“It's not that simple-” I snap.
“Three little words-”
“It would never be three,” I say firmly. “And you act like... like explaining it would be the conclusion of it all. Like it would solve everything.”
“It would. Believe me.”
“No, it wouldn't. It would be the beginning and end of everything.”
“Are you apprehensive because he's... you know. A beast?”
“He is not a beast.”
“So you keep saying. So what's the issue?”
“The fact that there are some... fundamental biological differences between the two of us is... potentially problematic.”
“I'm sensing that's not the only reason.”
“There's my family,” I say pointedly. “I can't have both, and yet... I think I have to. I cannot choose between them and him. I cannot choose between two parts of myself.”
Ariel cannot think of anything to say to this. She goes away. A few minutes later, there's scratching at the door. It clicks open of its own accord, and Bramble jumps up on the bed. He whimpers a little bit, and presses his nose to my face. I can deal with a dog, it's just people and voices -including my own- that I cannot process. I wrap my arms around him and cry into his fur.
We speak to each other less and less. I spend longer in my room, shut up with Bramble, doing anything I can think of to pass the time. I emerge at meal times, just to let people know that I'm all right. I am polite and courteous in every exchange, but avoid spending too much time alone with Thorn. I've taken to walking around the gardens a great deal, which is sometimes awkward because Thorn has taken up this habit too and we occasionally bump into each other and have to feign an excuse to separate. This is difficult when you live together; the lies are harder. Neither one of us can say we said we were going to call on our dear friend for tea and mustn't be late.
The gardens are cooler now. A light coat is required to explore them comfortably. The leaves are beginning to brown, the flowers are drying, wilting. There is a slight chill in the air that I have almost forgotten. Autumn is finally upon is.
I have never really enjoyed autumn. It is the precursor to winter, that blank, cold, dead time of year. A reminder that the days in the sun are over. Freedom would always try and appease my dislike by pointing out the myriad of colours coating the forests, but all I saw was the death and decay, how the season stole away the flowers, coated the landscape with ice, and stole the vibrancy of the summer leaves.
I never really enjoyed autumn, but I did not miss the summer. The impossible, baking heat. The endless days. It was good that they were gone. Nothing was built to last forever.
Thorn asks me what I am thinking one evening when he catches me staring at the trees.
“I am thinking that all things have their time,” I reply earnestly. “And that everything must die.”
I wake to the sound of shouting. Thorn. He is screaming, almost as if the change is upon him. Bramble cries.
“It's all right, boy,” I tell him. “Stay here. I'll find out what's wrong.”
I pick up a candlestick and follow the sounds down the corridor, slowly, as if waiting for the noises to stop. Praying they will. A part of me doesn’t want to move. He sounds desperate, angry, a howl that any other person would stray away from. Hairs creep up along the back of my neck. A small voice tells me to turn back.
But he is in pain, and so I must go.
The door to the hall of mirrors is ajar. Inside, Thorn has thrown a chair at one of the mirrors- the mirrors of truth. Glass litters the floor, spotted with blood.
“Thorn! What are you doing?”
Thorn carries on as if I am a ghost, throwing his fists into another pane. The Mirror of Desire. Shards of glass glitter around his feet.
“THORN!”
I throw down my candlestick and topple the others. The flames quickly flicker and die. Only a dim, sliver of light pools into the room from the open door. Reflections turn to shadow. Slowly, Thorn’s howls die out, and I creep beside him.
“Thorn?”
“I am sick of seeing.”
“Seeing what?” It is a stupid question, I know. I knew what he was sick of, it just always took me a little while to remember.
He looks at me in utmost despair. I grab his face and force his gaze to stay on mine. “Listen to me,” I demand, “I know what you are! I know exactly who you are.”
I do know, although I can’t explain it. I could give you a list of his traits, a list of all the reasons I love him so, but none of these come close to explaining what he is.
He is… important. Pivotal. Vital. To me, at least. To me… to me he is…
My mind struggles with all the poetic verse it knows, scrambling about for something that perfectly encapsulates my feelings. It finds nothing. Nothing exists that could express this, that could even contain it.
Thorn looks at me, and I know he wants an answer.
“Then what I am, Rose?”
Gingerly, I place a hand against his cheek. He moves his head, so that my palm is pinned between his shoulder, my thumb close to his lips. My other hand slides over his chest, until it feels the soft beat of his heart.
“You are just like me,” I say. For in whatever way we are different, there is one absolute, one thing we share. “Your soul is shaped like mine.”
And if the rest of him were shaped like me, I know that in that moment I would have kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Ball
Thorn refuses to let me bandage his hands. He marches up to the roof terrace, alone, while I sit the remnants of what had become one of my favourite parts of this strange, beautiful place. A large shard of glass sits at my feet. I pick it up, and the image flickers. The mirror of desire. In the little fragment, I see myself, and Thorn, and my family. All of us, together. All of us happy and smiling. A future that can never be.
Suddenly, I want the image smashed also.
The fairies arrive to clean up the mess, but I hiss them away. They say nothing to me. I go back to my room and wait for morning. At first light, I walk down to the meadow, and I imagine Freedom's voice again. I should have taken his hand. It would have spared me this.
