That curious feeling of clear-headedness increased with the light. Grey gave way to pink, and then to deep flushed rose edged with gold; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I could see the morning star shining like hope from the bottom of Pandora’s box. I opened a section of the window and a little wind slipped inside to play with my rumpled hair and tickle me back into the beginnings of a good mood.
Then I heard the voices. There was a rustling about them, like too many stiff satin petticoats, and I looked around in surprise, half-expecting to see someone. “Oh dear, oh dear,” said the melancholy voice. “Just look at that bed. I’m sure she hasn’t had a wink of sleep all night. Here now”—more sharply—“what are you about? Pull yourselves together immediately!” The bedclothes started scrambling over one another, and the bed-curtains quivered anxiously.
“Don’t be too hard on them,” said the practical voice mildly. “They’ve had a rough night too.”
“We all have,” said the first voice. “Oh yes indeed. And look at her sitting beside that open window, with her robe all open at the neck, and nothing but a bit of lace for a nightgown! She’ll catch her death!” I guiltily put a hand to my collar. “And her hair! Good heavens. Has she been standing on her head?”
The voices—these were the voices I had heard several times, just before I had drifted into sleep or just after; I had never decided which. They were my invisible maidservants, my friendly breeze, the voices of plain common sense in this magic-ridden castle. They whisked around now, finding hot water in a fold in the air, putting it in a basin, laying towels beside it. Breakfast was laid out—“It is early, but she will certainly feel better after she has eaten”—and all the while they talked, discussing me: “How pale and pinched she looks! Tonight we must be sure she rests properly”; and the coming day, and my wardrobe, and the difficulties of getting the food decently cooked and the floors decently waxed, and so on.
I sat amazed, listening. At first I thought that I must be asleep and dreaming, in spite of the cold clean touch of the dawn; that would also explain the odd sense of preternatural clear-headedness—I might dream anything.
But the sun rose, and I washed my face and hands and ate breakfast, while the voices went on and I listened. The clink of plate and fork and teacup, and the taste of the food, decided me. I was awake; something else had happened to me in this castle where anything might happen. I wondered what else I might find that I could hear or see that had been hidden from me until now.
! almost said aloud: “I can hear you”—but I stopped myself. Perhaps if I pretended continued deafness I would learn what they had meant, when I had caught bits of their conversation—for I was now sure I had heard them—in the weeks past: “You know it’s impossible.”
“It was made to be impossible.” After breakfast, when they brought me a walking dress—did I catch the shimmer of something almost visible out of the corners of my eyes, as they blew around me?—I did say, aloud, “I missed you last night.”
“Oh dear, she missed us, I knew she would, we’ve always been here before. But we couldn’t leave him; I haven’t seen him in such a temper since—oh, years and years. I’m always afraid he may do himself a mischief when he’s in that state—not that she has anything to fear—but we’ve always stood by him in such moods, it seems safer, we don’t really help anything but our presence is a distraction, I think, and anything is better than nothing at all.”
“It is very difficult for him. Much more so than for us.”
“Well, of course”—indignantly. “We’re almost—volunteers; and invisibility isn’t really so bad once you’re accustomed to not seeing yourself around, you know....”
“Yes, I know,” the other voice said drily.
“It is certainly a good thing that that magician took himself off directly after he’d finished his nasty business here, or he would have been murdered. Nights like this past remind me of it. Although I never have understood why killing a magician like that—fiend—yes, fiend—should be counted as murder; after all, he’s not even human,”
“Now, Lydia. That sort of talk will get you nowhere—and he would be angry if he heard you. If he knows better, surely we should.”
“Oh, Bessie, I know, it’s very wrong of me, but I sometimes—I just can’t help it.” The voice sounded near tears. “This can’t possibly work.”
“You may think what you like of course,” the other voice said briskly, “but I shan’t give up. And neither will he.”
“No,” said the melancholy voice, but in a tone so woebegone as to suggest that determination was only another aspect of the problem.
A Faint jingly noise like a laugh. “She’s a good girl, and bright enough. She’ll figure it out in the end.”
“The end is a very long time off,” Lydia said gloomily.
“All the more reason to be hopeful; there’s plenty of time. And she’s stronger than she knows—even if she understands nothing of it. You’ve seen the birds? They come to the garden now—and you know that that was expressly forbidden. Nothing—not even butterflies, not even birds. But we have birds now.”
“That’s true,” Lydia said wistfully.
“Well then,” said Bessie, as if the argument was won. “Now then, come along; there’s a lot to be done before lunch.” Invisible fingers patted my hair and shoulders, and the breeze whirled up and was gone.
All this made no sense to me at all. A magician? Well, if ever there was a place that was obviously under a spell, this was it. And the Beast—he must be the “he” they talked so much about. He must be under a spell too. He had said once, “I have not always been as you see me now.” And they said that I was “bright enough”: Were there clues, then, that I was supposed to be picking up, arranging into a pattern? Oh dear. I didn’t know anything about magic, and spells, and things; such branches of learning were considered a little less than respectable by everyone I knew—nor very intellectually rewarding, so I had felt little interest in them. Surely that wasn’t the method I was supposed to be looking for. But what else was there? I felt very stupid, notwithstanding Bessie’s—stubborn, it seemed to me—faith that everything would work out in the end.
I tackled something more readily accessible: “He” had been in a temper last night.
Sudden dismay clutched my stomach, and my breakfast somersaulted. Was he very angry with me then? “... Not that she has anything to fear ...” Lydia had said. Dismay and my breakfast subsided, but I was still worried; I didn’t like the idea of his being angry with me—perhaps I bad treated him badly last night. Perhaps I should apologize. What if he was so angry that I didn’t see him today? I felt lonely at once, and ashamed of myself.
I took the peacock-tin that held birdseed to the window. I leaned outside and whistled, scattering some seed on the sill as I did so. Butterflies and birds were forbidden; I was stronger than I knew, although I didn’t know why. I sighed. I certainly didn’t know why.
Little dark shadows crossed my face, and then I felt tiny feet on my head, and a sparrow perched on my outstretched hand, “Here, come down from there,” I said, gently dislodging the chaffinch sitting on my head. We discussed the weather and the possibility of rain in chirps and blinks, and I tried to lure a robin to take seed from my hand, but he only cocked his head and looked at me. No birds were allowed. Maybe these weren’t real birds at all, but figments invented by the castle, or by the Beast, because I’d wanted birds. They looked real; the prick of their tiny claws was real. There were never very many of them—whatever that meant. And it was true, too, that recently I had heard birdsongs sometimes when I was out riding Greatheart. Maybe the spell was weakening? Maybe I wouldn’t have to do anything heroic after all.