Rose Daughter (40 page)

“There were three of us—that is true. And the man who became
your Beast was my very good friend.

“He was a great sorcerer. But he was not interested in the
usual sorts of power, and he called himself a philosopher. But it is not for
any human to learn the first and last secrets of the universe, as other men
have discovered before your Beast—before he was a Beast—did. You have heard the
legends, I imagine. But your Beast was a different sort of man, and the
Guardians of those first and last secrets whom he awoke were confused by him.
They, who were set there when the world began, had come to believe that any man
who came near enough to disturb their solitude can have got so far only through
greed and pride, and they therefore are free to eat him
up,
hair,
toenails. and all. But your Beast was not only greedy and prideful; he was also
kind and painstaking and responsible, and he knew that his weaknesses were
mortal and never pretended they were not.

“The Guardians did not know what to do, and when they
reached out merely to block his way into the fortress they protected, and not
knowing that anything would come of it but that he could come no farther into
their domain, they touched him with their paws. And he, who had been a man,
became a Beast—though his heart remained a man’s heart. And there, I guess, is
where all the trouble came.

“I believe the transformation was very painful. I did not
see him till after it was done. He knew what he had become, and he was, as I
said, a great sorcerer. He it was who hurled himself into this exile, before
any ordinary human saw him, and I fear be was right to believe that the sight
of him ... would be very difficult to bear. But when there is too much going on
at once, it is impossible to get one’s spells exactly right. His exile from the
human world was not absolute. Other sorcerers could still visit him. As, I
admit, could one green witch, though this had less to do with my magical skill
than with my friendship for him.

“The story of the philosopher-sorcerer who had become a
Beast was soon told among all the magical practitioners at. this end of the
great world, and perhaps at all the other ends too. And I... grew alarmed at
the series of sorcerers who found ways to have speech with him, for it was not
merely speech they desired. They saw his transformation as a useful step on the
road—their road—to power, an alternative to being eaten up, hair, toenails, and
all. To be made into a Beast in exchange for power, power greater than any
sorcerer had yet possessed—it was a price they were eager to pay. I think some
of them felt that to be a Beast the sight of whom drove other men mad might not
be a price at all,

“He would not tell them anything they wished to know, of
course. And the change had ... changed him, for he studied his philosophy no
more, and what he knows, or does not know, or knows no longer, he has said to
no one, not even me. And his life became a burden to him, for philosophy had
filled his heart. When the sorcerers grew angry and began to plot among
themselves, he could not be made to care; he would not listen to me when I told
him that they believed him to have won more, in that meeting with the
Guardians, than he had told, and was working some great magic in secret to
ensnare them all.”

Again the voice broke off. “And then . . . one sorcerer came
to the Beast who was different from the others. The Beast was polite to him, as
he had been polite to them all, but this one was clever enough not to ask what
he wished to know, but to wait, and to watch, and ... I knew what he was. I
knew well enough. But I tell in love with him anyway. I was old even then, and
I have always been plain.

“The story from this point is much like what you have heard.
There was a simulacrum, except I took my own heart to beat in her breast, for I
am only a greenwitch and could not do what I had done, and besides, I loved
him. And it is not true that the dying sorcerer struck at the Beast for his
betrayal; he struck at the Beast in fury, for vengeance; he had forgotten the
simulacrum entirely, had forgotten me. ...

“The Beast had not used his sorcery, I believe, for many
years, and sorcery, Like any other skill, must be often used, if a skill it is
to remain. That too may help to explain why certain things came about as they
did. Well, he had little enough warning, but he wished to save Longchance, if
he could, and he threw his own strength into the destruction Strix had brought
down upon him. Longchance survived, in the shape you know, where the earth and
air and water are too restless for any magic to take root. And the weather
vane—and Mrs Oldhouse’s ghost—are what is left of my poor simulacrum, for she
had lived too long with a human heart to return herself completely to
rose-petals. And yet I think it may be she, with her half connections to both
worlds and to neither, who is the heart of the magic that let you enter here.

