It was near lunchtime, but for the first time she was not hungry for it. She stood restlessly in the centre of her glasshouse, with the transplanted heartsease gleaming velvety and merry in the sunlight, and looked round her. The good work she had done no longer pleased her, because she knew her task was only half accomplished. She had to feed the soil, feed her roses, or nothing would come of all she had done so far, and her cuttings and seedlings would die too. “If! say ‘compost,’ I don’t suppose a compost heap appears by the water-butt, does it?” It didn’t.
She walked through the orchard, too preoccupied to look for the Beast—or too ashamed, for how could she face him now, when the job she was here to do she was about to fail at?—and let herself into the walled garden again; but she found no compost heap, nor any of the usual signs of human cultivation, rakes and hoes and spades, trowels and hand forks and pruning knives, seed trays and bel! glasses and pots for potting on, odd bits of timber that might do for props but probably won’t, twists of paper that used to contain seeds and haven’t found their way to the bonfire, broken pots, frayed string, and bits of rusty wire. “Very well,” she said. “You are much too—too organized for such mortal litter, but if you, you magic, don’t need compost to make—to allow—things to grow, why are the Beast’s poor roses dying?” It is the heart of this place, and it is dying. She looked out again over the too-tidy, too-beautiful vegetable beds and listened to the silence. Where were the birds?
She slunk back through the orchard, looking only at her feet, not even interested in exploring the pond or stream the bulrushes heralded, not stopping to twist a fruit off any of the generously Jaden trees, because she suddenly felt she did not deserve such a pleasure. She went up to her balcony and stared at her lunch with no appetite.
There was a slab of cheese, and she poked it with her finger. “Where do you come from then? Herbivore dung is exactly what I want. Cow would be splendid—goat, sheep, even horse. I’m not particular. Chicken is also good, although I’m quite sure one cannot produce cheese from chickens. 1 wish I knew more about cheese.” She tried to recollect everything the dairymaid who had married a city man might have told her about cheese varieties, but it was all too long ago. She had not been a good pupil because she had had too much on her mind, and the woman had been careful to give her only the most basic instructions. She thought of her own experiments with goat’s cheese and smiled grimly; no help for her there.
She broke off a bit of this cheese and nibbled it, stared at the pattern of crumbs as if they were tea-leaves which could tell her fortune. “This isn’t even like any cheese I can remember anywhere else. It’s—it’s—” She stopped.
She had eaten cheese in the palace before, and no doubt what was happening now was only because she was concentrating so hard that her mind had to leap in some direction, like a horse goaded by spurs. But suddenly she seemed to stand in a forest, and there was an undulating sea of moss underfoot, and the sunlight fell through the green and coppery leaves in patterns as beautiful as those on a spider’s back, and there was a smell of roses in her nostrils and in her mouth. But just as she would know Lionheart from Jeweltongue in the dark simply by her smell, just as each of the roses at Rose Cottage possessed a smell as individual as the shape of its stems and leaves and the colour of its flowers, so was this smell of roses different from the rich wild scent that belonged to the Beast. This scent was light and delicate and fine and reminded her of apples after rain, but with a flick, a touch, a tremor of something else, something she could not identify. She drew in a deep breath, and her heart lifted, and then the vision—and the scent—dissolved, and she was back in her rose-decorated room, staring at a plate of cheese and cheese crumbs.
She hardly knew how she got through the afternoon, and she was preoccupied at dinner. When Fourpaws failed to put in an appearance, she found herself playing fretfully with the tails of the ribbons woven into her bodice, fidgeting with the silken cord of her embroidered heart, and twisting the gold chain set with coral that hung round her neck.
“May I ask what troubles you?” said the Beast at last.
Beauty laughed a little. “I am sorry; I am not good company this evening. No, I think I want to worry my problem one more day. It would please me to be abie to solve it myself, although at present I admit I am baffled.”
“I will help you any way I can,” said the Beast. “As I have told you.”
Beauty looked at him. He had turned his head so that the candlelight fell on one cheekbone, lit the dark depths of one eye; the tips of his white teeth showed even when his mouth was closed. He always sat so still that when he moved, it was a surprise, like a statue gesturing, or the wolf or chimera’s deadly spring from hiding.
“Yes, Beast,” she said. “I know ... you have told me this.”
He made his own restless motion, plucking at the edge of his gown, as she had seen him do before. The fabric rippled and glistened in the candlelight, seeming to turn of its own volition to show off its black sheen, like a cat posing for an audience. She repressed the urge to stroke it, to quiet the Beast’s hand by placing her own over it.
“It is a little early,” he said after a moment, “but I could take you on the roof tonight.”
“Oh, yes!” said Beauty. “Please. When I woke up this morning, I was angry, because I usually do wake at least once in the night.”
“Do you?” said the Beast, as he stood behind her chair while she folded her napkin and rose to her feel. “Does something disturb you?”
She turned round and looked up at him. He was very near, and the rose scent of him was so heavy she felt she might reach out and seize it, wrap it round herself like a scarf. “I have always woken in the night.’’ she said, * ‘since I was a little child, since—since 1 first had the dream I told you of, my—my first evening here.”
The Beast was silent for a moment. “I have forgotten,” he said at last, and the words / have forgotten echoed down a dark corridor of years. “I too used to wake most nights, when—before—when I slept more than I do now. I had forgotten.”
He turned away, as if still lost in thought, but she skipped round after him and slipped her hand beneath his elbow. His free hand drew her hand through and smoothed it down over his forearm, and his arm pressed hers against his side.