“Last night,” he began again at last, “when you fainted, you were helpless, for good or ill, I carried you to a couch in the next room; I was going to call your servants, and leave you alone. But when J tried to set you down, you murmured in your sleep, and held on to my coat with both hands.” He stood up, took a few paces away from me, a few paces back. “For a few minutes you were content—even happy—that I held you in my arms. Then you remembered, and ran away in panic. But it’s those few minutes of sympathy, I think, that caused whatever change you’re noticing now.”
“Am I always going to know when you’re nearby now?” I said, a little wistfully.
“I don’t know. I should think it likely. I always know where you are, near or far. Is that all it is—dial you were aware of me when you couldn’t see me?”
I shook my head, “No. My vision is funny. My colour sense is confused somehow. And you look funny.”
“Mmm,” he said. “I shouldn’t worry about It if I were you. As I told you at our first meeting, you have nothing to fear. Would you like to go back now?”
I nodded assent and we turned and walked slowly back towards die castle. Greatheart tore up a few last hasty mouthfuls and followed. I had a great deal to ponder, and did not speak; nor did the Beast say anything.
The rest of the day passed as my days usually did. I did not again mention my new strange sense of things, and by the end of the afternoon the new crystalline quality to die air, the way the flower petals shaded off into some colour I couldn’t quite put a name to, and the way I was hearing things that weren’t strictly sounds had, by and large, ceased to disturb me. That evening’s sunset was the most magnificent that I had ever seen; I was stunned and enthralled by its heedless beauty and remained staring at the sky till the last shreds of dim pink had blown away, and the first stars were lit and hung in their appointed places. I turned away at last. “I’m sorry,” I said to the Beast, who stood a little behind me. “I’ve never seen such a sunset. It—it took my breath away.”
“I understand,” he replied.
I went upstairs to dress for dinner, still bemused by what I had just observed, and found an airy, gauzy bit of lace and silver ribbons draped across the bed and gleaming in its own pale light. A corner of the skirt lifted briefly as I entered, as though a hand had begun to raise it and then changed its mind.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said in disgust, recalled from my visionary musings with a bump. “We’ve been through all this dozens of times before. I won’t wear anything like this. Take it away.” The dress was lifted by the shoulders till it hung like a small star in my chamber, and for all my certainty that I would not wear it, I did look at it a little longingly. It was very beautiful; more so, it seemed to me, than any of the other wonderful clothes my high-fashion-minded breeze had tried to put on me.
“Well?” I said sharply. “What are you waiting for?”
“This is going to be difficult,” said Lydia’s voice. If I
hadn’t been accustomed, until that day, to not hearing them, their present silence would have seemed ominous to me. Even the satin petticoats were subdued. I was suddenly uneasy, wondering what they had planned for me. The dress was wafted over to lie negligently across an open wardrobe door, and I was assisted out of my riding clothes. I was still shaking my hair loose from its net when there was a moment of confusion, like being caught in a cloud or a cobweb, and I emerged from it pushing my wild hair off my face and found that they had disobediently wrapped me in the shimmering bit of nothing I had ordered back into the closet.
“What are you doing?” I said, surprised and angry. “I won’t wear this. Take it off.” My hands searched for laces to untie, or buttons, but I could find nothing; it fitted me as if it had been sewn on—perhaps it had, “No, no,” I said. “What is this? I said no.” Shoes appeared on my feet; the golden heels were set with diamond chips, and bracelets of opals and pearls began to grow up my arms. “Stop it,” I said, really angry now. My hair twisted up, and I reached up and pulled a diamond pin out of it till it rumbled down around my shoulders and back; the pin I threw on the floor. My hair cascading down around me startled me as I realized that it was brushing bare skin. “Good heavens,” I said, shocked, looking down; there was hardly enough bodice to deserve die name. Sapphires and rubies appeared on my fingers. I pulled diem off and sent them to join the diamond hair-pin. “You shan’t get away with this,” I said between my teeth, and kicked off the shoes. I hesitated to rip the dress off; I didn’t like to damage it, angry as I was, and again I tried to find a way out of it. “This is a dress for a princess,” I said to the listening air. “Why must you be so silly?”
“Well, you are a princess,” said Lydia, and she sounded as if she were panting a little. Bessie said: “I suppose we must start somewhere, but this is very discouraging.”
“Why is she so stubborn?” asked Lydia, plaintively. “It’s a beautiful dress.”
“I don’t know,” replied Bessie, and I felt a quick surge of their determination, and this angered me even more.
“It is a beautiful dress,” I said wildly, as my hair wound up again and the pin flew back to its place, and the shoes, and the rings to theirs; “And that’s why I won’t wear it; if you put a peacock’s tail on a sparrow, he’s still a brown little, wretched little, drab little sparrow,” and as a net of moonbeams settled around my shoulders and a glittering pendant curled lovingly around my neck, I sat down in the middle of the floor and burst into tears. “All right, I don’t seem to be able to stop you,” I said between sobs, “but I will not leave the room.” I wept myself to silence and then sat, still on the floor, with my abundant skirts anyway around and under me, staring into the fire. I took the pendant off, not in any hope that it would stay off, but just to see what it was: It was a golden griffin, wings spread and big ruby eyes shining, about twice the size of the ring I wore every day and kept beside my bed at night. For some reason it made my tears flow again. My face must have been a mess, but the tears left no stain where they dropped onto the princess’s dress. I meekly refastened the griffin around my neck, and it settled comfortably into the hollow of my throat.
I knew he was there, standing uncertainly before my door, several minutes before he said, tentatively: “Beauty? Is something wrong?” I was usually changed and downstairs again in less than half the time I had spent sitting on the floor tonight.
“They’re forcing me eo wear a dress I don’t like,” I said sulkily, from the floor. “I mean, it won’t come off.”
“Forcing you? Why?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea!” I shouted, and pulled off a few bracelets and hurled them at the fireplace. They half-turned and threw themselves back at me, and over my wrists.
“That’s very odd,” he said through the door. After a pause, he added, “What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t like it,” I said sullenly.
“Er—may I see?”
“Of course not!” I shouted again. “If I didn’t mind your seeing it, why am I staying in my room? Who else is there to see me?”
“You care how I see you?” he said; his voice was muffled by the door, and I could be sure of only the astonishment.
“Well, I won’t wear it,” I said, avoiding the question.
There was a pause and then a roar that made me cower down where I sat and clap my hands over my ears; but I realized in a moment that it wasn’t the sort of roar I could protect myself from that way. I couldn’t catch the words. Whatever it was, I found myself hauled to my feet and tumbled in several directions at once; and when I emerged again, breathless, the fairy dress was gone. So, my sixth sense told me, were Lydia and Bessie. I was wearing a dress of an indeterminate colour somewhere