Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley

  “Yes … more than once. They run away, of course, when they see me. If they do not see me, they leave for loneliness—or fear of shadows.”

  Very low, Beauty said: “But none has ever stolen from you before.”

  The Beast said, “Your father is not a thief. It was my heart he took, and he could not have known that. Others have stolen.” The Beast’s voice became indifferent. “They had no joy of what they took, and no one has ever found this place twice.”

  The silence was all round her again, pressing through even the Beast’s words while he was still speaking; with a tiny gasp Beauty made a sudden gesture and knocked the butt of her knife against a copper bowl, which rang like a gong. “Oh! I’m sorry!” she said, but as the echoes died away, there was Fourpaws, winding round the table leg nearest Beauty’s chair, twisting the long tail of the heavy dark table runner till the goblet and small saucer near the corner danced in their places. Beauty reached out to steady the goblet just as Fourpaws stopped and looked at her reproachfully.

  “Pardon me,” said Beauty. “I should have known you never knock anything over unless you mean to do it.”

  Fourpaws forgave her, and purred, and jumped into her lap, and Beauty began to eat again, but only with one hand, since the other was necessarily occupied with stroking Fourpaws. It is rather awkward, eating with one hand. The Beast had not moved, but he was smiling.

  “Not all other beasts fear you,” said Beauty, stroking and stroking as Fourpaws purred, and lashed her tail, and purred.

  “A cat is a law unto itself,” said the Beast gravely, “even one cat from another cat. And Fourpaws, like any cat, is herself. That is the only explanation I have; and while she stays here, as she does, it is enough.”

  “It is enough,” agreed Beauty, and asked another question, as she might ask a friend: “What do you do on the roof at night?”

  “Look at the stars, when it is clear enough. I told you that this place and I have grown to each other’s shape over the years. I will send no weather away if I know it is coming, but it is often clear at night here.”

  Beauty thought of the bit of sky she could see from her balcony, and how blocked it was by the hugeness of the palace and even the peak of her beloved glasshouse; and she remembered the trees around Rose Cottage and the great bowl of sky she could see from there; and she thought of what the view must be from the roof of the palace, with no trees, no houses, no city lights.… “Oh, might I ever come up? Is there some bit of roof where I would not be disturbing you?”

  “I answered a question much like that in the orchard earlier today. I would be glad of your company.”

  “How shall I know where to find you?”

  “Any late night that you wake, look out of your window, and if the sky is clear, come and find me. Any stair up will take you eventually onto the roof.” He paused and looked troubled. “You—you will not be frightened? I know you do not like the dark.”

  Beauty looked at him in surprise, but she realised at once that the surprise must be directed at herself, for while she had loved the soft darkness in the garden at Rose Cottage, she did not like the dark in the Beast’s palace, which was silent but not quiet, did not like the shadows thrown by things which changed into other things when she was not looking at them, did not like the shadows containing other things she could not see.… “Perhaps I shall be frightened,” she said slowly, “but I shall still come and look for you.”

  “Will you marry me?” said the Beast.

  “No, Beast,” said Beauty, and the hand stroking Fourpaws stopped and curled its fingers, and Fourpaws leapt from her lap and disappeared into the darkness.

  She slept too deeply that night for wakening. She saw her sisters moving round the ground floor of Rose Cottage. Their father was again frowning over bits of paper by the hearth, but his scowl was that of firm concentration, and he bit the end of his pen briskly. She looked into his well-loved face and saw a clarity and serenity there that had never been there before. Even her earliest memories of him, when her mother was still alive, made him out to have been … not merely preoccupied with business or by his adoration of his wife, but somehow a little haggard, a little overstretched by life or work, by responsibility or longing. Beauty smiled in her sleep to see him now, even as she wished to put out her hand and smooth the lines from his face and the sorrow from his eyes that had been there only since she had come to the Beast’s palace, only since she had begun having these dreams about the home she had left. If this is only a dream—she thought, dreaming—why can I not do this? Why can I not tell my dream-father and my dream-sisters that I am well and whole? Just as I used to touch the wallpaper of that long windowless corridor and feel the roughness of the paper and the slickness of the paint and the edges where the lengths joined.

