Beauty (v1.2)

by Robin McKinley

  “Not now,” he said.

  “Yes, now,” I replied. I paused a minute while the world stopped pitching and rolling. I could hear the Beast breathing; I didn’t think he had been when I first entered the room. “Look,” I said. “Dawn.” Tendrils of pink were climbing above the forest, and a little hesitating light came through the window, and we could see each other’s faces clearly. The Beast was wearing golden velvet, I noticed, instead of the dark brown I had last seen.

  “I can’t sleep now,” I said. “It’s daylight. What I want is breakfast.” And I stood up, and walked to the window. As the light increased, a little of my strength returned. I leaned my elbows on the window sill and looked out across the gardens. They had never looked so beautiful to me before. The Beast joined me at the window. “It’s good to be back,” I said.

  “Were your family pleased with the news you brought?” he said.

  I nodded. “Yes. Grace won’t be good for anything now, till they have had proper news of him. But that’s all right too. They hope he’ll ride back with the man who’s carrying her and Father’s letters to him. Will you let me—sometimes—look in the glass again?” I added timidly.

  The Beast nodded. “Of course. You know, though, I feel a little sorry for the young minister.”

  I looked out the window again. I waved a hand, indicating vaguely the sweep of garden and meadow, and said, “You—this hasn’t suffered any lasting harm by my—er—delay, has it?”

  “No, Beauty, don’t worry,” he said.

  I hesitated. “What would have happened—if I hadn’t come?”

  “Happened? Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  I stared at him, not comprehending, as his answer hung between us in the morning air. “Nothing? But—” And I stopped, not wanting to mention, or remember, his dreadful stillness when I had first entered the room.

  “I was dying?” he said. “Yes. I would have died, and you and Greatheart would have returned to your family; arid in another two hundred years this castle would have been lost in a garden run wild, with the forest growing up to the dooryard, and birds nesting in the towers. And in two hundred years after that, even the legends would have left, and only the stones remained.”

  I took a deep breath, “This is what I have to tell you then,” I said, looking up at him. The Beast looked at me inquiringly. I looked down again, and said in a rush, to the grey stones of the window sill, “I love you, and I want to marry you.”

  Perhaps I fainted, but it wasn’t at all like the first time. The Beast disappeared, and then everything else did too, or perhaps it all happened at once. There was a wild explosion of light, as if the sun had burst; then, like a shock wave, there rose up a great din of what sounded like bells ringing, huge cathedral bells, and crowds shouting and cheering, horses neighing, even cannons firing. I huddled down where I stood and pressed my hands to my ears, but this helped not at all. The castle trembled underfoot as if the stones were applauding in their foundations; and then I could feel nothing under my feet at all, and I was buoyed up by light and sound. Then it all ceased as quickly as it had begun. I lowered my hands and opened my eyes cautiously. The gardens looked just the same; perhaps the sunlight was a bit brighter; but then it was morning, and the sun was rising. I turned around and looked into the room.

  The Beast was nowhere to be seen. A man stood beside me, dressed in golden velvet, as the Beast had been, with white lace at his throat and wrists. He had brown eyes, and curly brown hair streaked with grey. He was taller than I was, though not so tall as the Beast; and as I looked at him in surprise, he smiled at me, a little uncertainly it seemed. He was quite alarmingly handsome, and I blinked and felt foolish, “My Beast,” I said, and my voice sounded shrill. I felt like a scrubby schoolgirl beside this grand gentleman. “Where is he? I must go find him—” And I backed away from the window, still looking at my unexpected visitor.

  “Wait, Beauty,” the man said.

  I stopped. “Your voice,” I said. “I know your voice.”

  “I am the Beast,” he said. “I was laid under an enchantment to live as a dreadful Beast until some maiden should love me in spite of my ugliness, and promise to marry me.”

  I continued to stare bemusedly at him. My voice sounded weak and silly in my ears: “Your voice—I recognize it, but it sounds different.” I said inanely: “Is it really you? I mean—I—well, I find this rather—er—difficult....” I trailed off, and put my hands to my face, pinching my chin as if reassuring myself that I was awake; and heard the clink of bracelets failing back from my wrists.

  “Yes, I am really I,” he said gently; “but my voice is coming from a smaller—human—chest now.”

  “You’re the young man in the last picture,” I said suddenly.

  He smiled wryly. “Yes; but not so young now, I’m afraid. Even enchantments aren’t perfect protection against time. But then I don’t feel like a young man anymore.” He looked down at his hands. “It took me the first decade just to learn to walk like a man again.”

