But there is no answer from the forces of magic that govern us, nor indeed from God. Beast’s roses may be magic-born, but their life span is not eternal, so it seems. Once born, like all natural things, they are destined to die.
Beast falls to his haunches again and turns back to the bush from which he has plucked the withered stalk. He sets the dry stalk and the petals carefully down in the gravel track outside the rose bed, then begins to dig with his claws in the dirt beneath the bush. When he has made a ragged hole, he places the remains of the rose inside and covers it with a sprinkling of its petals, then shoves the little mound of dirt he’s dug out back in over it all, patting the surface of the dirt into place with his paws. I expect him to mumble a few words over the grave like a priest, but Beast says nothing, only hunches there, staring at the dirt. Then he turns an accusing glance on the rosebush itself, as if it has betrayed him. He thrusts his head forward and sniffs and snuffles all around it, trying to learn its secrets the way he tried to draw some sort of understanding from his family portraits and the grand furnishings in his rooms. Indeed, he seems to take some comfort from the scent of the roses still in full bloom, breathing in their fragrance, reassuring himself. At last he cradles two voluptuous blooms in his upturned paws.
“Do not leave me,” he begs of them as if they were companions. Indeed, they are the only companions he has left. Besides me.
Yet, while I expect to feel joy to see him so utterly alone, to hear his pathetic pleading, I am suddenly reminded how solitary my own existence has become.
He pries himself away at dusk to hunt and feed, but he does not drag himself up the steps to me afterward. Instead he comes back to the rose garden, to the errant bush that lost its bloom. On all fours he lumbers around and around its trunk, his deep chest low above his busy paws. When he has worn down a kind of track in the dirt surrounding the bush — the dirt must be dry as dust or it would not take him so long; soft, moist soil would give way more easily — he heaves himself into it, curling his massive body around the bush. And he sleeps, among the rest of his living companions.
I keep my vigil in the window throughout the night. My flame glows in the glass pane before me while the garden beyond sleeps in darkness. Sunrise is scarcely more than a white smudge above the stark winter landscape out beyond the chateau walls. But there is light enough to see the state of the garden. Beast still lies mounded up around the base of the rosebush, but his tawny fur is dappled with the red petals of dying roses. Indeed, every bush in every raised bed in the garden has dropped a litter of spent petals. Thousands and thousands of them cover the ground like splattered blood.
I brace myself for Beast’s reaction when he wakes and sees it. He leaps up, shaking off his dusting of petals, and stares all around the garden, but the cry that erupts out of him is not the angry bellowing I expect, but a slow, steady keen of mourning. It’s as if he grieves for the roses themselves.
Of course, there are means for keeping flowers alive that have nothing to do with magic. But Jean-Loup knew nothing of husbandry and cared less; he had servants and gardeners and groundskeepers for that. He took his pleasure freely from his garden, as he took it elsewhere, with no thought of how it came to exist or what it cost to maintain. It belonged to him; it was his due.
Beast can only stare helplessly all about him at the litter of petals, his massive head hung with grief. It angers me that he will let his beautiful garden die off again out of ignorance. He can’t know how simple the solution is. Any peasant child who has ever had charge of a vegetable patch knows it. Even I know it, cold and inhuman as I am. Nothing alive can survive without water.
Water. The word echoes inside my silver being. Water.
I focus all my thoughts upon it. Water, you great shaggy-brained fool. Water!
Out in the garden, Beast stops turning around. He frowns at the dirt beneath the nearest bush and probes it delicately with one hoof. He squats on his haunches and pats the earth with his paws. Frowning again, he pats under the next bush. Even from here I can see how hard and caked the dirt in the rose beds has become, its surface split by parched gullies. At last Beast scrambles up to his hind feet and sprints away out of my sight to the track between the chateau and the east wing that leads to the stables and the well.
Soon enough, I hear the far-off commotion of his rooting around in the stables — tools swept aside; hay bales knocked about. Later, I hear the clank of iron handles against wood, the distant smack of wood against stone, and the sloshing of water. At length, he hustles back into my vision from the gap in the east wing, his paws clasping the handles of the two buckets he’s found, the buckets so full of water they drip a wet trail behind him with every step.
Can he have heard me somehow? And why should I wish to help him, in any case? My happiness depends on his complete despair. But I enjoy the roses, too. It is not only Beast who will suffer without them, and he has the means of doing something about it, as I do not. Let him labor for my benefit for a change.
He carries them to the first row of rose beds, sets one down, and splashes half the contents of the other over the first bush. The ground beneath is so dry, the water puddles up on top of it.
He pauses, one bucket still grasped in his paw. He puts out one hoof and stamps lightly at the ground, then kicks at it. He sets down the bucket, crouches low, and begins to rake at the dirt with his claws. His first effort all but uncovers the root of the bush; he has to shove dirt back into the deep cavity he’s made. But he’s begun to understand the principle of the thing, clawing at the dirt more gingerly to break up the clods, then pouring out the water slowly, letting it seep through the broken dirt to the roots below.
I watch in fascination, trying to imagine any circumstance in which Jean-Loup would allow his fine, smooth hands to touch the raw wood of a bucket, let alone common dirt. But Beast doesn’t seem to mind his dirty paws, nor does he mind it when the mud he’s creating cakes his claws and sticks in wet clumps between his toes. He’s too absorbed in his task to even notice.
But after tending only three bushes, his buckets are dry again. He trots off with the empty buckets, brings them back full, and sets to raking more dirt and watering the next two bushes in the row. Then he catches up the empty buckets and carries them off to bring them back full of water once again.
I am reminded of the night Beast drew himself a bath. But this time he can have no thought for his own luxury; on the contrary, the goal he’s set himself is immense and exhausting. The sun is stretching for its midpoint by the time he’s completed a single row of rose beds on either side of the drive. He rises up on his haunches and shakes back his shaggy mane, surveying the situation. Then he picks up the two buckets and carries them around the side of the chateau again.