Over the gate we go, and then we are above the bridge across the moat. With another few heavy, measured wing beats, we are gliding out over the moat. Then we descend again to earth at the far end of the stone bridge. The swans natter at us as we land, and they puff up their own feathery wings in salute. I slide out of Beast’s arms, he folds his magnificent wings, and I climb aboard his back once again. We gallop into the cover of the trees, down the trail along the ridge that overlooks the town. Behind us, the gates remain closed, shutting in the mob, even as they clamor to pursue us. Perhaps it is the last of Mère Sophie’s enchantment.
Farther below, well out of sight of the chateau, we take refuge in a budding apple orchard that borders a steep, sloping vineyard. Beast slows to a trot and then stops to rest. I slide off his back and stand beside him, stroking his unruly mane as he pants from his exertions. Despite his powerful haunches, his spine is not made for galloping on all fours over too great a distance. He rises up and straightens his back as we gaze out at the placid landscape.
Deep in the valley at the foot of the hill far below us huddles Clairvallon. Soon enough, hysterical tales of the monster that terrorized the chevalier’s wedding will be all over the town. Whatever townsfolk did not witness our flight to freedom will be infected with all the same fears and prejudices as those we’ve just left shut up at the chateau. They must all be pressed against the gilded gate, shouting and cursing now that the danger is well past; their harsh human noise still echoes down the green hillside to us.
But we turn our backs on the din and set off down the dusty track that skirts the outer edges of the Beaumont grounds. The spring rains have given way to green summer. Insects hum lazily in the tall grasses, and untended wildflowers sway in the light breeze as we double back along the outskirts of the park well behind the chateau. We stop often to listen to the exuberant song of a mockingbird or watch the drunken path of an orange-and-yellow butterfly skittering playfully along in the air. Once Beast freezes in place so as not to fright a small brown hare nibbling at a shoot of greenery. The little creature freezes, too, angling its head to take us in with its large, liquid brown eye, wriggling its tiny pink nose. Then slowly, so slowly, it finishes its task, puts down its delicate front paws, and scampers silently away.
We wander deeper below the park, where the trees grow wilder and closer together, until the tittering of birds, the rustling of busy squirrels, the murmur of leafy branches on the breeze, and the distant burbling of the river are all that can be heard.
Beast stretches out a paw to take my hand, and I smile up at him.
And we start down the hill into the wood. Together.
That’s not the way folk tell the story now.
Fearful minds invent tales to conceal what their eyes have seen, to explain away what’s too frightening to understand. Stories are whispered in the shadows, across the hearth, at the well — but never in the hearing of the magistrate or the priest, I’ll wager. They seep into the wood like the distant cooing of a dove in the velvety fog — in the idle chatter of peasant girls picking blackberries or boys fishing in the river or the ribald old goodwives from other villages who visit Mère Sophie for her potions and possets.
Some say the handsome young chevalier was bitten by an enraged beast while on a hunt, that he sickened and died of his wound. They say his body was burned in secret to prevent a vile contagion from running riot throughout the seigneurie, and that is why he was seen no more. Others whisper that his poor bereft bride was cursed for her beauty by a jealous witch who wanted the chevalier for herself and whisked him away to the fairy world. They say this prodigious witch and her animal familiar were seen flying away from the chateau on the wedding day.
I might count myself defamed, or more likely flattered, by that part of the tale, if I cared anymore what others think of me. But only one other’s opinion matters to me, and he is far too sensible to worry over such idle talk.
Beast thrives in the wood, as I thrive in my studies with Mère Sophie, learning her skills and her secrets. She would gladly have made room for us both in her enchanted home, but Beast prefers to build us a cottage of stones dug out of the riverbank, mortared with good, loamy earth. The paws that found it so awkward to manage a pen are perfectly suited to mashing up the glue of mud and twigs and waste and setting the stones in place. We thatch it over with sturdy evergreen limbs that offer concealment as well as shelter.
Beast finds a wild climbing rose of the softest scarlet tangled up in the bramble behind our cottage. We cut back the bramble and train the rose to arch over the little plot of earth where I plant my vegetable garden. Small red buds explode along the mother plant, relishing their freedom. We hang the ring that belonged to Beast’s mother by its red ribbon on the highest branch, in her memory. Christine’s restless spirit, finally at peace, troubles me no more.
Mère Sophie introduces me into the vast sisterhood of wisewomen who live on the outskirts of all the villages, caring for the folk. And when I am off about the fetching and gathering that she finds so tiring on her own, or the chopping, measuring, and mixing I am learning at her worktable, Beast busies himself building a hearth for the fire in our home out of leftover river rock piled up outside. It gives him such pleasure to build useful things after so many idle years imprisoned within the illusion that was Jean-Loup. He makes a bed beside the fire, lined with straw and swansdown. I creep in beside him at night, into the sheltering warmth of his body, where his soft fur and the deep, rumbling hum of his breathing give me more contentment than I have ever known.
The woodland creatures fear him at first, sensing how he is not one of them. But Beast behaves with such deference in their presence, be they badger, buck, or butterfly, that they grow more tolerant. He hunts for our food when he must, learning again to eat meat that I have cooked, but he’s come to consider himself the caretaker of the animals. He will not countenance sportsmen in the wood hunting for amusement and drives them off. But he won’t interfere with a poor man hunting for food; that is nature’s will. And he watches over travelers in the wood who have lost their way — discreetly, from the shadows — to protect them from whatever predator, two-or four-legged, might trouble them in the night.
Beast finds it prudent to retreat into the shadows whenever folk are about in the wood. But as time passes, those who have caught a glimpse of him spin their own tales, and these, too, find their way to us. They call him Green Man; or Pan; or Silvanus, the Horned One, lord of the animals, heart of the forest. Once in a great while, a traveler finds a striped feather that Beast has dropped in the wood. These are considered objects of rare good fortune, Mère Sophie tells us, prized by the folk. Sometimes a feather is seen woven into a necklace or a belt or hung up in a place of honor inside a cottage for protection. Now and then, we find offerings left on the little pile of river rock outside our cottage, as if it were an altar: cups of mead or cow’s milk or milled wheat, a garland of garden flowers, a joint of fresh meat in the slaughtering season. Sometimes, we find bits of brightly colored cloth, berry-dyed, that I stitch together into quilts and curtains.
We make a place for ourselves in the wood, Beast and I, as cold and damp, dark and treacherous, and full of forbidding shadows as it often is. Here he belongs in his natural skin, free to enjoy and explore his animal power, and yet he has companionship to satisfy his humanity. He also has a purpose as useful as mine, as I partner Mère Sophie in her vital work. We have found our place in the world at last. Together, in the wood. We ask for nothing more.