Beauty

by Robin McKinley

  I paused on the second floor at the foot of the ladder to my loft. The forest looked different here. I was used to looking at it from my attic, or from ground level. The difference intrigued me, and I leaned out the window, teasing myself that there was an important difference, philosophical or moral, instead of just the fact of a few extra feet up or down, a change of physical perspective. There was a murmur of voices from downstairs. Suddenly I heard clearly, without wanting to.

  “Poor Ferdy,” said Ger. “I told him he needn’t come till afternoon tomorrow.” Ger’s wish to hire the boy full time, so that he could teach him the smith’s trade, was about to be fulfilled: Ferdy would work here daily, dividing his time between the shop and wood-cutting. He’d be invited to live here, once I was gone, probably in Ger’s old attic room, since Hope had said loudly, when we had discussed his staying here, “Of course we’ll leave Beauty’s room alone.”

  Like the rest of the townspeople, Ferdy had been told three weeks ago that I was leaving. Ger had told him in the shop while I was there too, holding another fractious horse while it was shod. Ferdy had listened in silence, and had remained silent for several minutes after Ger was finished. Then he said: “I wish you good luck, Beauty,” and little else, either that day or in the weeks following. He avoided me with much more purpose than I had ever expended in avoiding him, and he no longer ate dinner with us.

  “Poor Ferdy,” agreed Hope.

  The roses had clambered all around the window; there was an especially fat bud resting on the sill, its tip showing maroon. I took my boots off and climbed the ladder silently.

  But I couldn’t sleep. What little packing I had to do—my books, a few clothes—was done; the saddle-bag sat on the floor waiting to be carried downstairs at first light and tied on Greatheart’s back. I wrapped myself in a blanket and curled up at the head of my bed, where I could lean against the wall and stare out the window. I hadn’t worn the griffin ring since the first night, but I had begun carrying it in a pocket. I found that I didn’t like leaving it in my room, that I kept thinking about it; I was comforted in some obscure fashion when I carried it with me: It was a token of my future; I read it as a good omen. I felt for it now, pulled it out, and put it on.

  I must have dozed at last, because I found myself in the castle again, walking through dozens of handsome, magnificently furnished rooms, looking for something. I had a stronger sense of sorrow and of urgency this time; and also a sense of some other—presence; I could describe it no more clearly. I found myself crying as I walked, flinging doors open and looking inside eagerly, then hurrying on as they were each empty of what I sought. I woke abruptly; the sun was rising. The first thing I saw was three roses, opening in the faint light. Two were the dark red of the rose on the mantelpiece, one was white, delicately veined with peach color. I hadn’t realized the vines had reached so high. Two of the roses nodded gently, visible only barely above the window sill, but the third had wound up the side and hung at eye level, as I stood looking out, bowing on its stem as if it were looking in the window at me. I opened the window and leaned out, and to my exquisite delight found that the whole side of the house was covered with roses in full bloom; and I could see bright flowers leaning against the shop and stable walls. “Thank you,” I whispered to no one.

  I closed the window again and hurried into my clothes; today I left the griffin ring on my finger. The wooden box that had held the rose seeds was packed away in the saddle-bag. I made my bed neatly, or as neatly as I was capable of, smoothing the blankets with greater care than I ever used; and I hesitated, looking around, before I climbed down the ladder for the last time. The old wooden trunk was pushed into one corner; the bed stood along the long wall, under the eaves. My few books were gone from the opposite wall, where they had lain heaped on the floor near the little window. The big red rose was tapping softly against the window with a sound of velvet rubbing against glass. On an impulse I went across and opened the window again, and broke the stem; the rose fell graciously into my hand. I closed the window then and went downstairs without looking back, the saddlebag over my shoulder and the rose held respectfully in one hand.

  I met Grace in the garden, returning to the house with her apron full of eggs. She gave me as much of a smile as she could summon, and said, “There’s a bit of butter to fry these in.” Butter we used only on special occasions.

  By the time I had saddled Greatheart and Father’s horse the sunlight was winning a way through the light frost on the ground. I tucked the rose I had plucked under the crownpiece on Greatheart’s bridle and went in to breakfast. I came in silently through the front door so that I could stand in the parlour alone for a few minutes and look around me. The rose on the mantelpiece was dying at last: The petals were turning brown and many had dropped off; the stem was withered. The one golden petal glinted through the dry brown ashes. I could hear the rest of the family in the kitchen.

