The sun set, and still the Princess knew not how next to seek her chosen adventure of the Hunting of the Hind; and as the shadows lengthened, rage rose in her, and despair; and she turned to see the half-moon floating up above the horizon. She looked at it for long enough that it rose several degrees of its are; and then she closed her eyes and crossed her arms on her breast, turned, and walked straight into the rockface.
She had been standing less than an arm’s-length away from the side of the mountain as she stared at the moon; but now she walked forward—half a dozen steps, a dozen—but she feared to open her eyes to find herself caught by some magic a bodily part of the rock itself. So she continued forward, step by step, her eyes closed fast and her hands at her breast; and then she realized that her footsteps had begun to fall with an echo, as if she walked in a great cavern; and she opened her eyes.
It was a great cavern indeed; torches that gave off a fair and smokeless light were thrust in gold and ivory rings all around the walls, but the ceiling was lost in darkness at some immeasurable height. The walls, which from the clear light of the torches she could see to the height of cathedral walls, were of smooth stone, but that stone bore all the colors of the rainbow in its most peaceful and yet most joyful tints: yellows, greens, blues, and rosy reds; all were represented and all were glorious, and even the ever sharp thought of her dying brother was soothed a little as she looked.
The floor on which she walked was mirror smooth, and held a gleam of its own; but here was the shining of the sky before a storm, thunderheads of majestic white and heavy grey; and her booted feet struck out a noise like the ringing of a bell with every step.
Then she saw, still far away from her, a low wall, she thought perhaps in the center of this great place, for it was far away from the walls she could see. And on the wall, with its head bowed, sat a figure draped in white.
As the Princess approached, she realized that the shining golden head of the figure was no crown nor work of man’s hands, but the fabulous masses of heavy golden hair. When she grew near, the figure looked up: and her eyes met deep brown eyes with a glint of green in their depths, and a glint that the Princess saw more clearly now, of sorrow. And as the Princess saw the pale perfect face that held those eyes, she remembered her brother’s words, “I have seen her”; and her legs folded under her, and she knelt at the feet of a woman whose beauty could send a man mad, or blind, but grateful in his blindness, or even comfortable in his madness.
“Please, you must not kneel; it is not fit,” said the woman. “Indeed, I know I am very beautiful, for I cannot help knowing; nor can I help the beauty, which is not even rightfully mine.”
The Princess rose slowly, and looked bewildered at the woman who had made such a curious speech; and, at her gesture, sat on the wall near her. “Do not fear me,” the woman went on gently, as she read the puzzlement in the face before her; “you have looked into my eyes, and seen that I am—I am like you, whatever my face may say; and I thank you—I thank you exceedingly for that favor.” She paused. “He who keeps me here … lent my own, my human beauty, a touch of horror and dread, that I should fill the hearts of those who look on me with a wildness of delight that would destroy them.”
“Why?” said the Princess; and her whisper seemed to run out to the sheer walls, and even through them, carrying her question she could not guess where.
“Because I refused him,” said the woman, but her reply went only into the Princess’s ears, and to nothing that might wait beyond the walls. “And so he decided that none should have me; and that the face that had caught him would grow hateful to its owner for what it did to others …” and the woman covered her glorious, terrible face with her hands, and tears like diamonds slid through her fingers.
“What may I do for you?” said the Princess. “I am here to help you, for my brother’s sake.” But her voice trembled; for while no dread had touched her heart, because she had seen past this woman’s beauty into the deeps of her spirit in the green flickers of her wide eyes, still there was a fearfulness to the magnificence of the cavern, and she felt the weight of the woman’s cursed beauty as a soldier might feel a weight on his sword arm.
“Tell me what to do, and I will try, as best I may.” And the Princess realized as she spoke that while it was love for her brother that had brought her to dare as she did, still she was moved with sympathy for this strange woman, and would wish to help her if she could.
“For your brother’s sake,” said the woman, and a half-smile touched her sadness. “I have a brother too. Come.” She stood up, and the Princess stood too; but reeled in her place, and the woman reached out an exquisite white hand and caught her. “Come. You shall meet my brother, and you shall have something to eat, for I see you are faint with hunger, and I know too well the cause of it. Then perhaps we can tell you how you may save us all—” and the Princess heard the desperate anxiety in that sweet voice, and realized how sharply the woman had to catch herself up when she spoke of that hope.
They walked, the Princess leaning on the woman’s arm, toward one of the gorgeous colored walls; and as they approached, there was a plain simple doorway in the rock that the Princess could see and touch and understand, and she sighed as they passed through it.
They found themselves in a small room, and a golden smokeless fire like the fire of the torches glowed in a hollow at one end of it, and a man sat at a table at the center of it; and on that table were bread and cheese and fruit, and pitchers and cups and plates. The man stood up to welcome them, and the Princess saw that he was lame; he came no more than two steps toward them, and that only by leaning heavily on the table.
“Welcome, Princess,” he said, and his eyes were brown and green like his sister’s, and held the same imprisoned sorrow. He stretched out his hands and took the Princess’s between them for a moment, and for that little moment she thought a little less about her brother, as she had when she first looked at the rainbow walls of the cavern. “First you must eat,” said this man.
And so the Princess sat down, and ate white bread and yellow cheese, and fruits of green and red and deep blue-purple, and the woman of the terrible beauty ate with her, as did that woman’s brother, although the Princess noticed that they ate very little.
When they had finished, and the Princess stared into her cup without drinking, the man said gently: “My name is Darin, and my sister is Sellena. This place is a place of much magic, and little of that good, but you may trust us with your name without fear. Will you give it us?”