Beauty

by Robin McKinley

  The outlying lands where Greatheart and I rode were touched with the change of season; the snow patches disappeared from the ground, and new leaves appeared on the trees. But even here there was little mud; the ground thawed and grew softer under the horse’s hoofs without turning marshy, and there was little dead vegetation from past seasons, either underfoot or on the bushes and trees. The fresh young green replaced nothing brown and weary, but grew on clean polished stems and branches.

  Occasionally, however, it did rain. I woke up one morning a little over a fortnight after I first arrived, and noticed how dimly the sun shone through my window. I looked out and saw a gentle grey but persistent rain falling. The garden glimmered like jewels under water, or like a mermaids’ city of which I was catching fantastic glimpses beneath the surface of a deep quiet lake. “Oh,” I said sadly. This new vision of the castle and gardens was beautiful, but it meant postponing our morning walk. I dressed and ate slowly, then wandered listlessly downstairs, thinking to walk about a little indoors, and perhaps make a conciliatory visit to Greatheart, before settling down to a long morning of study.

  The Beast was standing at the front doors, which were open. He stood with his back to me as I walked down the curved marble staircase; for a moment I thought he looked like Aeolus, standing at the mouth of his thundery cavern on the mountain of the gods; a warm wind sang around him, and came up to greet me on the stairs, smelling of a green land at the end of the world. As I reached the ground floor he turned around and said gravely, “Good morning, Beauty.”

  “Good morning, Beast,” I answered, wondering a little, because I had only seen him in the evenings before. I walked down the hall and came to stand beside him in the doorway. “It’s raining,” I said, but he understood the question, because he answered:

  “Yes, even here it rains sometimes.” As if he thought there was need for some explanation, he went on: “I’ve found that it doesn’t do to tinker with the weather too much. The garden will take care of itself as long as I don’t try to be too clever. Snow disappears in a night, you know, and it’s never very cold here, but that’s about all. Usually it rains after nightfall,” he added apologetically.

  “It does look very beautiful,” I said. I knew by this time that his kindness was real, as was his interest in my welfare. It was very mean of me to boggle at rain, and it showed how selfish and spoiled I was becoming through having my least whim granted. “All misty and mysterious. I’m sorry I was sulky; of course it has to rain, even here.”

  “I thought, perhaps,” he said hesitantly, “that you might like to see a bit more of the castle this morning, since you can’t go out. I believe that there is quite a lot that you have missed.”

  I nodded and smiled wryly. “I know there is. I can’t seem to keep the corridors straight in my head somehow, and as soon as I’m hopelessly lost, I turn a corner and there’s my room again. So I never learn anything. I don’t mean to complain,” I added hastily. “It’s just that I get lost so very quickly that I don’t have the chance to see very much before they—er—send me home again.”

  “I quite understand,” said the Beast. “The same used to happen to me.”

  Two hundred years, I thought, watching raindrops sliding slowly down the luminous pale marble.

  “But I know my way around rather well by now, I think,” he continued. There was a pause. The rain seeped into the raked sand of the courtyard till it sparkled like opal. “Is there anything in particular that you would like to see?”

  “No,” I said, and smiled up at him. “Anything you like.”

  With a guide, the great rooms that had blurred into surfeit before my dazzled eyes during my solitary rambles became clear again, full of individual wonders. After some time we came to a portrait gallery, the first I had seen in the castle; all the paintings I had looked at thus far had avoided depicting human beings in any detail. I paused to look at these more closely. The men and women were most of them handsome, and all of them very grand. I knew little about styles and techniques of painting, but it seemed to me that they were a series, extending over a considerable period of time, possibly several centuries. I thought I saw a family resemblance, particularly among the men: tall, strong, brown-haired and brown-eyed, and a bit grim about the mouth, and they all had a certain proud tilt of eyebrow and chin and shoulder. “This looks like a family,” I said.

  There were no recent portraits; the line seemed to have stopped a long time ago. “Who are they?” I said, studying the picture of a pretty woman, golden-haired and green-eyed, with a silly fluffy white lap dog, and trying to sound casual; it was the secret that hid behind the men’s eyes I really wondered about.

