Some movement catches my attention, far below my window, and I peek out into early winter twilight. A hare creeps about in the courtyard foraging among the gnarled, overgrown flower beds. The small creature pauses for a moment; his ears prick up as he scents the air, then he goes back to his nibbling. But I see another movement, a dark shape poised in the long shadows thrown by the buildings. He watches the hare with feral intensity, his powerful haunches tensed.
He shifts his huge body into a better position and freezes, waiting. The hare, unconcerned, swivels about, presenting his backside as he takes the next shoot of withering grass in his paws. The larger animal rises imperceptibly, then springs over the flower bed dividing him from his prey. Startled by some natural instinct, the hare bolts off to the left the instant before the heavy paws would land on him. He’s fast, skittering this way and that, but the predator has size and strength and cunning. The hare wheels about three times, but the fourth is anticipated by a lunge from the larger animal, who falls on the hare with his deadly claws. The hare is slammed to earth, and a mighty paw crushes his backbone. Quick. Clean.
He crouches on his haunches and lifts the hare’s lifeless body in both paws. Holding it belly-up, he sniffs at it, touches his tongue to the still-warm flesh. He angles his head sideways, rips open the small body with one savage tooth, and begins to feed. Ravenously. Tiny bones break under his powerful jaws. Gore drips from his snout whiskers. Blood drenches the matted fur of his chest.
He is man no more. He is Beast.
My cupboard door is drawn open. Beast stands outside. Days or perhaps weeks have passed, and daylight streams in again through the window.
“I felt that someone was in here,” he rumbles as his gaze searches these empty shelves. His eyes look different in the daylight, still strangely human, but a warmer shade of brown, flecked with gold. Then he frowns at me. “What fool left lighted candles in a cupboard? It’s a miracle they didn’t burn the place down.”
What game is he playing at? Has Mère Sophie’s spell erased his memory along with his handsome face?
My candles stand as tall as they did when he first shut me up in here, however long ago that was; my wicks burn constantly, but they never diminish. Tilted briefly upward, as he lifts me down from the shelf, I see my flames have not blackened the shelf above. He notices it, too.
“Are these flames not real?” He draws me farther out, snuffles tentatively at my candles, but pauses when he glimpses his reflection in my silver surface. We have shattered all the mirrors, but I am still here to show him what he is.
“I know there’s been enchantment here,” he murmurs at last. “I can sense it.” And his whiskers quiver slightly. That’s all he says; no raging at his image, no flinging me across the room. He looks around one last time, but all is silence and dust. He glances again at me.
“Perhaps you are enchanted,” he suggests after further consideration. As if he didn’t know. Why does he pretend not to recognize me? “But whatever you are, your light is wasted here.” And he carries me out the door and downstairs. I could not agree more. I have nothing to illuminate up here, but now I can enjoy my revenge once more.
The solitary clopping of his hooves echoes in the stillness. “I thought this house would be full of people,” he murmurs as we go. “But it’s so empty.”
How can he not remember how all the servants fled in terror from witchcraft? From him? How can he have forgotten so soon? But I have vowed to never let him forget!
Gloom and neglect hang like cobwebs on all the once-fine things in the chateau. Beast has not kept up his housekeeping, and now no one will come in to do it for him. I can imagine the tales put abroad in the town by his fleeing servants. Witchcraft. Ruin. The Chateau Beaumont is haunted. A terrible monster lives there.
I wonder if this is the Beaumont Curse fulfilled at last, this monstrosity conferred upon the chevalier? But I know this monster has always lived here, for all that he once had a pretty face and comely form. Still, the rumormongers have done their work well. The chateau remains utterly deserted; no one is left on whom to spend his silver coins and his scorn. Only me.
On the second floor, he hesitates for a moment, then carries me toward his private apartments and through the outer salon. But he goes no farther than the sitting room, frowning down as his hooves crunch over the shattered glass that still covers the hearth. From here, I can see through the tall, arched window overlooking the grounds. It’s late afternoon, and I’m astonished to see how ferociously the wood has overgrown the park. Wild-growing thicket and bramble smother the stately, manicured trees and riot across the green. At this rate, they must soon devour the entire chateau.
Beast is also gazing out the window. “That is where I make my bed,” he says. “In the thicket, under a canopy of thorns.” Is he thinking aloud to pierce the silence or speaking to me? And why should he imagine I care? I am not here to listen to his prattling, at any rate, but to witness his suffering.
His uneasy gaze sweeps all around the sitting room, where his own nightmare began. He frowns again. “I feel that something terrible happened here,” he whispers.
I would stare at him if I could. He is the terrible thing that happened here — his beastliness! If he forgets his own hideous transformation, and all he has lost, how can he suffer? He must suffer, or I shall have no revenge! And without revenge, what use is my life?
Rage at this injustice so boils up in me that I feel bubbles explode out of one of my upheld silver cups. Tiny globs of hot wax, eternally burning, splatter over his paw, scorching him. He yelps and sets me firmly on the mantelpiece. Rumbling to himself, he marches out, clawing the hardening wax out of his fur. Let him suffer his own company a while longer. Let him know what it is to be truly alone.
The winter sun is cold and pale, shrouded in white gauze. It appears only briefly each day in the arch of the window near the fireplace before drifting off again, consumed by dark night as the park below is consumed by the wood. What little light the sun provides glistens off the ice and snow that covers everything outside now and glitters feebly in the bits of broken glass on the floor. It’s a silent, sleeping world, abandoned by time — abandoned by life.
Only Beast disturbs the deathlike serenity. Sometimes I hear him stomping about belowstairs or out in the yard, barking in the cold moonlight. I don’t know what he finds to feed on in this season. I am more fortunate in my transformation; I feed on his misery.
It’s cold afternoon again when Beast comes back to the sitting room. He crunches over the glass to the mantel where I stand. I see my steady flame reflected in the gold in his eyes as he peers at me.
“I feel certain that something I said or did offended you last time,” he rumbles at length. He rubs absently at the spot on his paw where the wax landed. There can be no doubt that he is speaking to me, not merely airing out his lungs for his own benefit. “I regret it, whatever it was.”
The words astonish me. It should never have occurred to Jean-Loup that he ever gave offense or to mind the consequences.
“It may be that you prefer your own company. For which I would not blame you,” Beast goes on with a wry glance at his image in my polished surface. “But if you feel yourself trapped in this solitary room, there is a great deal more to see in this place, and I am eager to see it.” He raises a shaggy brow hopefully at me. “I will try not to offend you again if you would like to come with me.”