Page 20 of Roses in Amber
I looked up at him, genuinely curious. "Is that the best you can do?"
"It's not unlike what I usually do," he admitted. "I haven't tried eating like a civilized being for a long time."
"Since the last time you had apple pie, perhaps. Well, would you like to give it a try?"
"…not with an audience."
That seemed eminently fair. I nodded. "Maybe I'll just have a bit of pie, then, and leave you to your own devices."
The Beast turned his head away from me a little, as though I'd landed a blow I hadn't even meant to throw. "Why," he said again, "would you be kind to me?"
"I don't know," I also said again, and got myself some pie. It was delicious, full of cinnamon and cloves, and there was a custard to pour over the top. I ate my piece, thinking about his question, and finally said, "I suppose behaving nicely is as much for my own benefit as yours. Probably more. I could be angry and afraid," and even saying those words lit their fire inside of me, so I took a breath, trying to ease their burn. "But there's clearly very little I could do to harm you, which means feeding my anger is more likely to makememiserable than you. So I suppose I'm trying to let it go by being nice. It helps that aside from our first meeting, and the fact that you coerced me into staying…" I had to breathe again, trying to shake off the memory of fear and the still-vivid fury that those admissions acknowledged before I continued. "Aside from that, you've been…quite pleasant yourself."
"Aside from that," the Beast echoed. "As if those things could be pushed aside."
"Did you come here of your own volition?"
The Beast cast me a startled glance. "No."
"Would you leave if you could?"
"I would."
"Then you and I aren't so different, except I see my captor every day and I think you don't. I don't even know which is worse. As long as I see you every day, there might be a chance I could talk you into letting me go. If whomever put you here is long gone, you don't even have that chance. So if I'm kind, maybe it's because I hope it'll awaken a sympathetic kindness in you, and you'll release me."
"Rather than be angry, and hope your rudeness will drive me to send you away?"
"You're a Beast," I said with a degree of scathing that would do Pearl proud. "If I fight, your nature will make mastering me your prize, and no master ever wants to release his prize. Prizes are things, and things don't have feelings that matter. If I have any hope of getting out of here, it's in making you see me as a person. An equal. Someone worthy of respect. Maybe you won't. Maybe you can't. But making myself into a monster to earn that respect means you win anyway, so I'll be kind where I can be."
The Beast watched me through all of that speech, and when it ended, said, "It's possible I've never respected anyone as much as I do you, in this moment. You're very wise, for one so young."
"But you're still not going to let me go."
"No."
"Fine. Enjoy your pie, Beast." I stalked from the dining hall, and managed not to cry until I was safely in my own rooms.
I only saw the Beast at the evening meal for the next several days. All he did, each evening, was ask me if I would sleep with him, and once denied, disappeared again. I told myself it was less offensive to be left alone than to be visited by a captor who had no intention of letting me go. That was true, but it was also lonelier. I worked on my perfumes—the khemet one took a month to brew, so I found other recipes and mixed them until my room was overwhelmed with scent—and I went out to glare at the gardens, and I talked to servants whom I could neither see nor understand, assuming the hair-raising subliminal muttering was indeed them.
As such, the days were difficult to track. I had been there a week before I thought to begin a calendar, and even that only came to mind because my blood began to flow. It made a way to mark the days, though, so I used it as the beginning of my calendar, and noted the phase of the moon—new, the sky hanging empty—to help remember the details of time's passage. It helped keep track of the perfume brews, too, so those three things became my points of reference: the moon, the blood, and the perfume.
The khemet was almost done when I arose one morning to go on my daily tromp around the gardens, and found a steady, drenching rain falling. All the snow was gone, and the earth, between blades of dead, yellow grass, looked saturated unto mud.
I had no doubt galoshes and oilskins would appear if I asked for them, or even if I simply rooted around in the wardrobe for a while, but the prospect of going out into the rain was too depressing. At home, Opal and Flint, especially, would be pleased by its offering the first hint of spring, and at the softening of the ground. They wouldn't yet be planting seeds, but they might turn the earth over, helping it to thaw, while Pearl muttered curses about dirty feet and hard labor. Or perhaps they were only awaiting spring because it could offer—with the goods the Beast had sent with Father—the chance to return to the city, and begin a more luxurious life all over again.
My heart faltered at the thought. It was one thing to be captive in a castle at the heart of an enchanted forest that my family lived in, no matter the distance. Somehow it was something else entirely to not even share the forest's borders with them. Distressed and trying to shake it off, I wrapped myself in a warm cloak and went for a walk inside the palace, which was large enough to exercise horses in, never mind one young woman. I wasn't looking where I was going; escape from my own thoughts, not exploration, was my purpose.
So it took longer than it might have otherwise to realize that the parquet beneath my feet had turned to smooth road, and then that I had sometime recently stopped walking, and now rode astride a familiar charger. I patted the creature's neck, feeling callouses from a sword marring my palm, and looked ahead to see the great gates of my city rising before me. The road became cobblestones, and I rode home at the head of my army, the triumphant warrior queen returning. I had gone to war bearing my husband's standard; now I carried my own, a blazing sun, crowned and crossed behind by a sword and a needle, so that no one might mistake my symbol for a man's. Among the crowds were thousands of women waving needlework, an honor that delighted me; I raised my blade and named it the Needle, for them, and their roars of pride carried me all the way to the palace.
At its gates I could—or did, at least, whether I should or not—shed the persona of queen, and instead became the mother I had missed being for three full years. The same woman, clad in gold this time instead of green, but still with her beloved roses embroidered at the hem, came forth with her sweet, wicked smile. With her walked a little boy whose eyes were large and round with awe. I slipped from my horse and knelt, my arms open, and he did not run to me. Instead he clung to the gold woman's skirts, and a whisper of sympathy rippled behind me as my soldiers saw what happened.
I ought to have known: a good leader doesn't fight a losing battle in public, not if she can help it. But I hadn't thought it through; I had forgotten that a mother's longing over a three-year campaign would not be reflected in the heart of a child who had barely been off the breast when his mother left. Nell was my sweet boy's mother, for all that he knew or cared, and I would damage us all if I tried to change that in an instant. So I stood, still smiling, hoping that smile's cost didn't show, and embraced Nell as she came to me. The little boy in her skirts watched me, and when Nell made as if to encourage him to hug me, I shook my head just a little. One rejection in front of the troops was enough. More than enough.
Nell, who was wise, lifted him onto her hip, and stood beside me so he was between us both, and we turned to face my army, crying, "Your prince!"
The roar of approval made my son gasp, then hide his face in Nell's shoulder, and, finally, peek out and smile, to the chortling delight of the army. When the tales of that day came to me in later years, they were told the way I had hoped it would go: that the little prince had run to me, and we faced our troops together, with Nell, my strong right hand, at our side. It made a better story, but I knew it was only that, and so that night, as soon as I had a moment alone with her, I said to my Nell, "I owe you a debt that can never be repaid. He loves you," and Nell, smiling, said, "I love him too."
It wanted to be a festering wound, that my son went to Nell for comfort and laughter. I wouldn't let it: I could not hate she who had held the kingdom for me for so long, nor could I blame him for not knowing a mother who had left him behind. Nell, generous of heart, saw my struggle, and guided him toward me, little by little. "What does it cost you," I asked late one night, and she only shrugged, stroking my hair.
