She stopped once and looked up, reassuring herself that the sky, at least, even here, looked as it had from her garden at Rose Cottage or from the city. But how was she to know that? The sky was blue, or it was grey, and it was full of clouds, or it was not, and the walls of the palace blocked too much of it. There was no horizon; it was like standing in the bottom of an immense well. Or of a trap. The sky was too far away to be of much comfort.
Once she paused because her eye was caught by some variation in the wall of the palace, a break in the tall ranks of windows. She peered at the gap, unsure of what she saw as she would be of shapes found in clouds or fish swimming in a dappled pond; were they there or not? But she held her ground and stared and at last could say: Here was an archway, but barred by solid gates, fitting so perfectly into both the wall itself and the plain forma! architecture of the rest of the facade that they were difficult to see unless searched for—and she would not have searched had she not wondered (and been grateful for the distraction) at a stretch of wall that had gone on too long without a window in it.
She stepped up close and laid her hand on the crack between the left-hand door and the wall; closing her eyes, she could barely find it with her fingertips and could sense no difference between the texture of the wall and that of the door. Opening her eyes, she was redazzled by the surface shimmer and lost both doors entirely; it was not till she stepped back and looked again that she could pick out the thin line of the arch, silver as fish scales.
It was all so silent! There was the scuff of her shoes in the line gravel, and the occasional whisper of wind, and that was all. Not even any birds sang. But what was there for birds here, in this bleak stone wasteland?
She went on; how long she did not know. She began to feel tired and discouraged and, without meaning to, swerved in her course till she could reach out and touch the glasshouse. She trailed her fingers idly over the width of one pane, bumped over the tiny ridge of its connecting frame, onto another pane. . . . But then, suddenly, there was a corner of the courtyard after all, and another wall running at right angles lo it, and her glasshouse produced a corner of its own to keep paralle! pace with ii. And very soon after she turned the corner, she found a great dark tunnel running through the palace, like a carriage-way, though she saw nothing to suggest the presence of stables, and the curve of its arch was much the same shape as the nearly invisible doors she had found in the last wall.
She walked through the tunnel, shivering a little, for it was surprisingly cold in its shadow, and the tunnel was surprisingly long. I should stop being surprised by things being very long, she said to herself. When she came out the other side at last, she found herself in a wild wood and halted in astonishment. She took a few cautious steps forward and then whirled to look back through the carriage-way and was reassured by the glint of the glasshouse she could see on the far side.
She remembered her glimpses of something that might have been wild wood at the edges of the formal gardens fronting the palace, but such wilderness still seemed so unlikely a neighbour for a palace. But then, she reminded herself, this was a sorcerer’s palace, and sorcerers could surround their palaces with anything they liked. There was a story of one, known lo dislike visitors, who had surrounded his with the end of the world. (Whether it was the real end or not was moot; you disappeared into it just the same.)
But the only magic she knew that still connected her to Rose Cottage and her family was on the other side of the dark carriage-way. She did not want to wander into any wild woods and not be able to find her way back.
But here was a splendid site for a bonfire.
The old branches and other bits and pieces had been tidily swept together and were waiting for her—just inside the carriage tunnel, just within the edge of its shadow, at the mouth that led to the wild wood. Beauty shivered again, thinking that the magic ended there for certain, or that if this wood was magic too, then it belonged to some other sorcerer than the one who ruled the Beast’s palace. She would much rather that it was merely a wild wood and not magic at all, but this was not something she was likely to leam—at least not until it was too late, when she found herself dangling from the roc’s claws or cornered by the wild boar, and even then who was to say the wild boar wasn’t a familiar in disguise? Oh dear.
She dragged the branches clear of the tunnel and into the middle of the ragged little clearing among the trees, and then she muttered, “Knife, candle, tinder-box, besom,” and went back to an especially deep shadow near the far end of the tunnel, where she might not have seen them till she was looking for them. She swept her bonfire into a rough hummock, and while it took a little while for the candle flame to catch the old leaves and twig shreds she’d made with her knife, the branches were all dry and brown-hearted and burned very satisfactorily once they were going.
Beauty stood and watched for a little time, waving away sparks and wiping smuts out of her eyelashes, turning occasionally to look again at the winking glasshouse, to make sure it was there, and sweeping the edges towards the centre of the fire again as it tumbled apart. One did not leave a bonfire till one was sure of its burning down quietly, even in a wild wood—perhaps especially in a wild wood.
She went back to the glasshouse, walking near it down the length of the palace wing, reaching out to touch it occasionally—it was a much shorter journey on the return, she was sure; she was almost sure—and tidied up, or pretended to tidy up, since most of it had been done for her already, “Tomorrow, please, may I have a small rake that I can use among the rosebushes and a bag or a basket to collect leaves in? And if you would be kind enough to leave the besom somewhere I can find it again.”
She addressed the water-butt for lack of a better choice and a dislike for looking up. She tended to feel that magic must descend, and she did not want to see it happening. Furthermore, the water-butt was so straightforward a thing to find in a glasshouse. And almost as comforting as a cat in an immense shadowy dining-hall.
By the time she went back to her room, twilight was falling again. There was the tall rose-enamelled bath waiting for her, its water steaming, drawn up by the fireplace. The sapphire towels had been replaced by amethyst ones. She shook them out very carefully so as not to drop the amethyst necklace, ring, and earrings in the bath. She took off her clothes thankfully and stepped into the water; it was perfumed slightly with roses. But as she sat down, and her arms touched the water, she hissed in sudden pain, for they were covered with thorn scratches. A few thorns had stabbed through her skirt and heavy stockings, and her legs throbbed in short, fiery lines, but the hot water quickly soothed them; her arms were so sore it took her several minutes to slip them under water.