Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley

  “Oh, I wish I knew what was happening! But I’ve only been gone a day. It was just a dream.”

  There was breakfast on a table in front of the balcony as she sat up, shaking herself free of the final shreds of her dream; the smell of food awoke her thoroughly. She had been too distressed yesterday to be hungry; today that distress on top of two days’ unsatisfied hunger made her feel a little ill. She slid out of bed, forgetting the stairs and landing with a bone-jarring thump on the floor. She put a hand to the bed-curtains to steady herself. “That is one way of driving sleep off,” she murmured, “but I think I prefer gentler means.”

  The tea on the breakfast tray was particularly fine; the third cup was as excellent as the first—enchanted leaves don’t stew. She held up the embroidered heart as she drank that third cup, turning it so that Lionheart’s hair caught the light, listening to the silence.

  She was grateful there was no rose in a silver vase on the table.

  She had been too tired the night before to notice that the nightgown she put on was not her own. She looked at it now and admired its fineness, and the roses embroidered round the bands of the collar and cuffs. It was precisely as long as and no longer than she could walk in without treading on the hem. There was a new bodice and skirt hanging over the back of the chair drawn up near the washstand, which was once again full of warm water, when she turned away from the breakfast table. She looked at them thoughtfully while she washed.

  “These are a bit too good for the sort of work I have in mind today,” she said to the air, “although I thank you very much. And I know that you are much too polite and—and kind to have thrown my shabby old things out, because I would be so unhappy without them, so I assume I will find them beautifully pressed and hanging up in the wardrobe—with all the other things, including my nightgown, that I see have disappeared, with my knapsack, from under the bed.”

  She said this in just the tone she would have used in speaking to a miserable dog, or any of her other rescued animals, who was refusing to eat. “Now, my sweet, I know you are a good dog, and good dogs always do what they are told when it is for their good, and I know the things you have been told recently have not been for your good, but you must understand that is all over now. And here is your supper, and you will of course eat it, you good dog.” And the dog would. Beauty went to the hanging cupboard and opened the doors, and there were all her few clothes, hanging up lugubriously in one corner, as if separated carefully from the other, much grander things in the rest of the wardrobe, and they looked self-conscious, if clothes can look self-conscious, and Beauty laughed.

  But when she took down her skirt and shirt, there was a sudden flurry of movement, and a wild wave of butterflies blew out at her, as if from the folds of her dull patched clothing, and she cried out in surprise and pleasure. For a moment the butterflies seemed to fill the room, even that great high ornamented room, with colours and textures all the more glorious for being alive, blues and greens and russets and golds, and then they swirled up like a small whirlwind and rushed out the open doors, over the balcony, and away.

  She ran to watch them go and saw them briefly twinkling against the dizzy whiteness of the palace and the dazzle of the glasshouse, and then they disappeared round a corner, and she saw them no more. She dressed slowly; but she was smiling, and when she touched the embroidered heart she wore, she touched it softly, without so piercing a sense of sorrow. And when she stepped into the chamber of the star, she deliberately did not count the number of doors and ignored the glare of the haughty lady in the portrait just beyond the one that opened.

  There was a pruning-knife and a small handsaw lying on top of the water-butt inside the door to the glasshouse. She spent most of the morning studying stems and bushes and cut very little. After a while she said, “Gloves. May I please have a good stout pair of gloves?” And turned round and discovered just such a pair of gloves lying at the foot of the water-butt, where she might have overlooked them when she first came in. “Ladder?” she said next, after another little while. “What I would like best is a ladder light enough that I can—that I can handle it on my own,” she added, for she was remembering that the last time she had had much to do with a ladder she had had Lionheart there to help her wrestle the great awkward object to where they needed it.

  There was a ladder behind the door. “Thank you,” she said, “but I don’t believe I could have missed that, you know,” she added to the listening silence; but she kept her eyes on the ladder.

