Beauty (v1.2)

by Robin McKinley

“I don’t know exactly,” said the Beast, looking at Greatheart. “I have some idea of it.”

  I curled my feet up beside me on the wall. The Beast was still standing, hands in pockets, half turned away from me. “Well?” I said. “What’s your idea?”

  “I’m afraid you won’t like it, you see,” said the Beast apologetically. He sat down at last, but kept his eyes on the horse.

  “Well?” I said again.

  The Beast sighed. “How shall I explain? You look at this world—my world, here, as you looked at your old world, your family’s world. This is to be expected; it was the only world, and the only way of seeing, that you knew. Weil; it’s different here. Some things go by different rules. Some of them are easy—for example, there is always fruit on the trees in the garden, the flowers never fade, you are waited on by invisible servants.” With a little tremor of laughter in his voice he added: “And many of the books in the library don’t exist. But there are many things here that your old habits and skills have left you unprepared for.” He paused, “I wondered, before you came, how you’d react—if you came. Well, I can’t blame you; you were tricked into coming here. You have no reason to trust me.”

  I started to say something, in spite of not wanting to interrupt him for fear that he would not continue; but he shook his head at me and said, “Wait. No, I know, you’ve gotten used to the way I look, as much as anyone can, and my company amuses you, and you’re grateful that your imprisonment here isn’t as direful as you were anticipating—being served for dinner with an apple in your mouth, or a windowless dungeon far underground, or whatever.” I blushed and looked down at my hands. “I’ve never liked Faerie Queen,” he added irrelevantly. “It gives so many things a bad name.

  “But I don’t blame you,” he continued. “As I said, you have no reason to trust me, and excellent reason not to. And in not trusting me, you trust nothing here that you cannot perceive on your old terms. You refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything that is too unusual. You don’t see it, you don’t hear it—for you it doesn’t exist.” He frowned thoughtfully. “From what you’ve told me, a little strangeness leaked through to you, your first night here, when you looked out your window. It frightened you—I quite understand this; it used to frighten me too—and you’ve avoided seeing anything else since.”

  “I—I haven’t meant to,” I said, distressed at this picture of myself.

  “Not consciously, perhaps; but you have resisted me with all your strength—as any sane person would, when confronted with a creature like me.” He paused again. “You know, the first drop of hope I tasted was that day I first showed you the library—when you were confronted with the works of Browning, and of Kipling, and you saw them. You might not have; you might have seen only Aeschylus and Caesar and Spenser, and authors you could have known in your old world.” He went on as if talking to himself: “Later I realized that this was only a reflection of your love and trust for books; it had nothing to do with me, or with my castle and its other wonders. And the birds came to you; that seemed a hopeful sign. But they came because of the strength of your longing for your old home. But perhaps it was a beginning nonetheless.

  He was silent for so long that I thought he would say no more, and I began to consider what sort of question to put to him next. But there was a strange quality to my sight that distracted me—a new depth or roundness, which seemed to vary depending on what I was looking at. Greatheart looked as he always had, large and dapple-grey and patient and lovable. But the grass he waded through caught the sunlight strangely, and seemed to move softly in response to something other than wind. When I looked up, the forest’s black edge shivered and ran like ink on wet paper. It reminded me of the spidery quaking shadows I had seen from my window on my first night in the castle; but there was no dread to what I was, or wasn’t, seeing now. This is silly, I thought; I don’t suppose you really see the sort of thing he’s talking about. What’s wrong with my eyes? I found myself blinking and frowning if I looked steadily at the Beast, too; it wasn’t that he looked any less huge or less dark or less hairy, but there was some difference. And how do I know whether I should see the sort of thing he’s talking about or not? There was something wrong, that first night. There’s something wrong now.

