Beast (20 page)

The rest of the pages tell of her fears of me, separated
by descriptions of random events. Memories stirred by our evening readings. Escapades of her childhood. I grew up an only child, adored by my parents and adoring them. She grew up plagued by rogue brothers and silly sisters — all of whom she writes about with a fondness that surprises me at first, then irritates.

I close the book and walk outside. On the ground by the front door lies a hindquarter of the wolf. Belle placed it there for my breakfast, unaware that the fawn I ate yesterday will satisfy me for days.

Chou Chou trots beside Belle as they come toward me from the dovecote, a pile of raspberries from the canes surrounding the cote in the scoop of Belle's skirt. I look at Chou Chou's limp, the limp I caused, and my lips curl under. In this moment I cannot bear Belle's solid goodwill. I want to run.

Belle walks past. She glances at me quickly, almost shyly. Her cheeks darken. She pours the berries onto the table. Then she goes to the garden and digs up a leek. She washes it in the moat and carries it inside.

I perform the
wudhu
and pray long. At last I go inside and watch Belle stirring a small pot of soup.

I know this woman now. Or much of her.

The small movements of her back tell me she feels known, and she is flustered by that feeling.

All comfort departs.

She ladles out a bowlful, puts it on the table, and sits. Then she looks at me. And waits.

I have never before stayed there during her meals. I don't want to stay now. But I have to.

Belle blinks, then picks up her spoon. The small silver bowl of the spoon dips into the soup, comes directly to her mouth. She hesitates, but doesn't look at me. I hear her heart — it stops. Then she sips. Over and over. Not a drop spills. This is how a human eats. This is how I once ate.

Belle is human. I am lion. Belle is human. I am lion. Belle is human. I am lion.

The chant rolls in my head.

She hums.

The chant dissipates.

Belle hums as she eats.

Like a lioness.

Is this the work of the
pari,
who distorts every moment, makes every moment a source of temptation?

Belle and I mustn't wait for evening. We must read now. Immediately. We must be brought to the humanity of Aeneas.

I go to the library and fetch the book. I put it on the table beside Belle.

She carries the book outside and sits with her back against the trunk of a fig tree. I lie beside her. It's a hot day, but the ground is cool in the shade of the fig.

Chou Chou's head pops up from a hole in the ground. Dirt covers his snout; he's been digging a tunnel. He jumps out and runs at us, leaping across Belle's frock, tracking dirt everywhere. She shoos him off.

He sees a mole in the grass and races away.

Belle laughs. Then she opens the
Aeneid
and begins the fourth book.

At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura

volnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni.

My ears ring as if someone has beaten them. I listen to the story of Queen Dido, who falls in love with Aeneas, in love to the point of distraction. I know that this book will end badly. How can the poet Virgil do this—take us from the raging thirst of battle, to the calm of acceptance, to this twisted misery?

I get to my feet and pace.

Belle looks up, surprised. When our eyes meet, she blushes and looks away. She rips a fig leaf from the tree and uses it to mark our place in the book.

I circle her, wide at first, but now closer, tighter.

“What is it, Mon Ami? What are you telling me?”

I hear her breath quicken as I circle closer.

“Of course,” she says softly. “Of course that's the answer. Let's try.” She puts the book on the ground
and grabs hold of my mane with one hand.

I stop moving. For a moment, my eyes go blind with excitement.

She throws a leg across me and, in an instant, she straddles my back.

Belle rides me. The beauty rides the beast.

I walk the path through the brambles, the path she cut yesterday. Then I trot. She holds fast with both hands.

I run.

B
elle comes downstairs in the frock she wore when she first came here. She goes into the library.

I watch her from the doorway, impatient. This morning I caught her a fat rabbit. It's her favorite meat. I stole lemons from a nearby orchard, and I broke off a branch of rosemary from a hedge near the road. These things lie on the table like a row of gifts. I want her to see them. I want to watch the happy smile come to her face. I want her to know that I give her gifts, while her family gave her nothing.