  At noon she stopped, and rubbed her forehead, and went in search of lunch, and there was lunch on the table by her balcony. She still was not at all certain how she got from her rooms to the glasshouse or back again; the corridor never seemed quite the same corridor, and the dislocating turns seemed to come at different stages of the journey, and the sun came through windows where the walls should have been internal, and even at noon there were far too many shadows everywhere. She was also beginning to feel that the portrait of the handsome but haughty lady just beyond the door from the chamber of the star was not just one haughty lady but several, sisters perhaps, even cousins, in a family where the likeness is strongly marked; but that did not seem plausible either, for no such grand family would allow all its women to be painted wearing nearly identical dresses, with their arms all bent with no perceptible kindness round the same sort of browny-fawn lapdog.

  The table by the door into the courtyard had reverted to square, and the slope-shouldered clock now had a shepherd, more suitably attired for his occupation, keeping company with the gambolling lambs.

  But she did not care, so long as the magic she needed went on working and allowed her to go where she needed to go and do what she needed to do. And there were few shadows in the glasshouse, and the ones there were laid honestly, by stems and leaves and the house’s own glittering framework—and her ladder.

  In the afternoon she took her first experimental cuts, beginning with the climbers, and she was rejoiced to find, as she cut cautiously back and back, living wood in each. She nicked dormant buds in gnarled old branches with green hearts and said, “Grow, you. Grow.”

  She stopped for tea and a shoulder-easing stretch in the afternoon, and then she spent the last of the lengthening spring twilight marking out her seedbed, peeling her rose-hips, and punching rows of tiny finger-sized holes to bury the seeds themselves in. “Grow, you,” she whispered, and went indoors.

  CHAPTER

  7

  This evening a sapphire-coloured dress lay across her bed, and a sapphire necklace on the blue towels of the washstand; but though the soap, and the bath oil in the great tin bath (enamelled over with roses) drawn up before the fireplace, again smelt of roses, today it did not make her weep, for she had work to do and felt she knew why she was here.

  She did not examine this feeling too closely, for she was too grateful for the possession of it, and even less did she examine the conclusions it might lead her to. But for the moment the roses in the glasshouse demanded her attention and care, and that was enough, for a little while, and she had a little space to nurse a little precarious security in. She lay in the bath while twilight turned to dusk, and she felt the aches slide out of her muscles and dissipate in the warm water, till she found herself falling asleep, and then she flew out and whisked herself dry in such a commotion of haste that she half believed herself assisted with extra towels by invisible hands.

  The Beast was waiting for her in the long dim dining-hall, and he bowed to her, and said, “Good evening, Beauty,” and she replied, “Good evening, Beast.”

  The silence and the shadows pressed round them. He moved to her chair and bowed her into it, poured her two kinds of wine, and took a chair himself a little distance from her. She picked up a glass, touched it to her lips, set it down again untasted, served herself blindly from the nearest plate. She was hungry—she had worked hard since lunch—but the silence was heavy, and the Beast, again dressed all in black, his head bowed so she could not see his eye
s, was almost obscured by the gloom and seemed as ominous as all the rest of the silence and shadow. She put her fork to the food on her plate; the click of the tines was too loud in the stillness; she set it down again. She was hungry, and could not eat. She sat motionless for a moment, feeling as if the shadows might seep into her blood, turning her into a shadow like themselves.… Her hand crept to the little embroidered heart tucked into the front of her bodice.

  When the gentle plonk came from the darkness at the far end of the long table, Beauty started in her chair, feeling like a deer who knows she is tracked by a hunter. There was another plonk, and then a rustle-rustle-rustle, and Beauty’s heart slowed down to a normal pace, and she began to smile, because it was a friendly, a silly sort of sound. There was a third plonk and then a quick run of tiny thumps.… Whatever it was, it was coming towards this end of the table.

  The Beast stirred. “I believe Fourpaws is coming to introduce herself to her new guest,” he said.

