Beauty (46 page)

If I were wise, and if I had the conviction wisdom should lend me, I would seize Snow up and take her somewhere away from this pathological child she is going to marry. And yet, one asks, where? Where does one take a gloriously beautiful twelve-year-old girl who has not two tiny brains to rub together to make even one wee warm idea in her head? And when one gets her there, what does one do with her? No monastery would take her. No, that's not true, given a sufficient dowry some monastery would, but she'd be miserable there. Marriage is her only hope. And yet ...

Well. Beauty does not breed true. I said that before, when Elly died. Beauty exists in all ages, but it does not necessarily breed true. Mixed with dross, it becomes dross. I am only her grandmother, after all. I am not God, who presumably made her as she is for some reason!

ALL HALLOW'S EVE

Tomorrow is the wedding. Tonight I was sitting alone in my warm, tapestry-hung room, with my cat on the bed and Giles next door, remembering Mama. I saw her last on Samhain Eve, so long ago, when Thomas the Rhymer got loose from Faery. I wondered if she would care that her great-granddaughter was being married.

"Fenoderee," I whispered.

And he was there, sitting on the window sill, looking out at the night. Puck lounged against the bed, chewing at a fingernail. Call one, get both.

"I was thinking about Mama," I said.

"Ah," said Puck. "Well, she's in Faery, looking well."

I tried to think of something to ask about her, but I couldn't. Instead, I wondered, "Was it the Dark Lord I saw in the witch's glass?"

"It was," said Fenoderee.

"Did he see me?"

"Carabosse thinks he may have. Israfel thinks he did, also. They're both frightened for you, though they say it was probably going to happen, sooner or later. Once you went back to the twentieth, it showed up in the Pool that he would."

Puck added, "They think the Dark Lord will come looking for you, manipulating things. Be careful, Beauty."

"How much do you know about ... "I started to ask, then shut my mouth, remembering they didn't know.

"About your burden?" Puck asked. "We've known since almost the beginning. It's not her fault, but old Clockwork Carabosse is one of the Sidhe, after all. She can't get out of the habit of thinking of us Bogles as slightly subnormal. She thinks we don't notice what's going on under our noses."

Fenoderee said, "I don't know what made her think we wouldn't see what she was up to. She and Israfel did it right there in front of us."

I sighed. "I'm getting old, you know. I won't last too much longer. They'd better start thinking of somewhere else to hide it."

Puck nodded deliberately. "They're cogitating, looking in the Pool, thinking deep thoughts, the way they do."

"And I'm still just supposed to go along, is that it?" I was surprised to find myself still capable of a little anger!

"For now," said Fenoderee. "Is that why you called?"

I shook my head. "No, it was just I was thinking about Mama. I was thinking of going to Faery to say hello, but when I returned here, wouldn't a lot of time have passed."

Puck nodded. "Oh, yes. No way around that. Your mortal part ages whenever you travel back and forth by magic."

I wanted to see her, but I couldn't risk that. If I died before Carabosse took away my burden, it might be lost forever. Besides, Giles and I couldn't look forward to that much time together. Nor Grumpkin, either. "Could you take a message for me?"

He smiled.

"Tell her ... I love her," I said.

I think I do. Despite what she is and how she feels, I think I do. In my long life there have been few enough people, mortal or Faery, for me to love.

ALL HALLOWS NIGHT

Well, we have had a wedding. There was the mad young prince, all dressed up in taffeta and furs with a plumed cap, looking very handsome, and there was Galantha, Snowdrop, in silk and velvet, both of them standing outside the church door, exchanging their pledges. I had hired a local goldsmith to break up the coffin and melt down the gold into nice little ingots. That gave me a goodly sum for her dowry, and the King settled a house and land on his son. They have enough to live on; neither of them is bright enough to get into serious trouble; and I laid a happiness spell on them as a gift. It was the least I could do. The King is quite a jolly fellow, several decades younger than I, but gallant and well-spoken. He says to call him Zot, and that he'll send word to me in England how the children get along. He flirts with me and tells me I don't look a day over eighty.

