Grim

BEAST/BEAST by Tessa Gratton

I The first time I attempted to escape from the Beast’s castle was under cover of flat, fierce rain. It soaked through the layers of wool and velvet I’d traveled here wearing, the hem now tattered and ruined, all sweat- and tearstained from two days in the attic. Dust streaked into mud along my cheeks. Hair clung to my skull, and my finger bones ached in the cold.

I ran straight to the gate, glad of my hardy riding boots to splash through the puddles and miniature rivers forming along the broad avenue. The sluice of rain obscured the world, melting everything.

Massive iron gates rose so fast I skidded through the slick gravel to stop. I grasped the bars, pulling with my weight, grinding my teeth. Nothing. I wiped water from my eyes to hunt for a lever or lock. Nothing. The hinges were solid, smooth iron. I saw no grooves in the earth. Had the gates even opened when I was dragged through? I could not recall.

My dull, frozen fingers barely obeyed as I untied my bootlaces, then discarded the boots. The wall was built of heavy granite blocks half my height with narrow grooves between. I caught my fingers into one and dug my toes in, but there was no good purchase in the rain.

I tried and tried again. Thunder shook the air. I will not cry. Even when the skin of my fingers and palms was raw and stinging, I refused.

The ninth—tenth—I don’t know!—time I fell into the freezing mud, I lay back and screamed at the low black clouds.

Mud melded to my back, and I rolled away heavily, dragging myself to the wall. I huddled there, arms on my knees, facedown and sheltered enough from the rain for hot tears to gather on my lashes. Water filled my nose and I swallowed it, choking, fighting its weight.

The Beast found me there.

I did not know what he was yet, and could see only the impression of his bulk in the dark, watery night. He said nothing, but loomed until the rain died and dawn lit the east. He turned his face away from it and waved me to come. I stood without aid and watched as he lumbered back toward the castle. Exhaustion compelled me to follow.

II The second night I tried to escape was clear and full of moonlight. I ran through the topiary forest and the wilderness garden toward the north curve of the wall. Everything was dry and crisp with shadows. I had no boots on, but slippers; no wool, but layers of silk and fine linen: a dress from the closet in the opulent room the Beast had given me.

Moonlight aided my search for hand- and footholds, but the wall there was no less forbidding. I left blood smeared down the pale granite.

That time I did not cry.

III It’s because of a rose I’m trapped here. I asked Father for one before he left, bitterly, to remind him I existed, to remind him of my mother, who had grown ghostly white roses along the fence of our city house.

He brought home nothing but that single red rose, stuck to his palm by the thorns. Fever-pink burned his cheeks as he offered it to me, and my half sisters groaned as they turned away. I took it.

Only, the thorns bit into my fingers and refused to tear free. I cried out at the blood weeping from my palm and my father did, too, triumphantly. He was free.

A spell—a compulsion—wove about me like vines, drawing me onto the strange black horse stamping at the dirt path before our house. I rode like the devil through a day and a night until the black gates and blacker castle appeared. My will returned to me as we passed through the rose garden and the bloodred rose fell away. I screamed as a great wind lifted me, dragging me through the castle, down corridors, through vast halls. Massive doors slammed. Lights flashed on before me and off behind, whispers gossiped hurriedly about my name, my hair, my boots and cape. But there were no faces, no creatures or people I could see.

The magic flung me into a tower room, dusty, but with a bed, a desk and toilet, three wide round windows curtained in faded violet. The door locked behind me and no matter how I pounded, no matter how I screamed, I was trapped.

IV For the first two nights the Beast spoke to me through the door. His deep voice shook the wood, pulsing in time with my heart.

He offered me food but I cried vows of murder and violence, swore to escape, to be free of this place and him.

I did not know what he was yet.

On the third night the door clicked open. The corridor was empty. I ran out into the rain.

V He led me inside after, both of us soaking, into a fine bedroom lacking the dust and grime of the attic tower. He left me there, behind an unlocked door, ruined and too weary for questions and demands. Too tired to look at his face.

Silk rugs layered over the cold stone floor, and there were more pillows than I could use in a month. I stripped out of the wet, torn riding habit and accepted a nightgown that hung in the air as if held by a ghost. The silk warmed my skin, and I fell into limp exhaustion even as many invisible hands combed my hair.