  She still had to strain to hear his words when he spoke anything beyond common courtesies such as “good evening”; it was like learning to hear articulate speech in a rumble of thunder. “Fourpaws?”

  But at that moment a small grey and amber cat appeared from behind one of the wine carafes, tail high, writhing once round the carafe as if that were her entire purpose at this end of the table, so supple and sleek in the dimness that it seemed she would overstep her hind legs and take a second turn round the narrow vessel. But then with a boneless flicker like a scarf coming loose from a lady’s neck, she unwound herself again and became a slim short-bodied cat, with silky fur just enough longer than short to move gently of its own in response to her motion, and to give her a very wonderful tail.

  She stood so that Beauty could admire her for a moment, while she looked off into some chosen distance, and then she turned as if to walk straight past the edge of Beauty’s plate. But Beauty was far too charmed by her not to make an effort, and she reached across her plate and offered Fourpaws the tips of her fingers. The fingertips were deemed acceptable, and the base of ears and a small round skull between were presented to be scratched. Beauty scratched. Fourpaws purred. Fourpaws then sat down—at just such a distance that Beauty would be risking the lace on her bodice to the food on her plate if she wished to go on scratching ears, so she stopped.

  Fourpaws moved a little towards Beauty and looked at her for the first time, stared at her with vast yellowy-greeny eyes, misleadingly half shut. She curled her tail round her feet—careful not to trail the tip of it in Beauty’s plate—and continued to purr. The purr seemed to reflect off the sides of the bowls and dishes and goblets round her. Beauty picked up her knife and fork again and began to eat.

  “It is so very quiet here,” said Beauty between mouthfuls.

  The Beast roused himself. “When I was … first here, here as you see it, the silence troubled me very much.”

  But you are a sorcerer! You cannot have come here against your will—against your will—as I did.… Beauty was briefly afraid that she had spoken aloud, so painfully had the words pressed up in her throat; but the shadows were tranquil, and Fourpaws was still purring, and after only the merest pause, the Beast continued: “I had forgotten. It was such a long time ago. I have learnt … I have learnt to look at the silence, to listen to the dark. But I was very glad when Fourpaws came. I believe she must be a powerful sorcerer in her own country, which is why I dare not give her any grand name such as she deserves, for fear of disturbing the network of her powers. She comes most evenings and drops a few rolls and bits of cutlery into the darkness, like coins in a wishing well. I am grateful to her.”

  “As am I,” said Beauty fervently, for she was discovering just how hungry she was. She moved a candlestick nearer and peered into various tureens. She recognised little, although everything smelled superb, which was enough recommendation, but when she turned back to her plate, which had been empty but a moment before, it had been served again for her already. “The chef’s speciality?” she murmured, thinking of grand dinner parties in the city, but she picked her knife and fork up readily and began.

  Fourpaws had moved herself again slightly, so that her bright furry figure slightly overlapped the great shadowy bulk of the Beast from Beauty’s point of view. Beauty smiled at her a little wonderingly; Fourpaws’ eyes shut almost completely, with only a thin gleam of green left visible, and her purr deepened.

  As soon as Beauty laid her knife and fork down for the last time, she felt exhaustion drop over her, shove down her eyelids, force her head forward upon her breast. “I—I am sorry,” she said faintly. “I am much more tired, suddenly, than I had any idea … If you will excuse me …”

  The Beast was on his feet again at once, bowing her towards the door. “Beauty, will you marry me?”

  Beauty backed two steps away from the table. Her eyes fell upon Fourpaws, who was still sitting where she had been while Beauty ate; but her eyes were now opened wide, her head tipped up, and she was staring at Beauty with an unnervingly steady gaze. “Oh, no, Beast,” said Beauty to the cat. Fourpaws leapt off the table and disappeared under it.

  “Good night, Beauty,” said the Beast very softly.

  “Good night, Beast,” said Beauty.