  The Beast was silent so long I looked at him inquiringly. It was more difficult to gaze at him steadily again after looking at all the handsome, proud painted human faces. “They are the family that have owned these lands for thousands of years, since time began, and before portraits were painted,” he said at last.

  He spoke in the same tone of voice that he had used in reply to all my other questions, yet for the first time in several days I was reminded of the undercurrent of thunder in his deep harsh voice, and remembered that he was a Beast. I shivered and dared ask no more.

  I looked longest at the last painting in the long row: Beyond it the wall was decorated with scrolls and hangings, but there were no more portraits. This last one that held my attention was of a handsome young man, of my age perhaps; one hand held the bridle of a fine chestnut horse that was arching its neck and stamping. There was something rather terrible about this young man’s beauty, though I could not say just where the dreadfulness lay. The hand on the bridle was clenched a little too tightly; the light in the eyes was a little too bright, as if the soul itself were burning. He seemed to watch me as I looked at him, watch me with all the intensity of those eyes; the other portraits I examined had flat painted eyes that behaved as they should, vaguely refusing to focus on their audience. For a moment I was frightened; then I raised my chin and stared back. This castle was a strange place, and probably not to be trusted, but I trusted the Beast; he would not let me be bewitched by any daub.

  As I stared I began unwillingly to realize just how beautiful this young man was, with his curly brown hair, high forehead, and straight nose. His chin and neck were a perfect balance between grace and strength, he was broad-shouldered and evidently tall, and the hand holding the bridle was finely shaped. He was wearing velvet of the purest sapphire hue; the white lace at his throat and wrists made his skin golden. His beauty was extraordinary, even in this good-looking family; and the passion of his expression made him loom above me like a godling. I looked away at last, no longer afraid, but ashamed, remembering the undersized, sallow, snub-nosed creature he looked down upon.

  “What do you think of him?” the Beast asked.

  I glanced at the picture again briefly. I thought: The artist was a genius, to catch that fire-eaten look. He must have been exhausted when he was done; I’m tired after only a few minutes of looking at the finished work. “I think he died young,” I said finally. A curious silence stepped in, took my words, and tapped and shook and rattled them together, as if they would ring clear as brass or silver; and then, disgusted, blew them away entirely.

  I felt as if I were half-awakened from an uneasy sleep by the Beast’s words: “Let me show you the library.” We walked down a half flight of stairs; the Beast opened a door set in a pillared arch. I looked back for a moment, over his shoulder; the hall of paintings had faded to indecipherable, shadowy colors. But the young man of the last portrait lingered before my mind’s eye in a way that disturbed me. I hesitated on the brink of trying to find out why; but my courage failed me, as it had when I had first faced his likeness. I told myself a little too firmly that I was reacting only to his extraordinary physical beauty, and fairly forced him out of my mind. I glanced up at the Beast and found him looking down at me, one hand still on the library door. Where do you fit into all this? I thought; what ha
s happened to the handsome family that has owned this land since before portraits were painted? Are you a doorkeeper, a kind of silent Cerberus perhaps? And what marvels might you guard beyond those I see around me? And there my courage failed me a third time, because I suddenly remembered myself as a small and very ordinary mortal, far from home and family—alone except for this great Beast who stood beside me, within whose power I was caught, for ends I knew nothing of. I was afraid again, as I stared at the Beast, afraid much as I had been on the first night; but then it was as if my vision cleared. He was not the awful master here, but my friend and companion within the spellbound castle. He too had had to learn to find his way through the maze of rooms and corridors that now bewildered me; he had had to learn to cope with enchantments in unfamiliar languages. As he stared down at me I knew his eyes were kind, and a little anxious, even though I could not read the rest of his dark face. I smiled at him, the handsome family forgotten, then turned and went through the door.

  This single room of the library was as large as our whole house in the city had been, and I could see more book-filled rooms through open doors in all directions, including a balcony overhead, all built from floor to high ceiling with bookshelves. “Oh my,” I said. “How do you reach the top shelves?”

