Page 37 of Roses in Amber
"Even if I didn't love him," I said as steadily as I could, and in a voice that didn't sound quite right, "you would need to be stopped."
"And you believe you can."
"I believe it's worth trying."
The attack came without warning, innumerable sharpened branches racing as one to pierce me. I let them, gasping as too many broke through my skin: my thoughts of bark-like protection were not, it seemed, enough to ward off killing attempts. Eleanor laughed, surprised at the ease of taking me to my knees, but I had no interest in taking her on directly. Not while she was tied to the power of the land, at least. On my knees, I was able to worm one hand through the rose roots and curl my fingers against the Beast's shin. I felt his weakening life force, and the strength of the roses, and I whispered, "No," to them.
They had bowed to my will before, parting just enough to let me pass through them. A shock trembled them now, and under my resolute command, they began to withdraw from the Beast's body. Eleanor shrieked in outrage, more and more spears raining down on me. Some struck home; more did not, as the roots pulled away from the Beast and the roses struggled to decide which of us was their master. I extended my other hand, head lowered, and thought of my thornless roses, racing now along a pathway between the hunting lodge and the palace's front gates. I called them to me, and they began to grow ever-faster. They peeled Eleanor's roses off the copper-worked gates and ran forward, moving more and more quickly as I pulled the other roots from their hold in the Beast's flesh.
He awakened screaming, a sound so terrible I wanted nothing more than to stop and comfort him. I didn't dare, knowing that if I did I would never have the chance to start again. I told myself the pain was good: it meant he was alive, and it meant Eleanor's roses were losing their grip on him.
Eleanor seized my hair, ripping my head back and slashing at my throat with nails made of thorns. They connected: I had no way to stop them. But my throat didn't slit open; it felt more like rough chunks of flesh were torn away, without any terrible pain accompanying the blows. As surprised as she was, I smiled at her. I couldn't fight her without taking my hands away from the Beast and my call to my roses; all I could dowassmile, and so I did, confused and bright and helpless. Her eyes went mad with rage. She seized my jaw and the back of my head as a tunnel opened in her roses,mypower bringing what it could to the fight.
It brought nothing visible, but before she could twist my head around, something struck her, knocking her away from me. My head was yanked forward as she staggered away, but my neck wasn't broken, and Opal appeared in front of me.
My sweetest sister wore a maniacal grin matched by the fierce smile on Pearl's face as she came striding down the tunnel I'd carved through the roses. They had both taken a beating: Opal limped and bled, and Pearl was scored all over by rose thorn lines. But they were neither of them defeated, and my heart soared to have them with me. As if joy fed my magic, the roots loosened from the Beast ever-faster. His screams lost strength, not as thoughhewas losing strength, but as if the pain was no longer as unbearable. I cried out in relief and my sisters turned their smiles on me, then both paled and stepped back before exchanging looks and returning, resolutely, to the battle.
Eleanor made a sword of thorns and struck not at Pearl, whose moonlight armor had faded with moonset, but at Opal, whose magic was the least of all of ours. Pearl, with a sword shaped like the crescent moon itself suddenly in hand, leapt to her defense, thorn meeting pearl-drop shield. I knew from the clatter that the shield was unlikely to last long.
The final threads came loose from the Beast. Eleanor's power weakened suddenly, obviously: she staggered with the loss of it, and Opal leapt on her with driving elbows and knees, more ferocious than I had ever imagined she could be. It created the briefest lull for Pearl, who shot me a wide-eyed look that jerked to the Beast and back, as if to sayget on with it!
I did not want to leave my sisters to fight a mad faery, but neither would the curse break if I left the Beast to help my sisters. I let the power of the roses go, surprised that the tunnel remained open, and crawled up my Beast's body to catch his huge face in my hands. "Beast. Oh, Beast, my love, my Beast. Wake up, my love. Listen to me. Listen, beloved. Wake up, and tell me: will you sleep with me?"
Eleanor screamed. From the corner of my eye I saw Pearl's crescent sword sweep down, and light exploded all around us as the Beast transformed in my arms.
I had seen so many beasts inmyBeast: the ram, the boar, the bear, the cat. His arching, writhing form transformed into each of them, fighting me with tooth and claw and tusk and horn. I hung on, sobbing, as he became too big, too cruel, too fierce to hold. Injuries opened on my arms, my torso, my legs: everywhere and in every way that a beast might strike in rage or fear, I was scored. I held on, afraid that if I released him I would lose him forever. Then he began to shrink, but in shrinking radiated heat, until it was as though I clung to an iron bar. A burning woody scent filled my nostrils. I screamed, but I did not let go, and suddenly the pain and the power were gone. The Beast made an ungainlywhumphof sound as he collapsed on top of me.