VI It was my third escape attempt when I saw him, full-on in the light.

I thought perhaps under the sun I might discover handholds or secret crannies leading to freedom. The light bled harsh and silver over the stone wall, revealing only smooth lines, and none of the streaks of blood from my first or second attempt. They’d faded or washed off in the rain, or had very, very painstakingly been rubbed away by the hands of invisible servants.

I tilted my chin to look up at the bluest sky possible. Nothing marred it, no stray clouds, no bird or wind with a clutch of leaves fluttering past. Only vast, glowing blue.

“Girl,” he said from behind me. “Come back inside. Eat. You’ll never climb it shaking with hunger.”

It made me smile, then choke on a laugh. Near hysteria, I slid down to the thick carpet of grass, tears dripping straight from my lashes onto the manicured green.

My stomach trembled for the first time in a day; my eyeballs pulsed with my heartbeat. I did need food, and drink. My blood flowed thick and sluggish. But accepting his food would be accepting my prison.

I turned my face and peeked at him. The sun flooded his body, allowing for no shadows or gentle, gradual reveal.

The Beast was a monster of flesh and fur and forest: fangs curled like tusks through his bottom lip, his arms were green as fresh vegetables and twisted with vines. Thorns pushed out through the elbows of his tattered velvet coat, from his crooked fingers like claws and in a fierce line down either cheekbone. Those eyes were dark, pupils slit like a cat’s, his shoulders humped like a buffalo’s, nose wide and flared, and his coarse hair tangled as though wet. A great orange fungus circled one wrist like a gauntlet. One foot was cloven and the other clawed into the grass like a tiger’s. He would never be graceful. Lichen dripped down one side of his face, pulling his features down so he appeared to melt even as he towered over me.

And red rose petals clung to him, blossoming from his neck like sores.

I might have stared at him forever if he hadn’t shied away. That thick hair swung over his face, and he pressed his fists into the hard edges of his hips. “Come, girl,” he rumbled.

VII

“What are you?” I asked as I discarded a chicken bone and reached for a bowl of orange soup that smelled of cinnamon and cloves and the comforts of home. My mother used to make something like it with pumpkins. This porcelain burned my fingers but I gripped harder, welcoming the sharp pain.

At the far end of the dining table, he hunkered in a throne large enough for a bear. I sensed his head shake rather than saw it. All the candles that side of the room had blown out the moment he entered. “No one thing,” he murmured.

I saluted with the bowl. “So a man.”

The Beast snorted, very much like a displeased stallion.

I shrugged and drank my soup, focused on the heat as it slipped over my tongue and down my throat, landing like love in my stomach. Warmth radiated through my chest.

“I don’t know your name,” he said.

“Neither do I know yours.”

“Beast. Only Beast.”

“That isn’t a name.”

He did not reply.

“Call me Prisoner, then, if we’re being literal.” I thunked the bowl down and thoughtfully slid my fingers along the silver knife at the place setting.

“Beauty,” the Beast said. “For that is what you are.”

It was my turn to snort. Not ladylike. Not beautiful.

“Will you love me, Beauty?” the Beast asked, shocking my fingers numb. “Will you marry me?”

I pushed violently. “No.”

He whispered, “Good night,” as I fled.

VIII This became our pattern: I rose and dressed in the morning, ate some little cheese and cold meat, then walked the grounds, hunting for escape.

The gardens were set like a wheel; the castle the hub, each spoke a path. Between them were triangles of nature. The wilderness garden, the topiary forest with its elephants and dragons and hearts, the garden of statues, the fruit orchard, the proper manicured garden full of tiny peonies and marigolds and tulips.

And of course the rose garden.

That was where he most often joined me, appearing like a shadow when the sun was high enough.

The roses were wild, though some attempt had been made to train them over trestles and benches and statues. They were all sorts of pinks and reds and creamy yellows; normal, natural colors, except when twilight fell they glowed as if they caught up bits of the sunlight to hold.

It was days before we spoke in the garden. I stopped to touch the velvet petal of a pale yellow rose, so delicately colored it seems almost translucent.

“A Ray of Dawn,” the Beast said quietly.

My fingers jerked.