  A miniature staircase, complete with a banister on one side, rolled up to me; I had the feeling that it would have cleared its throat respectfully if it had had a throat to clear. “You remind me of our butler in the city,” I said to it. “He stood at attention just the way you’re doing now. Do you clean silver as well as he did?” It moved in a half circle backwards, and I thought it was probably eyeing me in confusion.

  “Don’t distress it,” said the Beast mildly. “It will try to clean silver to please you, and it isn’t built for it.”

  I laughed. “Pardon me, sir,” I said to the waiting staircase. “I do not wish you to clean silver.” It settled down on its wheels with the faintest sigh of condensing springs. “Do you ever get yourself in messes by wishing inappropriate things?” I said to the Beast.

  “No,” he replied. “My orders are obeyed, not my wishes.”

  I turned my head away unhappily, but the rows of books tugged unrepentantly at the edges of my sight. I walked like one bewitched to the nearest shelf. “I didn’t know there were so many books in the world,” I said caressingly, and the Beast’s answer was heard only in my ear and did not register in my brain: “Well, in fact, there aren’t,” he said.

  I pulled a volume down at random, and opened it to the title page. “The Complete Poems of Robert Browning,” I read aloud, puzzled. “I’ve never even heard of him.” Pride before a fall, I thought. So much for my scholarship. The Beast said nothing; when I looked up at him he was watching me with a curious, intent expression. I put Browning back, and picked out another book. This one was called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The next one was The Screwtape Letters. Then Kim. “Rudyard Kipling,” I said in despair. “This is a name? I’ve never heard of any of these people. And the paper is funny, and the shape of the letters. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong,” said the Beast; he sounded pleased, which I didn’t like, assuming that he was amused at my discomfiture. “This library is—well—” He paused. “Most of these books haven’t been written yet.” I looked at him stupidly, Kim still in my hand. “But don’t worry, they will be,” he said. There was a pause. “You might try the Browning,” he suggested gently. “It shouldn’t be too confusing. I’m very fond of his poetry myself.”

  I should have long been past being shocked by anything in this castle, but I now discovered that I wasn’t. My dazed brain grasped at something more easily sensible. “You—you do read then,” I said, and added before I thought: “You can turn pages?”

  The earthquaking rumble that served the Beast for a chuckle washed over me briefly, lifting the hair on the back of my neck. “Yes, after a fashion. You’ll find that some of my favorite books are somewhat battered about the corners.” I looked at him, slowly collecting my wits. “Look,” he said. He held one arm out, shook the lace back from his wrist, stretched the fingers of the hand. Their tips glittered. “They’re sort of semi-retractable; not nearly so well-designed as a cat’s,” he said. The fingers quivered and about six inches of shining curved claw suddenly appeared. The daggers that served as index finger and thumb curved and met. “The temptation is always to rip things up a bit when my clumsiness prevents me from turning a page neatly.” The claws clicked lightly together. He sounded almost merry; he rarely spoke of himself, and then his tone was usually grim and sad.

  I was not frightened, but I was ashamed. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  The claws retreated, and his arm dropped. “Don’t be,” he said. “I don’t mind telling you.” He looked at me. “But perhaps you mind being told.”

  “No,” I said automatically; and then my slow thoughts caught up with me and told me that this was true. “No, I don’t mind.” We looked at each other for a moment. The sun shone through a window, then made its delicate, fawn-footed way across the broad inlaid floor, and found the Beast’s blue velvet shoulders to set on fire. “The sun,” I said abruptly. “Look, it’s stopped raining.” I went over to the window; the Beast joined me. The garden gleamed; the towers of the ancient castle looked young again, baptized by young rain. “I can take Greatheart out after all.”

  “Yes,” said the Beast. “I am sure he is looking for you.” The light-heartedness was gone. “I will say farewell to you now,” he continued. “I will see you this evening.” He turned away.