  “Who did this to you?” I said, and backed up against the window ledge, grateful for its support, as I had been grateful for the support of a balustrade on another first meeting months ago.

  He frowned. “It’s an old family curse of sorts. My forebears were, um, rather over pious, and overzealous in impressing their neighbors with their piety. After the first few generations of holier-than-thou the local magician got rather tired of them, and cursed them; but unfortunately their virtue was even as great as they made it out to be, and the curse wouldn’t stick. So, being a magician, he settled down to wait for their first erring step. My family laughed, which didn’t improve his temper any—and unfortunately for me, at last, that erring foot was mine.

  “You’ve probably noticed the carving around the front doors.” ! nodded. “That was I, two centuries ago.” He looked away, and when he looked back at me, his smile was strained. “I’m sorry I’m so old—I think it works out to about one year in ten—I’ve been waiting a long time. I can’t let you off now, you know. I hope you don’t mind very much.”

  “I can’t marry you,” I burst out, and the smile left his face as if it had been cut off, and his eyes were dark and sad. I blundered on: “Look at you. You should marry a queen or something, a duchess at least, not a dull drab little nothing like myself. ! haven’t anything—no dowry, not even a title to hide behind.”

  “Beauty—” he began.

  “And you needn’t consider yourself in my debt because I’ve undone your enchantment for you. You’ve”—I rushed on—“done a great deal for—for my family, and for me. I’ll never forget—my months here.”

  His expression had become quizzical as I was speaking. “Let’s leave aside my debt, ah, or responsibility for the moment. As I recall, we had a conversation along similar lines at the beginning of our acquaintance. You suffer from the oddest misapprehensions about your appearance.” He looked over his shoulder. “If I remember correctly, there should be a mirror that has reappeared just outside, in the hall. Come.” He held out his hand, and I reluctantly put mine in his, and heard the clink of bracelets again, and looked down. “Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “They’ve done it again. How—?” I was wearing the silver princess’s dress; the skirts drifted around me in a shining mist, and I wondered how I hadn’t noticed before that my straggling hair was clean again, and combed, and pinned to my head. I seemed to have had a bath while the foundations had danced under me, and my exhaustion had been washed away with the grime of travel. I felt the griffin necklace around my throat, and the high-heeled shoes on my feet.

  I tried to pull my hand free when I noticed the change, but his fingers closed around mine. “Come,” he repeated. I didn’t have much choice. I followed him unhappily out into the hall, and there, as he had said, was a mirror in a golden frame, big enough to hold a reflection of both of us as we stood side by side and looked into it.

  The girl in the mirror wasn’t I, I was sure of it, in spite of t
he fact that the man in golden velvet was holding my hand as he was holding the girl’s. She was tall—well, all right, I said to myself, I do remember that I’m tall enough now. Her hair was a pale coppery red, and her eyes, strangest of all, weren’t muddy hazel, but clear and amber, with flecks of green. And the dress did look lovely on her, in spite of the fact that she was blushing furiously—I felt as if I were blushing furiously too. I leaned closer, fascinated. No, there, it was I, after all:

  The quirk of the eyebrows was still there, the dark uneven arch that had always said that the eyes didn’t believe what they saw; but then since I had only seen them in mirrors, perhaps this was true. And I recognized the high wide cheekbones, bur my face had filled out around them; and the mouth was still higher on one side than the other, and the high side had a dimple.

  “Are you convinced?” said the man in the mirror.

  “Oh dear,” said the girl. “It’s magic, it’ll fade away. It’s not possible.”

  He put his hands on my bare shoulders and turned me to face him. “I should warn you, my darling, that we haven’t much time. Things all over the castle will be waking up, and discovering they exist again, and then coming to find me, and to meet their new mistress. There’s no magic left that can hurt you, nor any that remains that will fade away. Your family will be arriving soon—with Robbie—and if our minister wakes up in time and remembers where he left his Bible, we can have the wedding this afternoon. Double, if you like, with your sister.”