“Her name. It’s the rose’s name.”

“And what do you call the rose that trapped me here?” I asked in an even voice that belied the tumult beating in my chest.

He hesitated before rumbling a sigh and saying, “The Promise Kiss.”

I stalked out of the garden.

Often I left him there, suddenly furious. I’d go to the library or the roof, to drown myself in the lives and thoughts of others, or to stare out over the black forest, despairing that the only escape would be death.

Always I dined with him.

Always he asked, “Will you marry me, Beauty?”

Always I reacted badly.

It took the soothing fingers of ghosts braiding my hair, tying up a nightgown, washing my hands, before I calmed enough to sleep in that soft, feathery bed. I listened to their whispers as I drifted off, but ghosts never say anything useful, or in a language I understand.

IX I knew every step of the wall by the end of my first month. There were no secret latches. No crumbling footholds. No egress.

X

“Beauty,” he called down the massive curve of staircase.

I stopped in the entryway and turned slowly. There he stood on the landing, a black shadow against the rich blue carpet and hanging tapestries. I snapped, “It’s such a shallow thing, beauty. And I only am beautiful compared to you.”

His hunched shoulders lifted in either a shrug or sigh. One broad paw touched the pillar beside him, thorn-claws gouging the stone. “Beauty is…a challenge. It pushes up through winter earth and unfurls into a flower. It chases the nighttime away with a glorious sunrise. Beauty reaches out and puts its fingers around your heart.”

My own heart thudded, and I couldn’t help but press my hands there, eyes fluttering down. I warmed all over and became incensed with myself. How dare I appreciate such a compliment from my jailer!

I didn’t wait to learn why he’d called me, but charged outside.

XI One night I asked, “How long will you keep me here?”

He said, “Until you break the curse.”

“Curse!” I spat. “Open the gate. Let me go.”

“I cannot. It isn’t the part I’m allowed.”

“And what, then, sir, is your part?”

“Will you marry me, Beauty?”

“Why would I do that?” I left, but hid in a deep recess in the hall, where a statue of a frolicking faun took up most of the space. The Beast passed, silent, but in that rolling gait caused by mismatched feet. I traced his progress, following soft and evenly behind him. Up the staircase he went, past the library and past the hall of mirrors, to a tower stair much like the one I’d first been dragged through. I paused at the bottom, for he would know I came now.

The constant anger simmering deep in my stomach popped, effervescing up my chest and neck, making me drunk with it. I put a foot on the first step, and the next. The soft slippers whispered against bare stone. Once the hall light faded it was dark as a moonless night, for the Beast tolerated no candles. Does light hurt your eyes? I had asked him, and he’d replied, It hurts yours. I skimmed a hand along the cool wall as I ascended.

At least three stories up, the stairs widened, opening doorlessly into a landing. It was circular and lit only by the starlight that soaked the milky glass of the tall windows. Bare of furniture, the room contained only a rug and plain patterned tapestries hanging between the windows. A soft yellow glow beckoned me through a doorway with several stones pried out of its arch. The Beast had destroyed it in order to fit his immense shoulders through.

It delighted a smile to the corners of my mouth.

I paused in the broken doorway, leaning into one of the deep gouges. Beyond, a single candle hung in a chandelier with spaces for twenty. Books were piled along the walls, many torn, and a wardrobe pressed against one side, doors hanging wide to reveal large jackets poorly sewn together. There were metal measuring cups, a magnifying glass, beakers and delicate scales waiting on a table, smelling sharp and pungent. A neat nest of mattress and blankets was tucked into one corner beneath an open window. Stars glittered distantly.

Unlike in my lovely room, there were no mirrors or vases of flowers here, no tea set or fine armoire. Several wine bottles perched atop various stacks of the books.

“Beauty,” he rumbled with clear surprise.

I turned my eyes on his, tilting back my head because he stood so near. Strangly uneven wire spectacles brightened his eyes, strapped in place with a ribbon tied all around his head. Magnified, his eyes shone deep blue like the midnight sky around the moon, black pupils gaping wide.

I braced for his anger at my trespass—finally he would be angry at me! We could properly fight, could scream and tear and maybe find some answers.