  Breakfast was a silent meal. As soon as I could I escaped to the stable. I paused with my hand on the kitchen door and said to Grace, “The eggs were delicious.” She gave me a stricken look, then said, “Thank you,” to the pile of dirty dishes she was holding.

  Greatheart was anxious to get to whatever it was that was ruining my peace and therefore his. He came out of his stall with a rush, pulling me with him and nearly wrenching my shoulder out of its socket. He tossed his head, making the rose on his headstall bounce, and pranced a few steps, no mean feat for a horse of his bulk. Odysseus, Father’s horse, was tamer. I looped his reins over one arm while I wrestled with Greatheart. The stupid animal actually tried to rear, and lifted me several inches off the ground; he recollected himself before he went too high, and returned to earth, looking sheepish. The rest of the family was collected by the kitchen door. Grace and Hope stood at the threshold, each with a baby in her arms. Father and Ger stood a step lower, on the little patch of bare ground between the door and the gate in the fence around the garden. The roses were a blaze of vivid color, lighting up the dun-colored house, the plain clothes, and the white faces.

  Ger came to where we stood and took Greatheart’s bridle. The big horse arched his neck and quivered, but he stood still. “I’ll hold him for a bit while you—” he said, and stopped. I nodded. Father took Odysseus’s reins, and I walked slowly to where my sisters were standing. “Well,” I said, and kissed them and the babies in turn. Mercy and Richard didn’t know what was going on, but everyone looked solemn and rather terrible, so they looked solemn too. Mercy stuffed most of one fist in her mouth, and Richard was inclined to cry; he was whimpering, and Hope rocked him gently. “Good-bye,” I said. My sisters said nothing. I turned and walked back towards the horses; Father was already mounted. Greatheart was watching me, and as I turned towards him gave a great bound forwards, and I saw the blacksmith’s muscles on Ger’s arms stand out as he tried to hold him. Greatheart subsided, sinking back on his hocks, and chewing on his bits till the white foam splashed to the ground.

  “Oh,” I said, turning back to my sisters. “All the stuff in Father’s saddle-bags: I hope you’ll use it. It’s not—I mean, I wish you would,” I ended lamely. They both nodded. Grace gave me a ghost of a smile; Hope blinked, and a big tear rolled down her cheek and splashed onto Richard’s face. He broke into a thin cry. I still hesitated. “Use all that fine silver on my birthday,” I said at last, not having thought of what I wished to say, or how to say it; and turned away hastily.

  Greatheart was throwing his head up and down, but he was otherwise quiet: Ger embraced me with his free arm and kissed my forehead. “I’ll toss you up,” he said. The horse stood as still as a stone for this operation, and heaved a great sigh as I settled in the saddle. I reached forwards to fix the rose a little more firmly. “Okay?” I said to my father. He nodded. Ger stepped back.

  I turned Greatheart towards the forest edge, and he paced forwards deliberately, quiet now, and Odysseus followed. Just before I reached the trees I turned in the saddle to wave; Ger raised a hand i
n reply. I nudged the horse into a trot, and we broke into the first line of trees. The last thing I heard as the forest closed around Father and me was Richard’s small forlorn wailing. I urged Greatheart into a canter, and the noise of the horses crashing through the underbrush drowned everything else.

  When I pulled him up at last the edge of the forest was no longer visible; I could see nothing but tall trees in every direction. Few of them were small enough for me to have reached all the way around them and touched fingertips to fingertips. The scrub at the beginning of the forest had thinned out; there was moss underfoot now, and I saw a few violets, a few tardy snowdrops, and some tiny yellow flowers I didn’t recognize. It was cool here without being cold; sunlight dripped a little way among the leaves, but without warmth. Most of the tree trunks were straight and smooth to a height above our heads, where the broad branches began. I heard water running somewhere; except for that, and the noises of our passage—harness jingling and squeaking and occasional patches of cobweb ice that shattered underfoot—the woods were perfectly still. Father was a little way behind me. I looked up and could see little bits of blue sky, like stars against the variegated green and black and brown. I breathed deeply and for the first time for several days I felt my heart lift out of my boots and take its proper place in my breast. As Father jogged up beside me I said, “This is a good forest.” He smiled and said, “You don’t lack courage, child.”

  “No, I mean it,” I said.

  “Then I’m glad. I find it a bit oppressive, myself,” he said, looking around him. We went on a few more minutes, and then he said, “Look.” I could see something pale among the trees. In another minute I recognized it: It was the road leading to the heart of the forest, and the castle.