But then Thorn would probably be dead, and my life would not be any easier.
I go to breakfast.
“Nice walk?” asks Thorn. It sounds almost mean, as if he hopes it wasn't.
“I went to the meadow,” I make my words sound like an insult too. I went to the meadow because I want to get away from you.
This stops any conversation. We eat in silence. Eventually, it gets so awkward, that the fairies trickle in and try to add to the conversation.
“So, the ball tomorrow!” Ophelia chimes. “I'm very excited. Are you excited?”
Neither one of us replies.
“I'm looking forward to it,” Ariel says loudly. “I've prepared some divine music.”
“And you will positively die when you see my ball gown!” Margaret adds.
Thorn growls -actually growls- at her. They hush immediately. I drop my spoon with a clatter and walk away, running to my room as soon as I am out of sight. I slam the door and throw myself down on the bed, expecting to cry. But I do not. Instead, I punch my pillow, tear at the sheets, and sit there shaking. Anger and misery claw continuously at my insides.
Later, he knocks at the door.
“Yes?” I bark.
There is a long pause before he speaks. When he does, his voice is quiet. Still. Measured. “Do you still want to have this ball?”
I wait a little while before replying too. “The others have worked so hard.”
“Do you still want it?”
Another pause. “Yes.”
He does not speak, and for a moment, I think he must have slunk away. I get off the mattress and cross the room, but I know he is still there before I reach the door, before I hear his breath, before I feel his body pressed against the other side of the barrier. Something of him seems to burst out of th
e corridor, pervade the air between us. I can feel it as keenly as temperature when I reach out to touch the door. “Thorn... I have... I have almost another five months here. I don't think we can continue being mad at each other.”
He exhales softly, almost as if he's in pain. “I'm not mad at you.”
“I'm not mad at you, either.”
There does not seem to be anything else we can say to each other. Nothing we say will fix the mess we're in and yet...
Nothing will change.
In the hours leading up to the ball, the fairies are all a flutter, moving swiftly between my room and Thorn's. Even Bramble is caught up in the excitement; he cannot decide who he wants to be with, and keeps dashing back from one room to the next.
I am bathed and anointed with perfumes and oils. My hair is cleaned and combed and curled. I am scrubbed within an inch of my life. My nails are tidied. It is hard not to feel a little excited by the fairies' enthusiasm.
Finally, I stand in my undergarments in front of a screen. All the fairies are here for this part.
“Are you ready?” asks Margaret.
I nod. The screen is pulled back, and behind it is the most beautiful gown I have ever beheld. It is white and gold, simple and extravagant, billowing and dainty, made with shimmering thread and layers of soft white gossamer.
“Do you like it?” I see a flash of Ariel in the mirror, surrounded by Ophelia, and Margaret.
“It's perfect,” I say. My voice sounds like a ghost's. “Thank you.”
I slide into it easily, the laces pulled gently by their feathery touch. The dress has a beautiful weight, and yet it fits like a second skin. I feel like I am floating.
I stare at myself in the mirror as invisible fingers weave pearl beads and flowers through my hair. I am like a stranger. No, not a stranger, not at all, almost the opposite. I am myself, but a part I have never seen before. The more I am done up, the more I am revealed. Hello me, where have you been?
No one presses on me any adornments, any jewellery. The dress is decoration enough. The only thing that stays is Thorn's necklace, which matches perfectly- not that I would remove it if it didn't.
I glide towards the ballroom with my heart thumping wildly in my chest. I have rarely cared about how other people perceive my outward appearance. Why does it matter to me, how Thorn sees me?
When he startles when I enter the room, when he gets up, knocking the chair slightly, mouth agape, I know why.
He is the only one who sees me. His eyes alone, are the only ones that matter. The only eyes I care for.
“You... you look...” He gulps nervously. “You look beautiful, Rose. Otherworldly.”
The word is a thousand times more powerful, more real, coming from him. I must be blushing furiously. “A statement that applies to us both.”
He chuckles lightly. “Which one?”
“Both.”
He is dressed in a dark blue suit, with gold adornments. His hair has been clipped, and he smells faintly of cinnamon. His eyes are brighter than ever.
Soft music plays as we sit down to dine through five courses of the most exquisite food I have ever eaten. The conversation is light, slow but not uncomfortable. I am intimately aware of everything I am doing, everything around me.
“Ophelia's flowers are magnificent,” I declare, looking at the garlands strung from the ceiling, wrapped around the pillars. I have never seen such a display.
“She has worked hard on them,” says Thorn.
After dessert, we step out onto the balcony for a minute. There are a few final rays of sunset left. The nights are getting longer, I realise with a pang. There is a sharp change in the landscape. Browns and reds dominant where blues and greens used to be.
Music stirs from inside. I turn to Thorn.
“Can you dance with me?”
“Of course,” says Thorn, and then, a little sadly, “I can deny you nothing.”
I try to ignore his sadness, not knowing where it comes from. Tonight, I want us to be happy.