  I had a brief vision of my family riding over the meadows towards the castle. Behind them I noticed that the holly hedge was gone; the silver gates framed a broad white road that led through a park that had once been a dark enchanted forest. Hope rode the chestnut mare, Cider; Grace rode a horse only a few shades paler than her glorious hair. Ger’s and Robbie’s mounts were blood bays, with black legs and ears; brown Odysseus carried Father, and Melinda rode beside him on a cream-coloured mare, her rose-silk skirts failing like water over the mare’s white shoulders, her face as bright as my sisters’. My family was dressed in the rich things I had found in my saddle-bag: Father in white and the iridescent blue of aquamarines, Ger in red and grey and black, as fine as a lord, riding beside Hope in her green dress and sea-coloured emeralds. Grace was next, in gold brocade and rubies, and Robbie, in scarlet and green, rode close beside her, holding her hand, healthy and strong and happy again. I could still see the white in his hair, but now the vivid contrast suited him, lending his handsome face a wisdom and dignity beyond his years.

  Behind them hundreds of people walked the white road; more rode in carriages, and on horseback, splendid as the procession for a king’s coronation. The last of them were so far away that I could not distinguish them from the green leaves and the flowers, and the singing birds.

  Then the image faded as the man who stood beside me continued: “I love you, Beauty. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” I said, and he took me in his golden arms, and kissed me. When we parted, it was only to .a hand’s length, and we looked long at one another, smiling.

  He raised my hand to his lips, held it there for a moment. “Shall we go down now?” he said.

  I turned my head, listening to a purposeful stirring in the castle halls beneath us. Little tremors of sound and motion licked the threshold of the pilastered hall we stood in alone; but I thought my ear picked out an individual rustling it knew well. “I think I hear Lydia.”

  He turned his head also. “Very likely. I’m afraid you’ll find there are a good many Lydias about the castle now. I can recall a veritable army of housekeepers, each more enthusiastic than the last.” He paused. “You know about Lydia and Bessie, then?”

  I nodded. “I’ve been listening—rather a captive audience, you know—to their conversations for several months now. Since the night I fainted,” I said shyly. “You know. When I began to learn to see.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I know.” More briskly he added: “Then you’re a little prepared. They’ve been very good to me; they needn’t have stayed when the change came, but they chose to, for my sake—for the sake of what remained of my humanity. Although I can admit now that sometimes their common-sense attitude towards everything, including being enchanted, could be as much an irritation as a comfort. I daresay you know something of that.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, and dropped my eyes from his a moment. “I worried often about what it was I had to figure out, and about the last hope they couldn’t talk about.”

  “You understand now, don’t you?” he said, and raised my chin again with his ringer. “The terms of the magic were that you agree to marry the Beast. Not something that Bessie and Lydia, with their silver-polish and dust-under-the-rug consciences, could understand. I’m sorry.”

  I smiled. “I understand now. But it doesn’t matter and you needn’t apologize. They have been very kind to me too. Even if we did differ a little about suitable dresses.”

  He considered me a moment, a mischievous light creeping into his eyes, and said: “Was that the dress—that night you wouldn’t come out of your room?”

  I grinned and nodded, and we both laughed; and the last shadows fled away from the corners of the castle and flew out of the window like bats, never to return.

  He drew my hand through his arm; far below us in the bright, sunlit courtyard we heard a clatter of hoofs, and Grace’s laugh as she dismounted. Then I heard Melinda’s voice, and Father’s answering her. “A triple ceremony, I think?” said my lover.

  Ger said: “Where Greatheart is, Beauty cannot be far away.”

  I saw my horse standing, tall and proud and shining like the sky before a storm in winter, his mane riding his crest like thunderheads on the horizon. He was draped in crimson and gold, and a red rose was tucked under the crownpiece of his bridle. Beside him a black horse stood, like him enough that the two could have been brothers; his saddle was silver, and the trailing skirts sapphire blue; and a white rose gleamed like the moon between his black ears. Just as I saw the two grooms, dressed in green and white, standing at the horses’ heads, and several more assisting my family—and then more, striding out of the stable doors, dressed in their livery, with red and white roses at their breasts, going to assist the crowd of people collecting in the courtyard—the image faded once again.

  I turned back to the man at my side. “I don’t even know your name.”

  He smiled. “I’m afraid I no longer remember it. You will have to name me. Come; introduce me to your family. I am looking forward to meeting them.”

  “I am looking forward to their meeting you,’’ I said, and we left the hall that held the room where Beauty first met the Beast, and descended the stairs together, as thousands of candles in the crystal chandeliers blazed in greeting, till they rivaled the light of the sun. As we approached the great front hall, the doors swung open, and the sea of sound and scent and colour swept in and foamed around our feet. My family stood nearest the threshold, and they looked up with glad expectancy. The crowd caught sight of us, and everyone sent up a cheer; Greatheart and his brother neighed and stamped, and above it all rang the wild music of bells and pipes and horns.