  “Last night,” he began again at last, “when you fainted, you were helpless, for good or ill, I carried you to a couch in the next room; I was going to call your servants, and leave you alone. But when I tried to set you down, you murmured in your sleep, and held on to my coat with both hands.” He stood up, took a few paces away from me, a few paces back. “For a few minutes you were content—even happy—that I held you in my arms. Then you remembered, and ran away in panic. But it’s those few minutes of sympathy, I think, that caused whatever change you’re noticing now.”

  “Am I always going to know when you’re nearby now?” I said, a little wistfully.

  “I don’t know. I should think it likely. I always know where you are, near or far. Is that all it is—that you were aware of me when you couldn’t see me?”

  I shook my head, “No. My vision is funny. My colour sense is confused somehow. And you look funny.”

  “Mmm,” he said. “I shouldn’t worry about It if I were you. As I told you at our first meeting, you have nothing to fear. Would you like to go back now?”

  I nodded assent and we turned and walked slowly back towards the castle. Greatheart tore up a few last hasty mouthfuls and followed. I had a great deal to ponder, and did not speak; nor did the Beast say anything.

  The rest of the day passed as my days usually did. I did not again mention my new strange sense of things, and by the end of the afternoon the new crystalline quality to the air, the way the flower petals shaded off into some colour I couldn’t quite put a name to, and the way I was hearing things that weren’t strictly sounds had, by and large, ceased to disturb me. That evening’s sunset was the most magnificent that I had ever seen; I was stunned and enthralled by its heedless beauty and remained staring at the sky till the last shreds of dim pink had blown away, and the first stars were lit and hung in their appointed places. I turned away at last. “I’m sorry,” I said to the Beast, who stood a little behind me. “I’ve never seen such a sunset. It—it took my breath away.”

  “I understand,” he replied.

  I went upstairs to dress for dinner, still bemused by what I had just observed, and found an airy, gauzy bit of lace and silver ribbons draped across the bed and gleaming in its own pale light. A corner of the skirt lifted briefly as I entered, as though a hand had begun to raise it and then changed its mind.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said in disgust, recalled from my visionary musings with a bump. “We’ve been through all this dozens of times before. I won’t wear anything like this. Take it away.” The dress was lifted by the shoulders till it hung like a small star in my chamber, and for all my certainty that I would not wear it, I did look at it a little longingly. It was very beautiful; more so, it seemed to me, than any of the other wonderful clothes my high-fashion-minded breeze had tried to put on me.

  “Well?” I said sharply. “What are you waiting for?”

  “This is going to be difficult,” said Lydia’s voice. If I hadn’t been accustomed, until that day, to not hearing them, their present silence would have seemed ominous to me. Even the satin petticoats were subdued. I was suddenly uneasy, wondering what they had planned for me. The dress was wafted over to lie negligently across an open wardrobe door, and I was assisted out of my riding clothes. I was still shaking my hair loose from its net when there was a moment of confusion, like being caught in a cloud or a cobweb, and I emerged from it pushing my wild hair off my face and found that they had disobediently wrapped me in the shimmering bit of nothing I had ordered back into the closet.

  “What are you doing?” I said, surprised and angry. “I won’t wear this. Take it off.” My hands searched for laces to untie, or buttons, but I could find nothing; it fitted me as if it had been sew
n on—perhaps it had, “No, no,” I said. “What is this? I said no.” Shoes appeared on my feet; the golden heels were set with diamond chips, and bracelets of opals and pearls began to grow up my arms. “Stop it,” I said, really angry now. My hair twisted up, and I reached up and pulled a diamond pin out of it till it rumbled down around my shoulders and back; the pin I threw on the floor. My hair cascading down around me startled me as I realized that it was brushing bare skin. “Good heavens,” I said, shocked, looking down; there was hardly enough bodice to deserve the name. Sapphires and rubies appeared on my fingers. I pulled them off and sent them to join the diamond hair-pin. “You shan’t get away with this,” I said between my teeth, and kicked off the shoes. I hesitated to rip the dress off; I didn’t like to damage it, angry as I was, and again I tried to find a way out of it. “This is a dress for a princess,” I said to the listening air. “Why must you be so silly?”

