Roses

  “I just . . . just wondered where you were.”

  They shuffled their feet awkwardly and she wished for a moment that she had not called for him.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

  “No, not really. I just wondered what you do all day in the castle? I never see you when I walk around.”

  “I thought you would not want to see me.”

  She blushed.

  “I just wonder where you go. That is all.”

  “I stay out of your way, but I am never far. If you need me, you may call me and I will always hear it.”

  She had guessed as much. She felt watched always, sometimes by Beast and sometimes by the castle itself.

  “But, will you tell me what you do? Surely that is not a question out of bounds.”

  “Well, often I read. Have you seen the library here?”

  Beauty at once wished that she had not asked. “No.”

  “You must! It is the only good thing about this place.”

  “Oh, I—”

  Beast’s body shifted back. “Do not worry, I will not make you visit it with me, but you should ask the castle to take you there. I will try to make sure that I am away while you explore.”

  “That is not necessary,” she said before she could stop herself.

  “You will come with me now?”

  “Well . . . I suppose so.”

  She could not very well summon him here and then reject him, though she wished they could do anything other than visit the castle’s library.

  “This way.” Beast motioned with his paw for her to walk in front of him.

  “Surely you should lead the way?” she said. “I have never been before.”

  “It is better that you do not see me move, it may unnerve you.”

  Beauty did not need to be told twice and she obediently walked ahead of him.

  “Take us to the library,” he commanded in a rumble as they entered a corridor.

  Outlines began directing them down passages and through halls with hazy ornaments.

  “The things in this castle, they do not belong to you?” Beauty asked as they passed a huge, carved urn.

  “No.”

  “Are they real?”

  “They do not look it. But that is what is wonderful about the library; the books there feel real and worn.”

  They climbed up a flight of narrow, twisting stairs.

  “Have you seen every room in this castle?” she asked.

  “I do not think that is possible.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “A long time.”

  “Have you—”

  “The library will find any book you could possibly want, all you have to do is ask for it. I have never seen every book in the library either, but I suspect that that has more to do with its size than anything else.”

  Reaching the top step, Beauty glanced over her shoulder at him and wished she had not. She lost her footing, stumbling a little, and he pretended not to know that he was the cause. His face took her by surprise sometimes. Listening to his voice, she could almost imagine speaking to a man.

  The outlines led them on until they reached two wide double doors. As they approached, they were thrown back to reveal a yawning hall stuffed with bookcases. There were books in the walls, in piles on the floor, and on the ceiling. Beauty gasped, for it truly was spectacular.

  “Ask for a book,” said Beast. “Any book!”

  Beauty did not think that she had ever seen him so animated. She muttered a title under her breath and a slim volume flew towards her. She opened her old nursery book with a smile, turning to an illustration of a troll.

  “I had this when I was younger,” she explained, turning a few more pages.

  “Ask for something else,” he urged her. “Test it—it has everything.”

  She licked her dry lips.

  “Um . . .”

  “What else did you used to read?”

  She stepped away, looking at the floor.

  “Nothing,” she said quietly.

  “You do not like to read?”

  “It is not that. I . . .” She clenched her fingers and jutted out her chin. “I cannot read.”

  “You were never taught?”

  She swallowed hard. “No, I was never taught to read.”

  “Would you like me to teach you?” he asked, adding when she did not reply, “You may say no if you wish.”

  “Can I be taught?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be patient?”

  He made a growling, crashing sound like a chuckle. “Yes.”

  “Then I suppose so. Yes, I should like to be taught to read.”

  He stalked over to a table and crouched in front of it, then motioned for her to sit on the chair opposite. She had never been so close to him before, and she could feel the warm gusts of his breath and the heat of his body. She hesitated just a moment before taking the seat that he offered.

  He barked a sound and a book flew from a shelf to his hands.

  “This is a favorite of mine and I think that you will like it.”

  He raised his great paw and turned to the first page with incredible delicacy, using the very tips of his claws.

  “You do that very well.”

  “I have had a lot of practice.”

  He pushed the book toward her and she stared at the dashes and dots.

  “I will say the words and you will repeat them after me,” he said. “If you see a word you recognize, then interrupt.”

  “But these markings make no sense.”

  “They will in time. If I am to be patient, then you must be patient also. Besides, I do not think it will take you long to pick up the skill.”

  She hoped that he was right.

  “Once upon a time,” he began, hovering his claw over the markings.

  “Once upon a time,” she repeated.

  After that, Beauty met with Beast every afternoon in the library and they would read together for several hours. Sometimes she would get frustrated and stomp off through the maze of towering bookshelves until she had calmed down, but Beast always tried hard to contain his temper during these lessons. She only discovered how hard he tried when she came back to their table after a tantrum one afternoon and found the book in front of him torn clean in half.

  “Did you do that?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Was it because of me?”

