“At least you don’t change,” she murmured, sitting down where she was, drawing up her knees, and putting her arms round her shins. ‘‘I am grateful,” she said aloud, “that these rooms—my rooms—don’t change. In this palace, where too many things change—where the paintings hanging in the corridors change their faces and their frames, where the can-dlestands and torcheres and sconces are in different places and are higher or lower and have more branches or fewer, and there are different numbers of doors in the chamber of the star, and the cnamehvork around the sun window changes colours, and sometimes it’s vine leaves and sometimes it’s little inedailions, and the size of the tiles underfoot is sometimes larger and sometimes smaller, and there are of course different numbers of points on die star because there are different numbers of doors, but that doesn’t explain why the points are sometimes straight and sometimes curly—and perhaps it is a different dining-hall every evening too, only it is too dark to see. There is almost nothing here that does not change, except the glasshouse and—and me. And the Beast. And these rooms. The roses on the carpet in the first room are always pale pink cabbages, and the carpet in here is always velvety crimson roses mat have opened Hat—I suppose the carpet is dyed with a magic dye and will not fade in all this sunlight—and the tall japanned cabinet with the potpourri dish on top is always where I first saw it, and the mountain and the bridge and the trees on its front are always the same picture, and the potpourri bowl is always the same pale green china. And the fire grate always has the same number of bars—eight, I counted—and the bed stairs are the same number of steps, five.
“And the garden tapestries are always there. I particularly love the garden tapestries. I might not realise if some of the other things were changed just a little—things I can’t count—but I would see it at once in those tapestries; you, er, you change the tint of one columbine, and I would notice it. I am glad they are all, always there. Even if, er. you have rather odd habits about matching jewelry with bath towels. I am even glad of those gilt console tables, although 1 think they are hideous, because at least they are always the same hideous,”
She was still half asleep as she spoke, her eyes wandering meditatively over what she could see from where she was, and her gaze slowly settled back on the carpet she sat on. Several of the roses really did look surprisingly three-dimensional, although this one close at hand seemed less dark crimson than brown. . .. Her eyes snapped fully open, and she leant towards what was distinctly a small round lump on the carpet. Not Fourpaws, too small. “What,,, you’re a hedgehog!”
It stirred at her touch and then curled up tighter. “You’re a very small hedgehog. And you shouldn’t be wandering round enchanted palaces looking for adventures. How did you get in here? At least bats and butterflies fly.”
She stood up and began tapping gingerly at other bits of carpet. She found two more hedgehogs. Bemusedly she sat down at her breakfast table and poured herself a cup of tea. “Well, You would be quite useful in the glasshouse if there were any slugs, but at present there’s nothing for slugs to eat, so there are no slugs. 1 daresay by the time there are slugs, you will be full-grown and somewhere else. If I had a compost heap, you could sleep under the compost heap. Oh dear! If only 1 had something to compost! Grey and white pebbles and stone chips will not do. How am I going to feed my roses?” She put her feet under the table. “Oh!” She raised the edge of the tablecloth to look. Four hedgehogs.
When she came to get dressed, she discovered a canvas tunic with long sleeves folded up on the floor of the wardrobe under her skirt, and behind her skirt on its peg a canvas overskiit. “Very convenient for the transportation of hedge-bogs,” she said. There were tough leather boots that laced to her knees in the way of her searching hand when she scrabbled under the bed for her shoes. Then she bumped the curled hedgehogs together with one foot as gently as she could (even rolled-up hedgehogs do not readily roll) and, protecting her hands behind her overskirt, bundled them into her lap. “I hope tomorrow’s animal infestation isn’t fleas,” she murmured, and walked towards the chamber of the star, grateful for the first time for the eerieness of doors that opened themselves.
The lady, or the lady’s cousin, who was usually in the first painting in the corridor that led to the glasshouse had changed her hair colour, and her pug dog was now a fan. She gazed at Beauty with unchanged superciliousness, however. But this morning Beauty, with her arms full of possibly flea-infested hedgehogs, put her tongue out at her.
She laid her four spiky parcels down at the foot of the water-butt (having had a brief exciting moment holding her laden skirt together with one hand and one knee while she rapidly worked the glasshouse door handle with the other hand). “These are excellent garments,” she said, brushing her sleeves and her skirt front. “1 can even bend my arms. The shirt reminds me very much of Jcweltongue’s first... oh.:> She squeezed her eyes shut on her tears as one might hold one’s nose against a sneeze; after a little while the sensation ebbed, and she opened her eyes again and gave one or two slightly watery sniffs. The hedgehogs had not moved. “If you slay there a little longer, I will take you to the wild wood later on. But I have things to do first.”
The half-open bud of the red rose was fully open now, and one of the other two was cracking, and—best of all—she found a tiny green bump of a new flower-bud peeking from the joint between another leaf and stem. She took a deep breath of the open flower’s perfume; it was as good as sleep, or food.
She watered her cuttings. “You are striking, are you not?” she said to them briskly, like a governess addressing her students. “You are sending out little white rootlets in all directions, and soon you will prove it to me by producing your first leaf buds. I want you blooming by the end of this season, do you hear me? You shrubs, at least. You climbers, perhaps I will give you till next year.”
She heard her own voice saying it—by the end of this season, next year—and she stopped where she stood, and the water from the watering-can she carried wavered and stopped too. She looked up towards the cupola several storeys over her head, and her mind went blank, and she felt panic stir in its lair, open its eyes.... She opened her mouth and began to sing the first thing that came into her head: “And from her heart grew a red, red rose, and from his heart a briar.. . .”