I remembered little of what immediately followed. When she left my chamber, there was utter stillness, as if the world had stopped. My sense of hearing, already heightened due to my beastly form, seemed to become so sensitive that the beating of my own heart was a roar in my ears. The silence was unbearably loud, so full in its nothingness that I felt it would drive me mad. Though my heart continued to beat, though I continued to draw breath, I seemed incapable of motion. I was stone, incapable of feeling. All thoughts fled from my mind. I simply existed. I stared into the nothingness, and I existed.
Perhaps I should have immediately gone to the pool, to ensure that wherever Mira went, she made it there safely. I did not need to look to know she had left. It was as if all life, all color, all sound and scent and sensation had drained from the castle. I realized that this was, in fact, the case. The lifelessness of the castle was not something new; it had been lifeless all along. It had simply been made vibrant by her presence, and bled of all wonder the moment she left it.
My ceasing to exist seemed the only logical ending to her going, and so I sat, expecting it to happen. It did not. When I did regain some sensibility, I had no idea of how much time had passed. It was night, but that meant nothing. It could have been mere hours after she had left. It could have been days. I was not much longer for this world, but I was not granted the mercy of it ending when she left. Or had I experienced it? I felt no hunger, no thirst, no cold, and no sorrow. I felt nothing at all. Surely, I had ceased to exist.
However, this reprieve did not last for long. Sensation returned. Basic needs had to be fulfilled--or had to be ignored. Ignoring them caused pain, discomfort, but, as there seemed to be no reason to do anything else, I ignored them. Hunger clawed at me and my throat was as dry as dust, but it was not worth the effort to sate either my hunger or my thirst.
As my mind began to work again, these pains become secondary. The deep, dark, piercing pain of Mira's rejection began to suffuse every fiber of my body, making my thirst and hunger seem like scratches to a man who had been slashed open with a sword, minor annoyances that were hardly worth thought to one in such excruciating pain. I had thought her harsh words had cut me to the bone, but they had been nothing compared with her flight at my confession.
Oh, the unkindness of those words! I did not believe I had elevated Mira upon a pillar so lofty as to make her appear without flaws. They were an essential part of her character, and I loved her for them just as much as I loved her for her many perfections, but I had never imagined she could be so cruel. She had always seemed such a kind, loving person. It was not that I felt that I did not deserve for her to say them to me. Rather, what had truly shocked me was that she had said them because she had wished to wound me. I had seen the intent in her eyes, had heard it in her voice. I was intimately acquainted with that intent, having experienced its allure countless times myself. Mira had wanted to cause me pain, and she had succeeded most spectacularly.
This truly gave me pause. So that was what it was like to be on the receiving end of another's cruelty. I hated the sensation. It made me feel small, insignificant, dirty. I thought of all the people I had treated thus, thought of all the occasions upon which I had turned my nose up at someone in need of my assistance, and I was mortified, more ashamed than I had ever before been.
But what good were these lessons? I had learned them, but learned them in vain. The enchantress had wished me to see my own cruelty, and I had seen it. She had wished me to learn to love someone, to feel something unselfish, and I had. There had been no deception on her part; she had told me that I would need to earn love in return in order to break the spell, but this did not lessen the pain of the futility of my efforts.
I had deceived myself. Even the hundreds of years I had spent in my beastly form had not been enough to help me see that I could not break the spell as easily as I had thought. All my life, I had been given every trivial thing I had ever wanted. But now, now when I wanted something infinitely more precious, I could not have it.
Suddenly, through the fog of time, through my own determination to forget, I remembered something that had happened to me as a small boy. It was a rare occasion upon which I was alone with my father and had decided to indulge my curiosity about my mother.
"Father, what was mother like?" I asked. Gingerly, I edged closer to him.
Father was not a man for caresses or praise but, stupidly, I always hoped that each time I spoke to him would prove to be the exception. I was very good at hiding myself, and whenever I could slip away from my nursemaids, I would watch the knights training. It was always fascinating to me to see how they interacted with their sons, boys only slightly older than me who served as squires. Their fathers were exacting task masters, but whenever a boy did something well, he was sure to earn a smile and a word of praise from his father. Looking at the boy's face as he lapped up his father's encouragement, I felt transported, as if I was experiencing the pleasure along with him.
This was as close to actually experiencing this pleasure as I ever came. When I was older, I came to understand that my father was the sort of man who believed that praise was for the weak. He believed that if you wished to get the best out of someone, you did so by belittling them and criticizing their every move, so that they would be determined to do better. Father was not truly a despot, but no one dared cross him for they knew his punishment was even harsher and swifter than his criticism.
"Your mother was born of a very old, very distinguished bloodline," Father began. I could feel my eyes glaze over as he droned on. He sounded as if he were describing his prized destrier.
"Aye, but what was she like?" I asked, once he had finally ceased rattling off the merits of mother's ancestry.
"Like?" he asked, in a tone that suggested he thought me perhaps a bit slow.
"Aye. Did she like music? Was she fond of plays?" I was eager for his answer, hungrily awaiting the small details that might help me color in the blank in my mind that was my mother.
