I had been sitting with the birds perhaps ten minutes when I began to feel uneasy. Uneasy was perhaps too strong a word. It was like trying to catch the echo of a sound so faint I wasn’t sure it existed. Something existed that was niggling at the edge of my consciousness. I turned my head this way and that, seeking some plainer hint. No; it wasn’t so much like a sound as like a teasing whiff of something, something that reminded me of forests, of pine sap and springwater, but with a wilder tang beneath it. The birds were still pecking unconcernedly around my fingers, along the sill.
“Beast,” I called. “You’re here—somewhere. I can feel it. Or something.” I shook my head. There was a brief vision, behind my eyes, of him gathering himself together to materialize out of my sight, around a corner of the castle, before he walked around it in normal fash—
ion and came to stand beneath my window. The birds flew away as soon as he had appeared—before he walked around the corner, and I could see him. “Good morning, Beauty,” he said.
“Something’s happened to me,” I said like a child seeking reassurance. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve felt peculiar all morning. How did I know you were near?”
He was silent.
“You know something of it,” I said, still listening to my new sixth sense.
“I can see that your new clarity of perception will create difficulties for me,” he said lightly.
My room was on the second storey, over a very tall first storey, so I was looking down more than twenty feet to the cop of his head. He had not looked up at me since he had wished me good morning. The grey in his hair seemed to reproach me for not being cleverer in understanding the spell that was laid on him, in not being of any use to him. Today he was wearing dark-red velvet, the colour of sunset and roses, and cream-coloured lace.
“Beast,” I said gently. “I—want to apologize for my behaviour last night. It was very rude of me. I know you were only trying to help.”
He looked up then, but I was too far away, even leaning down over the sill with my elbows on the edge and my hands dangling, to read any expression on that dark face. He looked down again, and there was a pause. “Thank you,” he said at last. “It’s not necessary, but—well—thank you.”
I sat farther out on the window ledge, spraying him with birdseed as he stood below. “Oh—er, sorry,” I said. His face split into a white smile, and he said, “Aren’t you coming for your walk in the garden? The sun is getting high,” and he brushed cracked corn and sunflower seeds from his shoulders.
“Of course,” I said, and slid back into my room, and was downstairs and outside in the courtyard, running towards the stable, in a moment. I let Greatheart out, and he roamed on ahead of us like an oversized dog, while the Beast and I walked behind. When the horse had found a meadow to his taste and was settled down to some serious grazing, I sat down on a low porphyry wall and looked at the Beast, who avoided my gaze.
“You know something about what’s happened to me,” I said, “and I want to know what it is.”
“I don’t know exactly,” said the Beast, looking at Greatheart. “I have some idea of it.”
I curled my feet up beside me on the wall. The Beast was still standing, hands in pockets, half turned away from me. “Well?” I said. “What’s your idea?”
“I’m afraid you won’t like it, you see,” said the Beast apologetically. He sat down at last, but kept his eyes on the horse.
“Well?” I said again.
The Beast sighed. “How shall I explain? You look at this world—my world, here, as you looked at your old world, your family’s world. This is to be expected; it was the only world, and the only way of seeing, that you knew. Weil; it’s different here. Some things go by different rules. Some of them are easy—for example, there is always fruit on the trees in the garden, the flowers never fade, you are waited on by invisible servants.” With a little tremor of laughter in his voice he added: “And many of the books in the library don’t exist. But there are many things here that your old habits and skills have left you unprepared for.” He paused, “I wondered, before you came, how you’d react—if you came. Well, I can’t blame you; you were tricked into coming here. You have no reason to trust me.”
I started to say something, in spite of not wanting to interrupt him for fear that he would not continue; but he shook his head at me and said, “Wait. No, I know, you’ve gotten used to the way I look, as much as anyone can, and my company amuses you, and you’re grateful that your imprisonment here isn’t as direful as you were anticipating—being served for dinner with an apple in your mouth, or a windowless dungeon far underground, or whatever.” I blushed and looked down at my hands. “I’ve never liked Faerie Queen,” he added irrelevantly. “It gives so many things a bad name.
“But I don’t blame you,” he continued. “As I said, you have no reason to trust me, and excellent reason not to. And in not trusting me, you trust nothing here that you cannot perceive on your old terms. You refuse to acknowledge the existence of anything that is too unusual. You don’t see it, you don’t hear it—for you it doesn’t exist.” He frowned thoughtfully. “From what you’ve told me, a little strangeness leaked through to you, your first night here, when you looked out your window. It frightened you—I quite understand this; it used to frighten me too—and you’ve avoided seeing anything else since.”
“I—I haven’t meant to,” I said, distressed at this picture of myself.
“Not consciously, perhaps; but you have resisted me with all your strength—as any sane person would, when confronted with a creature like me.” He paused again. “You know, the first drop of hope I tasted was that day I first showed you the library—when you were confronted with the works of Browning, and of Kipling, and you saw them. You might not have; you might have seen only Aeschylus and Caesar and Spenser, and authors you could have known in your old world.” He went on as if talking to himself: “Later I realized that this was only a reflection of your love and trust for books; it had nothing to do with me, or with my castle and its other wonders. And the birds came to you; that seemed a hopeful sign. But they came because of the strength of your longing for your old home. But perhaps it was a beginning nonetheless.
He was silent for so long that I thought he would say no more, and I began to consider what sort of question to put to him next. But there was a strange quality to my sight that distracted me—a new depth or roundness, which seemed to vary depending on what I was looking at. Greatheart looked as he always had, large and dapple-grey and patient and lovable. But the grass he waded through caught the sunlight strangely, and seemed to move softly in response to something other than wind. When I looked up, the forest’s black edge shivered and ran like ink on wet paper. It reminded me of the spidery quaking shadows I had seen from my window on my first night in the castle; but there was no dread to what I was, or wasn’t, seeing now. This is silly, I thought; I don’t suppose you really see the sort of thing he’s talking about. What’s wrong with my eyes? I found myself blinking and frowning if I looked steadily at the Beast, too; it wasn’t that he looked any less huge or less dark or less hairy, but there was some difference. And how do I know whether I should see the sort of thing he’s talking about or not? There was something wrong, that first night. There’s something wrong now.