But he said nothing more. Only studied me in my fine dinner gown, all dawn-pink and cream that complemented the new pallor of my skin. In the mirror every morning I sneered at the paleness overtaking my once sun-kissed cheeks. No matter how much time I spent in the garden, this place sapped the life out of me.

The lichen tugging at his face twisted in some expression, yet I could still not read him.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he finally said.

“I want you to threaten.” I put my hands on his thick chest and shoved. He budged not at all. “I want you to roar,” I yelled.

His hands circled my wrists, those sharp thorns pricking through the silk sleeves. “I won’t.”

“Because you don’t have to,” I whispered, slumping. His grip on my arms held my body up, but not my eyelids. I closed them, drooping like a thirsty flower. I’d asked him tonight, What is your part? And he’d proposed. If that was his part, what was mine? To agree? And then I would still be his, still a prisoner, but of my own making. I snapped open my eyes. “I’m yours forever, no matter what I feel, no matter what I want. But I won’t fear you. I won’t love you, Beast. I won’t think of you at all.”

He released me so suddenly I stumbled and knocked into the wall. A cry, soft as a dove’s, echoed in my ears, but it could not have been him—my Beast surely could not make so pitiful a sound.

I tripped out of his room and ran down the stairs so hard my ankles jarred and I bruised my elbow against the dark curving wall.

XII The Beast made it easy for me, in his own way. He continued to join me in the rose garden, but didn’t follow when I chose the topiary forest. I refused to enter the dining room, and he sent the ghosts to my rooms with my dinner. Days passed when I didn’t go to the roses at all. I looked around corners and up at darkened windows but never saw him, except once, when I found him studying a caterpillar’s cocoon so closely, with such concentration, he did not notice me. He did not move for nearly an hour, and neither did I, uncomfortably aware that this was what he did all day: study and stare, like a piece of nature himself. With the patience of moss.

I had no such patience.

But I could not stop thinking of his. How long had he been here, waiting and studying? I could not stop thinking of him here, alone.

The library felt cavernous now that I’d seen his intimate piles of books. The gardens were a wilderness without his silent shadow. As I tried to fill my days, instead my thoughts fled in every direction, leaving me with nothing but emptiness. If I didn’t talk to myself in the mirror, I heard no voices but for the nonsense whispers of my ghosts.

I insisted to myself it did not matter. I did not need my jailer.

Twice more I attempted to scale the wall. I hunted for a ladder and found nothing. I thought to build a barricade, but the wind itself worked against me. And so I climbed bare-handed. Twice I broke my finely manicured nails, twice I ended in a furious, crying heap.

And after that I did not even have tears.

XIII The nights were oh so very long, and I left my bedroom in the middle of them to prowl the halls of the castle. I discovered sitting rooms, and fireplaces that could roast a horse. I found the kitchens and old servant stairs, the attic room where I’d spent my first two nights. I never went back to the Beast’s tower.

Sometimes I sank onto a fainting couch or leaned against a cool hearth to sleep until the ghosts woke me at dawn with trailing, teasing fingers.

The mirror gallery became my favorite. I could go there and waltz down the center, my reflections surrounding me like a crowd. I hummed and lifted my arms, curtsied at myself and at imaginary partners. I giggled at made-up jokes and flirted; I threw back my head and loosened my hair and lifted my skirts around my knees for a raucous peasant jig.

And I stopped, staring at my wild self, breathing heavily in the mirror. A mad girl with her hair tumbling around her face, her lips flushed and shoes missing. She’d been led away by the faeries into an unending dance, and if she didn’t wake up she’d die. Too young, too alone.

Nobody would remember her.

XIV I dressed with great care the following evening—a peacock-green dress like a duchess, hair up and tucked with a feather and golden comb. I accepted emeralds and topaz jewelry from the invisible hands and let them slide heavy earrings into my lobes. They dabbed red onto my mouth and deep silver onto my eyelids, rouge on my cheeks.

And I swept down to the dining room just as the nightly gong rang throughout the castle.

The Beast stood beside his chair, and one arm shifted as if he thought to welcome me.

I stood across the long table, chin lifted. “Good evening, Beast,” I said in a cracking voice.

A sigh like ocean wind ruffled the room and he said, “Good evening, Beauty.”