  “Well, you are a princess,” said Lydia, and she sounded as if she were panting a little. Bessie said: “I suppose we must start somewhere, but this is very discouraging.”

  “Why is she so stubborn?” asked Lydia, plaintively. “It’s a beautiful dress.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Bessie, and I felt a quick surge of their determination, and this angered me even more.

  “It is a beautiful dress,” I said wildly, as my hair wound up again and the pin flew back to its place, and the shoes, and the rings to theirs; “And that’s why I won’t wear it; if you put a peacock’s tail on a sparrow, he’s still a brown little, wretched little, drab little sparrow,” and as a net of moonbeams settled around my shoulders and a glittering pendant curled lovingly around my neck, I sat down in the middle of the floor and burst into tears. “All right, I don’t seem to be able to stop you,” I said between sobs, “but I will not leave the room.” I wept myself to silence and then sat, still on the floor, with my abundant skirts anyway around and under me, staring into the fire. I took the pendant off, not in any hope that it would stay off, but just to see what it was: It was a golden griffin, wings spread and big ruby eyes shining, about twice the size of the ring I wore every day and kept beside my bed at night. For some reason it made my tears flow again. My face must have been a mess, but the tears left no stain where they dropped onto the princess’s dress. I meekly refastened the griffin around my neck, and it settled comfortably into the hollow of my throat.

  I knew he was there, standing uncertainly before my door, several minutes before he said, tentatively: “Beauty? Is something wrong?” I was usually changed and downstairs again in less than half the time I had spent sitting on the floor tonight.

  “They’re forcing me to wear a dress I don’t like,” I said sulkily, from the floor. “I mean, it won’t come off.”

  “Forcing you? Why?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea!” I shouted, and pulled off a few bracelets and hurled them at the fireplace. They half-turned and threw themselves back at me, and over my wrists.

  “That’s very odd,” he said through the door. After a pause, he added, “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t like it,” I said sullenly.

  “Er—may I see?”

  “Of course not!” I shouted again. “If I didn’t mind your seeing it, why am I staying in my room? Who else is there to see me?”

  “You care how I see you?” he said; his voice was muffled by the door, and I could be sure of only the astonishment.

  “Well, I won’t wear it,” I said, avoiding the question.

  There was a pause and then a roar that made me cower down where I sat and clap my hands over my ears; but I realized in a moment that it wasn’t the sort of roar I could protect myself from that way. I couldn’t catch the words. Whatever it was, I found myself hauled to my feet and tumbled in several directions at once; and when I emerged again, breathless, the fairy dress was gone. So, my sixth sense told me, were Lydia and Bessie. I was wearing a dress of an indeterminate colour somewhere between beige and grey; the only decoration was a white yoke, and plain white cuffs on the long straight sleeves. The high round collar reached nearly to my chin. I laughed, and went over to open the door. As I moved, I felt something around my neck; I put my hand up. It was the griffin.

  I opened the door, and the Beast looked at me gravely. “I fear that they are angry with you,” he said.

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” I said cheerfully. “What did you say to them? Whatever it was, it nearly deafened me. If deafened is the word.”

  “Did you hear that? I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “It produced the desired result,”

  “Shall we go down then?” he said. He turned, and waved me towards the staircase.

  I looked at him a moment. “Aren’t you going to offer me your arm?” I said.

  There was a silence, while we stared at one another, as if every candle, every tile in the mosaic floor and coloured thread in the tapestries, had caught its breath and was holding it as it watched. The Beast walked the few paces back to me, turned, and offered me his arm. I laid my hand on it, and we walked downstairs.