  “No—wait,” I said, and put a hand out, but did not quite touch the velvet arm. He paused and looked back at me. “Wait,” I repeated. “Greatheart likes whomever I like. Come with us.”

  The Beast shook his head. “Thank you for the kindness of your offer, but no. It is not necessary, and I assure you it would not work. I will see you this evening.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “Beauty,” he said, “I can deny you nothing. Do not ask this. Greatheart loves you. Do not break his trust in you for no reason.”

  “Please,” I said. “I am asking.”

  There was a pause, but at last he said, as if the words were dragged from him like a blessing from a black magician, “Very well. I am sorry for this.”

  “Come then,” I said. I went out through the door we had come in, and turned down the hall, away from the paintings. The Beast followed. In the usual fashion, I found my room around the next corner, and from there I could easily find the way down the great staircase to the front doors. I paused there and waited for the Beast. When he did not speak his mere presence could be oppressive; I felt as if I were waiting for a stormcloud to catch me up.

  We went out into the courtyard together. The air was cool and damp against my cheek. “Not in the stable,” said the Beast. “Give the poor brute room. I will wait for you here.” He walked away from the stable wing to a bench at the edge of the garden on the opposite side, just inside the courtyard, and sat down. I went to fetch my horse.

  He was glad to see me, and eager to go outside. I found that now that I had committed myself to this venture, I was frightened, and unhappily inclined to believe the Beast’s predictions. Greatheart had too much sense to walk into the dragon’s mouth merely because I asked him to. But it was too late now. After a moment’s reflection, I put on his saddle and bridle. I had no chance at all of arguing with him from the ground with nothing but a halter and rope for persuasion; mounted, at least I could stay with him—probably—until he could be reasoned with. Oh dear. Why did the Beast have to sound so forlorn just at the wrong moment?

  Greatheart was a bit puzzled at being saddled at this hour, but he was willing enough. He was snorting with enthusiasm and pulling at the reins as the stable door opened for us.

  I saw the change at once, and mounted hastily at the threshold. As soon as his head emerged, he flared his nostrils and blew, and swung his head towards the bench where the Beast sat. I
could feel him turn to iron under my hand, and there was a glimpse of white around his eye. The door closed noiselessly behind us; the last little breath of warm hay-scented air stirred my hair. Greatheart hadn’t taken his eyes off the Beast; he was blowing unhappily, and spume began to form on his lips. I tightened the girths. Well, here we go, I thought, and gathered up the reins.

  It took us fifteen minutes to cross a courtyard two hundred feet wide. The horse’s shoulders and flanks were soon dark with sweat; but he went in the direction I insisted on. I whispered to him as he walked, and for the first time in his life he did not cock an ear back at me to listen. He would obey me—but only just; his entire concentration rested on the dark figure sitting on a white marble bench, its arms stretched out across the seat’s back.

  Fifty feet from Nemesis Greatheart stopped and would go no farther; we stood like stone in a silent battle of wills. My knees were pressed into the horse’s sides till my legs ached, and my hands on the reins urged him forwards; but his mouth was frozen on the bits, and I could feel a tiny quiver of panic, deep inside him. “Don’t move,” I said, panting, to the Beast. “This is harder than I was expecting.”

  “I won’t,” said the Beast. “I did not believe you would come so far.”

  At the sound of the Beast’s voice, Greatheart’s nerve broke. He reared up so wildly I threw myself forwards, fearing that he would go over backwards, and his neigh was a scream, sharp as shipwreck. Still on his hind legs, he whirled, nearly unseating me, and in two bounds he was back on the far side of the courtyard it had taken us so long to cross. I found myself yelling, “No, you great ox, stop it, listen to me, rot you, listen to me!” and when I untangled my hands from his mane and pulled again on the reins, his ears flickered and he stopped, shuddering and heaving as if he were at his strength’s end after a long gallop. He turned as he stopped, to look back in terror at the enemy, threw up his head, and took several unhappy steps sideways. The Beast had stood up, presumably when Greatheart had bolted. Now that it seemed that I was more or less in control again, he slowly resumed his seat.