Instead, she's in the library. I can't bear to listen to Dido's story now. I refuse to follow Belle into the library.

But Belle doesn't pick up the
Aeneid.
She sits at the desk, smooths a piece of parchment in front of her, and writes.

A note for me? But she can always just talk to me. I wait, curious.

She folds the parchment. Then she takes another piece of parchment, a bit larger, and folds an envelope, slipping the first parchment inside it. She addresses the outside.

Belle has written a letter.

To whom?

I walk away quickly and quietly, outside and around to the window, where I can watch everything she does without risk of being seen.

She picks up the metal stamp and walks into the main room. She goes to the fireplace, lights a candle, drips a bit of wax on the envelope to close it, and presses that stamp into the seal.

Finally her eyes go to the table. She laughs in delight and skins the hare expertly. She calls to Chou Chou, but the little fox has been outside for hours, sleeping in his newly dug den. He's not hungry. I watched him eat a rat that came up from the moat this dawn. The rat was sluggish and old, or Chou Chou never could have caught it. But the fox didn't seem to know that. He swung his catch by the tail and trotted in his uneven gait around me, parading his victory.

Belle calls for me now.

I crouch, to be sure she cannot see me. She stops calling. I slowly stand tall again and watch her.

She skewers the hare whole and leans the skewer against the wall of the fireplace, as far as possible from the hottest part of the fire. I understand: This way, the rabbit will roast slowly. It will be ready by afternoon. Belle must have plans for the morning. Plans that involve that letter.

Belle picks up the silver letter opener, which has been lying on the table since I first brought it to her. She comes outside and finds me. “Ah, here you are at last.” She smiles. “Shall we go?” She climbs onto my back.

So this is what I've been reduced to — her means of transportation. No better than a horse.

Or a camel.

The memory of Jumail, the camel I wrongly sacrificed, comes like a bolt of lightning. I flinch.

But the weight of woman on my back overcomes thought. The heat of her legs intoxicates me. I take her out through the woods, across the meadow. We skirt around farmlands, loping easily. At the last stand of woods before town, I stop.

Belle dismounts in tacit agreement. “Do you need me to bring back anything from town?”

Only you, I think.

Belle looks at me a moment more. Then she walks to the road and into town.

I wait, my head full of questions I despise myself for having.

The sun climbs to its zenith. Still, I wait, drifting in and out of sleep. In midafternoon, Belle reappears, thanks be to the Merciful One. She carries a large cloth sack over her shoulder.

I get to my feet.

Belle smiles and climbs on my back.

But I'm thirsty after waiting so long. I stop at a stream.

Belle gets off and looks at me questioningly.

I have never lapped water in her presence. But now that she's seen me with blood on my muzzle, how can anything be worse? I splay my front legs and lower my head.

I can't. I can't drink. I don't want her to see me this way. I look at her.

Belle quickly squats and cups her hands. She fills them with water and puts her face in, drinking noisily. On purpose? Her eyes are closed.

I lap the water.

When I finish, I look at her again.

Belle finally peeks over the edge of her hands and smiles. Then she laughs. She fills her hands again and . . .

SPLASH.

Belle has tossed the water in my face.

I shake my head in surprise.

She watches me, mouth open, breathless. When I
do nothing, she splashes me again and laughs. And again.

I slap my paw in the water and splash her back.

All at once there is water everywhere. A war of splashing and splashing.

Water and woman everywhere. Woman's laughter, light as bells. Woman's hair, hanging in long, silky strands. Woman's hands gleaming in sunlight. Woman's body, warm under clinging wet cloth.

Woman woman woman.

I leap, and knock her to the ground.

Belle lets out a scream.

But I have already stopped, shocked at myself.

She gets to her feet, clutches her arms across her chest, and stands panting, staring at me.

I shake off, and walk away.

Belle runs after me. “Please, Mon Ami. Please.”

I stop and look over my shoulder at her. What does this woman, who plays like a child, understand of the world?