He lumbered around the table to my chair and pulled it back for me to sit. I sank down, relief shaking my knees, and settled my hands elegantly in my lap as he pushed my chair into place.

The smell of vines and rose petals, of old earth and musty leaves, filled my nose and I realized I hadn’t missed only company. I’d missed him.

XV

“Must I stay here forever?” I asked him in the center of the rose garden, seated on a curved stone bench with no room for his bulk.

“I don’t know,” he answered immediately, one hand cupping a heavy purple rosebud. The petal tips promised bloody-red.

I crossed my arms and leaned back in a slouch. “How can you not know, oh Master of the Castle?”

He was silent so long I pursed my lips, ready to change the subject to something more pleasant—beheadings, perhaps, or the bond market. But he crouched down so the quilted jacket he wore billowed strangely around his bulk, and said, “I did not create the rose that brought you here, Beauty. Nor the high wall.”

On my feet, I swept to him. This way, me standing, him crouching, our eyes were nearly level. I studied his face.

In the sunlight his pupils contracted like a lion’s, and the twisted green skin ran in frozen rivulets over his wide nose. Every thorn that erupted from his cheekbones glinted sharply. The bright lichen pulled at his mouth. Those ivory tusks gleamed. I reached out with a finger and touched the tip of one. Beast did not even breathe. The ivory was smooth, almost warm. Understanding grew inside me and I felt an utter fool for never thinking it before.

“You’re a prisoner, too,” I whispered.

“I earned my sentence.” Beast’s breath tickled my wrist and I slowly pulled my hand away.

XVI Knowing Beast wasn’t my jailer was like removing a layer or armor. If it wasn’t him, he wasn’t my enemy. He was my silent, horrid companion.

“Will you tell me everything?”

He scratched at the lichen on his cheek. He tapped his cloven foot onto the stone floor. He said painfully, as if dragging every word through fire, “I can…try to…answer…questions. Specific questions. But not…put words to…the…whole.”

I asked him everything I could think of.

“Is this a curse?”

Yes.

“What are the ghosts?”

Ghosts.

“How does the magic work?”

How does the sun work?

“Why are you a Beast? What were you before?

“How do I break it?

“How do I set both of us free?”

To a few he gave half answers, and I learned to recognize the slow blink of his heavy eyelids as evidence the enchantment kept him from replying in full. To most, he shook his head sadly. Instead of letting loose my frustration, I asked something different.

“What is your favorite book?”

“Do you like dry or sweet wine?”

Things that were easy to answer, nothing to do with magic.

He would tell me, “Durid’s Theory of Nature” and “dry wine.” He brought me a tattered copy of the former to the rose garden one morning, and I read pieces from it, though my interest in scientific ideas had never reached great heights. But Beast, he explained what I read in quiet, simple terms, plucking a leaf to demonstrate or bending to draw diagrams in the pebbles. When he finished, if I understood, I’d take the stick from his paw and draw a smiling face.

The Beast couldn’t smile around the lichen and tusks and fangs.

At night, he continued to finish dinner with his own constant question. “Will you marry me, Beauty?”

“Why do you ask, Beast?” I replied once, flattening my palms on either side of my sauce-streaked dessert plate.

He struggled, I saw, to keep his eyes on mine across the distance of the long table. But he made no reply. And I knew the answer.

“No, Beast,” I whispered, and left.

XVII Outside the castle grounds it was deep winter. Through the iron gates I could see ice-crusted trees and drifting snow. It obscured the road, kept animals huddled in their nests and burrows. But inside the wall the snow melted into rain, and the roses bloomed.

I stood at the gates and gripped the bars until my hands were as cold as the metal. They ached to the bones but I refused to put on mittens. I needed that pain; that icy fire shot up my arms to my heart, kept me from becoming complacent.

XVIII I taught Beast to play cards. We used silverware for wagers; knives were worth the most, then forks, spoons, dessert spoons, salad forks, butter knives. Once he learned the basics, he defeated me easily because his game face was so impossible to penetrate. He pitied me sometimes, and left me with a knife or two, until I laughingly yelled at him to stop it, to take his winnings from me. It all belonged to him anyway.

So we whiled away the winter darkness.

I grew used to touching him, to the shock of hard bark under the cloth of his jacket instead of flesh. To the prick of his thorn-claws. To the musty smell of his vinelike tangled hair.