  Just as I petted a cat called Molly while Lionheart and her young man looked on.

  But she could not.

  Jeweltongue was humming to herself as she settled down across from her father and picked up a froth of pink ribbons and net. “I will be glad when Dora outgrows the frou-frou stage. Mrs Trueword never grudges paying my labour, but all this nonsense is simply boring.”

  Lionheart, at the kitchen table, beating something in a bowl, said, “She may not outgrow it, you know. She may decide she is expressing a unique and exquisite taste. Try considering yourself lucky. Out of six women in one family to sew for, you have only one addicted to frills.”

  “Hmm,” said Jeweltongue, biting off thread and watching her sister through her eyelashes.

  Lionheart lost her grip on her bowl with the violence of her mixing, hit herself in the stomach with her spoon gone out of control, and grunted, “Rats’-nests!” as batter flew across the room.

  “You’ve been out of sorts for weeks now,” said Jeweltongue. “You come home every seventh day and bang round the house like a djinn in a bottle, and go off again next morning looking like the herald of the end of the world. I say this with the understanding that you may now upend the remains of your bowl over my head.”

  Lionheart’s face relaxed, and she gave a faint and reluctant laugh. “I’m sorry. I know I am—I am not at my best, which is to say that I know you must know that I am not at my best, and I—I—oh, I can’t help it! It’s just the way it is. It won’t go on forever. I can’t …” But whatever else she thought of saying remained unsaid.

  Jeweltongue laid the net and the ribbons down and came over to help Lionheart mop up. “What’s wrong, dearest? Surely it would be a little easier for you if you told us.”

  Lionheart, on her knees, leant her forehead against the edge of the table and closed her eyes. “No.”

  “Well, will you tell me anyway if I ask you?”

  Lionheart opened her eyes and began to smile. “You are giving me warning you are about to begin plaguing me to death about it, are you?”

  “Yes,” said Jeweltongue at once. “I was willing to let it alone, you know, and wait for you to solve it yourself, but it’s been weeks. It’s been—it’s been since the week after you went to the horse fair with Mr Horsewise. Your great triumph, I thought. Has Mr Horsewise decided his protégé is just a little too young to be so clever?”

  “Your estimation of my abilities is touching but misplaced,” said Lionheart. “Mr Horsewise knows more than I’ll ever learn. It isn’t Mr Horsewise.”

  “Then you had better straighten out whatever it is, or it will be Mr Horsewise,” said Jeweltongue, “because I can’t believe you aren’t behaving like this at work too. I know you too well.”

  Lionheart rocked back on her heels and stared wide-eyed at Jeweltongue, and then her face began to twist and crumple, and, savagely as she bit her lips, the tears would come. Jeweltongue put her arms round her, and Lionheart pressed her face into her sister’s breast and roared, for Lionheart could never weep quietly.

  Their father rose from his place by the sitting-room hearth, and came to the sink, and began to pump water for the teakettle, stooping to pat Lionheart’s back
as he passed her. He filled a bowl and left it on the table near Jeweltongue, with a towel, and when Lionheart had subsided to a snuffle, Jeweltongue tenderly wiped her sister’s face till Lionheart snatched the towel away from her with a return of her usual spirit and muttered, “I’m not a baby, even if I’m behaving like one,” and scrubbed at her face till the skin turned a bright blotchy red. “Matches your eyes nicely, dear,” said Jeweltongue.

  Tea-cosy, judging that emotions were cooling to a safe level, came out from behind the old merchant’s armchair, to which haven she had withdrawn after being hit in the eye with some flying batter. She sidled up to Lionheart, put her nose in Lionheart’s lap, and when she was not rebuffed, the rest of her followed.

  The old merchant made tea and passed cups down to the two sisters still sitting on the floor, murmuring, “Old bones, you must forgive me,” and drew up a chair for himself. When he sat down, Lionheart leant back against his legs and sighed, and he stroked the damp hair away from her forehead.