  Part Three

  1

  I was eager to make as much speed as possible; I knew that Father was on the brink of begging me to turn back and let him go on to the castle alone. I would not leave him, whatever he said now, but I was uncertain just how far beyond this essential determination my thin courage could bear me. I knew I would go on, but I wanted to do it with dignity; if Father said anything it was likely that I would cry, and then the journey would be a great deal more miserable than it was at present, with nothing more dreadful between us than the grim and thoughtful silence that we shared. I kept hearing Richard’s tiny crying in my mind, and seeing the gorgeous roses framing Grace and Hope and Ger as they faced the forest. I tried to feel encouraged by my sense that the forest was welcoming, not hostile, but that shallow cheerfulness seemed to ebb away as we walked onto the white road. I prodded Greatheart into a trot, and Father fell a little behind again; for a little while I didn’t have to worry about the expression on my face. I could feel that it wasn’t one I wanted him to see.

  We stopped once to rest the horses; neither of us was hungry, although there was food in our saddle-bags. It was a little after noon when we saw the dense dark hedge and the huge silver gate looming up before us. The gates shimmered like a mirage in sea-fog. Odysseus, who had been well-behaved until now, shivered and shied, and did not want to go near those tall silent gates. At last Father dismounted and led the unhappy horse to the gates, but when he put out his hand to touch them, Odysseus reared and broke away. He stopped again only a few feet from Father’s outstretched hand, looking back over his shoulder, ashamed of himself but still afraid. Greatheart stood still and watched.

  “Father,” I said, as he stroked his horse’s nose and tried to calm him, “you needn’t come any farther with me. These are the gates to the castle. If you leave at once you will be home by suppertime.” My voice cracked only a very little. I was glad I could sit quietly on Greatheart, that I did not have to dismount and make my legs carry me, and that I could hide my shaking hands in the thick white mane that fell over his withers.

  “Child—you must go back. I cannot let you do this—I cannot think what made me agree to it in the first place. I must have been mad to think that I could let you go—like this.”

  “The decision is long past now—you cannot revoke it; and you agreed because you had no choice.” I swallowed, although my mouth was dry, and went on before he could interrupt: “The Beast won’t harm me. And perhaps, after all, he is only testing our sense of—fair play. Perhaps I won’t have to stay long.” The words sounded well, but my voice didn’t, and neither of us believed what I was saying. I hurried on. “Go. Please. Parting will only be worse later.” I thought: I couldn’t bear to see this Beast send you away. “I’ll be all right.” I rode towards the gates, but before I had wheeled Greatheart so that I could touch them with my hand, they swung open without a sound, and a trackless field of bright green grass lay before me. “Good-bye, Father,” I said, half-turning in my saddle. Father had remounted. Odysseus was standing still, but the stiffness in his neck and ears indicated his tension and fear. One gesture from Father would send him plunging back down the road the way we had come.

  “Good-bye, dear Beauty,” he said almost inaudibly. My ears rang with my heartbeats. I rode forwards before he could say any more, and the gates of mist closed impassively behind me. I turned and faced forwards before they were quite shut, and did not look back again.

  Sunlight and the smell of the sweet grass were better than sleep or food; I felt that I was awakening from a dream left behind in the shadowed eaves of the forest. When we came to the edge of the orchard we found a white pebbled path leading between the trees towards the castle.

  I cannot begin to describe the gardens. Every leaf and blade of grass, or pebble in the path, or drop of water or flower petal, was perfect, in plan and in execution: true in color and in shape, unworn, and unharmed as if each had been created only a moment ago, as if each were a gem, and the polish of each facet the life’s work of a fairy jeweler. I clung to Greatheart’s mane as he went forwards at a gentle walk; the motion of his shoulders and flanks seemed like the heaving of a ship in storm.

  The castle rose up before us like sunrise, its towers and battlements reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. It was of grey stone, huge block set on block; but it caught the sunlight like a dolphin’s back at dawn. It was as big as a city, I thought; not one building, but many, tied together by corridors and courtyards; I stared around at what I could see of the wings and walls of it stretching in many directions. I could not begin to imagine the number of rooms it must contain. But it stood silent, the windows dark, apparently deserted. But not quite deserted, I told myself unhappily. Oh dear.