When the music sings, it breathes. Veins pump through invisible strings. Piano keys transform into bone. The room lifts, sways, moves with us, transforms from stone and marble and glass into living flesh. I am heavy and light at the same time, a puppet on a string and utterly free. The music exists like an extension of my soul, of our souls. I can feel it flowing in and out, like the ebb of a tide. I do not know where it begins and I end.
The colours of the room swirl together, more vibrant and more beautiful in their proximity to each other. I cannot tell the floor from the ceiling. Starlight floods the room on the curling shadow of night. I am caught in a shimmering, glittering bubble of gold and silver and blue and white.
There is a moment, a split second, where I almost feel as I have left my own body. I am somewhere else in the room, beholding this scene, wanting to capture and preserve every sliver of it. But there are sights that can never be painted, too majestic to be forged from paper and ink. This is one of them.
The music ends. I am in Thorn's arms, my head resting against his chest, my eyes tightly shut. I can almost feel the colour trickling away. The music slithers off like a snake. There is no starlight now, only shadow.
It is not enough. I want to hold him tighter, faster. It is impossible to believe that we are two separate people at all. There should be no space between us. I can hear his heart beating, and for a moment, forget that it is his at all. It is my heart that I feel in his chest. I feel that if I keep holding him, our two hearts will press together into one, and this emptiness I feel at not being able to have him in the way I want to will cease.
“Rose,” my name eases passed his lips, part sigh, part question. He wraps his arms around me until I am cocooned inside his embrace.
I wish for words to explain this to him, but there are none. I ease back, for fear this longing will break me. I feel as if I am standing on the precipice of a pool. I want so badly to dive in, but I cannot. I am held back, I am barred. I know I will never even touch those waters, and suddenly I am dying of thirst.
A clock chimes, echoing round the chamber like a drum.
“It is late,” I say. I edge towards the doors. I cannot take my eyes from him, from his. They are mirrors of my own. I turn with poisonous reluctance.
I have not stepped one foot across the threshold before a hand fastens around my wrist. I hear my name, murmured breathlessly, and a second later I am up in his arms again, my face against his neck, arms fastened around him.
He knows, he knows how I feel.
Oh God, moving away, disentangling myself is so hard. I cannot look at him this time, I cannot. I race up to my room, not daring to look back, and slam the door shut behind me. I want to the lock the door, but what against? Not him; I would never shut him out. What I want to shut out is the injustice. I want him in here, by my side, as always, and I want to throw away the world that makes us impossible. How can I dissociate him from our problem? They are one in the same. But it does not feel that way. He is he and I am me and the simple fact that he is what he is does not change-
Does not change. Cannot be changed. However much that does not stop me feeling the way I do, it does not change.
The fairies have set up a bath for me by the fireplace. I am glad of their absence, of their hovering, sad forms. I cannot deal with others right now. There is nothing I can say to them.
I shed my clothes, ripping away the fabric and hurling it to the floor. If only we could change ourselves so easily.
I sink into the waters, break the surface with my mouth and the let the salt spoil the water. I hear Thorn prowling the corridors, pausing ever-so-slightly at my door. I pray he cannot hear me cry.
I crawl, damply, into my bed, pressing my face deep into the pillow. I bite the feathers and do not scream. I remember his heartbeat. I feel mine.
Nothing changes.
I want to say I hate him. I want to scream it. It feels –in that moment- like the biggest truth I know. I hate him I hate him I
hate him. But I don’t hate him. The opposite is true. What I hate, what I truly cannot stand, is what I cannot change.
That’s what he hates, too.
It has been a while now since I have thought of home, but tonight, I can think of nothing else but how much I long to be there, and be the person I was before I came to this cruel, enchanted place.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Sacrifice and the Gift
I do not leave my room the next day, or the day after that. Thorn comes to talk to me three times, but I ignore him. His voice alternates between concerned, hurt, sad, and then even angry. He begs me to let me in. To talk to him. To tell him what's wrong.
You know. You know what's wrong. You must know.
I wonder what I would do, if he said it. Would I be able to ignore him then? Would I be able to lie to him, to spare us further pain?
I don't think I can ever lie to him. I would have to tell him the truth, and then where would we be?
I want to be with you, but we cannot be. I must leave you, because this is killing me. I think I need to hate you if I am to survive this.
I whisper for him to leave, because I lack the strength to speak. He does not hear me, but eventually he gives up. Perhaps he will give up entirely if I leave it long enough.
Then the fairies wander in. They try to convince me to eat, convince me to get up, convince me to talk to him.
“I'm sure you'll feel better once you do...”
“Just tell us what's wrong Rose, we'll help!”
“This is hurting him, too, you know...”
I do not listen. I do not care if this is hurting him. I need to find my own remedy. If I can stay away from him, perhaps it will feel less. Perhaps this is best for both of us. But I can still feel him, I can feel him everywhere, whether he is standing outside my door or in some other part of the castle. I can feel him in my soul and in my skin and I need him gone if I'm to survive knowing, and leaving him.
On the third day, Thorn comes again to my door.
“You know I would do anything to make you happy. Anything within my power.”
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