  4

  Summer turned gradually, peacefully, to autumn. I had been in the Beast’s castle for over six months. I was no nearer the answer to the riddle of the magic that Lydia and Bessie hinted was laid on the Beast and his estate; nor did my sixth sense develop any further. Or at least—I didn’t think so. I found I could read more of the books in the library with comprehension; if I stopped and tried deliberately to envision, say, a motorcar, I managed only a headache, and my reading was spoiled. But if once I slipped into an author’s world, nothing in it disturbed me, and I could slip out of it again when I closed the book. But perhaps there was nothing really mysterious in that. I had accepted Cassandra and Medea, and Paris’s choice among three goddesses as the reason for the Trojan War, and other improbables long before I read about steam-engines and telephones; I had accepted my life in this castle, for example. The principle was probably the same.

  I continued to listen to Lydia and Bessie’s conversations without acknowledging that I could hear them, but I learned nothing that was useful. I had trouble, sometimes, when I inadvertently made comments I shouldn’t have been able to make. But Lydia was straightforward and trusting and never—I think—suspected. Bessie may have; she was the quieter of the two, and I didn’t know her as well; and she said nothing that would indicate one way or another. Perhaps the Beast had warned them. I didn’t see the princess’s dress again, nor the convent schoolgirl’s dress, and neither of them referred to that incident; although, once or twice, Lydia said with meaning during minor squabbles: “Now we know how stubborn she can be.” Whereupon I won.

  I occasionally heard other things talking to one another, especially the plates and trays and glasses on the grand dinner table; but they spoke in a language that I had never learned. I understood a phrase, sometimes, by not listening: It was usually something like “Here you, move over,” or “I won’t have this, it’s my turn,” that would spill into my mind. But mostly I heard nothing more than echoes behind the clink of silver and crystal. This, with Lydia and Bessie, served to make me feel far less lonely; and the castle never again seemed as immense and solitary as it once had after I’d heard, once or twice.

  “Hsst—wake up, you,” and seen a startled candle burst into flame.

  And I always knew where the Beast was. If he was at a good distance, I could ignore him. If he was nearby, it was like listening to the soughing of wind through tall trees—it was there, and while I could choose not to pay attention to it, I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. Usually this latter situation prevailed. “Beast,” I said, exasperated, about a week after the night I’d fainted, “do you always lurk like this?”

  “I like to watch you,” he said. “Does it disturb you?”

  “Oh—well,” I said, off balance. “I suppose not.” When I looked out over the forest from my bedroom window there was a
rosy flush of autumn leaves among the evergreens, and I began to wear a cloak again on the afternoon rides. I thought of my family as little as possible, putting them out of my head, and resisting any attempts to return to them. Although I had almost contrived to forget what the Beast had said that night many weeks ago, just before I fainted, it was nonetheless the reason that I had since then chosen never to think about the future. When I did remember my family—and I dreamed of them very often, nor were they ever far from my conscious mind, even if I would not entertain them there—I thought of them as I had left them. I avoided thinking about how much the babies must have grown, and whether Ger and Father had had time to build the extra room on the house as they had planned. I never allowed myself to think about seeing them again. And much deeper than all of this in my mind, where I probably couldn’t have reached it even if I had wanted to, was the thought that I couldn’t leave my Beast now even if the opportunity were offered. I still wanted to visit my family, and I missed them desperately; but not if leaving this world to return to theirs meant that I could not come back here. But I was only dimly aware of the smallest part of this. Consciously I understood only that to save myself needless pain I must not think about my life before I had come to live in the castle.

  And every night before I left him in the dining hall the Beast asked, “Beauty, will you marry me?” And every night I closed my eyes, my heart, and my mind, and replied, “No, Beast.”

  This magic land was not entirely free of the lashing storms of autumn. In October there was a day heavy and grey with foreboding, and that night I had difficulty sleeping, as the clouds crept lower and lower, and hung themselves balefully around the castle’s high towers. It was past midnight when the rain finally broke through; but even then it was nearly dawn when I fell uneasily asleep, and dreamed. I dreamed of my family, as I often did, but never before had I dreamed of them with such vividness.