And I wondered myself why I’d never been afraid of him. I’d been overwhelmed and fascinated when I first beheld his monstrosity. But not afraid. Perhaps I’d been too furious, too desperate for fear.

Maybe because he was so clearly made of natural things. Tumbled together by magic, certainly, but he was earth and trees and flowers and all the beasts of the wild.

Once he caught me staring, and his mouth moved into what I perceived to be a grimace. I caught one of his hands with both of mine and held him before me. “My answer isn’t because I don’t…care.”

“Your answer?”

But he knew what question I meant.

I ran outside, straight down the white pebble road to the iron gates. Snow melted before me, pelting the earth like rain, pitter-patter, and two thin squirrels froze in their dashing to stare back at me. I tore at the gate, throwing all my weight into it, but it never budged.

The Beast joined me.

“What do you miss so very much, outside those black gates?” he asked, behind me like a shield, like a mountain.

I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead to the bars. A shiver racked my body, for I’d run here without a coat. What did I miss? Not my father. Not parties that lasted all night, or the silk sheets slightly less fine than the ones I slept on now. But my sisters and a few acquaintances in the village we’d moved to after Father’s catastrophe, who might one day have become friends. My garden, so gaunt and bare and nothing like the magnificence behind me. Watching the sun set after a long day sewing and cooking and stirring butter, knowing I owed only myself for the food on my table.

“I did not choose to be here,” I whispered finally. “I’ve never chosen my place, but been dragged by my father everywhere. Even if I might—might have been able to be happy here, how can I ever be, when I did not choose it?”

A heavy hand settled briefly against my head. As soon as I realized he touched me, his hand slid down my hair, thorns combing through.

I shivered again, though less from cold.

XIX That night when he asked me to marry him, for the first time I considered it.

But it would be only the illusion of choice.

XX I stood in the center of the rose garden and tore at the red roses.

Gloves only protected my hands at first. Soon the canvas shredded and my skin with it. My fingers were slick with blood, but I found every last red rose and destroyed it. When the pain numbed my hands and I could barely move them, I resorted to ripping apart the flowers themselves. Petals stuck to me, glued in place with blood.

The Beast found me, and cried out, a strangled roar.

He grabbed me, wrapping his arms around me so I was trapped, and lifted me up and away. “Beauty!” he roared again, and then, “Beauty…” more sadly. I wilted in his arms, blood printing his chest and arms, filling my nose and mouth.

Inside, he set me beside the fire and went for bandages and water. With his large, clumsy hands, he mopped up blood and broken petals. They released sweet perfume, their redness merging with my blood. He shook his head again and again as he wrapped my hands.

Finally, as I balanced a mug of hot tea in my lap, able to grab it only with both hands, as clumsy as him now, the Beast asked, “Why?”

“I thought it might free us.”

He snorted impatiently.

I reached up and touched one of the petals clinging to his hair as they always did.

XXI My hands healed as the springtime grew.

I watched the process in the mirror gallery, as gashes scabbed over, as they grew thinner, closed up, turned pink and puckered, lining my hands as though my bones had been sewn together with uneven stitches. Like the Beast’s coats.

In the mirror, I was wild. Wild as I’d been dancing, but as I stared I didn’t see a lost girl; I saw a beast. Wild like nature is wild; tangled hair, scarred hands, heavy garden boots, a tattered hem on an otherwise beautiful velvet dress. I smiled and my teeth were strong and straight, not fangs, but when I turned my smile to a growl, they were dangerous.

I wanted to show him, and whirled to run through the walls, yelling his name until it echoed off the high stone ceiling.

He waited in the grand entryway, blue tapestries behind him like the sky.

“Beauty, now that your hands have healed, come with me,” he said.

I opened my mouth to tell him, No, come with me! But he reached out his hand and I slid mine into it, scars against fur, scars made by rose thorns, and his thorn-claws touching them delicately, harmlessly.

Together we walked out to the wall beside the black iron gate.

“Reach your hands up,” Beast said, and amused, I did, remembering in a flash the first escape while rain pelted me, washing the entire world away.