“And the Beast himself survived. But he survived in what had
become a dungeon of solitude, where no living creature could come. The
simulacrum is a wisp and a weather vane and a breath of rose scent where there
are no roses, and I, now, could not visit him as 1 had done.”

“Not solitude,” whispered Beauty. “For you are here, and so
is Fourpaws.”

“He does not know about me,” the voice said, and there was
great sorrow in it. “He does not know, for he would have tried to stop me, and
in the beginning he would still have been strong enough to do so, like a man
blocking up mouse-holes. His strength has waned—it was only the last rose, was
it not?—for no human being can thrive in such solitude, not even with a cat
such as Fourpaws, and 1 have told you his heart is still a man’s. It is only because
he is what he is that he has lived so long—the man he was who became the Beast
he is.”

“But my father—the other travellers—the butter and milk from
your cows, and from—and—and the orchard that chooses to bear its fruit all
year—’’

The voice tried to laugh. “His dungeon is not perfect, for
it is still mortal. There have always been gaps. He does not know I have
widened them, pegged them open, thrust stones in their frames so they cannot
blow shut.... I am an enterprising mouse.

“And the orchard .. . Trees feel kindness just as animals
do, but they live slowly, and it takes longer than most humans live for a tree
to feel human kindness and respond to it. Trees think we humans are mostly
little, flashy creatures, rather the way we think of butterflies. But the Beast
has lived here long enough for the trees to learn to know him.”

The voice paused and then went on, sadly, reluctantly. “Your
Beast also does not know that I... for a second time. nearly I—”

The voice stopped, and began again: “I had once hoped for a
child, but I was not pretty enough, and my simulacrum could make love like a
woman, but she could not bear a child. Your mother looked as if she could have
been Strix’s daughter—or his great-granddaughter—I do not know. Perhaps she
was. It would explain why she was so interested in ... but I would not tell
her; it was then she reminded me too much of the man who had never been my
lover.

“When she ran away from me. I never imagined she would marry
and have children, and I almost leant of you too late. The dream you have had
since you were very small... I am sorry, my dear. I would have spared you it if
I could have done.”

“‘It was you, not my mother, the first night of my dream,”
said Beauty, with a sudden, grieving certainty, and the voice in answer sounded
sad and weary: “Yes—it was 1, and not your mother,’’

“It was you who gave us Rose Cottage,” said Beauty.

“Yes—yes—that was I also. But listen to me. my dear. Listen.
It was none of my doing that a blizzard brought your father to this palace; I
am no weathercaster. That is sorcerer’s work, and I am only a greenwitch. And
still less was it I who stirred your father’s heart to pity, nor was it I who
gave him words to speak to the Beast which would bring you here. Nor have 1
anything to do with your own decision to come and then to stay. Nor, indeed,
could I have saved you from your first took into the Beast’s face, that first,
ordinary human glance since he had ceased to be an ordinary man. You had to
withstand that yourself. Bless your friend the salamander! But you see, what
little I could do, I have done, and I have told you all of it.

“Your Beast’s heart came to you, my dear, to you and no
other, just as the animals have come to you, because you are what you Eire. Nor
would I ever ask.—nor tell—my moon—and starlight friends whom to greet. Do you
not know what the breath of a unicorn is worth?”

In a gentler tone the voice continued: “I had been wandering
a long time when I came back to Longchance: my old cottage was very nearly a
ruin. But after your mother left—and especially when I discovered your
dreaming—I began to feel that there were too many sorrows in this world that
were by cause of my meddling and that 1 would be better off not in this world.
And I have grown very old; the moon—and starlight shines through me now almost
as it shines through my friends.”

The voice fell silent, and Beauty thought the howling was
nearer. “And the curse?” she said, or thought, for she did not put the question
into words, but only felt it lying painfully in her mind.

