "You felt it?"
"There's very little that goes on in this palace that I'm unaware of, and the necklace is part of the palace. It's all bound together, me and it."
"And me?"
The Beast shifted his big head, not quite a shake. "Not so tightly."
"And what about the things you sent to my family? Are they irrevocably bound up in this too?"
"Everything inside the forest's boundaries is, to one degree or another. The enchantment's influence lessens, the farther from the palace it goes. But you need not worry." What passed for his smile pulled at his mouth. "The coin is real enough, and won't turn to lead in the city. Nor will the books turn to dust, or the jewels to ordinary stones. Are you all right now?"
I took a shuddering breath and straightened my shoulders. "I think so."
He leaned forward, onto all fours. "I'll leave you, then."
"Don't!" I put a hand over my mouth as if I could block the blurted word too late, but said, "Don't," again, more quietly. "I'd rather not be alone. I don't…I don't trust the palace. I don't want to get caught in another story right now."
The Beast ducked his vast head, an invitation, and, emboldened, I curled my fingers into the thick fur along his spine, and walked from the ballroom with him.
"Does the palace…listen?" It had taken me until evening to gather the courage to ask, after a quiet day spent in the Beast's company. We had read in the library—or I, at least, had read, while the Beast had stretched out in front of the fire and napped like the beast he was—and taken dinner together, in
so far as the Beast was willing to sit with me while I dined; he still wouldn't eat in my presence. Neither reading nor eating had been entirely able to take away the memory of the dance, or the beauty of the prince I'd danced with.
I could see absolutely nothing of him in the Beast, save perhaps a shared coloring. The Beast was dark-furred as the prince had been dark-skinned, but since every beast I saw in him, from lion to bear to boar, could be or habitually was darkly furred, that seemed more coincidence than reflection of who he had once been. I wanted to ask what his memory of that dance was, but it hadn't been memory, not all of it. It had been a vision, one I lacked the knowledge to fully understand, and I was afraid that if I pressed it, the palace would retaliate.
The Beast looked up at my question, great brows furrowing. Feeling foolish, I tried to explain myself. "I know the servants listen, obviously, but you said there are things you can't tell me. Does the palace listen? Is that how it knows what's being said?"
"Ah. No. The enchantment—" He gestured at his throat. "Seizes me, if I say too much. The palace doesn't have ears, but the magic has limits. If I come up against them, I pay the price."
I closed my lips on burgeoning questions. A shadow crossed the Beast's face. "I'm sorry I can't explain."
"It's all right. I'd rather you could stop me from dancing myself to death than explain, if it comes down to it. But if the palace doesn't listen—is it safe to tell you something, Beast?"
"I hope it is always safe for you to tell me whatever you wish, Amber."
"It has to do with Pearl's witchery," I said cautiously.
The Beast's ugly face lit up, his gaze sharpening on me. "Has she learned to use the pearl?"
"She's starting to. She spoke to me, Beast. Through my mirror, last night. They're all well." My heart soared, remembering the conversation. "Upset at my absence, but mostly well. I found myself defending you to them."
"Really. That—I would not have expected that. Thank you. Which mirror?"
"The big one on my vanity. Why," I asked lightly, "does the other mirror do something too?"
He gave me a look that sent a flush of excitement through me, then twitched his head in a denial as I took breath to ask more. I bit my tongue, gazing at him and trying to remember what he'd told me about Pearl and her pearl. That it had power and she could use it, no more. He had been circumspect, and now I understood he may have been pushing the boundaries of what he was allowed to say about the enchantments here. I thought the same thing was happening now, and swallowed down my questions. I would have to explore for myself, although stars knew I lacked Pearl's native gift.
Then again, so had Pearl, before she'd been jilted. Perhaps I only needed the offense of being throughly rejected by a lover to waken magic in me.
The idea made me laugh aloud, surprising me and the Beast both. "I'm sorry," I said merrily. "I was imagining myself a witch. It didn't work very well. One in the family is enough. More than enough. I can almost hear our city neighbors clucking about it."
"And what would they say about the youngest daughter absconding to an enchanted castle?"
"That I had always been peculiar and that you could never trust my smile anyway."
The Beast tilted his head, examining the smile that came with the pronouncement. "It's an inviting smile," he said after a moment. "Difficult to look away from."
"There you go," I said. "Witchery, no doubt."
"No doubt," the Beast replied solemnly.
I smiled at him again, then stood, stretching. "I suppose I should go to bed." In truth, I wanted to examine my little mirror and see if I could discover any magical properties, but he had ended that conversation, so admitting as much seemed gauche.
"I suppose you should." He watched me as I went to the door, and then, inevitably, said, "Amber, will you sleep with me?"
I looked back at him, one hand on the door frame, and thought of his protective hand on my waist in the ballroom earlier, and of the tremendous paw cradling my hair while I trembled. And I thought, because I could do nothing else, of his enormous size, nearly three feet taller than I, and of the beast-like proportions and angles that made up his body. "Beast," I said softly, "how would that even work?"
He murmured, "Indeed," and I left the room.
