Rose Daughter (19 page)

Beauty thought of the salamander’s gift to her—and of her
first sight of the Beast,
Can you not hear to look at me?
he had said.
Most sorcerers enjoyed making the sort of first impression that would give them
the upper hand in any dealings to come; but that first sight had almost... and
the Beast had taken no advantage as he certainly .. . And then Beauty
remembered the story of a sorcerer who looked like the Phoenix, and who had
married a human princess because her hair, he said, was the colour of the fire
of his birth.

I am no princess, she said to herself.

She turned away from the familiar end of the palace
courtyard and began to walk towards the end she could not see. She went on a
long way, a very long way, and the way disconcertingly seemed to adjust itself
somehow as she walked, like the corridor from the chamber of the star to the
door into the courtyard. The sense of mortar and stone flu-idly running into
and out of each other, like a cat standing up and stretching or curling up into
a cat cushion, was much more unsettling out of doors in sunlight.

She glanced to her right; if the palace was adjusting, then
so must be her darling glasshouse. She was sure it was not this big from the
inside—unless the other end of the palace was horseshoe-shaped, and she was
going dear round it and would eventually find herself at the opposite corner of
the one square-ended wall that held her balcony. Bui the glasshouse itself had
comers—at least, from the inside—and she had not passed any, and she was not
willing to suppose that her glasshouse was anything other than what she
saw—that it would pretend to be a panther when it was a salamander.

She stopped once and looked up, reassuring herself that the
sky, at least, even here, looked as it had from her garden at Rose Cottage or
from the city. But how was she to know that? The sky was blue, or it was grey,
and it was full of clouds, or it was not, and the walls of the palace blocked
too much of it. There was no horizon; it was like standing in the bottom of an
immense well. Or of a trap. The sky was too far away to be of much comfort.

Once she paused because her eye was caught by some variation
in the wall of the palace, a break in the tall ranks of windows. She peered at
the gap, unsure of what she saw as she would be of shapes found in clouds or
fish swimming in a dappled pond; were they there or not? But she held her
ground and stared and at last could say: Here was an archway, but barred by
solid gates, fitting so perfectly into both the wall itself and the plain
forma! architecture of the rest of the facade that they were difficult to see
unless searched for—and she would not have searched had she not wondered (and
been grateful for the distraction) at a stretch of wall that had gone on too
long without a window in it.

She stepped up close and laid her hand on the crack between
the left-hand door and the wall; closing her eyes, she could barely find it
with her fingertips and could sense no difference between the texture of the
wall and that of the door. Opening her eyes, she was redazzled by the surface
shimmer and lost both doors entirely; it was not till she stepped back and
looked again that she could pick out the thin line of the arch, silver as fish
scales.

It was all so silent! There was the scuff of her shoes in
the line gravel, and the occasional whisper of wind, and that was all. Not even
any birds sang. But what was there for birds here, in this bleak stone
wasteland?

She went on; how long she did not know. She began to feel
tired and discouraged and, without meaning to, swerved in her course till she
could reach out and touch the glasshouse. She trailed her fingers idly over the
width of one pane, bumped over the tiny ridge of its connecting frame, onto
another pane. . . . But then, suddenly, there was a corner of the courtyard
after all, and another wall running at right angles lo it, and her glasshouse
produced a corner of its own to keep paralle! pace with ii. And very soon after
she turned the corner, she found a great dark tunnel running through the
palace, like a carriage-way, though she saw nothing to suggest the presence of
stables, and the curve of its arch was much the same shape as the nearly
invisible doors she had found in the last wall.

She walked through the tunnel, shivering a little, for it
was surprisingly cold in its shadow, and the tunnel was surprisingly long. I
should stop being surprised by things being very long, she said to herself.
When she came out the other side at last, she found herself in a wild wood and
halted in astonishment. She took a few cautious steps forward and then whirled
to look back through the carriage-way and was reassured by the glint of the
glasshouse she could see on the far side.

