Page 14 of Roses in Amber
"And what would you exchange instead? Your father? Your family? The village, which feasts uninvited on the beasts of my forest?"
"Exch—the vill—do you mean to say anobjectmust remain here in exchange for the rose, in order to earn your forgiveness? And what do you mean, your forest? The lodge is ours, and the forest ours to hunt! And you can't take an entire village in exchange for arose, that's preposterous. What would you do with it?" I looked around the garden, imagining the enormous grounds beyond them, and reconsidered. "The villagers' lives would probably be much easier here, with the obliging snowfall and the invisible servants. Not that I intend totradethem for yourrose, but—"
"Someone must pay. The roses are precious to me. If you refuse to stay, I will take something else in exchange. You have sisters, brothers. Perhaps one of them."
"Over my dead body!"
"That," the Beast snarled, suddenly very large and angry again, "can be arranged."
I cringed, cutting my hands on the rose's thorns again, and that was how my father found us: me quailing before a looming Beast. He threw himself between us, all his age forgotten in the defense of his child, and I saw with a shock that he carried a sword, a weapon I didn't believe he'd touched since his days in the Border Wars. The Beast raised an enormous paw to slap him away, and Father darted to one side, piercing the monster's hand with his blade. The Beast roared so deeply that snow fell from the rosebushes. He closed his hand around the sword, yanking away from Father, and withdrew it from his own paw to hold in his uninjured hand. It looked diminished in his grasp, like a trifle or a toy, but he wielded it with strange competency, reversing the blade as if he would bring it down to impale my father.
I flung myself in front of Father, screaming, "No!", and the Beast growled, "Someone must pay."
"A rose isn't worth alife!"
The Beast lifted his bloody paw-like hand, roaring, "This is more than a rose!"
I pushed Father back and advanced furiously on the Beast. "He was protecting me, which he wouldn't have needed to do if you weren't being so terrifying over a stupid rose! You'll heal! The rosebush isn't harmed for having lost one bloom! But you willnotslay my father over a rose, or steal away any of my family, or the villagers, or anyone else! I picked the rose! If you're so determined that someone has to stay to pay for it, then yes, I'll stay! And I'll make you regret it until your dying day!"
Father blurted, "Amber," in horror, and the Beast began to laugh, a deep, bitter sound that reverberated off the frozen ground and distant estate walls. "If you can bring about my dying day, I will welcome your presence here more profoundly than you will ever know. Go," he said more sharply to Father. "Be grateful that your daughter is as bold as she is lovely." He turned on a massive paw and clumped away through the garden, leaving us alone.
I hadn't realized, until he left, that the Beast's presence made the air feel heavier, like a storm was coming. No wonder: I'd hardly had time to. My shoulders slumped and I curled my hand around—around the rose, thorns prickling my palm again. I'd forgotten I even still held the cursed thing, and I began to cast it away, then thought again. If it was going to cause so much trouble, then at the very least I would keep it. Not for cuttings to make perfume from, not if I was to remain here—or maybe Iwouldgrow it, and make perfume anyway, just to be spiteful—but if not that, to press and dry, and that, too, would be for spite. So instead of throwing it away, I put it down in the snow carefully, where I could collect it later, and looked at the dots of blood rising from my palm.
They sparkled faintly, as if this place made something so mundane as bleeding a magical process, too. Wonderful: that would make my moon bloods a splendid experience, here. I sighed, curled my hand around the thorn-pricks, and turned to face my father, who had been ranting since the Beast's departure, and to whom I had not been listening. I didn't need to. I knew he would be speaking of the Beast's horrors and forbidding me to stay while also demanding to know how it was I had come to promise to stay, and, indeed, such was the content of his speech. When he finally fell silent, awaiting my explanations, I only said, "You should take Beauty and leave now, Father, before any more of the day is lost."
He said, "No," with such finality that I didn't bother arguing. I had very little doubt that one way or another, the Beast would see him on his way very soon, and I was grateful for a few more hours of human company. "What happened, Amber?"
"I picked a rose. Our host objected." My mild response amused me, and I began to laugh. Not a healthy, full laugh; that I knew. It was fed by fear and absurdity and the tingling pain in my hand, but it was laughter, and I was grateful for that, too. When it ran its course, I added, "Heisthe Beast of our forest, and threatened the villagers for feasting on the forest's beasts, if I didn't stay. Or the family. He threatened them too. So I'm staying."
"I'll stay!"
"You didn't pick the rose."
"I'm old, Amber. My life is near enough to over already. What does it matter if a Beast kills me?"
"It matters very much to me!" I glanced behind me at the Beast's dreadful footprints. "Besides, I don't think he's going to kill me. He had ample opportunity while I was cowering and screaming, and he seemed quite specific abouttakingvillagers, or someone from the family, not killing them."
"So you intend to remain his prisoner here forever?"
I looked toward the palace and said, "There are worse prisons," hollowly. "Perhaps he'll let me go sometime. After the lifespan of a rose."
Father's voice dropped. "These roses are blooming in the dead of winter, Amber. How long do you think their lifespan is?"
I crouched to collect the flower that had started all the trouble, and gestured with it as I stood. "Well, I should be able to make some astonishing perfumes with it, if it lasts forever."
"Amber!"
"I'd better find some humor in it, Father, gallows or otherwise, or I'll go mad before you've even left the gates." I offered him a brief, determined smile. "Now let's go back to the castle so I can write a goodbye letter to the family for you to bring home."
I heard the shape of my name on his inhalation, the protestation he wanted to make, but somehow he held it back, for which I was grateful. Instead he offered me his arm. I tucked mine through it, and we walked in silence back to the palace that was now my prison.
The letter ought to have been difficult to write. Instead it came smoothly from my pen, a recitation of facts so peculiar that there seemed no profit in trying to explain them: either they would be accepted, or they would not. Father would back my story up, and Pearl, I knew, would believe me. I wondered again what might have happened if I had not gone with Father. A death, Pearl had said. Maybe none of this would even have transpired; perhaps something would have gone wrong in the city.
I didn't believe that, though. I thought he would have died in the storm, or perhaps worst of all, been rescued by the enchantment only to pick the wretched rose himself, as a gift for me, because he knew I liked them. I thought he would have died here, at the Beast's hands, for that transgression, and just imagining that version of events was worse than staying here myself.
Father and I walked down to the stables again together when I'd finished the letter. Beauty stood ready in her harness, already hitched to the wagon, but the wagon sat lower than it had when we'd arrived. I glanced through the tightly-drawn cover and let out a sharp laugh. "Father."
He paused in climbing to the driver's seat and looked into the wagon. "Mother of stars."