"I hardly know," my father said in a severe tone. "She was high born, obedient, and she did her duty by her lord. That is all that is worth knowing about her." With those words, he called out for my nursemaids and I was hustled away from him.
His words had made me go cold and I must have looked quite pale indeed, for I heard one of the nursemaids whisper to the other, "His Highness looks peaked. Mayhap we ought to ask for Doctor Barnes. If we do not and His Highness should fall ill…"
The other nursemaid shot her a quelling glance, aware that I could hear what had been said. She need not have bothered, for I was aware of the words only as most people are aware of the sounds of insects singing in the night. My mind was far too occupied with other thoughts for me to pay them any mind. I kept hearing my father's words ringing in my head, over and over. It was as if my mother had been little more than a figure made of straw.
I knew my father was not entirely indifferent about her. Indeed, he had spoken his approval of her when he had droned on and on about her bloodlines and her obedience. What disturbed me was how he had summed her up. She could have been a faithful hound, for all the depth he had given her. I could not help but wonder if, perhaps, he was more distraught whenever one of his purebred bitches died than he was when my mother died. The dogs at least gave him pleasure, as they accompanied him on one of his favorite pursuits: hunting. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to have given him little pleasure at all.
Now, centuries later, I sat in my chamber and remembered this encounter with my father. I remembered it so vividly because I had wondered what it would be like to die and have my existence summed up that succinctly. It made my mother's life insignificant. The farmers continued to work their fields, our enemies continued to make war, and my father continued to slay as many deer as he could. She had not even left behind a son who could honor her memory, for I had never had the chance to know her. The only evidence of her ever having existed was the fact that I existed.
Beams of weak light began to appear in the c
hamber, and I vaguely realized that another night had passed. At least my mother had me thinking of her, all these years later. I may not have known anything about her, but there I was, acknowledging that she had lived. Who would acknowledge that I had? It was true that the enchantress had cast her spell so that the villagers would forget they had been governed by me as their king, but, even so, there was no one on whom I had made any sort of impression. Perhaps Mira might remember me, many years down the road when she was an old woman tucking her grandchildren into their beds, an unwelcome memory causing her to shudder and thank her lucky stars that she had escaped me.
Or perhaps not. She had said her piece and then she had left. It was more likely that she would hurry to return to her old life, hurry to block this span of time from her memories. This thought stung like salt being poured into my open wounds, but I also knew that I could not blame her. Had I been her, I too would have wanted to forget everything about the beast.
I did not want to dwell on what might have been. I did not want to indulge myself in fantasies, but I was powerless to stop the flow of my thoughts. The pain was abated by these fantasies though, when they ended, the pain returned and was keener, deeper. Despite this, my afflicted mind insisted on building elaborate dreams of a life with Mira that had never happened and would never happen. I imagined her confessing her love for me, telling me that she never wanted to be without me, just as I never wanted to be without her. I tried to imagine the return to human form these words would spur, but I could no longer remember how I had looked.
I pushed this realization aside, intent on picturing the look on Mira's face when she witnessed my transformation. Though she had fallen in love with the beast, she would be even more deeply in love with the man. She would be unable to believe her good fortune, just as I would be unable to believe mine. It filled me with awe to imagine discovering that Mira loved me as desperately as I loved her.
The fantasies became progressively more colorful and progressively more unrealistic. It struck me as so strange that my heart's desire now consisted of a family, a wife, children. These were things I had never before wished for in my life. Even though I knew it was my duty as king to produce an heir, I had refused to seriously entertain thoughts of marriage. Now, I not only wanted these things, I wanted them so desperately the bitter realization that I would never have them left a metallic taste in my mouth.
As the taste grew stronger, I gradually came to my senses and realized that the metallic flavor was due to the blood that was in my mouth, blood coming from my lip. I had bitten it so hard in an effort to control my emotions that I had drawn blood without realizing it. Finally, I broke. I wept and wept as if I would never stop.
There were many reasons to weep. I wept for shame, for having kept Mira against her will, for having been cruel to her father, for denying her the comfort of seeing him in the pool. I wept for the unfortunates of my kingdom, who had led lives of misery because I could not, would not be bothered to care. I wept for my lost mother, a woman I had never known and would never have the chance to know. How different might my life have been had I known the kindness, the warmth, the comfort of a mother's love?
I was lost, so very lost. Never before Mira had there been direction in my life, and I had not felt the lack of it. Once she had come into my world, I had gradually begun to find a purpose, a reason for living rather than merely existing. Now that she was gone, I felt horribly adrift. My world had revolved around her for a comparatively short amount of time when considered against the length of my life and, yet, I could scarcely remember what life had been like before her. I did not want to know what life was now to be like without her. Though I had precious little time, I thought of the hours and days remaining to me as ravenous wolves, mouths widely agape in order to swallow me whole.
More time passed. Servants came and went, bringing me food and water. I must have partaken of at least some sort of sustenance, for I continued to linger. It seemed strange to me that I was caught in such lassitude. I would have thought I would be angrier than I had ever been, that I would have descended into the depths of a rage so black it would kill me. There was no rage, though. There was only pain; sharp, unendurable pain without cessation.