She remembered her glimpses of something that might have
been wild wood at the edges of the formal gardens fronting the palace, but such
wilderness still seemed so unlikely a neighbour for a palace. But then, she
reminded herself, this was a sorcerer’s palace, and sorcerers could surround
their palaces with anything they liked. There was a story of one, known lo
dislike visitors, who had surrounded his with the end of the world. (Whether it
was the real end or not was moot; you disappeared into it just the same.)

But the only magic she knew that still connected her to Rose
Cottage and her family was on the other side of the dark carriage-way. She did
not want to wander into any wild woods and not be able to find her way back.

But here was a splendid site for a bonfire.

The old branches and other bits and pieces had been tidily swept
together and were waiting for her—just inside the carriage tunnel, just within
the edge of its shadow, at the mouth that led to the wild wood. Beauty shivered
again, thinking that the magic ended there for certain, or that if this wood
was magic too, then it belonged to some other sorcerer than the one who ruled
the Beast’s palace. She would much rather that it was merely a wild wood and
not magic at all, but this was not something she was likely to leam—at least
not until it was too late, when she found herself dangling from the roc’s claws
or cornered by the wild boar, and even then who was to say the wild boar wasn’t
a familiar in disguise? Oh dear.

She dragged the branches clear of the tunnel and into the middle
of the ragged little clearing among the trees, and then she muttered, “Knife,
candle, tinder-box, besom,” and went back to an especially deep shadow near the
far end of the tunnel, where she might not have seen them till she was looking
for them. She swept her bonfire into a rough hummock, and while it took a
little while for the candle flame to catch the old leaves and twig shreds she’d
made with her knife, the branches were all dry and brown-hearted and burned
very satisfactorily once they were going.

Beauty stood and watched for a little time, waving away
sparks and wiping smuts out of her eyelashes, turning occasionally to look
again at the winking glasshouse, to make sure it was there, and sweeping the
edges towards the centre of the fire again as it tumbled apart. One did not
leave a bonfire till one was sure of its burning down quietly, even in a wild
wood—perhaps especially in a wild wood.

She went back to the glasshouse, walking near it down the
length of the palace wing, reaching out to touch it occasionally—it was a much
shorter journey on the return, she was sure; she was almost sure—and tidied up,
or pretended to tidy up, since most of it had been done for her already,
“Tomorrow, please, may I have a small rake that I can use among the rosebushes
and a bag or a basket to collect leaves in? And if you would be kind enough to
leave the besom somewhere I can find it again.”

She addressed the water-butt for lack of a better choice and
a dislike for looking up. She tended to feel that magic must
descend,
and
she did not want to see it happening. Furthermore, the water-butt was so
straightforward a thing to find in a glasshouse. And almost as comforting as a
cat in an immense shadowy dining-hall.

By the time she went back to her room, twilight was falling
again. There was the tall rose-enamelled bath waiting for her, its water
steaming, drawn up by the fireplace. The sapphire towels had been replaced by
amethyst ones. She shook them out very carefully so as not to drop the amethyst
necklace, ring, and earrings in the bath. She took off her clothes thankfully
and stepped into the water; it was perfumed slightly with roses. But as she sat
down, and her arms touched the water, she hissed in sudden pain, for they were
covered with thorn scratches. A few thorns had stabbed through her skirt and
heavy stockings, and her legs throbbed in short, fiery lines, but the hot water
quickly soothed them; her arms were so sore it took her several minutes to slip
them under water.

When she stepped out of the bath again, she patted her poor
arms very tenderly with the towels and found that the lavender-blue dress laid
on the bed for her tonight had slashed sleeves, the material meeting only at
the shoulders and wrists and belling out between in a great silken wave. “Thank
you,” she said aloud. “How glad I am this is not the grand dinner-party this
dress is suited to. however; a rose-gardener’s battle scars might be embarrassing
to explain.”