  She went slowly up to her rooms, the whispering of her skirts the only sound, and stayed awake only long enough to take her elegant dress off carefully, lay the necklace of sapphires back on the washstand, and climb up the stairs to her bed. She almost didn’t make it to the top; she woke up to find herself with her head resting on the top stair and pulled herself the rest of the way into bed.

  She dreamt again of Rose Cottage.

  There was a new rug on the floor by the fireplace at the sitting-room end of the downstairs room, and Tea-cosy, looking unusually well brushed, lay on it in her traditional neat curl. There was a new tablecloth, with a bit of lace at its edge, on the old table—Beauty could still see its splinted feet beneath—and the place settings were as mismatched as ever, although none of the cups or plates was chipped.

  The old merchant was talking, and the other two were listening—three, counting Tea-cosy’s half-pricked ears—or rather, as Beauty’s dream shimmered into being, her father had just stopped talking. Beauty’s dream-eyes ranged over the familiar scene and picked out its unfamiliar elements, pausing finally on the person sitting in what had been Beauty’s chair. There was a little silence in which Beauty could almost hear the echo of her father’s last words—she had a half notion that he had been reciting poetry—but she did not know for sure.

  The strange young man spoke first. “That was very moving, sir. Perhaps—perhaps you would come to one of our meetings?”

  “Oh, do, Father!” said Jeweltongue. “I had no idea you were—you were—” She stopped, blushed, and laughed.

  Her father looked at her, smiling. “You had no idea the old man had any idea of metre and rhyme, you were going to say? I never used to. It seems to have come on me with moving here, to Longchance and Rose Cottage. I would be honoured to come to your meeting, Mr Whitehand, if you think I will not embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass us! Father! Wait till you hear Mrs Oldhouse, whom we name Mrs Words-Without-End, but we cannot bring ourselves to turn her out, not only because she has the biggest drawing-room and serves the best cakes—”

  “Thank you,” murmured the young man called White-hand.

  Jeweltongue reached towards him and just touched the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers, but Beauty saw the sweet look that passed between them as Jeweltongue continued. “But she is so genuinely kind, and surprisingly has quite a good ear for other people’s work! But we shall put you at the top of the list for your evening, because if she reads first, she may frighten you away.”

  “Not before I have eaten some of Mr Whitehand’s cakes, at least,” said her father, and Beauty then remembered where she had seen Mr Whitehand, for he was the baker in Longchance. It occurred to her then that for quite some time, as Jewelton
gue divided up the errands when the two of them went into Longchance together, it was never Beauty who went to the baker’s, though they almost always had lardy-cake or crumpets for tea on any day Jeweltongue had been to Longchance. But Beauty had never heard of poetry-reading evenings.

  “To be fair,” Jeweltongue went on, “she tells excellent stories—when she doesn’t try to put them into verse first. She learnt them from her father, who was a scholar, but his real love was collecting folk-tales.…”

  Beauty woke to a soft shushing sound. It was a gentle sound, and her first thought was that there was water running somewhere nearby, and she wondered if she had missed seeing some fountain, perhaps in the inner courtyard, perhaps invisible behind the glasshouse. But the rhythm of the shush was wrong for water, she eventually decided, still half in her dream and wondering about the young man and the new hearth-rug and wishing to hear her father’s poems—and telling herself it was all only a dream again, just as last night.

  She eventually decided that it could not be water. It sounded like something flying.

  She opened her eyes. After a moment of reorienting herself, she picked out the small shadow hurtling back and forth across her room which went with the shushing sound. It flew very near each wall and then wheeled away as if panic-stricken. It disappeared, while she watched, into the other rooms through the wide doorless archway, and the shushing died away; but then it came streaking back into the bedroom, straight towards the clear glass of the closed balcony doors.

  Beauty, still too sleep-dazed to make an attempt at scaring it onto a safer course, held her breath for the inevitable collision, but it swerved away at the last minute and raced towards her bed. It flew straight under the canopy towards the wall, did another of its last-minute, violent changes of direction before it struck, flew back towards the bed, and collapsed on the counterpane.