He ought to have crushed me. That he did not took some consideration; the thought that we had succeeded, that the curse had ended and his transformation had been undone, took some time to reach. My heart clenched in sudden terror: I had become quite accustomed to my Beast, had fallen in love with him. I had seen the prince in a vision, but I had never thought of what he might be like, or if I would care for him. I pressed my eyes shut against the oncoming sunrise—the sky above the tunnel of crumbling roses was gold and pink and streaked with blue—and tried to tell myself that Timmetwasthe Beast, whether in an ungainly monstrous form or in his own.
A voice, his voice, but much thinner and lighter, no longer coming from a chest as broad as my arm, said, "Amber?" with much the same confusion I myself felt.
I set my teeth so I might gather my nerve, and opened my eyes to see—
—to see a Beast, albeit not the same Beast I had known, propped above me. His shoulders were no more than a man's in breadth, though like before a dark mane cascaded over them, and down his chest, like a lion's. More of a mane than before, in fact, as it had less inhuman features to struggle with, and could frame them more magnificently. His face was slim, all planes and angles softened by the loose long fur of his mane, through which the ears I had liked so much still swept upward. Like Eleanor, his eyes were huge and slanted, though his were the amber shade of a beast's, and his lips, parted in astonishment, showed teeth sharper and more deadly than any human had ever owned.
I scrambled backward, out from under him, until my back hit the brambles. It was a greater distance than I had expected: we were in a proper clearing now, and also all alone. "Beast?"
He sat on his heels—he was no taller than an ordinary man now, and shaped beautifully through the waist and hip, where more fur clung, offering an appealing amount of modesty to an astonishing creature. His forearms were furred as well, and his hands no longer massive paws, but slim fingers ending in unmistakable claws. He had not, I thought, looked at himself yet: his bewildered gaze was fixed on me, as though I had done something more impossible than break a faery's curse. "Amber?"
"It's me, Beast, I'm—oh, you can see me clearly for the first time, can't you? It's me," I repeated. "But you're—" I made a gesture, trying to encompass what had happened, trying to indicate that it had somehow gone wrong, and, catching sight of my own hand, froze.
My fingers werebranches.Slender and knobbly with knuckles, still able to bend, but unmistakablybranchesof golden-hued wood. So were my arms, my legs; I scrambled to my feet, looking down at myself, and discovered my clothes had been torn away entirely as I'd struggled through the brambles the night before. It hardly seemed to matter: the whole of me had taken on an aspect of a living tree. Not bark-like: my torso shone more like polished heartwood, and I was dressed at hip and breast in wreathes of roses. I was warm to the touch, and the hair that fell around my face cascaded like petals, velvety against my cheeks. My toes gripped the earth like I could put down roots. My heart still beat like a woman's, fast with shock, but I was not, I realized,afraid.Startled, but not afraid, and, in digging my toes against the earth, I almost feltright, as if I had long since known where a path of roses might lead me, and had only been waiting for this moment.
Notthismoment, though: I hadn't transformed when the Beast did. Memories flooded back: Eleanor's sharp laugh and her claim that Iwasher daughter, after all. The way my throat had not slit like a mortal's would, under Eleanor's attack, and Pearl and Opal's exchange of glances upon seeing me. I had beenotherfor some little while already, although I'd been too occupied to know it. I lifted my hands to my cheeks, trying to feel if my face was at least shaped as it had been, but I wasn't' sure: I had never tried to memorize myself with my fingers before. I turned a helpless gaze at my Beast, who was no more what he had been than I was, and found him presenting a wolfish smile.
"Beauty," he said, and despite everything, I made a disparaging face.
"Beauty is our horse."
"Youare a beauty." He came toward me, extending his hands, and thenhesaw what he had become, and stopped as short as I had, turning his palms up and down, watching the ruff of fur at his wrists fall and drape, and the light catching his deadly nails. As I had done, he spread his hands a little and looked down at himself, taking in the mane that stretched in a V down his chest, and the heavier fur at his hips. Fur grew more heavily on his calves, too, falling around his ankles very like Beauty's feathered feet, though the long clawed toes beneath it were nothing like her hooves. He looked up at me, his golden eyes wide, and I whispered, "You should see your face. It's beautiful."
He touched long fingers to his cheeks as I had done to myself, but he, who had worn a Beast's massive head for decades on end, found more changed with that touch than I had. In particular he tested the shape of his mouth, no longer overbitten from below and or weighted with tusks. He took three long strides, suddenly standing before me with a question in his eyes.
I answered it by throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him, again and again, until we were together a loving tangle of beast and botany on the earth, and the sun had risen high into the sky above us.
"So," the Beast said then, in an amused murmur against my skin, "this has not gone quite as we imagined. We may have some explaining to do."
I turned my face against his mane, inhaling his scent. Still musky, and the khemet perfume had vanished with his transformation. I would have to make more, if the ingredients could be found. I wasn't at all sure they could be: the palace had been lost to roses, and I had no idea if it would rise again. I sat up, examining the clearing as if it might hold answers.