  “It’s—it’s Aubrey,” Lionheart said at last. “He’s—he’s guessed.”

  “He won’t have you turned away!” said Jeweltongue, shocked. “I would not have thought him susceptible to doltish views of propriety. And he has been a good friend to you, has he not?”

  “It’s worse than that,” said Lionheart. “I—I’m in love with him. And I think—I’m pretty sure—he’s in love with me.”

  “But that’s not—”

  “Isn’t it?” said Lionheart swiftly. “Has Master Jack forgiven you for preferring a short, stoop-shouldered flour-monger with hands like boiled puddings to his tall, elegant, noble self, whose white hands have never seen a day’s work? D’you want to think about what happens next? This is going to be one too many for Master Jack’s vanity, from the occupants of that tatty little witch’s cottage beyond the trees at the edge of Farmer Goldfield’s lands, where no respectable sort of folk ought to be willing to live in the first place. You must have heard some of the stories that are being told about why Beauty … where Beauty … why she isn’t here just now. Stories with magic in them, here in Longchance, where everyone knows magic never comes.” Her voice faltered, and then she went on. “And surely you’ve heard that there’s a curse on this place if three sisters live in it? The lads like to tease me about it, say I’m pretty enough to be a girl if I wore a dress and learnt to walk right, but they’ve never told me what exactly the curse is, and I don’t like to ask outright, do I?

  “Our friends love us, so at present the stories are only stories, even the curse—whatever it is. But … the Truewords do what their eldest son tells them to, you know; they think he’s wonderful; they think he’s just too clever and wise and good to bother himself with doing anything. And Longchance does what the Truewords tell them.”

  Beauty felt herself driven out of her own dream, pushed away, as if by a storm wind, and battered and beaten by some force she could not resist—but the sensation was much more sluggish than that. She felt weighed down, dragged, muffled and mauled. She no longer dreamt, but she could not wake, and she tossed in her bed as if her bedclothes imprisoned her.

  Finally she threw herself successfully into wakefulness, and there was sunlight on the carpet, and the teapot steaming through the spout slit in the tea-cosy. All her pillows had fallen to the floor, and the bedclothes, and her own hair, were wound in a great snarl round her. It took her a minute or two to creep free, for she moved languidly, and she had trouble understanding what she was looking at and which way to pull to loosen the snare. She had to think about it to so much as brush her hair out of her mouth in the right direction. Even awake as she was now it was difficult not to feel trapped and to struggle blindly.

  She felt her way down the bed stairs and poured herself a cup of tea with an unsteady hand and then sat, staring at the cup while the tea grew cold, holding the embroidered heart in both her hands, and saying to herself, It was only a dream. It was only a dream. Please. It was only a dream.

  Finally she drank the cold tea, and poured herself another cup, and drank it hot, and the clouds in her mind and heart began to thin and shred and then to blow away. “I must—I must return soon,” she muttered. “I must know what is happening. And—if anything is happening, I must be there to share it with them.” She kept remembering Lionheart saying, The stories that are being told about why Beauty isn’t here.

  And the curse. Surely you’ve heard that there’s a curse on this place if three sisters live in it? The curse was catching up with them at last. They’ve never told me what exactly the curse is.…

  She knew little of the Longchance baker and less of either of Squire Trueword’s sons, but she knew about gossip, about how people talk and how stories grow. She remembered Mrs Greendown saying, I like to talk. And she remembered Mrs Greendown telling her about the country greenwitch to whom it mattered so much that Rose Cottage go to a particular family, who lived many miles away in a city that perhaps no one living in Longchance had ever seen, that she went to a lawyer and had papers drawn up to do it. Papers drawn up that left it specifically to the three sisters of that family. And she remembered Mrs Greendown saying, I ain’t prying … much; but it’s … interestin’, isn’t it? Like you said to begin, you can’t help being interested.