The mirror, to my disappointment, absolutely did not work with moonlight. I brought it to the balcony, filling its pane with blue-white light, and felt nothing. I polished it, rubbed its back, said silly chants, and accomplished nothing. Nor did I know what I expected to accomplish, save that the Beast implied something could be done with it. I gave up and went to bed, and in the morning, watching sunlight glow through the amber frame, chided myself for a silly goose and tried again.
It answered to my wish and to sunlight as it hadn't done with the moon. Well, of course: a pearl had all the properties of the moon, pale and luminous, with shadows in its depths. Amber was the very color of the sun, rich and gold and made of life itself, born from the scars of trees fighting to live on.
It was not, though, as powerful as Pearl's magic. The mirror's surface shimmered gold and cleared to show me little Jet studiously smearing handsful of mud all over his face, while beside him an adult's shadow dug at the earth. I cried out, but neither of them heard me. The adult stood, then stooped to collect Jet, and for a moment I saw Opal's laughing face, but couldn't hear her words or the joy in her voice as she spoke to my littlest brother. They looked happy, though, and I closed my eyes against the image, feeling both relieved to see them and saddened that the contact wasn't as intimate as Pearl's magic made it. I had felt like I was with them, then; watching through my mirror made me feel that much more removed. I would rather be fully here, with the Beast, than pretending at a half-life of my family, whom I could only see and not hear or touch.
The image swam, then focused again, this time to show me the Beast. He, with the innocence of one who had no idea he was being watched, sat on his haunches and lifted his back leg to scratch at his mane. I yelped, embarrassed to have caught him in such an undignified pose, and pressed the mirror's surface against my chest so I wouldn't see any more. A moment later I peeked again, but I saw only my own amused face reflected back at me. "Very well," I said, both to my reflection and myself, "this mirror is not for me, unless I wish to go into the Queen's service as a spy, and learn to read lips."
The mirror blurred again. I put it down swiftly, its face against the vanity, rather than see what my commentary might awaken in its surface. I didn't want to become the Queen's spy, or risk any method of contacting her; explaining that I was the latest captive at her son's enchanted palace was beyond me, and I had an itching conviction that she would somehow be able to reach through the mirror's limitations and force those confessions from me.
"Which is madness," I breathed, but then again, I lived in an enchanted castle, and what seemed like madness on the surface might be perfectly reasonable when that surface was scratched.
"Perfumes," I said to myself, and resolutely stood to check my mixtures and their scents, testing them for strength and potency. Some of them wanted rose water, and what little I had had left after the city was all but gone. I gathered a cloak and, at the insistent murmuring of the invisible servants, a scone, and went out to the gardens.
The roses, which had never stopped blooming, had grown ferocious in the oncoming spring sunshine, and now covered the garden walls in relentless color. Loose petals drifted to the ground on every breath of wind, until a carpet of color greeted my feet. I began gathering the petals in my skirt as they fell, determined to use them in rose water: I would have my perfume yet, even if the garden didn't like me picking its roses.
Behind me, and without warning, the Beast said, "I believe you're safe enough picking them now that you're a guest here."
I shrieked and spasmed, narrowly keeping my grip—and thus my collected petals—in my skirt. "Could you please make some noise!"
"Evidently not. Are you all right?"
"Fine, save for a
heart seizure!" I glowered at the Beast, who failed to look at all threatened. Piqued, I pulled a rose from one of the bushes, and aside from a piercing pain where I hadn't been careful enough of the thorns, suffered no ill effects. "Why didn't you tell me I could pick them?"
"I didn't know you wanted to."
"How maddeningly reasonable." I turned my palm up, examining a startling well of blood from the thorns. "I don't think the roses like me. Does this look strange to you?" The Beast hesitated, but I thrust my hand at him, displaying the blood rising from it. "It's got a golden sheen," I insisted. "It happens every time one of those thorns gets me."
He sat on his haunches like an enormous dog and lifted one paw to not quite cup my hand. I still felt his body heat, tremendous compared to my own, and resisted the impulse to settle my hand in his and feel if the pads of his palm were as rough as they looked. "Perhaps," he said after a careful look. "My eyesight isn't what it might be, but you may be right."
I'd quite forgotten about my injury by then, so intently was I studying him from so close. He was nearly as tall as I, sitting as he was, and I could see the short, velvet-like fur on his nose. It stretched into longer tufts at the bridge, thickening to a visible depth over the brow ridges before lengthening into the coarse mane that only parted around the twisting horns that swept back from his forehead. "Where are your ears?"
The Beast drew his head back, focusing on me with apparent effort. "My ears?"
"I assume you have them. But they're not…where they belong. Bears, boars, lions, goats, antelope…everything you remind me of has ears up here." I gestured vaguely along the outer lines of his forehead and skull, where animals tended to keep their ears. "Where are they?"
Moving slowly, and still watching me as though I had perhaps lost my mind, the Beast sat all the way back on his haunches and pawed through his mane until he'd exposed an ear far more human than animal, though it swept into a pointier tip than any human had ever sported. It struck me as delicate and unsuitable for his enormous rough form. "Well. You have lovely ears."