Chapter 38
Homecoming
When I opened my eyes and found myself in my bed at home, my father seated in a chair beside me, I thought I was dreaming. Papa stared straight ahead, looking at nothing, and when I moved, causing the bedclothes to rustle, his head turned sharply toward me and he began to weep in great, heaving sobs.
"Mira, oh Mira, I can scarce believe it is you!" he cried, falling to his knees beside the bed and lowering his head onto my coverlet. His fingers scrabbled for my hand, seizing it and holding it in a vise-like grip.
"Papa?" I asked, still wondering if I was dreaming.
"Yes, my darling girl. You're home. You're safe now." He took my hand between his and pressed a kiss to it.
"But how did I…" I began. I wanted to sit up, but I felt so horribly weak and achy that I could not manage more than a slight movement. My lips felt parched and my head throbbed.
"I found you just beyond the edge of the forest," my father said quietly. He seemed to sense my thirst, for he took a pitcher from the table next to my bed and poured some water into an earthenware mug. Cradling my head gently, he moved me into a semi-reclining position and tipped the mug to my lips, helping me to drink as if I were a baby. When I had drunk my fill, Papa gently lowered me back down upon the bed.
"The forest," I said, and, just like that, everything returned to me. I remembered the conversation I had with Lysander, remembered my flight into the forest. I did not remember almost making it to the forest's edge but, by that time, I must have been delirious with exhaustion.
"You were ill, sweetheart, babbling nonsense. You…you spoke of…" His voice trailed off and I could see the strain on his face.
"The beast?" I asked, hearing the rasp in my voice for the first time.
"Yes," Papa said quietly, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
I turned my head away from him, blinking back tears. "But what…what did I…"
"You did not know what you were saying." Papa stroked my hair gently. "You were burning with fever."
"Does anyone know about…" Suffused with panic, I attempted to sit up, and Papa gently laid a quelling hand on my shoulder.
"No one else knows about the beast. We told everyone else that you had gone to visit a long-lost aunt. I think people found it strange, but they did not question." Papa's hand moved away from my hair and I turned once more to look at him. He twisted his hands in his lap, staring at them as if he had never before seen them. "It was your sisters' idea. I wanted to rescue you from that horrible monster. I set out immediately, trying to find you, but I rode for hours and never arrived at the castle, even though I swore I followed the route that led me there the first time. Finally, the light failed and I returned here. I wanted to go on, but I knew the search would be easier by daylight. I set out at dawn the next morning, and it was as if I rode in a circle, no matter the direction I took. Each time, I found myself back at the edge of the forest, near our cottage."
There was a sick knot in my stomach because I was relieved that Papa had not discerned the true source of my panic, but I ignored it and thought about what Papa had said. It had seemed strange to me that no one had ever before stumbled upon the beast's castle. However, I knew there was magic there, and I wondered if it protected Lysander from the eyes of the world. If that were so, why was my father able to find his castle? Why had I been able to find my way home?
"I kept trying, for days. I would have continued, but I was not fit to do so. Your sisters had to convince me to keep silent, as I wanted to raise the villagers. They said everyone would think I was mad if I told them tales about a beast and a hidden castle in the forest." The shame in his voice was sharply evident, and it made my heart ache.
"They were right," I said. I moved my hand to take one
of his, and it cost me much more effort than the slight gesture merited. It was incredible, that I would agree with my sisters but, in this instance, I did. I could only imagine what the people of Everforest would have thought had my father tried to convince them of the existence of Lysander. How could anyone believe a tale so incredible unless they had actually seen the beast for themselves?
"I felt…" Papa began, his voice trembling so violently that he fell silent for a moment, visibly steadying himself. "I felt that I had failed you, my own child. I cannot tell you how I felt when I awoke and found that you had left in my stead. Mira, you should not have done so. I feared that the beast would do all manner of terrible things to you. Not a single night went by during which I managed to sleep, for I was plagued by terrible nightmares."
"Papa, please," I begged. My exhaustion made it difficult to speak, but I knew I had to set his mind at ease. "Lysander was…he was unpleasant, at first. But he never harmed me. And after I had been in his castle for some time, he became…kinder."
"But that horrible monster! He…Lysander… Did you call him Lysander?" Papa's tone conveyed his confusion.
I felt my color rise. "I…yes. Papa, it is very difficult…and I am so tired…"
"Sleep, child," he said, seeming to forget, instantly, that I had named the beast. "We shall talk more when you are stronger."
The words had barely left his mouth before I drifted off again, but there was little rest for me. Lysander haunted my dreams. When I was awake, I often found myself staring at nothing at all, my mind wandering idly. Papa must have noticed, but he said nothing. My sisters were not so timid.
"So you are back," Thomasina said, when they finally troubled themselves to come for a visit.
"It is good to see you too, Thomasina," I said, fixing her with a steady gaze. Too long had I allowed my sisters to abuse me. That would no longer be the case.
"Only be sure not to say anything to anyone about this…this beast," Rowena added, glancing over at our sister.
The Eye of the Beholder (2012) Page 28