  And she remembered saying to Mrs Greendown, I’d much rather know, and Mrs Greendown replying, You may not, dear, but I’m thinking maybe you’d better.…

  “I must go home,” she said. “The roses must bloom soon, for I must go home.” She stood up from the breakfast table and walked out to the balcony, nursing her teacup in one hand and the embroidered heart in the other, and stood staring at the glasshouse, effervescing in the light of the early sun; slowly her face eased into a small smile. “Well,” she said in her ordinary voice, “what is it to be today then? Nothing too—too demanding. I’m probably about in a mood for spiders.”

  As she said spiders, there was a twinkle in the corner of her eye, as if the glasshouse had found a mirror to repeat itself in, and she turned to look. The spiderweb hung the entire length of the balcony door frame, and it caught the sunlight just as the glasshouse did, and lit up in tiny fierce lines of fire and crystal.

  “Oh,” said Beauty, letting out a long breath. “Oh.” It was so beautiful she almost touched it, remembering just in time; but even the tiny air current stirred by her fingers made the nearest gossamer thread quiver and wink, and she saw the spider come out of its corner of the door frame and pluck a connecting thread to see if there was anything worth investigating.

  “Well, you are a handsome spider,” said Beauty bravely, “as spiders go, and I salute you for a most radiant and well-composed web, and I daresay I can bear you as a roommate—so long as you stay out here. I do not want any of your daughters spinning their homes in my bed-curtains, I hope you understand.”

  The spider dropped the thread and retreated. A narrow gleam of sunlight, barely thicker than gossamer itself, found an unexpected entry into the spider’s corner and touched its back. The spider had curled itself into a little round blob with no legs showing (it immediately became smaller when, with its legs tucked up, it was no longer so mercilessly identifiable as a spider), and under the sunlight’s caress it glittered bright as polished jet, and there was some faint gold and russet pattern upon it, which would not have disgraced the bodice of a lady or the shield of a knight.

  Beauty had leant closer to look and gave a kind of hiccup, which should have been a laugh, except that she did not want to disturb the spider again with her breath. “I draw the line at discovering spiders to be beautiful too,” she said, “but I, er, take your point.”

  It was not until then that she remembered she had wanted to wake during the night and go onto the roof, and her life in the Beast’s palace crept back to her and wrapped itself round her, and she did not notice it or how comfortably it fitted her.

  On this, her fourth day, she found the first leafbuds on her cuttings and the first green tips aboveground in her seed
bed.

  She had a last load of clippings and rubbish to haul to the bonfire glen; she raked and swept till the ground between the bushes was satisfyingly brown and bare, and she went round a last time, looking at everything with her pruning-knife in her hand, and mostly felt her decisions had been good ones. She had found green wood in nearly all her new roses (to herself she called them her roses, as if they were merely an extension of those at Rose Cottage, though she knew she was only rescuing them for the Beast), and even those she had had no success with she was not yet ready to dig up and dispose of; arguing to herself that they might yet shoot from the base if she gave them a little more time.

  There was perhaps more tying up she could do, more propping and spreading out—the stakes and string had of course appeared for the purpose, under and around the water-butt—but the glasshouse was nearly as tidy as she could make it. “Barring an infinity of buckets of hot soapy water and a rag on a very long stick,” she said, looking up at the thousands and thousands of bright panes round her; “but I’m very—very—glad to say you don’t look as if you need it.”

  She leant her tools by the water-butt and bundled up a few handfuls of leaves and twigs in her overskirt with her tinderbox in her pocket, so that she could begin the fire, while she didn’t examine too closely her expectation that the magic would bring the rest of the debris. And she might keep her back to the carriage-way, so she need not see it arrive either. Would leaves and twigs tumble suddenly out of nothing? Might she see—something—carrying a great bundle of rubbish? No, she would definitely keep her back to the carriage-way.

  She put a trowel in another pocket as well. “I might have a look round for heartsease at the edge of the wood,” she murmured, “just to have something flowering to frame the paths. But once you’re all growing, and I see what shapes you come to, I can plant up the empty spots with pansies.” But this time she did not react to the implications of her words, and though she hummed and sometimes sang to herself as she worked, she did not do so to drive fear away from her.