It was nearly full dark now. She had closed the balcony
doors while she had her bath; now she opened them again and stood looking out.
The headachy glitter of the stone palace and courtyard were quieted by
darkness; she surprised herself by drawing a deep breath and feeling at peace,
One hand crept to the breast of her dress, where the embroidered heart lay
hidden beneath silk and amethysts.

She turned back into her rooms again, leaving the doors
wide, and went into the next room, where the four seasons tapestries hung, and
lifted a corner of the right-hand summer one and felt for a door frame. She had
not wanted to light any candles, and in this inner room there was very little
daylight left, merely shadows of varying degrees
of
blackness. (She had
blown out the candles that stood round the bath and the washsland, muttering
Stay,
as one might to a well-meaning but slightly larky dog.) She found the door
edge, and ran her hand down till she found a little concavity in the wall, and
pressed it, and the lock uttered a muffled
clink,
and the door slid open
an inch.

She curled her ringers round it and pulled, calling softly,
“Bat! Bat! Are you there? It is nighttime again, and if you fly straight out
from my halcony windows, you will soon come to a wild wood which I think should
suit you very well.”

She heard nothing, but felt a soft puff of air and, between
blink and btink, thought she saw a small moving shadow. She turned round to
follow it, hoping to see a little dark body fly out the balcony, but saw
nothing, and tried not to feel sad. “It was only a little bat, and 1 meant to
set it free,” but it did not work; she was sad, and her sense of peace was
gone, and she was lonely again.

But then something caught the corner of her eye, out beyond
the balcony, some small moving shape darker than the falling night, but it was
too quick for her, and by the time she thought she saw it it had vanished
again. But then the flicker of darkness reappeared, curving round the corner of
the balcony doors and flying straight at her. She was too astonished to duck,
even had she had time to tell her muscles to do so, and the soft puff of air
was not air only—she was quite sure—but the tiniest brush of soft fur against
her cheek.

The shadow raced back out through the doors but remained
near the balcony for a moment, bobbing and zigzagging, as if making sure that
her slow, ill-adapted eyes could see it, and then shot away, and she did not
see it again. She closed the doors slowly, smiling, and went down to dinner.

k5he went gaily through Lhe door from her rooms into the
chamber of the star, but her eye betrayed her there, rushing into a count round
the circumference before she could cancel the impulse. There were twelve doors.

Having counted once, she courted again, and a third lime,
counterclockwise for a change, beginning each count with the door to her rooms
where she still stood, and there were always twelve doors. And, while she did
not want to notice, she also noticed that the shape of the star-points
themselves had altered, and the colours of the enamelling, and her memory told
her, although she tried not to listen, that this was not the first time her eye
had marked this inconstancy. A little of her gaiety drained away from her, and
she went pensively through the door that opened for her, not quite opposite her
rooms’ door.

She had not seen the Beast all day. If she was again to
dress for dinner, she must be about to see him now. She put out of her mind the
dreadful question he had asked her at the end of the last two evenings. She
wanted to see him—yes, she positively wanted to see him; she wanted to talk to
him. She wanted him to talk to her. Talking to bats and rose-bushes was not the
same as talking to someone who

:ouid talk back. She wanted someone to speak to her using luman
words—if not a human voice. She would not think )f her sisters; she
would
not.
She would think of him; she vould think pleasantly of the Beast, of—of
her companion, he Beast.

Almost she put out of her mind the size of him. the ease
vilh which he walked through the shadows of his palace, he silence of his
footfalls, the terrible irreconcilabilities of us face. She touched the
embroidered heart Jeweltongue lad given her and. surreptitiously, as if there
might be some->ne watching her, cupped her hands momentarily to feel the
ialamander’s heat. It rolled against her palms, wanning her :old fingers. There
was nothing to be frightened of. The 3east had given his word, and she believed
him. And she vas going to make him happy; she was going to bring his osc-bushes
to life—and then she could go home. He would elease her, as she had released
the bat and the butterflies.
is
would release her to go home again, home
to her sisters, icr father, home to Rose Cottage, home to her garden.