  “Do not worry, this library is good at fixing itself. I am sure that I have torn this book at least once before.”

  “But it is one of your favorites.”

  “I know, but it will be mended tomorrow. We shall carry on our lesson then.”

  “No, we can read another book.”

  “It is probably best—”

  “But I want to read another.”

  He saw her pleading face. “If you wish it.”

  He called down another book and Beauty was more careful to control her own temper after that.

  As Beast predicted, she learned quickly and could soon read whole paragraphs with just a few corrections. One day, she insisted they read late into the evening, she was so gripped by the story’s plot.

  “Beauty, you must ready yourself for dinner.”

  The library was dark and the candles in the golden chandelier had lit themselves.

  “But we need to find out if she loves him too.”

  “You should take the book to bed with you and finish it before you sleep.”

  “But then you will not hear it.”

  Beast paused, his hazel eyes locking with her own.

  “I have a better idea,” she said. “I will take it to dinner and we can read it together then.

  “If you wish it.”

  Once she had reached a competent level of reading, Beauty wanted to learn to write and the library produced a quill and ink for her.

  “It is harder than it looks,” she muttered, scratching the nib over the parchment
.

  “I do not doubt that you will master it soon,” said Beast, encouragingly.

  If she was not reading or writing, then Beauty liked to wander through the bookshelves, Beast following at a distance. Sometimes she would try to count all the books, but that was impossible, for there were volumes hidden in the most unlikely places. Often, she simply liked to pull out books at random and leaf through them. One afternoon, she saw a yellow spine in a slot on the wall high above her head.

  “That one!” she said to the library, pointing, but it brought down the book below it. “No, that one—the yellow one!”

  When it brought down the book next to it instead, Beast suddenly jumped onto the wall, climbing up the rows of books with his claws. He grabbed the desired volume and carried it down, landing with a crouch on the floor beside her.

  “T-thank you. I wish that I could do that.” She was a little breathless.

  “I have read that book before,” he replied.

  “Yes?”

  “It is about the Southern Realm.”

  Beauty took it back to their table and they began to read. It conjured a dry landscape of sand and rock, where the days were blistering and the nights were cold. As she read, she forgot the snow and the castle and lost herself in the words. When Beast had taught her to read, he had given her a kind of freedom—a way to endure the prison of this enchanted place.

  “Is this what the Southern Realm is really like?” she asked after they had reached the end of the chapter.

  “Yes, it is hot and desolate. There are deserts there.”

  “You have been?”

  He shifted. “A long time ago.”

  “Is it like Sago?” she asked.

  “It is a drier heat. When have you been to Sago?”

  “A long time ago.”

  They read another chapter before stopping again.

  “How well do you know the realm?” he asked.

  “Not well at all. I know Pervorocco and The Neighbor, and I have heard of the Wild Lands. I did not realize that there was more.”

  “There is much more.”

  He led the way through the maze of bookshelves to a section in the right wing of the library.

  “Maps,” he said to the air and a chest of scrolls shuffled up to them. He carried a few back to their table awkwardly in his paws and unrolled them.

  “This is what we know of the realm so far,” he said. “It is likely that there is much more that we have never found. The Wild Lands, for instance, are ungoverned and could be large or small for all we know.”

  Beauty stared at the jagged shapes and expanses of sea.

  “The Scarlet Isles,” she read, running her finger over the words to say out the sounds. “The Jade Rivers.”

  She swept her hand over the golden parchment, following the illustrations with her finger, and suddenly her hand bumped with Beast’s paw. “Oh!”

  “Sorry, forgive me.”

  He quickly stepped away from her. His fur had felt bristly and the bones of his paw hard, as if she had touched Champ’s hoof.

  “No, do not worry,” she said, and they both turned back to the map.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Voices

  As Beauty rode Champ through the grounds one morning, she realized that she had been at the castle for almost two seasons. The thought caught her by surprise and, sensing her shock, Champ skidded to a halt in the middle of an orchard. Beauty glanced at the crooked, leafy branches around her, which were hung with russet apples, and could scarcely believe it. Back at Imwane, it would be summer and there would be rainbows arching over the hills and children playing on the hillside. Hally would hold a feast in the barn to celebrate and they would sing Hilland songs and drink ale.

  She looked over her shoulder at the castle, as far away as it was ever going to be. The rest of the realm was carrying on without her. Come autumn, the horses would be taken to town and sold and then new steeds would be caught and the cycle would begin again. She wondered if Owaine would ask for a village lad to help him since he was too old to train them all alone. She wondered if this new lad would whisper soothing words to the horses and make them into perfect rides. She wondered if Imwane, Owaine, and all of the Hillanders would eventually forget her.

  With a gentle squeeze of her knees, Beauty turned Champ away and they galloped back to the stables, her head full of memories. Life at the castle was not terrible; in fact, she almost had everything that she could ever desire. But she did not have her freedom.