But Belle's face is not childlike now. Her eyes hold misery. “I should have known better. It was my fault.”

I turn to her in hope. Has she guessed at who I am?

“I'm sorry,” says Belle. She takes a step forward. “I know you need my help. I'm so sorry.”

I need no one's help. I am Prince Orasmyn. I roar.

Belle straightens at the noise. She clasps one hand in the other. But she doesn't step back.

My roar finally dies from the air.

How foolish to have made such a racket so close to town.

Belle wipes the water from her face. She lifts her sack with a trembling hand. She remounts without a word. We pick our way carefully through the farmland.

Once at home, she immediately assumes a business air. She lays out the treasures from her sack, one by one. Oil for the lamp and olive oil for cooking. But that's not all. No, she has a melon and corn and spices. She has hazelnuts and medlars and cherries. She has olives and bacon and cheese and walnuts. As she puts each thing on the table, she announces it and checks my face for reaction.

She is still shaken by our encounter at the stream, yet she cannot hold back the rising glee she feels at the treasures on the table. It creeps into her voice, stronger with each announcement. The steadfast innocence of Belle would condemn the best of men. And I am far from the best.

She stops, one hand still in the sack. She looks at me and smiles, her lips parted. Slowly she takes out a bottle of red wine. She pulls out the cork and holds it under my nose. “For you,” she announces triumphantly. “I will put some in the best bowl.”

The smell of the alcohol assails me. I step back and blink.

Belle looks confused. “You don't like it? It's the same wine that I found in the larder, but not rancid.”

Belle thinks I'm responsible for everything here. She knows I came from far away, but somehow she hasn't realized this is not my castle. When she reads from the
Aeneid,
she doesn't know the story is mine, as well. The loss of my homeland, of my parents, of my very body—Belle knows nothing of these.

I am alone, but for the Merciful One. I go outside to the moat.

Belle comes alongside me, her face dismayed.

I want to pray.

But Belle stays with me.

Well, I don't care. She can't disturb me; she is totally unrelated to me. I perform the
wudhu
and pray.

When I rise from the first
rakat,
Belle whispers, “Do you pray to your god?”

I scratch in the dirt, “Only one God.”

“Yes, you're right. There is only one God.” Belle goes to the moat and washes her face and hands. She wets a part down the center of her hair. She washes the tops of her feet. She bends over awkwardly.
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,”
she chants, saying the same prayer her father said the night he came to my castle. Then she stands straight
and bends again. She does this three times, each time with a prayer.

I am amazed that she knows my prayer ritual so well. I stare.

“I watch you from my window every morning,” she says simply.

I realize her bending from the hip in this angular way is her attempt at mimicking the strange way I let myself hang from my shoulder bones when I pray. I crouch now and put my chin on the ground.

Belle studies me. Then she kneels and folds herself down to the ground in a deep bow.

Belle is smart. Smart and brave and good.

“I interrupted you,” she says. “Would you like to finish?” She comes very close and leans toward me. “Will you allow me to pray with you?”

And so we pray together, my head hanging low from my shoulder bones, Belle's face to the dirt in a proper
rakat.

For the next two weeks we enjoy the end of summer, the shortening of the days. We begin the day with Belle writing in her diary, as she calls it, while I hunt. Then she bustles off. She has some sort of project out in the clearing that she won't let me see. She covers it with pine branches when she's not working on it. When I come near, she shoos me away with a laugh. I am curious. But I can wait. It feels good to know that she'll let me in on the secret when she's ready.

But that's not all Belle's busy with. She makes cakes of walnuts and cherries. She gives them dry to Chou Chou, but she drenches mine in honey. She has noticed my fondness for it. I devour these cakes. And Belle never offers me wine again, nor do I smell it on her breath.

We finish the fourth book of the
Aeneid
and start the fifth, reading for less time now, because every night before Belle goes to bed, we pray together, doing our versions of the
rakat
side by side.