After the pledging was done and the rings exchanged and the papers signed, we went into the church and had the nuptial mass. And after that was done, we went to the feast, and there was Princess Ilene of Marvella. I'm not sure whether she knew who the bride was. I'm not sure the invitation mentioned the bride's name. If it did, she may have assumed it was someone else by the same name, or that Snow would have aged during the thirty years she'd been asleep, or something. At any rate, when Princess Ilene saw Snow, her eyes bulged. I've never seen that actually happen before, but it happened this time. Ilene was standing beside me at the time, her eyes bulged, and then something quite dreadful happened to her face. It sagged, melted, and began to fall off the skull. She raised her hands, just as she had when invoking the presence in the mirror, and they were all bones. Well, she'd said the Dark Lord held her beauty in thrall, and she'd been safe so long as no one around was prettier than she. However, Snow certainly was prettier and it seemed the Dark One was ending his contract and taking Princess Ilene for his own.

I was the only one who saw what was happening. Ilene crumpled to the floor, very slowly. I'd brought my cloak to the banquet with me, folded over my arm, thinking I might want to escape if things got dull. I spread it like a fishing net, to hide what was left of the Princess. "Fenoderee," I whispered, and there he was. "Take it away," I said. "And put the cloak back under my bed upstairs."

He was gone only for an instant. Then he was back. "Where did you put her?" I whispered.

"Under the church with the other old bones," he whispered back, then made a face at me and departed. Faery folk aren't very respectful, sometimes. That was consecrated ground!

Then I caught myself and realized that was merely another way of saying "magical ground." She could lie there as well as anywhere.

A few moments later, Prince Charming, the hereditary Prince of Marvella came wandering toward me with Snow on his arm and a silly smile on his sweet old face. He was looking for his wife to tell her he'd found his long-lost daughter, but Princess Ilene was nowhere to be found. I helped them look for a while, until I got tired. Then I came up here to bed.

Giles brought me a cup of wine and asked where we would go now.

"Home," I told him. Meaning Westfaire. Or, at least, somewhere near there. I long for home.

NOVEMBER

King Zot of Nadenada gave us an escort to Bayonne. There we found it simple to join a group of travelers who were seeking passage to England. Good weather held. A merchantman presented itself in due course. Five days north, we landed once more at Bristol and found a carriage we could hire to take us to Sawley, where, after inquiries, I found the man who claimed to own Wellingford (though I much doubt his claim would stand a legal test). I paid him a few years' rent on the Dower House.

And in that house we have come to rest, Giles and I, keeping our old bones busy hiring people to refurbish the place and manage the farm land around it, and finding half a dozen women to keep it clean. It is not a wreck, not like some places in the countryside, but it is certainly dilapidated. I converted gems back to cash, and cash into investments with a certain House of Levi in England. This time, just in case I decide to go away and come back in five hundred years, the money is to be paid to whoever knows a few code words. I've had enough of darting about planting forged documents.

SPRING 1418

Winter came and went. Despite the cold, it has been the happiest time of my life. Strange to say that with youth gone and all the pains of age very much with me, but it is true. Giles is a loving, dear companion, a sweet and kindly friend.

A few days ago I decided I wanted to see Westfaire. I told Giles just enough for him to help me, and we went through the water gate together, floating on pigs' bladders, for neither of us is strong enough to push through that deep water. Inside it is just as I left it. We climbed slowly up to the tower, me holding the cloak, Giles clutching the boots to keep us from falling asleep. As we climbed, he paused often to catch his breath. He was not this weak when we were searching for Snowdrop. It must be a very recent thing.

Beloved is still there in the tower, still lovely, still sleeping.

"How long?" Giles wanted to know, reaching out to touch her face. "How long will you sleep?"

"You." Not "she." Oh, Giles. Giles.

Well, according to Joyeause, she will sleep thirty more years, until kissed by a handsome prince, though, according to Carabosse, that wasn't the real curse at all. Supposing that both of them are right (and I do not take Aunt Joyeause so lightly as old Carabosse does), at the end of a hundred years, someone may be able to take Beloved out of Westfaire and kiss her awake. If I am to see that event, I must live to be one hundred and sixteen years old. Looking at myself in the glass, I don't think I'll make it. Still, if and when that day comes, Beloved will know it was all worth it, being my friend. She'll have the best of it then. ;

I wrote her a note. "Beloved, you are Beauty. And Beauty is gone, long ago. Live her life as well as she would have lived it, or even better." ?