  She was in a bad mood for the rest of the day and Beast suffered at their meeting in the library that afternoon.

  “Is this book boring you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You do not seem very interested.”

  “I am tired.” She shut the book and pushed it away.

  “Is something troubling you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Beauty . . .”

  “I do not remember agreeing to be hassled continually with questions! That was not part of our deal.”

  Beast sensibly moved himself to the other side of the library.

  “Perhaps you should go to bed early tonight,” he said as he retreated. “If you are so very tired.”

  “Yes! Perhaps I should!” She got up and stormed from the room.

  “I shall see you tomorrow!” she shouted. “Like I shall see you every day for the rest of my life!”

  She paced her room for the remainder of the afternoon and evening. Several times she walked over to the windows and looked out at the misty void of the moat and the iron gates that imprisoned her.

  “I just want to see the other side,” she whispered. “Just for a moment.”

  But all she saw was a haze of gray and black.

  She snapped at the outline in her room as it undressed and bathed her that evening, complaining when a comb found a tangle in her hair and yelling when the water in the bath grew too cold. She would not eat dinner and climbed into bed too early and tossed and turned for an hour before she slept.

  “I wish to dream of Owaine,” she said to herself. “Please.”

  But she did not. When she first came to the castle, she had dreamt of him often. She had seen him in the cottage regaining his health and she had seen him walking through the village, asking if anyone had heard news of her, which they had not. Then the dreams had changed. She closed her eyes now, thinking of lush green hills, waterfalls, and lakes, but her head conjured the sticky heat of Sago and its close reek of sweat and people. She wanted to see the cottage and the temple, but instead she saw Rose Herm’s drawing room and Ma Dane’s study.

  She had never dreamt of the past before and it confused her. It could not be the present or the future, for she knew that after the turmoil of the Magic Cleansing, Sago must be a different place. She did not understand much of the powers she possessed, but she knew that they always meant something—her imprisonment in the castle proved that much. She wished to understand herself more; she wanted to be able to harness her gift and direct her own dreams, but she did not know how. She had even tried to look for a book about it in the library once without success.

  “I wish to know about Magics,” she had said to the air.

  There had been silence.

  “Why do you seek such knowledge?” Beast had barked.

  “I am curious.”

  “You will find no books on such things here.”

  She did not mention it again, but dreams of her past came faster and more vivid with each night. When she finally slipped into slumber that evening, after twisting her bed sheets into knots, she dreamt of Ma Dane.

  Beauty saw a mob dancing and shouting in the streets of Sago, baying for blood, and she saw a string of starved women dressed in rags. Blood oozed from their backs where they had been flogged and filth was smeared across their faces. They were chained at the ankles and some were missing their hands. At the very end of the line crawled a woman that could once have been Ma Dane. She was shriveled a
nd gaunt now and her head was shaved to dark stubble. As she was led to the stake she was whispering, “Asha? Asha, will you save me?”

  There were men in gray uniforms watching and carrying out the spectacle. They occasionally beat the crowd or jeered with them. Beauty knew that Eli was there, but she could not see Pa Hamish Herm-se-Hollis and suddenly it occurred to her that he could not be there, for he was already dead. She instinctively sensed that he had died the moment Eli handed Ma Dane over to the State.

  The women were pulled screaming onto their stakes and there was much sneering and taunting from the crowd. Ma Dane resisted the least of all of them and once she was secured, the fires were lit. The next scene was the dream that had haunted Beauty’s childhood—the knowledge of her aunt’s death—and she awoke.

  Her pink room was dark and felt empty. Her sheets were messy, her pillows were on the floor, and her body was wet with sweat and tears. Her chest heaved with the shock of the vision and she gasped for breath. The image of Ma Dane’s poor, crippled body came to her mind and she suddenly forgave her for the seasons of abuse in her childhood, when she never thought that she could. She would wish that fate on no one.

  Beauty lay still for a moment, wondering if that was the dream’s purpose. She had begun to feel differently about Ma Dane since she came to the castle—she had begun to feel differently about everyone. She no longer hated Isole, but pitied her instead. She realized that the Hilland villagers did not despise what she was; they feared what they did not understand. She was slowly changing.

  She did not have long to contemplate this revelation before the stillness of the room struck her. By now she would have expected the outline to begin rearranging her pillows, light the candle beside her bed, and straighten the sheets.

  “I would like a glass of water,” she said, but nothing happened.

  The room felt strange—unoccupied. She did not feel watched.

  Slipping out of bed, she padded to the door and slowly turned the handle. She looked down the long, empty corridor.

  “Beast?” she whispered.

  He did not appear and she was sure that he could not hear her.

  She walked down the corridor, following it into a hall and then up a twisting turret. She did not know where she was going, but she felt that something was wrong.