He lifted me by the waist until my hands found the top stone. I gasped, and he boosted me higher. I climbed onto the wall, crouching there, halfway between the castle grounds and the freedom of the forest.

Wind hit my face, warm with springtime, and birds sang loudly now—I hadn’t heard such a song in months! I laughed.

But the Beast sighed. It was so soft, if I weren’t attuned to him so finely now, I’d have thought it a breath of the same wind teasing my hair.

I looked down at him. He said nothing. My smiles and laughter fell away as I realized what he’d done.

I was free.

My stomach dropped. I curled my scarred fingers into fists. “You could have always done this!” I cried. “Any day or night you could have lifted me up here!”

“Yes,” he said. Red petals fell from his hair as the wind blew.

“Why didn’t you?”

“I am desperate for you to stay.”

Am. Am. Am. It beat in my heart. “But you’ve done it now,” I whispered. I turned away from him to look out over the forest toward the city. Toward my village and sisters and decrepit little garden. I could leave anytime. He could boost me over this wall anytime! Now, or tomorrow, or the next day. But if I leaped down and away, however would I climb back in?

I would want to climb back in.

I would choose to climb back in.

Lowering myself carefully to sit on the wall with my feet dangling down against the castle side, I smiled at the Beast. “Thank you,” I said fervently, for he had given me my choice.

“I will miss you, Beauty,” he said. “If you— If you would think of me, sometimes, I would—like that.”

“I will think of you every day, Beast.”

Perhaps that twist of his mouth around the tusks was a smile.

But I still didn’t move. “What will happen to you if I go?”

“If?” he whispered.

I waited. After a moment, staring up at me, he shook his head. “I do not know if anything will happen.”

“What if you come with me?” I held down my hand as if to pull him up—as if I had that sort of strength.

With an awkward but powerful shove, he leaped onto the wall, catching himself with his claws. He swayed as he found balance, then knelt a few paces from me. His pupils narrowed as he looked toward freedom.

Excitement shivered through me, and I laughed. But it cut short when I saw the lichen pulling down the side of his face flake away. He trembled.

“Get back down!” I cried.

His dark blue eyes found mine and one of his tusks cracked.

He fell more than jumped, landing hard on his knees. I scrambled down.

When I touched him he did not flinch, for his breath rattled like winter branches. I remained, an arm spread as far around his hunched shoulders as it would go, until he was ready to walk slowly back inside the castle.

XXII

“I will not leave without breaking this curse,” I said firmly as we shared dinner that night.

He stopped in his eating—he’d begun to pick at the easy things the castle shared with me; meat and cheeses, things he could pluck up with his claws and drop into his mouth. The Beast said, though it was early for it, “Will you love me, Beauty? Will you marry me?”

Standing fast, I paced away, my back to him, mind abuzz. Did I love him? Could I marry him? Was that the only way?

I remembered the moment his tusk had cracked, and my heart cracked, too. I remembered the sound of his knees slamming into the earth.

I loved him. I could not leave if it killed him. Or hurt him, or even just left him the same: alone, waiting, watching.

I stopped pacing, with my hands on my face. My scarred hands. I imagined caressing the rough lichen on his chin, gently kissing the thorns that pierced his cheekbones. What would his hands feel like against my back? Under that coat, where was fur and where bark? It was too much—too much.

As a coward, I fled.

XXIII Because he is not a coward, he found me in the mirror gallery.

Positioning himself at my side instead of behind as he usually did, the Beast studied his reflection. “I understand.”

“Will you dance with me?” I asked in a small voice, a little girl’s plea.

The Beast bowed and we waltzed, slow and ungainly down the hall. His shadowy form flashed in the mirrors, reflecting again and again, with me as little bursts of bright hair, of pale silk. I closed my eyes and found the rhythm of his mismatched feet, and slid a hand under his coat, to the place I guessed his heart would be. He was soft as moss, cool as a mountain. I stepped in closer and breathed his smell.

Keeping hold of one hand, I led him outside the castle once more, and to the wall. Without having to ask, he boosted me up again, until I stood atop it, under the silver moon.

Turning as if still dancing, I said, “Ask me again.”

“Don’t make me.”

“Do you love me, Beast?”

He opened his arms.

I leaped off the great wall and into the sky, knowing he would catch me.

* * * * *