  Greatheart came to a halt before the stable, whose door had slid back at our approach. Inside, afternoon sunlight slanted through tall narrow windows with half-moons of stained glass set in their arched tops. The colored glass held pictures of horses, standing, galloping, richly caparisoned or free of harness, with long waving manes and bright dark eyes. The bits of color sprinkled the marble walls of the stalls and the smooth golden sand of the floor. The door to the first stall slid back, just as it had for Father, as we approached, and straw finished scattering itself into the corners as we looked in. Greatheart pricked his ears at self-propelled bedding; but when I pulled his bridle off he quickly transferred his attention to the mixed grain in the manger. He did not eat so well at home.

  There was a selection of bone-handled brushes, combs, and soft cloths on a shelf on the stall’s outer wall. I groomed the horse carefully, but still I lingered; I did not want to be finished, to leave him in the stable and go by myself into the castle, where the Beast was doubtless waiting for me. The Beast had said that no harm would come to me, but how did I know? I thought of how ready I had been to believe those promises of safety when I had first heard Father’s tale, beside our own hearth. He was only a Beast. What could he possibly want with me anyway? I banished that thought as I had many times before in the past month. I recalled unhappily the tales of the insatiable monster that lived in the forest and ate all the game. Perhaps the Beast found young maiden a difficult dish to procure, and had to resort to trickery. I had cut and carried too much wood
in the last two and a half years to make a very delicate morsel; but this was no comfort, since it would undoubtedly be discovered too late.

  I remembered that Father’s tack had been mysteriously cleaned while it hung on a rack overnight. The rack I found, it having conjured itself outside the stall while I was in it. “Won’t you let me wash it myself?” I said to the air, looking up as if expecting to see something looking down; I lowered my gaze hastily and was unnerved by the appearance of a bucket of warm water, soap, sponges, cloths, and oil. “Well, that is what you asked for,” I told myself aloud; and then “Thank you,” louder, and was rewarded by the same feeling that Father had had: that the air was listening. I didn’t like it.

  By the time I had done everything I could do twice over, the sun was nearly gone; lanterns set in the doorposts of the stalls were lighting themselves. It then occurred to me that I liked the idea of going into the castle for the first time after dark even less than I had liked it a few hours ago while daylight was with me, keeping trolls and witches under cover. Greatheart had finished the grain, and was happily working on the hay hanging in a net; he was not inclined to be sympathetic to my fidgets. I patted him for the last time and went reluctantly out. The horse was calm and relaxed again, as he had always been at home until the last few days. I tried to tell myself that this was a good omen, but I felt more as if I were being betrayed in my last extremity. I closed the stable door—or anyway my hand was on it when it closed itself—on the sound of quiet chewing. I found myself twisting the griffin ring on my finger as I stepped down from the threshold.

  As I stepped outside, the lanterns in the garden were lighting up; there was a warm sweet smell of perfumed lamp oil. The silence was unbroken but for the clear tinkling of the little streams, and the slow scuff of my booted feet; there was still no sign of any living thing. I felt very small and shabby amid all this magnificence; riding Greatheart lent its own dignity, for he shone through his battered harness. The size and grandness of his new environment suited him; he might have been coming home after exile among the savages. But there was nothing grand about a small plain girl, poorly dressed, self-conscious, and jittery. I looked around me, blinking, and then turned back towards the castle. The courtyard was dark as I turned; but it leaped into a blaze of light as I looked towards it. The silver arch around the enormous front doors glittered and gleamed, and the figures molded on it seemed to come to life: a king’s hunting party, the horses’ manes flying, and banners and pennoncels bucking in the wind. There were hounds scattered, tails high, before the galloping horses, and two or three riders carried hooded falcons on their wrists. There were several ladies riding sidesaddle, their skirts mixing with the trailing saddleskirts. In front of the field the king rode, leaning forwards over his horse’s neck; he wore a thin circlet around his forehead, his sleeves and collar were trimmed with fur, and his horse was the largest and finest. I found myself trying to read his face, and could not. He was galloping towards a great wood that stood at the peak of the arch, branches bowed like the petals of a flower. On the other side of the arch the scene was a mirror image of the first, but the story told was changed. The king’s horse was plunging wildly away from the forest, riderless, its eyes rolling. The other hunters were reining back hard at the forest’s edge, with expressions of shock, dismay, and dawning horror on their faces. The dogs were fleeing, tails between legs and ears flat, and the falcons struggled to be free, wings spread, claws tearing at tasseled hoods. Both scenes were colorless, icy pale, yet sharp and vigorous; I expected to see the next hoof hit the ground as I looked at a galloping horse, to see the lady’s raised hand brush the scarf from her eyes; and I looked with nervous fascination at the wood, but saw nothing but the silver trees.