The voice laughed, and it was a grandmother’s laugh, amazed
and indulgent at the antics of the young. “It is no curse! It has never been a
curse! Children are more sensible than adults about many things; can you
suppose that generations of children would have used it as a skipping-rhyme if
it were a curse?
¹
’

Slowly Beauty found the words for her final question: “You
said that if I chose that my Beast keep his wealth and influence, we should use
it for good and that our names should be spoken in many lands. How will our
names be spoken?”

“Ah!” said the voice, and it sounded as light and merry as a
little girl’s. “That is the right question. Your names shall be spoken in fear
and in dread, for no single human being, nor even the wisest married pair, can
see the best way to dispense justice for people beyond their own ken.”

“Then I choose Longchance, and the little goodnesses among
the people we know,” said Beauty.

At that moment she opened her eyes, and she saw three unicorns
leap into the bonfire glade and turn, as if at bay, and she saw the wild wolves
leaping after them. And there was another shock and crash of thunder, but the
thunder seemed to crack into a thousand sharp echoes, and each of the echoes
was the scream of a falcon or of some great owl.

But the lightning bolt was a bright blue, blue as sky on a
summer’s day, and it shattered as it struck, and the fragments whirled up and
became blue butterflies. The butterflies converged in great shimmering, radiant
clouds, and their wings flickered as they crowded together, and it was as if
they were tiny fractured prisms, instead of butterflies, throwing
off
sparks
of all the colours of the rainbow.

But then they became butterflies again, and now there were
other colours among them, greens as well as blues, russets and golds and
scarlets, and they flew in great billows round the wolves. The wolves recoiled,
and shook their heads, and tried to duck under them, or dodge round them, and
some of the wolves stood on their hind legs and clawed at them with their
forefeet; but the butterflies danced round them, zealous as bees defending
their honey from a marauding bear. The wolves could not shake free of them, nor
see where the unicorns stood, and so the unicorns drove them from the clearing,
smacking them with the sides of their resplendent horns as a fencing-master
might smack an inattentive pupil with the side of his sword, pricking them
occasionally as a cowherd might prod his cows, but now prancing and bouncing as
if this were no more than a game, and so drove the wolves from the clearing,
trailing blue and green and russet and gold ribbons of butterflies.

“Quickly,” gasped Beauty, and lugged at the Beast, but he
sat up slowly and groggily, moving like one who has long been ill. They would
dash through the carriage-way, Beauty thought, run for the glasshouse; she did
not believe any wolves would dare cross that threshold. But as she thought
this, more wolves leapt into the clearing, but they came from the carriage-way,
and Beauty’s hands froze on the Beast’s shoulder, as she stooped beside him,
trying to steady his attempts to rise to his feet.

There was a brief soundless whirr just past her face, and a
soft plop against her bent thighs. “Oh, bat, bat, do you know where we can go?”
she said, and knelt, to give it a lap. The bat folded its wings together and
made a funny awkward hop-hop-hop, and then it was in the air, and she looked
up, and there were many bats, more and more bats, streaming through the trees
like wind, and she saw which way they flew. The Beast was on his feet at last,
and she held his arm, felt him sway and check himself, sway and check again.
“This way,” she said, and drew him gently after her.

There were so many bats now, they surged past them like a
river of darkness, and she could no longer see the wolves or the unicorns or
the trees round the clearing. And then there was a smell of earth in her
nostrils, and she put out her free hand, and felt the crumbly earth wall of the
tunnel, and put her hand over her head, but could find no tree roots, It is
very kind that they should make the corridor this time tall enough for the
Beast to walk comfortably upright, she thought, and put her hand out to the
side again so she could guide them by touching the wall. But the wall was no
longer there, and the smell of earth was mixed with the smell of roses, and she
could tell by the movement of air that they were no longer in a tunnel.

There was a faint light like the beginning of dawn round
them, and they were standing in the middle of the crosspath in the centre of
the glasshouse, and the little wild pansies Beauty had planted there spilt over
the corners of the beds at their feet, and the roses bloomed everywhere round
them, silhouetted in the faint light, and the white roses were shimmers in the
gloom.