As I turned toward the stair, I saw my mysterious thing, still sitting upon the chest. It's a clock, of course. One of Carabosse's clocks. The hand has moved to half past fifteen. It does not measure hours but centuries. It ends, as the world will end, with the twenty-second. I leaned close and listened to the sound. The faint ticking. The tiny crepitation of time moving past. On the face of the clock is the word "Carabosse," entwined with the numbered centuries. She cursed me. But she left me this gift. Sometimes I wish it was all she had left me.

It was easier climbing down. When we got back to the lake shore, we were thoroughly chilled through. Such a stupid thing to do at our age!

LATER

Giles is very ill. I know what he has. He has pneumonia. I could get to the twentieth in an instant, I could steal penicillin, I could be back before he knows I am gone. Maybe. I don't know if I could. I could try!

I told him that. His being sick is all my fault. He would be all right if I hadn't dragged him through the water and up that tower. He must let me help him.

But he won't. He shook his head at me, smiling. "I saw you sleeping in that tower, just the way you were. If I die, let me die remembering that, sweet girl. I want you here, not off somewhere with your boots."

"Giles, we could have years, yet."

"Don't want years that badly," he whispered to me. "I've had years. More years alone than I ever wanted. Don't leave me alone now. I'm tired. It's enough."

He went off to sleep.

Oh, God in Heaven, I could not let him go. I wept and screamed and threw myself about, while he went on sleeping, more deeply, more deeply.

It was that gave me the idea. I called Puck and Fenoderee and put on the boots, and we held him while all of us went, holding onto him we went, through the thorns, through the roses, into Westfaire. Oh, I could have used the boots anytime. So foolish. So stupid. I let my love go through that cold water when we could have used the boots. If they would go through time, what were a few thorns!

I put him in Aunt Lav's bed. I took the boots away. He fell even more deeply asleep. He slept, as all in Westfaire sleep. He will not die. Nothing in Westfaire can die. I know it! That was the curse Carabosse put upon Westfaire. Sleep! Not for a hundred years, but forever! It has to be. It's the only thing that makes sense of everything that's happened!

I asked Puck if I was right, and he nodded, shuffling his toes in the dust as though embarrassed. I asked him why, and he said he didn't know.

26

JUNE 1418, SOME SAINT'S DAY OR OTHER

With Giles gone from me, nothing seems worth it, somehow. Not that we were recent lovers, in a physical sense. All that sort of thing leaves you. You remember it, but your body doesn't urge you toward it. Your body wants comfort and affection and the sweetness of companionship. We weren't lonely, not so long as we were together, but now I am. I go to Westfaire often and sit there, talking to him as he sleeps. Sometimes I pretend he answers me.

It seems to me his breathing is easier. Is he healing? While he sleeps? It would be so easy to summon him up, not really him, you understand, but an enchantment of him. But I don't. I won't. It wouldn't be fair to him. It would be like Chinanga, all a dream, my creation, not really him at all. An enchantment Giles would be incapable of surprising me. He who always surprised me.

It was unfair of him to go before me. I believe I will probably live quite some time yet. Despite all the aches and pains, my heart sounds steady and strong and I breathe easily. I may have years yet to get through.

When I was a child, my legs used to hurt often. Aunt Terror, I think it was she, used to say it was growing pains. I have the same pain now. Perhaps now they are ungrowing pains. Whenever the pain wakes me in the night, I think of going back to Faery where I don't feel pain.

I called Fenoderee a day or so ago, and he didn't come. He always came before when I called. What's going on in Faery?

I need to talk to Carabosse. What's she going to do with this thing inside me? I would like to see Mama, too, to tell her how sorry I am for what happened to her. Besides, in Faery, I would at least look and feel young.

Remembering the condition I was in when I returned last time, I'll need to make some provision for staying healthy and clean. Going to Faery will do no good if my human flesh is starved while I'm there. I'll have to figure something out.